Many describe jazz asa the one true form of American music. Arising out of the syncopated rhythms of African music, Cajun songs, and Ragtime, jazz evolved in many 'scenes' throughout the country. The Young Lions jazz movement in New Orleans spread up the Mississippi in the northern Migration. Communities such as St. Louis and Sedalia became jazz centers, while Count Bassie led a revolution in Kansas City. Chicago became a center of freewheeling jazz in the 1920s with the efforts of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong, while classic jazz and swing took root in New York City in the '30s and '40s behind Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Benny Goodman. And while 'boogie woogie' and 'hot jazz' grew out of the Big Apple, a generation of experimental musicians such as Chet Baker and Stan Kenton stood at the forefront of West Coast jazz. Yankow carefully traces the evolution of jazz from regional manifestations to an increasingly national language at the turn of the 20th century. Many audiophiles describe jazz as the one true form of American music. Arising out of the syncopated rhythms of African music, Cajun songs, and Ragtime, jazz evolved in many scenes throughout the country. The Young Lions jazz movement in New Orleans spread up the Mississippi in the northern Migration. Missouri communities such as St. Louis and Sedalia became jazz centers, while Count Basie led a revolution in Kansas City. Chicago became a center of freewheeling jazz in the 1920s with the efforts of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, and Louis Armstrong, while classic jazz and swing took root in New York City in the '30s and '40s behind Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Benny Goodman, the King of Swing. And while boogie woogie and hot jazz grew out of the Big Apple, a generation of experimental musicians such as Chet Baker and Stan Kenton stood at the forefront of West Coast jazz and the Los Angeles scene. Noted jazz writer Scott Yanow carefully traces the evolution of jazz from regional manifestations to an increasingly national language at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. The Greenwood Guide to American Roots Music series includes volumes on musical genres that have pervaded American culture. This series describes American musical traditions that have been associated with specific geographic regions throughout our nation. Each volume explores the different ways that a genre, such as jazz, has evolved naturally in different regions and scenes while becoming an undeniable element of American culture.

Gettin' Around examines how the global jazz aesthetic strives, in various ways, toward an imaginative reconfiguration of a humanity that transcends entrenched borders of ethnicity and nationhood, while at the same time remaining keenly aware of the exigencies of history. Jurgen E. Grandt deliberately refrains from a narrow, empirical definition of jazz or of transnationalism and, true to the jazz aesthetic itself, opts for a broader, more inclusive scope, even as he listens carefully and closely to jazz's variegated soundtrack. Such an approach seeks not only to avoid the museal whiff of a "golden age, time past" but also to broaden the appeal and the applicability of the overall critical argument. For Grandt, "international" simply designates currents of people, ideas, and goods between distinct geopolitical entities or nation-states, whereas "transnational" refers to liminal dynamics that transcend preordained borderlines occurring above, below, beside, or along the outer contours of nation-states. Gettin' Around offers a long overdue consideration of the ways in which jazz music can inform critical practice in the field of transnational (American) studies and grounds these studies in specifically African American cultural contexts.

A celebrated jazz writer offers fascinating portraits of friends he's known during a lifetime in jazz For more than half a century, jazz writer and lyricist Gene Lees has been the friend of many in the world of jazz music. In this delightful book he offers minibiographies of fifteen of these friends-some of them jazz greats, some lesser-known figures, and some up-and-comers. Combining conversations and memoirs with critical commentary, Lees's insightful and intimate profiles will captivate jazz fans, performers, and historians alike. The subjects of the book range from the versatile orchestrator and arranger Claus Ogerman to legendary jazz broadcaster Willis Conover, from the gifted young Chinese violinist Yue Deng to undersung pianist Junior Mance. Lees writes about these figures both as musicians and as human beings, and he writes out of a conviction that jazz as an art form represents the highest values of American culture. Inviting us into the lives of these unique individuals, Lees offers an affectionate view of the jazz community that only an insider could provide.

In this wise, stimulating, and deeply personal book, an eminent jazz chronicler writes of his encounters with four great black musicians: Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat "King" Cole. Equal parts memoir, oral history, and commentary, each of the main chapters is a minibiography, weaving together conversations Gene Lees had with the musicians and their families, friends, and associates over a period of several decades.
Lees begins the book with an essay that tells of his introduction to the world of jazz and his reaction to racism in the United States when he emigrated from Canada in 1955. The underlying theme in his book is the impact racism had on the four musicians' lives and careers and their determination to overcome it. As Lees writes, "No white person can even begin to understand the black experience in the United States. . . . All of the four jazz makers] are men who had every reason to embrace bitterness--and didn't."

