We had a hard time getting people to quiet down and listen, Percy Heath, the Modern Jazz Quartets bass player, once explained about his innovative ensembles early gigs in clubs whose patrons were inclined to jabber during performances. If it got too loud, wed come off just stop playing and walk off. . . . We were conservatively dressed, we played conservative music, and if you didnt listen you didnt get it.
The M.J.Q.s formative role in the cool jazz movement of the early 1950s is just one of a centurys worth of musical milestones counted off in JAZZ (Norton, $39.95), Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeauxs weighty, entertaining history. But Heaths insistence on comprehension through attentive listening sums up the books ears-on approach to the music. To help you hear really hear Giddins and DeVeaux intersperse their text with remarkable tabular listening guides, detailed second-by-second, bar-by-bar descriptive breakdowns of 78 representative recordings, including many venerable classics (Louis Armstrongs West End Blues, Charlie Parkers Nows the Time, Miles Daviss So What) and some sweet surprises (the Georgia Sea Island Singers version of The Buzzard Lope, a slave-era folk relic, and Piece Three, Anthony Braxtons 1976 vivisection of a traditional American march, glockenspiel and all). Alas, the companion set of four CDs costs an additional $62.50 from the publishers Web site, but for serious woodshedders, its worth it.
The M.J.Q.s formative role in the cool jazz movement of the early 1950s is just one of a centurys worth of musical milestones counted off in JAZZ (Norton, $39.95), Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeauxs weighty, entertaining history. But Heaths insistence on comprehension through attentive listening sums up the books ears-on approach to the music. To help you hear really hear Giddins and DeVeaux intersperse their text with remarkable tabular listening guides, detailed second-by-second, bar-by-bar descriptive breakdowns of 78 representative recordings, including many venerable classics (Louis Armstrongs West End Blues, Charlie Parkers Nows the Time, Miles Daviss So What) and some sweet surprises (the Georgia Sea Island Singers version of The Buzzard Lope, a slave-era folk relic, and Piece Three, Anthony Braxtons 1976 vivisection of a traditional American march, glockenspiel and all). Alas, the companion set of four CDs costs an additional $62.50 from the publishers Web site, but for serious woodshedders, its worth it.
