Today, jazz is considered high art, America's national music, and the catalog of its recordings-its discography-is often taken for granted. But behind jazz discography is a fraught and highly colorful history of research, fanaticism, and the simple desire to know who played what, where, and when. This history gets its first full-length treatment in Bruce D. Epperson's More Important Than the Music. Following the dedicated few who sought to keep jazz's legacy organized, Epperson tells a fascinating story of archival pursuit in the face of negligence and deception, a tale that saw curses and threats regularly employed, with fisticuffs and lawsuits only slightly rarer. Epperson examines recorded jazz from its careless handling as a novelty in the 1920s and '30s, through the deluge of 12-inch vinyl in the middle of the twentieth century, to the use of computers by today's discographers. Though he focuses much of his attention on comprehensive discographies, he also examines the development of a variety of related listings, such as buyer's guides and library catalogs, and he closes with a look toward discography's future. From the little black book to the full-featured online database, More Important Than the Music offers a history not just of jazz discography but of the profoundly human desire to preserve history itself.

Born in 1905, Bill Russell demonstrated diverse musical interests from an early age. A contemporary of John Cage, Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, his significance as a percussion composer is well known among aficionados and his work as a musicologist of New Orleans jazz music is equally acclaimed. He was a major figure in the revival of interest in the music of that city, notably from his recordings of trumpet player Bunk Johnson in the 1940s. He became the first curator of the Tulane Jazz Archives when they were established in 1958. This is the first full-length book about Bill Russell's life that is largely 'in his own words'. It is based on personal interviews conducted with Russell about the diversity of his life's work, interspersed with views and anecdotes from his friends and associates written especially for the book, together with archive material and a wealth of photos. These sources are woven together to give a portrait of an extremely talented, modest man who forsook an academic career to become a champion of the music and musicians of New Orleans.

Charles Mingus is among jazz's greatest composers and perhaps its most talented bass player. He was blunt and outspoken about the place of jazz in music history and American culture, about which performers were the real thing (or not), and much more. These in-depth interviews, conducted several years before Mingus died, capture the composer's spirit and voice, revealing how he saw himself as composer and performer, how he viewed his peers and predecessors, how he created his extraordinary music, and how he looked at race. Augmented with interviews and commentary by ten close associates--including Mingus's wife Sue, Teo Macero, George Wein, and Sy Johnson--"Mingus Speaks" provides a wealth of new perspectives on the musician's life and career.
As a writer for "Playboy, " John F. Goodman reviewed Mingus's comeback concert in 1972 and went on to achieve an intimacy with the composer that brings a relaxed and candid tone to the ensuing interviews. Much of what Mingus shares shows him in a new light: his personality, his passions and sense of humor, and his thoughts on music. The conversations are wide-ranging, shedding fresh light on important milestones in Mingus's life such as the publication of his memoir, "Beneath the Underdog," the famous Tijuana episodes, his relationships, and the jazz business.

Over forty years have elapsed since the death of the British jazz legend Tubby Hayes and yet his story still continues to captivate. Beginning as a precociously talented teenage saxophonist, he took first the local and then the international jazz scene by storm, displaying gifts equal to the finest American jazzmen. He appeared with none other than Duke Ellington and proved almost single-handedly that British jazz need not labour under an inferiority complex. Hayes's triumphs during the 1950s and 60s enabled still later generations of English musicians to take their music onto the world stage. However his story, distorted by the folklore surrounding his tragically early death, aged only 38, has rarely been accurately recorded. Much of what has been written, broadcast and recounted about Hayes has added only confusion to our understanding of his short but brilliant life.In this new, expanded paperback edition, award-winning saxophonist and writer Simon Spillett, widely regarded as the world's leading authority on Hayes and his work, painstakingly outlines a career that alternated professional success and personal downfall. Using credible eye-witness recollection, drawn from conversations with Hayes's family, partners, friends and musical colleagues, unique access to Hayes's own tape, photographic and personal archives - including papers that have only recently come to light - and extensive contemporary research material, Spillett has reconstructed the trajectory of his subject's life both candidly and respectfully.

