Masters of Jazz Guitar: The Story of the Players and Their Music (Paperback)

~ Charles Alexander (Editor) "Looking back from here, the guitar seems to have been the defining instrument of 20th century popular music..." (more)
Key Phrases: jazz guitar, hank garland, guitar duets, New York, Charlie Christian, Los Angeles (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

There are at least three kinds of jazz books: text-laden historical or critical overviews; photo-laden visual chronicles; and collections that detail the operations of a jazz musician, how a musician technically or creatively acts as a pioneer. Masters of Jazz Guitar dabbles happily in all three areas. It's a coffee-table book first, with fantastic, evocative photographs strewn throughout. You rarely see a collection in jazz that features photos of folks like Hungarian six-stringer Atila Zoller just pages away from far better known quantities like Al DiMeola, but the visuals here are just a sweet coating. Inside, the text is even more delicious, with 25 chapters breaking down the jazz guitar traditions, from Django Reinhardt to Wes Montgomery, Pat Metheny, and many more. In addition, the chapters are authored by a slew of great British critics, including Stuart Nicholson and Brian Priestley, each of whom demonstrates a liberal cut in the jazz tradition, an idea of the genre that easily spans swing, bop, free jazz, and the chilly abstractions of Derek Bailey. For the guitar player, this is a splendid and entertaining resource. For the jazz fan, it's all that and more. --Andrew Bartlett --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

These two books provide contrasting approaches to jazz photo collections. Masters of Jazz Guitar, an oversized volume, skillfully mixes more than 200 color photos of musicians and album-cover art with 25 insightful essays by notable writers. Beginning with jazz guitar roots, Alexander--publisher of Jazzwise magazine--traces the use of the guitar from swing to bop to bebop, cool, hardbop, and fusion. It contains chapters on such icons as Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass, and Wes Montgomery; devotes sections to specialty areas such as Brazilian guitarists; and showcases some of the new talent on both sides of the Atlantic. Hardly just a coffee-table adornment, this volume provides all types of readers with a visually stunning, informative compendium of the many styles of jazz guitar during the last century. Highly recommended. Is This To Be My Souvenir? more modestly compiles over 300 black-and-white photos from the collection of Danish journalist and one-time New York jazz aficionado Rosenkrantz. It includes photographs of prebop giants such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong as well as lesser-known artists like Rube Bloom. B chmann-Moller (You Got To Be Original, Man!) adds paragraph-length biographies of the musicians pictured. Though littered with many stock publicity head shots, the book occasionally rises above a drab effort with revealing, never-before-published photos such as the picture of a happy-go-lucky Fats Waller eating a hot dog on a New York street before a session. Hardly indispensable and suffering in comparison to Masters of Jazz Guitar, this title will appeal mainly to fanatics of prewar jazz.
-David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Backbeat Books (December 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879307285
• ISBN-13: 978-0879307288
• Product Dimensions: 12 x 9.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #640,219 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A MUST have for any jazz guitarist or fan., June 27, 2003

By	Darren Littlejohn "the 12-Step Buddhist" (Portland, OR United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is quite an excellent book and is surprisingly done in soft cover now. My copy is hard cover and is a prized possession. It's thoughtfully and knowledgably written, has excellent references, recommendations, photos and discussions.

I love this book, and it would be a GREAT present for ANY jazz guitarist. If you love one, buy it for them and they'll never forget it!

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-d

4.0 out of 5 stars The best I've found, June 27, 2009

By	Julian46 - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Masters of Jazz Guitar: The Story of the Players and Their Music (Hardcover)

If you like jazz guitar or want to know more about the great players, this is the book for you. Enough general historical overview of the emergence of jazz and the role of guitar in its sound, plus decent critical summaries of the life and work of many players. Obviously the better known get the most coverage (Wes, Lang, Pass, Metheny etc.) but you can find info on less celebrated greats such as Roberts, Smith, Hall etc.). One could ask for more in-depth coverage, greater accounting of the development of the electric archtop etc but the balance here seems right and allows the reader to dip in and learn without having to know anything about scales and changes. Good pictures too. But I could have lived without the brief section on Yngwie!