In the illustrious and richly documented history of American jazz, no figure has been more controversial than the jazz critic. Jazz critics can be revered or reviled--often both--but they should not be ignored. And while the tradition of jazz has been covered from seemingly every angle, nobody has ever turned the pen back on itself to chronicle the many writers who have helped define how we listen to and how we understand jazz. That is, of course, until now.
In "Blowin' Hot and Cool," John Gennari provides a definitive history of jazz criticism from the 1920s to the present. The music itself is prominent in his account, as are the musicians--from Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington to Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Roscoe Mitchell, and beyond. But the work takes its shape from fascinating stories of the tradition's key critics--Leonard Feather, Martin Williams, Whitney Balliett, Dan Morgenstern, Gary Giddins, John Hammond, and Stanley Crouch, among many others. Gennari is the first to show the many ways these critics have mediated the relationship between the musicians and the audience--not merely as writers, but in many cases as producers, broadcasters, concert organizers, and public intellectuals as well.
For Gennari, the jazz tradition is not so much a collection of recordings and performances as it is a rancorous debate--the dissonant noise clamoring in response to the sounds of jazz. Against the backdrop of racial strife, class and gender issues, war, and protest that has defined the past seventy-five years in America, "Blowin' Hot and Cool" brings to the fore the most vital critics of jazz and the role they have played not only in defining the history of jazz but also inshaping its significance in American culture and life.

New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the cityOCOs jazz scene is more important now than ever before. "BlowinOCO the Blues Away" examines how jazz has thrived in New York following its popular resurgence in the 1980s. Using interviews, in-person observation, and analysis of live and recorded events, ethnomusicologist Travis A. Jackson explores both the ways in which various participants in the New York City jazz scene interpret and evaluate performance, and the criteria on which those interpretations and evaluations are based. Through the notes and words of its most accomplished performers and most ardent fans, jazz appears not simply as a musical style, but as a cultural form intimately influenced by and influential upon American concepts of race, place, and spirituality.

Fred Astaire: one of the great jazz artists of the twentieth century. Astaire is best known for his brilliant dancing in the movie musicals of the 1930s, but in "Music Makes Me", Todd Decker argues that Astaire's work as a dancer and choreographer - particularly in the realm of tap dancing - made a significant contribution to the art of jazz. Decker examines the full range of Astaire's work in filmed and recorded media, from a 1926 recording with George Gershwin to his 1970 blues stylings on television, and analyzes Astaire's creative relationships with the greats, including George and Ira Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, and Johnny Mercer. He also highlights Astaire's collaborations with African American musicians and his work with lesser known professionals - arrangers, musicians, dance directors, and performers.

Here is the book that distinguished music critic Leonard Feather called a "brilliantly perceptive examination of the forces that shaped Coltrane's brief life." Illustrating the influence of African folklore and spirituality on Coltrane's work and sound, Bill Cole creates an innovative portrait of the legendary tenor saxophonist. With illustrative diagrams, a discography, and more than twenty photographs, this is an essential addition to every jazz fan's library.

In The Heart of Rock & Soul, veteran rock critic Dave Marsh offers a polemical guide to the 1,001 greatest rock and soul singles ever made, encompassing rock, metal, R&B, disco, folk, funk, punk, reggae, rap, soul, country, and any other music that has made a difference over the past fifty years. The illuminating essays,complete with music history, social commentary, and personal appraisals,double as a mini-history of popular music. Here you will find singles by artists as wide-ranging as Aretha Franklin, George Jones, Roy Orbison, the Sex Pistols, Madonna, Run-D.M.C., and Van Halen. Featuring a new preface that covers the hits,and misses,of the'90s, The Heart of Rock & Soul remains as provocative, passionate, and timeless as the music it praises.