Containing over 500 annotated entries for individual poets and several anthologies, this work presents a substantial collection of poems that have been inspired by blues and jazz. Thousands of poems written between 1916 and the present are included. References to individual jazz figures addressed in the poetry are cross-referenced. The range of poems includes homages to jazz musicians and work written primarily to be read with jazz accompaniment. This wide selection of poetry offers a unique guide to the poetry inspired by jazz musicians and their music.

Of interest to scholars and jazz enthusiasts alike, this substantial bibliography, annotated by author and cross-referenced by musician, presents a wealth of information previously unavailable in a single source. The jazz-related poetry identified will attract a range of writers and musicians. Furthermore, the broad variety of poets and anthologies presented crosses many boundaries and will also interest scholars of 20th century poetry, African American literature, and American literature.

Today's "Retro Swing" bands, like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and the Brian Setzer Orchestra, all owe their inspiration to the original masters of Swing. This rich reference details the oeuvre of the leading Swing musicians from the WWII and post-WWII years. Chapters on the masters of Swing (Ella Fitzgerald, Woody Herman, Billy Strayhorn), the legendary Big Band leaders (such as Les Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Vaughan Monroe, etc.), vocalists (including Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington), and Small Groups (Louis Jordan, Art Tatum, Charlie Venture, etc.) introduce these timeless musicians to a new generation of musicians and music fans. An opening chapter recounts how the cultural changes during the war and postwar years affected performers-especially women and African-Americans-and an A-to-Z appendix provides synopses of almost 700 entrants, including related musicians and famous venues. A bibliography and subject index provide additional tools for those researching Swing music and its many roles in mid-century American culture. This volume is a perfect sequel to Dave Oliphant's The Early Swing Eera: 1930 to 1941. Together, these books provide the perfect reference guide to an enduring form of American music.

(Limelight). ..".his economical writing style ... manages to pack lots of information and opinion into a few carefully chosen words ... Besides detail work well-grounded in scholarship...the author isn't afraid to interpolate such generalizations and speculations as he sees fit; he may be the Stephen Hawking of jazz criticism." Bob Tarte, The Beat

The study develops a new theoretical approach to the relationship between two media (jazz music and writing) and demonstrates its explanatory power with the help of a rich sampling of jazz poems. Currently, the mimetic approach to intermediality (e.g., the notion that jazz poetry imitates jazz music) still dominates the field of criticism. This book challenges that interpretive approach. It demonstrates that a mimetic view of jazz poetry hinders readers from perceiving the metaphoric ways poets rendered music in writing. Drawing on and extending recent cognitive metaphor theories (Lakoff, Johnson, Turner, Fauconnier), it promotes a conceptual metaphor model that allows readers to discover the innovative ways poets translate "melody," "dynamics," "tempo," "mood," and other musical elements into literal and figurative expressions that invite readers to imagine the music in their mind's eye (i.e., their mind's ear).

Just after recording with John Coltrane in 1963, baritone singer Johnny Hartman (1923-1983) told a family member that "something special" occurred in the studio that day. He was right - the album, containing definitive readings of "Lush Life" and "My One and Only Love," resides firmly in the realm of iconic; forever enveloping listeners in the sounds of romance. In The Last Balladeer, author Gregg Akkerman skillfully reveals not only the intimate details of that album but the life-long achievements and occasional missteps of Hartman as an African-American artist dedicated to his craft. This book carefully follows the journey of the Grammy-nominated vocalist from his big band origins with Earl Hines and Dizzy Gillespie to featured soloist in prestigious supper clubs throughout the world. Through exclusive interviews with Hartman's family and fellow musicians (including Tony Bennett, Billy Taylor, Kurt Elling, Jon Hendricks, and others), accounts from friends and associates, newly discovered recordings and studio outtakes, and in-depth research on his career and personal life, Akkerman expertly recollects the Hartman character as a gentleman, romantic, family man, and constant contributor to the jazz scene. From his international concerts in Japan, Australia, and England to his steady presence as an American nightclub singer that spanned five decades, Hartman personifies the "last balladeer" of his kind, singing with a sentiment that captured the attention of Clint Eastwood, who brought Hartman's songs to the masses in the film The Bridges of Madison County. In the first full-length biography and discography to chronicle the rhapsodic life and music of Johnny Hartman, the author completes a previously missing dimension of vocal-jazz history by documenting Hartman as the balladeer who crooned his way into so many hearts. Backed by impeccable research but conveyed in a conversational style, this book will interest not only musicians and scholars but any fan of the Great American Songbook and the singers who brought it to life.