Sun Ra said he came from Saturn. Known on earth for his inventive music and extravagant stage shows, he pioneered free-form improvisation in an ensemble setting with the devoted band he called the "Arkestra." Sun Ra took jazz from the inner city to outer space, infusing traditional swing with far-out harmonies, rhythms, and sounds. Described as the father of Afrofuturism, Sun Ra created "space music" as a means of building a better future for American blacks here on earth. A Pure Solar World: Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism offers a spirited introduction to the life and work of this legendary but underappreciated musician, composer, and poet. Paul Youngquist explores and assesses Sun Ra's wide-ranging creative output-music, public preaching, graphic design, film and stage performance, and poetry-and connects his diverse undertakings to the culture and politics of his times, including the space race, the rise of technocracy, the civil rights movement, and even space-age bachelor-pad music. By thoroughly examining the astro-black mythology that Sun Ra espoused, Youngquist masterfully demonstrates that he offered both a holistic response to a planet desperately in need of new visions and vibrations and a new kind of political activism that used popular culture to advance social change. In a nation obsessed with space and confused about race, Sun Ra aimed not just at assimilation for the socially disfranchised but even more at a wholesale transformation of American society and a more creative, egalitarian world.

What, where, and when is jazz? To most of us jazz means small combos, made up mostly of men, performing improvisationally in urban club venues. But jazz has been through many changes in the decades since World War II, emerging in unexpected places and incorporating a wide range of new styles. In this engrossing new book, David Ake expands on the discussion he began in "Jazz Cultures," lending his engaging, thoughtful, and stimulating perspective to post-1940s jazz. Ake investigates such issues as improvisational analysis, pedagogy, American exceptionalism, and sense of place in jazz. He uses provocative case studies to illustrate how some of the values ascribed to the postwar jazz culture are reflected in and fundamentally shaped by aspects of sound, location, and time.

First time in paperback and e-book! The jazz musician-composer-arranger Mary Lou Williams spent her sixty-year career working in-and stretching beyond-a dizzying range of musical styles. Her integration of classical music into her works helped expand jazz's compositional language. Her generosity made her a valued friend and mentor to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Her late-in-life flowering of faith saw her embrace a spiritual jazz oriented toward advancing the civil rights struggle and helping wounded souls.Tammy L. Kernodle details Williams's life in music against the backdrop of controversies over women's place in jazz and bitter arguments over the music's evolution. Williams repeatedly asserted her artistic and personal independence to carve out a place despite widespread bafflement that a woman exhibited such genius. Embracing Williams's contradictions and complexities, Kernodle also explores a personal life troubled by lukewarm professional acceptance, loneliness, relentless poverty, bad business deals, and difficult marriages. In-depth and epic in scope, Soul on Soul restores a pioneering African American woman to her rightful place in jazz history.

First time in paperback and e-book! The jazz musician-composer-arranger Mary Lou Williams spent her sixty-year career working in-and stretching beyond-a dizzying range of musical styles. Her integration of classical music into her works helped expand jazz's compositional language. Her generosity made her a valued friend and mentor to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. Her late-in-life flowering of faith saw her embrace a spiritual jazz oriented toward advancing the civil rights struggle and helping wounded souls.Tammy L. Kernodle details Williams's life in music against the backdrop of controversies over women's place in jazz and bitter arguments over the music's evolution. Williams repeatedly asserted her artistic and personal independence to carve out a place despite widespread bafflement that a woman exhibited such genius. Embracing Williams's contradictions and complexities, Kernodle also explores a personal life troubled by lukewarm professional acceptance, loneliness, relentless poverty, bad business deals, and difficult marriages. In-depth and epic in scope, Soul on Soul restores a pioneering African American woman to her rightful place in jazz history.

The drum kit has provided the pulse of popular music from before the dawn of jazz up to the present day pop charts. Kick It, a provocative social history of the instrument, looks closely at key innovators in the development of the drum kit: inventors and manufacturers like the Ludwig and Zildjian dynasties, jazz icons like Gene Krupa and Max Roach, rock stars from Ringo Starr to Keith Moon, and popular artists who haven't always got their dues as drummers, such as Karen Carpenter and J Dilla. Tackling the history of race relations, global migration, and the changing tension between high and low culture, author Matt Brennan makes the case for the drum kit's role as one of the most transformative musical inventions of the modern era. Kick It shows how the drum kit and drummers helped change modern music-and society as a whole-from the bottom up.

