This 1991 update of Berendt’s venerable jazz survey (first published 1953) is the first that the author has delegated to other hands, namely those of his protégé Gunther Huesmann (b. 1957). The unfailingly selfless and fair-minded Berendt was guided in this by the principle that you can’t write what you haven’t lived: he hadn’t lived the jazz of the eighties, so the job passed to one better equipped.
The format remains the same, with jazz apologetically divided into styles, musicians, elements, instruments and so on, but additions have been made in various departments to reflect the events of the last decade or so. For example. The Styles Of Jazz chapter now includes useful definitions and discussions of such much-bandied terms as postmodernism, classicism, neoclassicism, neobop, free funk, world music and no wave. Careful excision of material now considered inessential has yielded some space, but most of it seems to have come in new pages. This US edition also has an American discography by Kevin Whitehead, though there is no indication whether special provision has been made for any British issue.
In earlier editions of this book, and in the preface to this one, Berendt laid messianic emphasis on the critic’s duty to be descriptive rather than partisan, and Huesmann, following in this particular jazz tradition, is similarly even-handed and considered. On occasions the writing or translation in the new sections is a little untidy, but it’s rarely less lucid than the founder’s own work.
The Jazz Book, by Joachim E. Berendt. Sixth edition, revised by Gunther Huesmann. Lawrence Hill Books, New York, pb, 541pp, $16.95. ISBN 1 55652 098 0
