The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings is firmly established as the world's leading guide to recorded jazz, a mine of fascinating information and a source of insightful - often wittily trenchant - criticism. This is something rather different: Brian Morton (who taught American history at UEA) has picked out the 1000 best recordings that all jazz fans should have and shows how they tell the history of the music and with it the history of the twentieth century. He has completely revised his and Richard Cook's entries and reassessed each artist's entry for this book. The result is an endlessly browsable companion that will prove required reading for aficionados and jazz novices alike. 'It's the kind of book that you'll yank off the shelf to look up a quick fact and still be reading two hours later' Fortune 'Part jazz history, part jazz Karma Sutra with Cook and Morton as the knowledgeable, urbane, wise and witty guides ... This is one of the great books of recorded jazz; the other guides don't come close' Irish Times
Following the same format as the acclaimed first volume, this selection of the best 250 modern jazz records and CDs places each in its musical context and reviews it in depth. Additionally, full details of personnel, recording dates, and locations are given. Indexes of album titles, track titles, and musicians are included.
First published in 1984 and reissued to coincide withthe publication of the second volume, this selection of the 250 best jazz records traces the earliest roots of the music to the beginnings of the modern jazz era. Volume One's focus is on LP collections of 78 rpm originals and nearly every significant musician--both familiar and obscure--of early 20th-century jazz is listed. For each record listed, full details of personnel, recording dates and locations are provided.
A photographic look into the world of vinyl record collectors—including Questlove—in the most intimate of environments—their record rooms. Compelling photographic essays from photographer Eilon Paz are paired with in-depth and insightful interviews to illustrate what motivates these collectors to keep digging for more records. The reader gets an up close and personal look at a variety of well-known vinyl champions, including Gilles Peterson and King Britt, as well as a glimpse into the collections of known and unknown DJs, producers, record dealers, and everyday enthusiasts. Driven by his love for vinyl records, Paz takes us on a five-year journey unearthing the very soul of the vinyl community.
Here are sixty-odd years of recorded jazz brillaintly reviewed in one essential source. Covering more than 4,000 currently available jazz albums, this long-needed work will remain the standard reference in the field for years to come.
"A jazz-lover's delight."—Ray Olson, Booklist Noted jazz author Ashley Kahn brings to life the behind-the-scenes story of Impulse Records, one of the most significant record labels in the history of popular music. “Kahn mingles engaging stories of corporate politics with insider accounts of music-making and anecdotal takes on particular albums. His history of Impulse is also the story of the genesis of an American art form and the evolution of the record industry through the tumultuous 1960s—and will compel readers to seek out this label’s masterful albums,” says Publishers Weekly in a starred review. Kirkus Reviews calls the book “a swinging read,” adding that “Kahn covers all the aesthetic, business, social, and historical bases with crisp economy.” Don’t miss the exciting inside scoop behind some of the most enduring masterpieces of jazz!
The author of the magisterial A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers now approaches the great singers and their greatest work in an innovative and revelatory way: through considering their finest albums, which is the format in which this music was most resonantly organized and presented to its public from the 1940s until the very recent decline of the CD. It is through their albums that Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, and the rest of the glorious honor roll of jazz and pop singers have been most tellingly and lastingly appreciated, and the history of the album itself, as Will Friedwald sketches it, can now be seen as a crucial part of musical history. We come to understand that, at their finest, albums have not been mere collections of individual songs strung together arbitrarily but organic phenomena in their own right. A Sinatra album, a Fitzgerald album, was planned and structured to show these artists at their best, at a specific moment in their artistic careers. Yet the albums Friedwald has chosen to anatomize go about their work in a variety of ways. There are studio and solo albums: Lee’s Black Coffee, June Christy’s Something Cool, Cassandra Wilson’s Belly of the Sun. There are brilliant collaborations: famous ones—Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson—and wonderful surprises like Doris Day and Robert Goulet singing Annie Get Your Gun. There are theme albums—Dinah Washington singing Fats Waller, Maxine Sullivan singing Andy Razaf, Margaret Whiting singing Jerome Kern, Barb Jungr singing Bob Dylan, and the sublime Jo Stafford singing American and Scottish folk songs. There are also stunning concert albums like Ella in Berlin, Sarah in Japan, Lena at the Waldorf, and, of course, Judy at Carnegie Hall. All the greats are on hand, from Kay Starr and Carmen McRae to Jimmy Scott and Della Reese (Della Della Cha Cha Cha). And, from out of left field, the astounding God Bless Tiny Tim. Each of the fifty-seven albums discussed here captures the artist at a high point, if not at the expected moment, of her or his career. The individual cuts are evaluated, the sequencing explicated, the songs and songwriters heralded; anecdotes abound of how songs were born and how artists and producers collaborated. And in appraising each album, Friedwald balances his own opinions with those of musicians, listeners, and critics. A monumental achievement, The Great Jazz and Pop Vocal Albums is an essential book for lovers of American jazz and popular music.