American cinema has long been fascinated by jazz and jazz musicians. Yet most jazz films aren't really about jazz. Rather, as Krin Gabbard shows, they create images of racial and sexual identity, many of which have become inseparable from popular notions of the music itself. In "Jammin' at the Margins, " Gabbard scrutinizes these films, exploring the fundamental obsessions that American culture has brought to jazz in the cinema.
Gabbard's close look at jazz film biographies, from "The Jazz Singer" to "Bird, " reveals Hollywood's reluctance to acknowledge black subjectivity. Black and even white jazz artists have become vehicles for familiar Hollywood conceptions of race, gender, and sexuality. Even Scorsese's "New York, New York" and Spike Lee's "Mo' Better Blues" have failed to disentangle themselves from entrenched stereotypes and conventions.
Gabbard also examines Hollywood's confrontation with jazz as an elite art form, and the role of the jazz trumpet as a crucial signifier of masculinity. Finally, he considers the acting careers of Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, and Hoagy Carmichael; Duke Ellington's extraordinary work in films from 1929 until the late 1960s; and the forgotten career of Kay Kyser, star of nine Hollywood films and leader of a popular swing band.
This insightful look at the marriage of jazz and film is a major contribution to film, jazz, and cultural studies.

With Hit Me, Fred, sensational sideman Fred Wesley Jr. moves front and center to tell his life story. A legendary funk, soul, and jazz musician, Wesley is best known for his work in the late sixties and early seventies with James Brown and as the leader of Brown's band, Fred Wesley and the JB's. Having been the band's music director, arranger, trombone player, and frequent composer, Wesley is one of the original architects of funk music. He describes what it was like working for the Godfather of Soul, revealing the struggle and sometimes stringent discipline behind Brown's tight, raucous tunes. After leaving Brown and the JB's, Wesley arranged the horn sections for Parliament, Funkadelic, and Bootsy's Rubber Band, and led Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns. Adding his signature horn arrangements to the P-Funk mix, Wesley made funk music even funkier. Wesley's distinctive sound reverberates through rap and hip-hop music today. In Hit Me, Fred, he recalls the many musicians whose influence he absorbed, beginning with his grandmother and father-both music teachers-and including mentors in his southern Alabama hometown and members of the Army band. In addition to the skills he developed working with James Brown, George Clinton, Bootsy Collins, and the many talented musicians in their milieu, Wesley describes the evolution of his trombone playing through stints with the Ike and Tina Turner Revue, Hank Ballard, and Count Basie's band. He also recounts his education in the music business, particularly through his work in Los Angeles recording sessions. Wesley is a virtuoso storyteller, whether he's describing the electric rush of performances when the whole band is in the groove, the difficulties of trying to make a living as a rhythm and blues musician, or the frustrations often felt by sidemen. Hit Me, Fred is Wesley's story of music-making in all its grit and glory.

What was the first jazz record? Are jazz solos really improvised? How did jazz lay the groundwork for rock and country music? In Why Jazz?, author and NPR jazz critic Kevin Whitehead provides lively, insightful answers to these and many other fascinating questions, offering an entertaining guide for both novice listeners and long-time fans.
Organized chronologically in a convenient question and answer format, this terrific resource makes jazz accessible to a broad audience, and especially to readers who've found the music bewildering or best left to the experts. Yet Why Jazz? is much more than an informative Q&A; it concisely traces the century-old history of this American and global art form, from its beginnings in New Orleans up through the current postmodern period. Whitehead provides brief profiles of the archetypal figures of jazz--from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Wynton Marsalis and John Zorn--and illuminates their contributions as musicians, performers, and composers. Also highlighted are the building blocks of the jazz sound--call and response, rhythmic contrasts, personalized performance techniques and improvisation--and discussion of how visionary musicians have reinterpreted these elements to continually redefine jazz, ushering in the swing era, bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, and the avant-garde. Along the way, Why Jazz? provides helpful plain-English descriptions of musical terminology and techniques, from "blue notes" to "conducted improvising." And unlike other histories which haphazardly cover the stylistic branches of jazz that emerged after the 1960s, Why Jazz? groups latter-day musical trends by decade, the better to place them in historical context.
Whether read in self-contained sections or as a continuous narrative, this compact reference presents a trove of essential information that belongs on the shelf of anyone who's ever been interested in jazz.

