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Whitney Balliett

Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000 Hardcover – December 1, 2000

by Whitney Balliett (Author)

4.4 17 ratings

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As jazz critic for The New Yorker magazine since 1957, and the author of fifteen books, Whitney Balliett has spent a lifetime listening to and writing about jazz. "All first-rate criticism," he once wrote in a review of someone else's work, "first defines what we are confronting." He could as easily have been describing his own work. For nearly half a century, Balliett has been telling us, in pitch-perfect prose, what we confront when we listen to America's greatest, and perhaps only truly original, musical form.

Collected Works: A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000 is a monumental achievement, capturing the full range and register of the jazz scene, from the first Newport Jazz Festival in 1954 to recent performances by a rising generation of musicians. Here are definitive portraits of such major figures as: Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Django Reinhardt, Martha Raye, Buddy Rich, Charles Mingus, Louis Armstrong, Billie Holliday, Art Tatum, Bessie Smith, and Earl Hines-a list that barely scratches the surface. Generations of readers have learned to listen to the music with Balliett's graceful guidance. For five decades he has captured the moments when jazz history was being made.

Balliett's knowledge is encyclopedic treasure and yet he has always written as if he were listening for the first time. Since its beginnings in New Orleans at the turn of the century, jazz has been restlessly and relentlessly evolving, improvising, experimenting, shapeshifting, a constant work in progress of sounds and tonal shades, from swing and dixieland, through boogie-woogie, bebop, and hard bop, to the new thing, free jazz, abstract jazz, and atonal jazz. Yet in all its forms, the music is sustained by what Balliett calls a "secret emotional center," an "aural elixir" that "reveals itself when an improvised phrase or an entire solo or even a complete number catches you by surprise." Whitney Balliett performs the miracle of capturing the essence of jazz-the "sound of surprise."

Print length

928 pages
Language

English
Publisher

St. Martin's Press
Publication date

December 1, 2000
Dimensions

6.44 x 2.07 x 9.58 inches
ISBN-10

0312202881
ISBN-13

978-0312202880
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Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Balliett, known for his contributions to the Saturday Review and The New Yorker, is one of a handful of jazz experts who can adroitly deal with every jazz style from New Orleans and Dixieland through bebop and 1960s avant-garde jazz to today's popular jazz artists like Wynton Marsalis. The present volume, massive in scope, draws together many of Balliett's best pieces, ranging from brief performance reviews to in-depth analyses of various artists' musical approaches. Perhaps the most impressive aspect of this outstanding collection is the author's ability to communicate each musician's style in a way that is both understandable and meaningful to the musician, the jazz aficionado, and the lay reader alike. Equally important are Balliett's insightful comments on the place of jazz and jazz personalities in film and television and his analysis of tendencies in the work of other writers on the genre. Highly recommended for public and academic libraries, this book will assuredly also find a place on the shelves of many jazz fans in their homes.DJames E. Perone, Mount Union Coll., Alliance, OH
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Balliett has earned the title of one of America's preeminent, and certainly prolific, jazz critics. Since 1954 he has penned literally hundreds of album and concert reviews, musician profiles, book reviews, and other critical essays on jazz music for the New Yorker magazine. This anthology brings them all together under one cover, and it is an illuminating if not also daunting collection of work. The table of contents does not list each essay, but groups hundreds of pages of material together by decade, five entries in all. It is a very accessible and worthwhile body of work for jazz novices and aficionados alike. Years of writing for a general audience sharpened Balliett's impressionistic writing style, which manages to convey the excitement and nuances of jazz music to the uninitiated without compromising his critical ear. Balliett remained an impartial critic and embraced the mainstream and avant-garde alike. Key players--John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus--reappear consistently throughout the volume as Balliett dutifully charted the ebbs and flows of their careers. Collected Works is a tremendous reference guide to the diverse and vibrant school of music collectively known as jazz. Ted Leventhal
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press; First Edition (December 1, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 928 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312202881
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312202880
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.75 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.44 x 2.07 x 9.58 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,507,802 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,524 in Jazz Music (Books)
- #13,695 in Music Theory, Composition & Performance (Books)

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4.4 17 ratings

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PING

Balanced and thorough criticism of jazz personages and techniques of musicianship!

Reviewed in the United States on February 1, 2020

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Better than expected; I had earlier read an essay about Harry James, which I'd dislike (I'm a former trumpet player)

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Larry Brill

You can hear the music...

Reviewed in the United States on December 25, 2009

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This is my sixth copy of Ballietts" Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000. I love it that much. Have copies all over the house. Give it as gifts...lasts longer than a bottle of wine. When Balliett writes, you are there. In the club, at the concert, in the studio with the artists. You can hear the music...Miles, Monk, Mable, Bird, Billy, all the greats...and Balliett's not reluctant to write about the not-so greats. It's all there...46 years of JAZZ! The pictures he paints are the portraits of Americas' gift to us all. Buy the book and listen.

