Home » Jazz News
Book / Magazine News
Timely announcements covering new album releases, tours, concert series, special events, job postings, crowdfunding campaigns and more. You can find more news by searching our website, viewing our news stream, seeing what's trending or reading our blog posts. Subscribe to our news RSS feed and/or embed AAJ news content on your website or blog. Learn about our news service here. Submit news here.
UC Press Publishes "Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus" by Krin Gabbard
Source:
All About Jazz
“Krin Gabbard is one of the finest stylists writing about jazz today, and Better Git It In Your Soul finds him at the top of his game. The writing is crisp, charming, and funny, a pleasure to read. The author’s love of this immensely rich body of music comes through on every page.” —Thomas Brothers, author of Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism “One of the reasons that the great musician Charles Mingus is not better known is that the raw ...
Continue Reading
Mort Weiss' E-book, "Sex And The Jazz Musician - The Hollywood Years And Beyond," Now Available
Source:
GoMedia PR
New E-Book Translates the Octogenarian Clarinetist’s Mort Report Columns from All About Jazz into an Autobiographic Series of Vignettes Complimented with Music and Video Sex and the Jazz Musician—The Hollywood Years and Beyond, an intriguing glimpse into the life and times of the world's greatest unemployed jazz clarinetist," 80-year old Mort Weiss, is now available as an e-book. It is currently available for pre- sale at all online retailers, as well as at Mort’s Book Baby Bookshop. Inspired by The ...
Continue Reading
Monday Recommendation: Playboy Swings
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Patty Farmer, Playboy Swings: How Hugh Hefner and Playboy Changed the Face of Music (Beaufort Books) For sixty years, Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine have been easy targets for lampoon and parody. With their fixation on the care and feeding of the male libido, they have attracted plenty of both. But there has always been more to Playboy than preoccupation with sex. Ms. Farmer and contributing writer Will Friedwald make the case that the magazine, night clubs, TV shows, ...
Continue Reading
Joe Meek’s Bold Techniques — New Video And V3 E-book Unveiled
Source:
Barry Cleveland
“When I began researching my book I had no idea that Joe Meek’s recording concepts and techniques had basically turned the ’50s and ’60s British studio world upside down,” says Barry Cleveland, author of Joe Meek’s Bold Techniques. “Many of the things Meek did were revolutionary—and often considered wrong—at the time, but have now been so thoroughly integrated into everyday practice that they are taken for granted.” This new video provides an overview: Joe Meek’s best-known recording, “Telstar,” topped the ...
Continue Reading
Playboy Swings: How Hugh Hefner And Playboy Changed The Face Of Music
Source:
Nina Gordon Public Relations
Since the launch of Playboy magazine in 1953, two elements have been remarkably consistent: the first is the celebration of the world’s most beautiful & desirable women and the second is its involvement with music. The Playboy experience was never just about sex—it was about lifestyle. And music—particularly the finest jazz, a personal passion of Hefner’s—has always been an essential component of that lifestyle. While many books have been written about the Playboy organization and the ultimate playboy himself, Hugh ...
Continue Reading
Jive-Colored Glasses: A Memoir That Tells How A Jazz Critic Got That Way
Source:
John Goodman
A jazz memoir combined with personal stories, Jive-Colored Glasses tells how critic John Goodman came to jazz as a child from a privileged background and how jazz radically changed his life. Jive-Colored Glasses was published July 8 on Amazon in paperback and ebook versions. It jumped to #5 in Amazon's Best Seller List (for Jazz Musician Biographies). Sales continue strong. See the reviews at the book's Amazon page. One reviewer called John “a perennial freelancer, partly because he's too much ...
Continue Reading
Gunther Schuller On Book 3
Source:
Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
Gunther Schuller wrote two books about the history and development of jazz. The first, published by the Oxford University Press in 1968 was Early Jazz. The second —in 1989—was The Swing Era. They were detailed histories, deeply researched and bolstered with musical examples painstakingly annotated by Schuller as he listened to and analyzed thousands of recordings. Schuller died yesterday at 89 (see the previous Rifftides post). For 25 years listeners, musicians and scholars have been anticipating a third volume about ...
Continue Reading
"Spirits Rejoice! Jazz And American Religion" By Jason C. Bivins
Source:
Oxford University Press
In Spirits Rejoice! Jason Bivins explores the relationship between American religion and American music, and the places where religion and jazz have overlapped. Much writing about jazz tends toward glorified discographies or impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds. Rather than providing a history, or series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice! takes to heart a central characteristic of jazz itself and improvises, generating a collection of themes, pursuits, reoccurring foci, and interpretations. Bivins riffs on interviews, liner notes, journals, audience reception, ...
Continue Reading