Keil's classic account of blues and its artists is both a guide to the development of the music and a powerful study of the blues as an expressive form in and for African American life. This updated edition explores the place of the blues in artistic, social, political, and commercial life since the 1960s. "An achievement of the first magnitude...He opens our eyes and introduces a world of amazingly complex musical happening."--Robert Farris Thompson, Ethnomusicology

Keith Jarrett is probably the most influential jazz pianist living today: his concerts have made him world famous. He was a child prodigy who had his first solo performance at the age of seven. In the sixties he played with the Jazz Messengers and then with the Charles Lloyd Quartet, touring Europe, Asia, and Russia. He played electric keyboards with Miles Davis at the beginning of the seventies, and went on to lead two different jazz groups,one American and one European. He straddles practically every form of twentieth century music,he has produced totally composed music, and has performed classical music as well as jazz. Jarrett has revolutionized the whole concept of what a solo pianist can do. And his albums such as Solo Concerts (at Lausanne and Bremen), Belonging, The Koln Concert , and My Song have gained him a worldwide following.Now, with Keith Jarrett: The Man and His Music, Ian Carr has written the definitive story of Jarrett's musical development and his personal journey. This is a revealing, fascinating, and enlightening account of one of the outstanding musicians of our age.

The jazz decade saw the emergence of many of the great figures who defined the music for the world: Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Earl Hines, Bix Beiderbecke, Fats Waller, Jack Teagarden, Fletcher Henderson--these giants set the standards for blues singing, big band arrangements, and solo improvisation that are the foundations for jazz. Richard Hadlock has chapters on each, with a discography and descriptions of all the players who made the '20s swing.

Floyd Levin, an award-winning jazz writer, has personally known many of the jazz greats who contributed to the music's colorful history. In this collection of his articles, published mostly in jazz magazines over a fifty-year period, Levin takes us into the nightclubs, the recording studios, the record companies, and, most compellingly, into the lives of the musicians who made the great moments of the traditional jazz and swing eras. Brilliantly weaving anecdotal material, primary research, and music analysis into every chapter, "Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians" is a gold mine of information on a rich segment of American popular music. This collection of articles begins with Levin's first published piece and includes several new articles that were inspired by his work on this compilation. The articles are organized thematically, beginning with a piece on Kid Ory's early recordings and ending with a newly written article about the campaign to put up a monument to Louis Armstrong in New Orleans. Along the way, Levin gives in-depth profiles of many well-known jazz legends, such as Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong, and many lesser-known figures who contributed greatly to the development of jazz. Extensively illustrated with previously unpublished photographs from Levin's personal collection, this wonderfully readable and extremely personal book is full of information that is not available elsewhere. "Classic Jazz: A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians" will be celebrated by jazz scholars and fans everywhere for the overview it provides of the music's evolution, and for the love of jazz it inspires on every page.

As the 1960s ended, Herbie Hancock embarked on a grand creative experiment. Having just been dismissed from the celebrated Miles Davis Quintet, he set out on the road, playing with his first touring group as a leader until he eventually formed what would become a revolutionary band. Taking the Swahili name "Mwandishi," the group would go on to play some of the most innovative music of the 1970s, fusing an assortment of musical genres, American and African cultures, and acoustic and electronic sounds into groundbreaking experiments that helped shape the American popular music that followed. In "You'll Know When You Get There," Bob Gluck offers the first comprehensive study of this seminal group, mapping the musical, technological, political, and cultural changes that they not only lived in but also effected. Beginning with Hancock's formative years as a sideman in bebop and hard bop ensembles, his work with Miles Davis, and the early recordings under his own name, Gluck uncovers the many ingredients that would come to form the Mwandishi sound. He offers an extensive series of interviews with Hancock and other band members, the producer and engineer who worked with them, and a catalog of well-known musicians who were profoundly influenced by the group. Paying close attention to the Mwandishi band's repertoire, he analyzes a wide array of recordings--many little known--and examines the group's instrumentation, their pioneering use of electronics, and their transformation of the studio into a compositional tool. From protofunk rhythms to synthesizers to the reclamation of African identities, Gluck tells the story of a highly peculiar and thrillingly unpredictable band that became a hallmark of American genius.

