Book Reviews
American Drummers 1959-88
An evocative photo collection from Val Wilmer includes Billy Higgins, Kenny Clarke and Ed Blackwell, as well as an off-duty Jimi Hendrix
Pat Metheny – Stories Beyond Words
Bob Gluck is an academic but also a musician whose performance of Metheny charts helped inform this survey of the guitarist's work
The Notebooks Of Sonny Rollins
The famously self-examining saxophonist wrote telegraphic notes on his musical and spiritual progress and how much he fancied Gene Tierney
“God Is In The House”- Art Tatum
Mark Lehmstedt loves the work of the virtuoso pianist and produces a wealth of information and argument but also too many exclamation marks
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In With The In Crowd: Popular Jazz In 1960s Black America
Mike Smith says soul-jazz - popular, enjoyable and typified by such as Ramsey Lewis and Eddie Harris - is as valid as the serious variety
Spirit Of The Century
The fraught, sometimes contradictory journey of the famous gospel group is laid out with evocative testimony and photos
Talking The Groove – Jazz Words From The Morning Star
The Morning Star’s jazz scribe finds the positive in the music, noting that Marx would have passed the Pizza Express as he hatched Das Kapital
A Trumpet Around The Corner – The Story of New Orleans Jazz
Samuel Charters traces how jazz arose from the Afro-European melting pot that was nineteenth century New Orleans
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The Jazzmen
Author of books on Bobby Kennedy and Joseph McCarthy turns his hand to jazz and finds a few novelties among the familiar history
At The Vanguard Of Vinyl
The language may challenge comprehension, but the book has good detail on Ellington, Gillespie, Adderley and Mingus
The Blues Brothers
Detailed book traces the story of a film that was reviled by many critics but struck a note with the populus and grossed millions of dollars
Knowing Jazz / Learning Jazz
Two books by American academic discuss the jazz community, jazz education, jazz criticism and the interest in jazz history
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