Charlie Parker has been idolized by generations of jazz musicians and fans. Indeed, his spectacular musical abilities--his blinding speed and brilliant improvisational style--made Parker a legend even before his tragic death at age thirty-four.
Now, in Chasin' The Bird, Brian Priestley offers a marvelous biography of this jazz icon, ranging from his childhood in Kansas City to his final harrowing days in New York. Priestley offers new insight into Parker's career, beginning as a teenager single-mindedly devoted to mastering the saxophone. We follow Parker on his first trip to New York, penniless, washing dishes for $9.00 a week at Jimmy's Chicken Shack, a favorite hangout of the great Art Tatum, whose stunning speed and ingenuity were an influence on the young musician. Priestley sheds light on Parker's collaborations with other jazz legands, and illuminates such classic recordings as "Salt Peanuts," "A Night in Tunisia," and "Yardbird Suite"--music which defined an era. He also gives us an unflinching look at Parker's dark side--the drug abuse, heavy drinking, and tangled relations with women and the law. He recounts the death of Parker's daughter Pree at just two-and-a-half years old, and Parker's own death at thirty-four, in such wretched condition that the doctor listed his age as fifty-three.
With an invaluable discography that lists every recording of Charlie Parker that has ever been made publicly available, this is a must-have biography of a true jazz giant, one that helps us penetrate the dazzling surface to grasp the artistry beneath.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Jazz Guide: The History of the Music in 1001 Best Albums is an indispensible guide to the recordings that every fan should know. Richard Cook and Brian Morton's Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings is firmly established as the world's leading guide to the music. In this book, Brian Morton has picked out 1001 essential recordings from their acclaimed guide, adding new information, revising and reassessing each entry, and showing how these key pieces tell the history of the music - and with it the history of the twentieth century. These are the essential albums that that all true jazz fans should own, or - at the very least - have listened to, from Kind of Blue to lesser-known classics and more surprising choices. Full of fascinating updated biographical information, new quotes and interviews and, of course, highly opinionated and wittily trenchant critical reviews, the result is an endlessly browsable companion that will prove required reading for aficionados and jazz novices alike. 'One of the great books of recorded jazz; the other guides don't come close' Irish Times 'It's the kind of book that you'll yank off the shelf to look up a quick fact and still be reading two hours later' Fortune 'The leader in its field ... If you own only one book on jazz, it really should be this one' International Record Review 'Indispensable and incomparable' NME Brian Morton is a freelance writer and broadcaster who for many years presented Radio 3's jazz magazine Impressions and In Tune. Richard Cook (1957-2007) was formerly editor of The Wire and edited Jazz Review. He contributed to many other publications, including the New Statesman and his books included Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopaedia and It's About That Time: Miles Davis on Record.

Gary Giddins's magnificent book Visions of Jazz has been hailed as a landmark in music criticism. Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post called it "the definitive compendium by the most interesting jazz critic now at work." And Alfred Appel, Jr., in The New York Times Book Review, said it was "the finest unconventional history of jazz ever written." It was the first work on jazz ever to win the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. Now comes Weather Bird, a brilliant companion volume to Visions of Jazz. In this superb collection of essays, reviews and articles, Giddins brings together, for the first time, more than 140 pieces written over a 14-year period, most of them for his column in the Village Voice (also called "Weather Bird"). The book is first and foremost a celebration of jazz, with illuminating commentary on contemporary jazz events, on today's top musicians, on the best records of the year, and on leading figures from jazz's past. Readers will find extended pieces on Louis Armstrong, Erroll Garner, Benny Carter, Sonny Rollins, Dave Brubeck, Ornette Coleman, Billie Holiday, Cassandra Wilson, Tony Bennett, and many others. Giddins includes a series of articles on the annual JVC Jazz Festival, which taken together offer a splendid overview of jazz in the 1990s. Other highlights include an astute look at avant-garde music ("Parajazz") and his challenging essay, "How Come Jazz Isn't Dead?" which advances a theory about the way art is born, exploited, celebrated, and sidelined to the museum. A radiant compendium by America's leading music critic, Weather Bird offers an unforgettable look at the modern jazz scene.