"This is a very good book which will certainly become one of the essential works of reference for the jazz enthusiast. It covers the ragtime to swing period by way of 250 LPs, each of which is afforded full discographical information on dates, titles, and personnels. . . . The quality of the writing is extemely high, as indeed one has a right to expect from authors of this calibre. . . . Harrison, Fox, and Thacker have produced some beautifully composed essays on artistes such as Billie Holliday, Roy Eldridge, Duke Ellington, etc. . . . It is a book which needs to be dipped into frequently, a volume to keep close to one's record collection. . . . It will increase immeasurably anyone's knowledge of, and appreciation for, jazz." The Gramophone

Cross-Rhythms investigates the literary uses and effects of blues and jazz in African-American literature of the twentieth century. Texts by James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Gayl Jones, Toni Morrison and Ishmael Reed variously adopt or are consciously informed by a jazz aesthetic; this aesthetic becomes part of a strategy of ethnic identification and provides a medium with which to consider the legacy of trauma in African-American history. These diverse writers are all thoroughly immersed in a socio-cultural context and a literary aesthetic that embodies shifting conceptions of ethnic identity across the twentieth century. The emergence of blues and jazz is, likewise, a crucial product of, as well as catalyst for, this context, and in their own aesthetic explorations of notions of ethnicity these writers consciously engage with this musical milieu. By examining the highly varied manifestations of a jazz aesthetic as possibly the fundamental common denominator which links these writers, this study attempts to identify an underlying unifying principle. As the different writers write against essentializing or organic categories of race, the very fact of a shared engagement with jazz sensibilities in their work redefines the basis of African-American communal identity.

A Danish musician here presents the most accurate, comprehensive work on a major figure in American jazz: Lester Willis Young (1909-1959), better known as Pres' or Prez, ' from the nickname President' given to him by Billie Holiday. Based on interviews with Young's colleagues and friends, and often presenting his own vulgar scatological words, the book faithfully chronicles the ups and downs of his life and career. Despite his alcoholism, drug addiction, syphillis, epilepsy, and emotional disturbances, Young became the outstanding tenor saxophonist of his time and a dominant, profound influence on the development of bop and progressive (cool') jazz in the 1940s. His solos with the bands of Fletcher Henderson and Count Basie and his collaboration with Holiday are recalled in this outstanding biography. "Publishers Weekly"

This is] the big, warm book about Lester Young that swing lovers have been waiting for, written by a Danish jazz musician. This is a rich authentic life of one of the three greatest tenor players who ever lived, much of it told in vivid quotation from eyewitnesses. Kirkus this is the first thoroughgoing biography of one of America's greatest musicians; its fascination for at least jazz aficionados is magnetic....Along with Porter's magisterial work of musical analysis, Lester Young, this is the book to have on the most influential jazzman between Armstrong and Parker. "Booklist"

A fascinating and invaluable compilation of raw material...a straightforward, accurate narrative.

"The New York TimeS"

By far the most comprehensive work available on the extraordinary Lester Young, "You Just Fight For Your Life" is the jazz enthusiast's dream come true. Meticulously researched and teeming with previously unpublished information, this book accurately recreates the life and character of one of the world's greatest jazz musicians. Historian Frank Buchmann-Moller crafts a full length biography exclusively for Lester Young fans focusing on Young's philosophy of life, his exceptional ability as a bandleader, and his sharp wit. Through the examination of army psychiatric reports, interviews with fellow musicians, and concert reviews, "You Just Fight For Your Life" tells the story of this gifted yet troubled musician.

Beginning with his childhood, the book accurately chronicles the many bands in which Lester Young played prior to joining Count Basie in 1936. Through countless interviews with Young's peers, the book recounts the Basie years and the spicy stories of life on the road. The author includes new information about Young's own first band and follows this with details of his military experience. The final chapters deal with his years as featured soloist. Two appendices list all of Young's jobs from 1919-59 and his own bands chronologically as well as all musicians with whom he played. Now Lester Young followers have a full length biography valuable not only as a reference but for its recreation of a fascinating life.

This is a series of unorthodox peices that analyze some 40 of the author's favorite jazz records. The book is intended to make people listen to records which we believe are worth listening to again.

Jazz has always been a genre built on the blending of disparate musical cultures. Latin jazz illustrates this perhaps better than any other style in this rich tradition, yet its cultural heritage has been all but erased from narratives of jazz history. Told from the perspective of a long-time jazz insider, Latin Jazz: The Other Jazz corrects the record, providing a historical account that embraces the genre's international nature and explores the dynamic interplay of economics, race, ethnicity, and nationalism that shaped it.

The Ella Fitzgerald Companion is a celebration of the woman who is arguably musical history's greatest singer of popular. An international superstar of jazz and popular music, Fitzgerald boasted astounding versatility and sophistication that covered the entire musical spectrum, and her combination of incredible vocal flexibility, precise diction and articulation, accurate improvising skills, and a huge repertoire remains unmatched. This guide to her sixty-year career-including her recordings, her important influences, and her collaborators-offers an overview of the evolution of American popular singing in the twentieth century through the lens of its greatest interpreter. Interspersed throughout the text are over eighty transcribed examples of recorded performances by Fitzgerald and a number of her influences, illuminating her genius in an unprecedented way. With accompanying discussions in both descriptive and musical language, this unique collection of transcriptions is accessible to musicians and non-musicians alike. Concluding the volume is a comprehensive discography of all the important Fitzgerald albums that have been re-issued to date on compact disc, offering the reader a practical way to become acquainted with one of the twentieth century's true musical pioneers.