This is the only jazz history written by a musician that is not strictly autobiographical. Rex Stewart, who played trumpet and cornet with Fletcher Henderson and Duke Ellington, knew personally all the giants of jazz in the 1930s and thus his judgments on their achievements come with unique authority and understanding. As a good friend, he never minimizes their foibles; yet he writes of them with affection and generosity. Chapters on Fletcher Henderson, Coleman Hawkins, Red Norvo, Art Tatum, Big Sid Catlett, Benny Carter, and Louis Armstrong mix personal anecdotes with critical comments that only a fellow jazz musician could relate. A section on Ellington and the Ellington orchestra profiles Ben Webster, Harry Carney, Tricky Sam Nanton, Barney Bigard, and Duke himself, with whom Rex Stewart was a barber, chef, poker opponent, and third trumpet. Finally, he recounts the stories of legendary jam sessions between Jelly Roll Morton, Willie the Lion Smith, and James P. Johnson, all vying for the unofficial title of king of Harlem stride piano. It was the decade of swing and no one saw it, heard it, or wrote about it better than Rex Stewart.

Stan Kenton (1911-1979) formed his first full orchestra in 1940 and soon drew record-breaking crowds to hear and dance to his exciting sound. He continued to tour and record unrelentingly for the next four decades. "Stan Kenton: This Is an Orchestra " sums up the mesmerizing bandleader at the height of his powers, arms waving energetically, his face a study of concentration as he cajoled, coaxed, strained, and obtained the last ounce of energy from every musician under his control.

Michael Sparke's narrative captures that enthusiasm in words: a lucid account of the evolution of the Kenton Sound, and the first book to offer a critical evaluation of the role that Stan played in its creation. Insightful and thought-provoking throughout, and supported by liberal quotes from the musicians who made the magic, even at his most contentious the author's high regard and admiration for his subject shines through. The most knowledgeable of Stan's fans will learn new facts from this far-reaching biography of a man and his music. "Stan Kenton "will be essential reading for every Kenton devotee and jazz historian.

Michael Buble is an international singing sensation. Since his debut in 2003, he has sold 18 million albums, won numerous awards (including a Grammy), reached the top 10 in the UK charts with his first album, 'Michael Buble', and the top 50 of the Billboard 200 album charts for the same CD. His second album, 'It's Time', was more successful still, debuting at number 4 in the UK charts, and his song 'Home' was a UK number one. His performances and concerts worldwide have been sell outs, while he has cultivated a huge and loyal fanbase. Of Italian origin, and born into a family of fishermen in Canada, Michael was heavily influenced by his grandfather, whom he credited with introducing him to the kind of music he would make his own - Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Dean Martin and Elvis, to name but a few. His popularity continues to grow, and this comprehensive and definitive biography charts his fascinating and phenomenal success story.

Hailed by corporate, philanthropic, and governmental organizations as a metaphor for democratic interaction and business dynamics, contemporary jazz culture has a story to tell about the relationship between political economy and social practice in the era of neoliberal capitalism. The Jazz Bubble approaches the emergence of the neoclassical jazz aesthetic since the 1980s as a powerful, if unexpected, point of departure for a wide-ranging investigation of important social trends during this period, extending from the effects of financialization in the music industry to the structural upheaval created by urban redevelopment in major American cities. Dale Chapman draws from political and critical theory, oral history, and the public and trade press, making this a persuasive and compelling work for scholars across music, industry, and cultural studies.

Hard bop was a brand of post bebop jazz that enveloped many of the most talented American musicians in the period between 1955 and 1956. These were years unrivalled in jazz history for the number of musically brilliant records issued - including Art Blakey's Ugetsu, Miles Davis's Kind of Blue, Thelonius Monk's Brilliant Corners, and Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus.

This is the first book devoted entirely to hard bop, combining a narrative of the movement's evolution, from its beginnings as an amalgam of bebop and R&B to its experimental breakthroughs in the 1960s. With close analyses of musicians' styles and recordings, as well as specific tendencies within the school, such as `soul jazz', it offers a much needed examination of the artists, milieus, and above all the sounds of one of America's greatest musical epochs.

Here, for the first time, is a book which analyses popular music from a musical, as opposed to a sociological, biographical, or political point of view. Peter van der Merwe has made an extensive survey of Western popular music in all its forms - blues, ragtime, music hall, waltzes, marches, parlour ballads, folk music - uncovering the common musical language which unites these disparate styles. The book examines the split between `classical' and`popular' Western music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shedding light, in the process, on the `serious' music of the time. With a wealth of musical illustrations ranging from Strauss waltzes to Mississippi blues and from the Middle Ages to the 1920s, the author lays bare the tangled roots of the popular music of today in a book which is often provocative, always readable, and outstandingly comprehensive in its scope.