7 people found this helpful

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David May, WHFC-FM

Whitney Balliett Loved Jazz

Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2011

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Whitney Balliett did not pull punches, he was very honest, direct, and courageous in his written reviews of jazz musicians and performances. Mr. Balliett had a rare ability to translate what he heard in the music into very descriptive prose, giving the reader a colorful image of the musicians, their surroundings, and how the music was being presented. His honest assessments of performances were grounded in his thorough knowledge of jazz, its history, and of the musicians' background influences. Whitney Balliett's Collected Works should be a must-read for anyone who loves jazz.

4 people found this helpful

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Rootie Tootie

Genius

Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2019

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The man was a genius in the art and craft of making jazz and its perpetrators come alive on the printed page. And still is.

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Bomojaz

Unfortunate title to essential jazz journalism

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2006

Whitney Balliett is one of my favorite jazz writers (along with Dan Morgenstern and Ira Gitler), and I've enjoyed reading his pieces in The New Yorker since the 1960s. In the introduction to this book Balliett says he chose the title COLLECTED WORKS because "I like its ring"; that's a bit unfortunate because it gives the wrong impression. These are not his "collected works" but rather, as he again says in the introduction, "a distillation of many of the reviews and critical pieces that I have written about jazz." If you saved most of the original articles as I did, you would have a fairly decent sized pile of pieces that are not included here; perhaps even worse, you would notice that many of the articles appear in the book in truncated form (perhaps that's where the "distillation" comes in). One of the reasons I bought the book was because from its title and size (almost 900 pages) I thought I could take the Collected part literally, and I'd be able to free up some file cabinet space by discarding the original magazine articles. No way. I know this is a personal issue (mainly), but buyers should be aware of what they're getting (or not getting) here.

That being said, what you do get is absolutely worth having. Balliett knows the music as well as anyone and describes what he hears clearly and directly. He writes about the entire spectrum of jazz, from the earliest years of the music up into the avant-garde. Besides being deeply appreciative of the jazz masters (Armstrong, Morton, Ellington, Basie, Parker, Rollins, Coleman, to name just a handful) he writes about hundreds of musicians, good, bad, indifferent (but mainly good) who made it onto the jazz scene. He is particularly fond of good drummers (being a drummer himself). Reading The New Yorker you could be almost assured of getting Balliett's perspective on important jazz happenings in (particularly) the NYC area every couple of weeks or so. It was a wonderful steady diet of superb jazz journalism and criticism. It's great to have what's been included between book covers now, and hopefully what's missing gets published in book form some day, too. I really could use that file space.

16 people found this helpful

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John Howard McClellan

Whitney Balllieet, Collected Works 1954-2000

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2011

Whitney Balliett is a writing phenomonon. What he writes is straight from the bandstand, if you turned in a good performance as a band or a soloist he will say so; if it wasn't good he will say so too, without equivocation and believe me, he covered the music scene. This book is a collection of his articles for Thhe New Yorker supplemented by his independent wrtings and opinions. See if you can get it on Kindle. It is 900 pages and a little hard to handle. If you want to read of jazz as it happened get Balliett.

2 people found this helpful

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Music Fan

Wonderful Book on Jazz

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2006

I grew up reading Whitney Balliett's pieces in The New Yorker and in anthologies. This book is the motherload--collecting a huge amount of his written jazz work in one place (excluding his wonderful profiles, which are available elsewhere). The work is an insightful and opinionated march through jazz history, written as the history unfolds. Since these acounts were written as players worked, aged and passed on, one gets a real sense of continuity and development in the music and in the people who played it. A must for any jazz fan.

5 people found this helpful

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Jeffrey Giles

Balliett writes of one of the all-time great jazz singers

Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2015

In this collection of jazz criticism, Balliett writes of one of the all-time great jazz singers, Mildred Bailey, that she "rarely indulged in blue notes" and that "she was not emotional."

I admire Mildred Bailey precisely because of the bluesy and highly emotional quality of her singing, which has often brought tears to my eyes.

One person found this helpful

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Garry Corbett

Anyone who loves jazz & fine writing should have this in their collection

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2014

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I've owned a copy of the authors first book 'Sound of Surprise' for many years. I dipped into it again recently & wanted more. This book delivers in spades. Anyone who loves jazz & fine writing should have this in their collection. Balliett writes with a sharp no nonsense style that takes the reader to the heart of the matter without fluff or padding. Its a book to dip into or as I intend to do read from cover to cover & savour. Highly recommended.

One person found this helpful

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Collected Works : A Journal of Jazz 1954-2000 Hardcover – December 1, 2000

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