(Fake Book). The Real Books are the best-selling jazz books of all time. Since the 1970s, musicians have trusted these volumes to get them through every gig, night after night. The problem is that the books were illegally produced and distributed, without any regard to copyright law, or royalties paid to the composers who created these musical masterpieces. Hal Leonard is very proud to present the first legitimate and legal editions of these books ever produced. You won't even notice the difference, other than all the notorious errors being fixed: the covers and typeface look the same, the song list is nearly identical, and the price for our edition is even cheaper than the original Every conscientious musician will appreciate that these books are now produced accurately and ethically, benefitting the songwriters that we owe for some of the greatest tunes of all time This Bb mini edition includes 400 songs: All Blues * Au Privave * Autumn Leaves * Black Orpheus * Bluesette * Body and Soul * Bright Size Life * Con Alma * Dolphin Dance * Don't Get Around Much Anymore * Easy Living * Epistrophy * Falling in Love with Love * Footprints * Four on Six * Giant Steps * Have You Met Miss Jones? * How High the Moon * I'll Remember April * Impressions * Lullaby of Birdland * Misty * My Funny Valentine * Oleo * Red Clay * Satin Doll * Sidewinder * Stella by Starlight * Take Five * There Is No Greater Love * Wave * and hundreds more C Edition also available.

Jazz and its colorful, expansive history resonate in this unique collection of 60 essays specially-commissioned from today's top jazz performers, writers, and scholars. Contributors include such jazz insiders as Bill Crow, Samuel A. Floyd Jr., Ted Gioia, Gene Lees, Dan Morgenstern, Gunther Schuller, Richard M. Sudhalter, and Patricia Willard. Both a reference book and an engaging read, the Companion surveys the evolution of jazz from its roots in Africa and Europe until the present. Along the way, each distinctive style and period is profiled by an expert in the field. Whether your preference is ragtime, the blues, bebop, or fusion, you will find the chief characteristics and memorable performances illuminated here with a thoroughness found in no other single-volume jazz reference.
The Oxford Companion to Jazz features individual biographies of the most memorable characters of this relatively young art form. Sidney Bechet, King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, and the divas of jazz song--Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan--come to life in thoughtful considerations of their influences, often turbulent personal lives, and signature styles. In addition, this book looks at the impact of jazz on American culture-in literature, film, television, and dance-and explores the essential instruments of jazz and their most memorable players.
The Oxford Companion to Jazz will provide a quick reference source as well as a dynamic and broad overview for all lovers of jazz, from novices to aficionados.

Although Frank Zappa died over 20 years ago, he continues to be regarded as an iconic figure in 20th century culture. In 1973 he famously said 'Jazz is not dead... it just smells funny,' and in this new book Geoff Wills takes a look at Zappa's widely assumed antipathy for the jazz genre. Along the way, he throws up some very interesting facts. Frank Zappa's music has a unique and easily recognisable quality, and it brilliantly synthesizes a wide range of cultural influences. Zappa and Jazz focuses on the influence of jazz on Zappa in an attempt to clarify the often-confusing nature of his relationship with it. Zappa's early years are examined, from his first foray into a recording studio to the formation and progress of his band The Mothers of Invention. There are exhaustive critiques here of the key jazz-related albums Hot Rats, King Kong, The Grand Wazoo and Waka/Jawaka. Along the way, Wills analyses Zappa's music and the wider influences that were crucial in forming his attitudes, not only to jazz but to society in general. The book concludes with a discussion of Zappa's similarity to more orthodox jazz leaders, his legacy and the influence on jazz-related music. Guaranteed to appeal to all Zappa fans who seek new insights into his music, to open-minded jazz listeners and to anyone with an interest in the melting pot of 20th century music.

"May be the best book ever written about jazz."--David Thomson, "Los Angeles Times" In eight poetically charged vignettes, Geoff Dyer skillfully evokes the music and the men who shaped modern jazz. Drawing on photos, anecdotes, and, most important, the way he hears the music, Dyer imaginatively reconstructs scenes from the embattled lives of some of the greats: Lester Young fading away in a hotel room; Charles Mingus storming down the streets of New York on a too-small bicycle; Thelonious Monk creating his own private language on the piano. However, music is the driving force of "But Beautiful, " and wildly metaphoric prose that mirrors the quirks, eccentricity, and brilliance of each musician's style.

