Book Review
Queer Blues: The Hidden Figures Of Early Blues Music
by Ian Patterson
Queer Blues: The Hidden Figures Of Early Blues Music Darryl W. Bullock 352 Pages ISBN: 978-1-9131-7252-7 Omnibus Press 2023 The blues is ripe with legends and myths, not least the oft-touted claim that W.C. Handy was the father of the blues. But as Darryl. W. Bullock tells it, there is an important tract of blues history that has not got its due. Until now. In his telling, many of the blues pioneers were ...
read moreChasing The Masters: First Takes Of A Modern Drumming Artist
by David A. Orthmann
Chasing The Masters: First Takes Of A Modern Drumming Artist Phil Haynes 296 pagesISBN: #979-886-0200883 Self Published 2023 I recently attended several recitals by instrumentalists, composers, and arrangers from the renowned Jazz Studies Program at William Paterson University. The level of musicianship was uniformly high in these stimulating and thought-provoking performances, and the alleged homogeny of jazz in the academy was nowhere to be found. Hearing idealism and enthusiasm in the emerging, ...
read moreBecoming Ella Fitzgerald
by Katchie Cartwright
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald Judith Tick 560 Pages ISBN: 978-0-393-24105-1 W.W. Norton & Company 2024 In his 859-page monograph The Swing Era (1989), composer and historian Gunther Schuller skipped past Ella Fitzgerald. In 2011, when Judith Tick asked him about the omission, he responded that “there wasn't room to cover two singers, and he had chosen Billie Holiday" (Becoming Ella Fitzgerald, p. 429). Tick's meticulously researched and insightful Becoming Ella Fitzgerald fills that hole ...
read moreTeenage Wasteland: The Who At Winterland 1968 and 1976
by Doug Collette
Teenage Wasteland: The Who At Winterland 1968 and 1976 Edoardo Genzolini 256 Pages ISBN: # 978-0764367359 Schiffer Books2024 Teenage Wasteland: The Who At Winterland 1968 and 1976 is much more than simply contiguous chronicles of two concerts by the iconic British rock band. As with the deceptively attractive dust cover, half in flat and half in glossy finish, the 256 pages of photos and text within 8.75 x 1 x 11.25 inch ...
read moreMiles Davis and the Search for the Sound
by Mark Sullivan
Miles Davis and the Search for the Sound (graphic novel) Dave Chisholm 150 Pages ISBN: #9798886560428 Z2 Comics2023 Artist and jazz trumpeter Dave Chisholm has created a series of graphic novels that combine his two loves. The most recent was Enter the Blue (Z2 Comics, 2022), a supernatural jazz story incorporating the history of Blue Note Records. But in many ways, this story recalls Chasin' the Bird: Charlie Parker in California (Z2 Comics, ...
read moreTalking The Groove: Jazz Words From The Morning Star
by Chris May
Talking The Groove: Jazz Words From The Morning Star Chris Searle 394 Pages ISBN: 978-1-9163206-7-3 Jazz In Britain 2024 Although Marxist-Leninist theory itself has proved to be, at best, a blind alley--and, at worst, in practice the enemy of the freedoms it claims to champion--writers from the Left have contributed much to the study of jazz, an art form which has ideas of freedom, both artistic and societal, at its core. The ...
read moreMonterey Jazz Festival: Forty Legendary Years
by Joel Roberts
This article was first published at All About Jazz in December 1997. Monterey Jazz Festival: 40 Legendary Years William Minor and Bill Wishner 176 pages ISBN: 0-883318-40-8 Angel City Press 1997 The opening night of the first Monterey Jazz Festival in 1958 featured performances by Gerry Mulligan, Max Roach, Dave Brubeck, Cal Tjader, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Harry James, and, just nine months before her death, Billie Holiday. The evening's ...
read moreDrums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon
by Doug Collette
Drums & Demons: The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon Joel Selvin 288 Pages ISBN: #978-1635768992 Diversion Books2024 In keeping with the title of Drums & Demons, Joel Selvin's account of The Tragic Journey of Jim Gordon is a schizophrenic piece of work. A seasoned journalist who's distinguished himself with a disinterested yet frank objectivity in past publications like Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels, and the Inside Story of Rock's Darkest Day ...
read moreBass Notes: Jazz In American Culture, A Personal View
by Harvie S
Bass Notes: Bass Notes: Jazz In American Culture, A Personal View Chuck Israels 240 Pages ISBN: 1493074849 Backbeat Books 2024 Chuck Israels developed musically in what many would say was an extremely fertile time in Jazz. I'm talking about the 1960s. Of course, his stint with Bill Evans during those years does stand out, but there is so much more. In Bass Notes, Israels has written a book that is aimed ...
read moreJazz And Death: Reception, Rituals And Representations
by Ian Patterson
Jazz and Death: Reception, Rituals and Representations Walter van de Leur 200 Pages ISBN: 9781138553422 Routledge 2023 The title might seem a tad non-felicitous, but it surely invites reflection. How do we respond to and commemorate jazz musicians' deaths? In what ways do these rituals manifest themselves from one place and from one culture to another? Most significantly, what do the various responses to jazz deaths reveal about wider jazz culture--the traditions, heritage, ...
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