Traditional jazz studies have tended to see jazz in purely musical terms, as a series of changes in rhythm, tonality, and harmony, or as a parade of great players. But jazz has also entered the cultural mix through its significant impact on novelists, filmmakers, dancers, painters, biographers, and photographers. Representing Jazz explores the "other" history of jazz created by these artists, a history that tells us as much about the meaning of the music as do the many books that narrate the lives of musicians or describe their recordings. Krin Gabbard has gathered essays by distinguished writers from a variety of fields. They provide engaging analyses of films such as Round Midnight, Bird, Mo' Better Blues, Cabin in the Sky, and Jammin' the Blues; the writings of Eudora Welty and Dorothy Baker; the careers of the great lindy hoppers of the 1930s and 1940s; Mura Dehn's extraordinary documentary on jazz dance; the jazz photography of William Claxton; painters of the New York School; the traditions of jazz autobiography; and the art of "vocalese." The contributors to this volume assess the influence of extramusical sources on our knowledge of jazz and suggest that the living contexts of the music must be considered if a more sophisticated jazz scholarship is ever to evolve. Transcending the familiar patterns of jazz history and criticism, Representing Jazz looks at how the music actually has been heard and felt at different levels of American culture. With its companion anthology, Jazz Among the Discourses, this volume will enrich and transform the literature of jazz studies. Its provocative essays will interest both aficionados and potential jazz fans.Contributors. Karen Backstein, Leland H. Chambers, Robert P. Crease, Krin Gabbard, Frederick Garber, Barry K. Grant, Mona Hadler, Christopher Harlos, Michael Jarrett, Adam Knee, Arthur Knight, James Naremore

Bop Apocalypse, a narrative history from master storyteller Martin Torgoff, details the rise of early drug culture in America by weaving together the disparate elements that formed this new segment of the American fabric. Channeling his decades of writing experience, Torgoff connects the birth of jazz in New Orleans, the first drug laws, Louis Armstrong, Mezz Mezzrow, the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, swing, Lester Young, Billie Holliday, the Savoy Ballroom, Reefer Madness, Charlie Parker, the birth of bebop, the rise of the Beat Generation, and the coming of heroin to Harlem. Having spent a lifetime immersed in the world where music and drugs overlap, Torgoff reveals material that is completely new and has never been disclosed before, not even in his own litany of work. Bop Apocalypse is truly a new and fresh contribution to the understanding of jazz, race, and drug culture.

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.

Focusing on blues, jazz, gospel, rhythm and blues, and soul music, this text explores the rich musical heritage of African-Americans in California. The contributors describe in detail the individual artists, locales, groups, musical styles and regional qualities, and the result is a book which seeks to lay the groundwork for a whole new field of study. The essays draw from oral histories, music recordings, newspaper articles and advertisements, as well as population statistics to provide insightful discussions of topics such as the Californian urban milieu's influence on gospel music, the development of the West Coast blues style, and the significance of Los Angeles's Central Avenue in the early days of jazz. Other esays offer perspectives on how individual musicians have been shaped by their African-American heritage and on the role of the record industry and radio in the making of music. In addition to the diverse range of essays, the book includes a bibliography of African-American music and culture in California.

Note-for-note piano, bass and drum transcriptions of eight great tunes performed by the formidable trio of Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. Includes: Alice in Wonderland * Autumn Leaves (Les Feuilles Mortes) * How Deep Is the Ocean (How High Is the Sky) * Nardis * Peri's Scope * Solar * Waltz for Debby * When I Fall in Love.

The best biography of any jazz musician that we have. Bird Lives! will stand for a long time as a major source of information and illumination not only of the great musician with whom it deals but of the entire jazz life in this society.--Ralph Gleason Inspired by great affection and dedication, Bird Lives! provides a vivid and accurate picture not only of the saxophonist-composer as artist and human being but of his zeitgeist and the musical/social setting that produced him. Parker was an immensely complex personality; saint and satyr, loving father and footloose vagabond, with a limitless appetite for sex, music, food, pills, heroin, liquor, life. A man of vast influence, the most admired and imitated creator of the mid-1940s bop revolution, he was forced to work in dives, reduced to bumming dollars when he should have been respected as a reigning virtuoso. . . . A sensitive, penetrating portrait.--Leonard Feather, Los Angeles Times One of the very few jazz books that deserve to be called literature . . . perhaps the finest writing on jazz to be found anywhere. . . . Those aware of Parker's genius cannot do without this book.--Grover Sales, Saturday Review

A contribution to the history of the blues in particular and of Afro-American culture in general, new information about a remarkable set of assertive, creative women as well as new insights into the musical heritage they have left behind. Sippie Wallace, Edith Wilson, Victoria Spivey and Alberta Hunter are the collective focus of this work - four influential blues singers with diverse styles, who were big in the 1920s and were still performing in the 1980s. Writing from a firm black/feminist standpoint, Harrison shows the joys, trials, and heartbreaks in the lives of the first popular women blues artists.