This biography reveals the lost history of the life of Florence Mills, who was very famous during the 1920s, and traces her story from childhood to her untimely death at age 31. Mills who was probably the first black female international superstar, was lionized by crowned heads in Europe and described by English show business impresario C.B. Cochran as "one of the greatest artists that ever walked on to a stage." Although her career and shows changed the nature of black entertainment, and thereby the wider American popular culture, she was largely forgotten in later years. An additional theme of the book is the important but little-known associations Florence Mills had in the early world of jazz and ragtime, and her innovative influence on important aspects of jazz singing. It explores the connections between her and Duke Ellington, who dedicated his outstanding composition "Black Beauty" to her. Will be of interest to librarians, jazz fans, especially those interested in Duke Ellington, and anyone interested in the history of musical theater.

London-based musician and journalist Gordon Jack's method is to let the musicians tell their own stories with minimum intervention, in the manner of Ira Gitler's classic Swing to Bop. Famous or obscure, these more than 30 musicians who came to prominence in the 1950s each has a story to tell, and Jack captures the style and tone of his interviewees in this oral retrospective of what may have been jazz's last golden age. The musicians are: Gene Allen, Mose Allison, Dave Bailey, Chuck Berghofer, Eddie Bert, Bob Brookmeyer, Pete Christlieb, Bill Crow, Joe Dodge, Bob Enevoldsen, Don Ferrara, Herb Geller, Corky Hale, Peter Ind, Frank Isola, Lee Konitz, Stan Levey, Jack Montrose, Gerry Mulligan, the Gerry Mulligan Quartet (with Larry Bunker, Chico Hamilton, Carson Smith, Bob Whitlock), Lennie Niehaus, Jack Nimitz, Hod O'Brien, Bill Perkins, Bud Shank, Phil Urso, and Phil Woods. Jack's introductions and notes unobtrusively sketch out the life and achievements of each musician, and there are photographs of each one, many of them taken by Jack himself.

Contains easy piano arrangements for top jazz complete with song background notes and playing hints and tips.

Dancer, award-winning choreographer, show producer, stand-up comedienne, TV/Film actress and author, Norma Miller shares her touching historical memoir of Harlem's legendary Savoy Ballroom and the phenomenal music and dance craze that \u0022spread the power of swing across the world like Wildfire.\u0022 A dance contest winner by 14, Norma Miller became a member of Herbert White's Lindy Hoppers and a celebrated Savoy Ballroom Lindy Hop champion. Swingin' at the Savoy chronicles a significant period in American cultural history and race relations, as it glorifies the home of the Lindy Hop and he birthplace of memorable dance hall fads. Miller shares fascinating anecdotes about her youthful encounters with many of the greatest jazz legends in music history, including Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Ethel Waters, and even boxer Joe Louis. Readers will experience the legend of the celebrated Harlem ballroom and the phenomenal Swing generation that changed music and dance history forever.

The Jazz Itineraries series, a new format based on Ken Vail's successful Jazz Diaries, charts the careers of famous jazz musicians, listing club and concert appearances with details of recording sessions and movie appearances. Copiously illustrated with contemporary photographs, newspaper extracts, record and performance reviews, ads and posters, the series provides a fascinating insight into the lives of the greatest jazz musicians of our times. No.1 in the series, Dizzy Gillespie: The Bebop Years 1937d1952, chronicles Dizzy_s life from his early struggles, through the birth of bebop, the demise of his first big band, up to his departure for France in 1952.

Charles Mingus was one of the most innovative jazz musicians of the 20th century, and ranks with Charles Ives and Duke Ellington as one of America's greatest composers. By temperament, he was a high-strung and sensitive romantic, a towering figure whose tempestuous personal life found powerfully coherent expression in the ever-shifting textures of his music. Now, acclaimed music critic Gene Santoro strips away the myths shrouding "Jazz's Angry Man," revealing Mingus as more complex than even his close friends knew. Written in a lively, novelistic style, Myself When I Am Real draws on dozens of new interviews and previously untapped letters and archival materials to explore the intricate connections between this extraordinary man and the extraordinary music he made.