"In The Return of Jazz, Andrew Wright Hurley has admirably demonstrated Berendt's influence upon the emerging jazz scene of the early Federal Republic. Hurley shows how Cold War politics and rejection of the National Socialist past heightened Berendt's sense of mission. For Berendt, jazz was more than an avocation; it was a program for social and cultural reform. It is to Hurley's credit that he raises so many important issues surrounding jazz's development in the second half of the twentieth century." - H-German

"This is a benchmark study, in showing why a subject that has been overlooked in jazz historiography should not have been. Its importance lies not just in recognising the importance of a major mediator and 'enabler' of postwar jazz; it also models the late twentieth century shift of the jazz centre of gravity away from the US and towards international fusions. In its balancing of cultural theory with the most painstaking empirical research this is, quite simply, essential reading not just in jazz scholarship, but in the larger field of cultural history and its methodologies." - Bruce Johnson Cultural History, University of Turku

Jazz has had a peculiar and fascinating history in Germany. The influential but controversial German writer, broadcaster, and record producer, Joachim-Ernst Berendt (1922-2000), author of the world's best-selling jazz book, labored to legitimize jazz in West Germany after its ideological renunciation during the Nazi era. German musicians began, in a highly productive way, to question their all-too-eager adoption of American culture and how they sought to make valid artistic statements reflecting their identity as Europeans. This book explores the significance of some of Berendt's most important writings and record productions. Particular attention is given to the "Jazz Meets the World" encounters that he engineered with musicians from Japan, Tunisia, Brazil, Indonesia, and India. This proto-"world music" demonstrates how some West Germans went about creating a post-nationalist identity after the Third Reich. Berendt's powerful role as the West German "Jazz Pope" is explored, as is the groundswell of criticism directed at him in the wake of 1968.

Born in the late 19th century, jazz gained mainstream popularity during a volatile period of racial segregation and gender inequality. It was in these adverse conditions that jazz performers discovered the power of dress as a visual tool used to defy mainstream societal constructs, shaping a new fashion and style aesthetic. "Fashion and Jazz" is the first study to identify the behaviours, signs and meanings that defined this newly evolving subcultural style. Drawing on fashion studies and cultural theory, the book provides an in-depth analysis of the social and political entanglements of jazz and dress, with individual chapters exploring key themes such as race, class and gender. Including a wide variety of case studies, ranging from Billie Holliday and Ella Fitzgerald to Louis Armstrong and Chet Baker, it presents a critical and cultural analysis of jazz performers as modern icons of fashion and popular style. Addressing a number of previously underexplored areas of jazz culture, such as modern dandyism and the link between drug use and glamorous dress, " Fashion and Jazz" provides a fascinating history of fashion's dialogue with African-American art and style. It is essential reading for students of fashion, cultural studies, African-American studies and history.

TONY BENNETT: Harold Jones is one of the finest men I know. I have reviewed "The Singer's Drummer" and it is a Knock-Out I am happy that someone is putting together a history of what really happens on the road. This is a very creative work. Best of luck with the book COUNT BASIE: A great drummer can mean everything to a band. Harold Jones has really pulled us together. LOUIS BELLSON: Harold Jones was Count Basie's favorite drummer. BILL COSBY: Harold is a master of mind, hands, feet and touch. His playing is very delicate, like handling the very finest crystal and china and when he is done, there's no damage. NATALIE COLE: Harold is one of the best jazz drummers in the world. NANCY WILSON: When I speak of my "Gentlemen" I am referring to a select group of super-talented musicians with whom I have had the good fortune to work. Harold was a treasured member of my trio in the mid-70's, a class act both as a musician and a man. I commend him as one of my gentlemen. JON HENDRICKS: Harold always pulled the band back of us singers. Harold always swings and he is a beautiful, sensitive cat. GEORGE YOUNG: Playing with Harold is like taking a warm bath. All you have to do is lay back and enjoy the swinging feel of his playing. JOHN BADESSA: Harold won the Downbeat International Award as the "Best New Artist and Big Band Drummer" in 1972. He has not relinquished his title. He is still the best big band drummer in the world.

Free Jazz: A Research and Information Guide offers carefully selected and annotated sources on free jazz, with comprehensive coverage of English-language academic books, journal articles, and dissertations, and selective coverage of trade books, popular periodicals, documentary films, scores, Masters' theses, online texts, and materials in other languages. Free Jazz will be a major reference tool for students, faculty, librarians, artists, scholars, critics, and serious fans navigating this literature.