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Ted Gioia

ed Gioia is a musician and author, and has published eight non-fiction books, most recently the bestselling The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire, published by Oxford University Press in July 2012. His The History of Jazz was selected as one of the twenty best books of the year by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post, and was chosen as a notable book of the year in The New York Times. Gioia’s 2008 book Delta Blues, published by W.W. Norton, was also selected by The New York Times as one of the 100 most notable of the year, and was picked as one of the best books of the year by The Economist.

Gioia has been called "one of the outstanding music historians in America" by the Dallas Morning News. In 2006, Gioia published two books simultaneously, Work Songs and Healing Songs, the result of more a decade of research into traditional music, and both works were honored with a special ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award. Gioia has also written extensively on popular culture, most notably in his 2009 book The Birth (and the Death) of Cool, a work of cultural criticism and a historical survey of hipness—his concept of post-cool, outlined in this work, was highlighted as one of the "ideas of the year" by Adbusters. "The prose is so strong, simple and evocative that it brings the reader almost to tears with longing," The Washington Post has written of this book. "It will force you to think about making connections you haven't made before.”

From 2007 until 2010, Gioia served as founding president, editor and resident blogger for www.jazz.com, a popular web music media portal. In addition, Gioia's writings have appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Salon, American Scholar, Hudson Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among other publications.

Gioia was raised in a Sicilian-Mexican household in Hawthorne, California, a working class neighborhood in the South-Central area of Los Angeles. Gioia was valedictorian and a National Merit Scholar at Hawthorne High School, and attended Stanford University. There he received a degree in English (graduating with honors and distinction), served as editor of Stanford’s literary magazine, Sequoia, and wrote regularly for the Stanford Daily. He was a member of Stanford’s College Bowl team, which was featured on television, and defeated Yale in the national finals. Gioia also worked extensively as a jazz pianist during this period, and designed and taught a class on jazz at Stanford while still an undergraduate.

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5
Book Review

How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia

Read "How to Listen to Jazz by Ted Gioia" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


“As you develop your listening skills, [answer this question]: Are the musicians playing the notes with precision, almost as if they are reading music from some Platonic ideal score, or are they handling them roughly, torturing them to make them speak the truth?" I see [Billie Holiday] more as a diagnostician of the soul, whose music reaches into those vulnerabilities and emotional risks that many of us avoid or actively repress. Ted Gioia, How To Listen ...

13
Interview

How to Listen to Jazz: A Q&A with Ted Gioia

Read "How to Listen to Jazz: A Q&A with Ted Gioia" reviewed by S.G Provizer


In How to Listen to Jazz, Ted Gioia has tasked himself with writing a book that asks people to drop their musical prejudices and open up their ears. The challenge in writing a book like is to find a middle path between, as Gioia says, “those who pretend that music is objective science and those who insist it is “subjective whimsy..." For my money, he has succeeded; talking about the nuts and bolts of melody, harmony and rhythm in a ...

Book Review

Ted Gioia: Gli standard del jazz

Read "Ted Gioia: Gli standard del jazz" reviewed by Maurizio Zerbo


Gli standard del jazz Ted Gioia EDT/Siena Jazz Leggere un libro di Ted Gioia è sempre un'esperienza appagante, sia per i neofiti che per gli addetti ai lavori. Nonostante non raggiunga i vertici creativi de “L'arte imperfetta," questa ricognizione sugli standard jazzistici lascia il segno. La informa un rigoroso approccio metodologico, che coniuga testo e contesto: la grammatica musicale (forma, tonalità, sviluppo motivico) e l'humus storico-culturale di riferimento. Come era lecito aspettarsi da ...

5
Interview

Ted Gioia Talks "Love Songs: The Hidden History"

Read "Ted Gioia Talks "Love Songs: The Hidden History"" reviewed by S.G Provizer


Ted Gioia is a prolific writer and a good one. Readers probably know him through his books and articles about jazz, but Mr. Gioia is a polymath and writes on a wide range of subjects. In this interview, he talks about his recently released book, Love Songs: The Hidden History. I'm confident that what he says will inspire many of you to pick up a copy of this fascinating book. All About Jazz: In your introduction, ...

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Bailey's Bundles

Delta Blues & the Birth (and Death) of the Cool: Two definitive Ted Gioia Histories

Read "Delta Blues & the Birth (and Death) of the Cool: Two definitive Ted Gioia Histories" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


Does the music world need one more history of Delta blues music? Does a survey of a spongy concept like “cool" have any relevance in a post-9/11 world? Considering Robert Palmer authored a definitive narrative on depression-era Mississippi Delta music in Deep Blues (Viking, 1981) almost 30 years ago, and that Martin Williams and David Rosenthal, among many others, have already tried, with anemic success, to define other amorphous musical concepts like “Swing" and “Bad," do we really need to ...

1,172
African Jazz

Ted Gioia: The History of Jazz

Read "Ted Gioia: The History of Jazz" reviewed by AAJ Staff


Index About the Author About The History of Jazz Excerpt: The Prehistory of Jazz Thoughts on Jazz by Ted Gioia Visit Ted Gioia on the web.

About the Author

Ted Gioia was raised in Hawhtorne, California, a working class neighborhood in the South-Central area of Los Anglees county. Jazz was not part of Hawthorne's nightlife - indeed, the city is perhaps best known as hometown to the Beach Boys. But ...

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4

Book / Magazine

Love Songs The Hidden History by Ted Gioia

Love Songs The Hidden History by Ted Gioia

Source: Michael Ricci

Music historian and Daily Beast columnist Ted Gioia uncovers the hidden truths of love, one of the most dominant themes of music in the last millennium. While many tend to view love songs as simple, sentimental, and formulaic, Gioia proves that no other style of music has led to more censorship, controversy, or reprisals. Based on more two decades of research, Love Songs provides readers with the backstories that shaped the most popular hits including Darwin’s theory of evolutionary connection ...

Book / Magazine

A Spotify playlist for Ted Gioia's "The Jazz Standards" of 2,000 songs

A Spotify playlist for Ted Gioia's "The Jazz Standards" of 2,000 songs

Source: Michael Ricci

My passage as a listener into the jazz world was accidental and fortuitous. As a young rock fan browsing the vinyl cutouts at Jack's Record Rack, I found one of Miles Davis' Live at the Blackhawk albums for $1.99 or so. Something about the moody cover appealed to me, so I bought it. Not long after that, I heard my first live jazz performance. The shortlived Winterfest booked tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, who'd made a remarkable comeback after some lean ...

137

Book / Magazine

"The History Of Jazz" Second Edition By Ted Gioia

"The History Of Jazz" Second Edition By Ted Gioia

Source: Michael Ricci

The History of Jazz, Second Edition is a tale of giants: Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington at the Cotton Club, cool jazz greats such as Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, and Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's advocacy of modern jazz in the 1940s, Miles Davis's 1955 performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, all the way to the postmodernists of the current day. Along the way, readers are treated to vivid descriptions of the best venues and shows. ...

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Radio

Jazzing the Cool with Ted Gioia

Jazzing the Cool with Ted Gioia

Source: Michael Ricci

Ted Gioia, author of “The History of Jazz" and “West Coast Jazz", argues in his new book “The Birth (and Death) of the Cool" that what many think of as “cool"-the attitude, sound, look, and way of life-came about in large part because of jazz, and that the notion of cool has now been co-opted and commodified in a way that's nearly drained the term of its meaning. Gioia joins us on this edition of Night Lights to talk about ...

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Tango Cool

Summit Records
1990

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The End Of The Open...

Summit Records
1988

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