Django Reinhardt was arguably the greatest guitarist who ever lived, an important influence on Les Paul, Charlie Christian, B.B. King, Jerry Garcia, Chet Atkins, and many others. Yet there is no major biography of Reinhardt.
Now, in Django, Michael Dregni offers a definitive portrait of this great guitarist. Handsome, charismatic, childlike, and unpredictable, Reinhardt was a character out of a picaresque novel. Born in a gypsy caravan at a crossroads in Belgium, he was almost killed in a freak fire that burned half of his body and left his left hand twisted into a claw. But with this maimed left hand flying over the frets and his right hand plucking at dizzying speed, Django became Europe's most famous jazz musician, commanding exorbitant fees--and spending the money as fast as he made it. Dregni not only chronicles this remarkably colorful life--including a fascinating account of gypsy culture--but he also sheds much light on Django's musicianship. He examines his long musical partnership with violinist Stephane Grappelli--the one suave and smooth, the other sharper and more dissonant--and he traces the evolution of their novel string jazz ensemble, Quintette du Hot Club de France. Indeed, the author spotlights Django's amazing musical diversity, describing his swing-styled Nouveau Quintette, his big band Django's Music, and his later bebop ensemble, as well as his many compositions, including symphonic pieces influenced by Ravel and Debussy and his unfinished organ mass inspired by Bach. And along the way, the author offers vivid snapshots of the jazz scene in Paris--colorful portraits of Josephine Baker, Bricktop, Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and countless others--and of Django's vagabond wanderings around France, Europe, and the United States, where he toured with Duke Ellington.
Capturing the extraordinary life and times of one of the great musicians of the twentieth century, Django is a must-read portrait of a true original."

Harry James was one of the major figures of the Swing Era of the 1930s and 1940s. As a trumpet-player he had few peers. The band he led was the most popular in the United States during the war years, but it was also the band that first introduced Frank Sinatra. His fame was even wider as husband to the most famous Hollywood star of the period-Betty Grable- as a film star himself, and as a long term headliner in Las Vegas casinos. But he also had a dark side-as a womanizer, alcoholic, compulsive gambler. In this dramatic, understanding biography, Peter Levinson brilliantly delineates James and the role he played in American culture.

Declared a "national treasure" by the White House in 1990, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie was a not only a great musician but also a major innovator in the jazz world. While his first and foremost claim to fame is helping to create the style known as bebop, Gillespie also did much to establish the inclusion of Latin American elements in jazz and was partially responsible for the inception of both Afro-Cuban jazz and bossa nova. Covering Dizzy's days as a flashy trumpet player in the swing bands of the 1930s, the worldwide fame and adoration he earned through a State Department-backed tour of his big band in the 1950s, and the many recordings and performances which defined a career that ran clear up to the early 1990s, this book fully traces the path and progress of an extraordinary--and most exploratory--American musician.

J.J. Johnson, known as the spiritual father of modern trombone, has been a notable figure in the history of jazz. His career has embodied virtually every innovation and development in jazz over the last half of the 20th century. In this comprehensive biography, filmography, catalogue of compositions and discography of J.J. Johnson, Berrett and Bourgois fill a gap in jazz studies. In its exploration of the various turning points in Johnson's life, The Musical World of J.J. Johnson offers a provocative and comprehensive declaration of the makings of a jazz legend. This analysis details Johnson's childhood and early education, documents his first compositions and examines his classical roots, thereby creating a powerful illustration of the composer's technical and stylistic development.

In Jazz Transatlantic, Volume II, renowned scholar Gerhard Kubik extends and expands the epic exploration he began in Jazz Transatlantic, Volume I. This second volume amplifies how musicians influenced by swing, bebop, and post-bop influenced musicians in Africa from the end of World War II into the 1970s were interacting with each other and re-creating jazz. Much like the first volume, Kubik examines musicians who adopted a wide variety of jazz genres, from the jive and swing of the 1940s to modern jazz. Drawing on personal encounters with the artists, as well as his extensive field diaries and engagement with colleagues, Kubik looks at the individual histories of musicians and composers within jazz in Africa. He pays tribute to their lives and work in a wider social context. The influences of European music are also included in both volumes as it is the constant mixing of sources and traditions that Kubik seeks to describe. Each of these groundbreaking volumes explores the international cultural exchange that shaped and continues to shape jazz. Together, these volumes culminate an integral recasting of international jazz history.

Gene Lees is probably the best jazz essayist in America today, and the book that consolidated his reputation was Singers and the Song, which appeared in 1987. Now this classic work is being released in an expanded edition: Singers and the Song II. This volume includes famous selections from the original edition, including Lees' classic profile of Frank Sinatra, as well as new essays.

Nadine Jansen, a flugelhornist and pianist, remembers a night in the 1940s when a man came out of the audience as she was playing both instruments. "I hate to see a woman do that," he explained as he hit the end of her horn, nearly chipping her tooth. Half a century later, a big band named Diva made its debut in New York on March 30, 1993, with Melissa Slocum on bass, Sue Terry on alto sax, Lolly Bienenfeld on trombone, Sherrie Maricle on drums, and a host of other first rate instrumentalists. The band made such a good impression that it was immediately booked to play at Carnegie Hall the following year. For those who had yet to notice, Diva signaled the emergence of women musicians as a significant force in jazz.
Madame Jazz is a fascinating invitation to the inside world of women in jazz. Ranging primarily from the late 1970s to today's vanguard of performance jazz in New York City and on the West Coast, it chronicles a crucial time of transition as women make the leap from novelty acts regarded as second class citizens to sought-out professionals admired and hired for their consummate musicianship. Author Leslie Gourse surveys the scene in the jazz clubs, the concert halls, the festivals, and the recording studios from the musicians' point of view. She finds exciting progress on all fronts, but also lingering discrimination. The growing success of women instrumentalists has been a long time in coming, she writes. Long after women became accepted as writers and, to a lesser extent, as visual artists, women in music--classical, pop, or jazz--faced the nearly insuperable barrier of chauvinism and the still insidious force of tradition and habit that keeps most men performing with the musicians they have always worked with, other men.
Gourse provides dozens of captivating no-holds-barred interviews with both rising stars and seasoned veterans. Here are up-and-coming pianists Renee Rosnes and Rachel Z., trumpeter Rebecca Coupe Frank, saxophonist Virginia Mayhew, bassist Tracy Wormworth, and drummer Terri Lynne Carrington, and enduring legends Dorothy Donegan, Marian McParland and Shirley Horne. Here, as well, are conversations with three pioneering business women: agent and producer Helen Keane, manager Linda Goldstein, and festival and concert producer Cobi Narita. All of the women speak insightfully about their inspiration and their commitment to pursuing the music they love. They are also frank about the realities of life on the road, and the extra dues women musicians pay in a tough and competitive field where everybody pays dues. A separate chapter offers a closer look at women musicians and the continual stress confronting those who would combine love, marriage, and/or motherhood with a life in music.
Madame Jazz is about the history that women jazz instrumentalists are making now, as well as an inspiring preview of the even brighter days ahead. It concludes with Frankie Nemko's lively evaluation of the West Coast jazz scene, and appends the most comprehensive list ever assembled of women currently playing instruments professionally.

Any listener knows the power of music to define a place, but few can describe the how or why of this phenomenon. In "Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams", Andrew S. Berish attempts to right this wrong, showcasing how American jazz defined a culture particularly preoccupied with place. By analyzing both the performances and cultural context of leading jazz figures, including the many famous venues where they played, Berish bridges two dominant scholarly approaches to the genre, offering not only a new reading of swing era jazz but an entirely new framework for musical analysis in general, one that examines how the geographical realities of daily life can be transformed into musical sound. Focusing on white bandleader Jan Garber, black bandleader Duke Ellington, white saxophonist Charlie Barnet, and black guitarist Charlie Christian, as well as traveling from Catalina Island to Manhattan to Oklahoma City, "Lonesome Roads and Streets of Dreams" depicts not only a geography of race but how this geography was disrupted, how these musicians crossed physical and racial boundaries - from black to white, South to North, and rural to urban - and how they found expression for these movements in the insistent music they were creating.

Bold and original, The Power of Black Music offers a new way of listening to the music of black America, and appreciating its profound contribution to all American music.

Created in the jazz clubs of New York City, and initially treated by most musicians and audiences as radical, chaotic, and bewildering: bebop has become, Thomas Owen writes, `the lingua franca of jazz, serving as the principal musical language of thousands of jazz musicians.'

In Bebop, Owens conducts us on an insightful, loving tour through the music, players, and recordings that changed American culture. Combining vivid portraits of bebop's gigantic personalities - among them Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis - with deft musical analysis, he offers an instrument-by-instrument look at the key players and their innovations.

As music columnist for The Nation, Gene Santoro has established himself as an important new critical voice, able to write well on a broad spectrum of popular music and jazz, without losing touch with the cutting edge of today's music scene.

Dancing in Your Head gathers Santoro's liveliest reviews and essays for the first time, introducing a fresh and provocative perspective on several decades of musicians and their work. From the legendary blues singer Robert Johnson to Miles Davis and James Brown, from the sounds of Neil Young and Lou Reed to Public Enemy's controversial rap lyrics, this books offers sharp and honest reflections on the evolution of jazz, rock and roll, and rap.