Celebrating the Duke, and Louis, Bessie, Billie, Bird, Carmen, Miles, Dizzy, and other heroes

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Francis Davis

Jazz is more popular than it has been since the early sixties. Every major record label is bringing out jazz reissues and new releases, and dating couples are turning up in the jazz clubs alongside the usual middle-aged male fans. But this popularity comes at a cost: Jazz has become identified with its past, and especially with bebop, the style that first dominated the jazz scene in the forties and fifties. Bebop started out as a daring departure from the conventions of swing, but ironically, many listeners and musicians now experience this style as a comfortable orthodoxy that defines the limits of jazz. In his third collection of essays, Francis Davis shares his insights into this new jazz mainstream: the greatness of its sources, the sterility of performance that follows those sources too closely. He also conveys his listening experiences beyond the mainstream - from the futuristic jazz of the avant-garde to the pre-forties styles that some performers continue to develop, at the risk of being labeled old hat. Finally, Davis leaves behind the boundaries of jazz altogether, pursuing its adventurous spirit into a broader musical territory that includes musical theatre, rock, and rap.

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Carol Ann Muller & Sathima Bea Benjamin

The life story of the outstanding jazz vocalist Sathima Bea Benjamin sheds light on South African jazz history, women in jazz, and American music as a transnational art form.

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Leslie Gourse

Traces the evolution of the guitar in jazz history and profiles the world's greatest jazz guitarists from the early 1900s to the present.

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Toby Gleason

During his nearly forty years as a music journalist, Ralph J. Gleason recorded many in-depth interviews with some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. These informal sessions, conducted mostly in Gleason's Berkeley, California, home, have never been transcribed and published in full until now. This remarkable volume, a must-read for any jazz fan, serious musician, or musicologist, reveals fascinating, little-known details about these gifted artists, their lives, their personas, and, of course, their music. Bill Evans discusses his battle with severe depression, while John Coltrane talks about McCoy Tyner's integral role in shaping the sound of the Coltrane quartet, praising the pianist enthusiastically. Included also are interviews with Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins, Quincy Jones, Jon Hendricks, and the immortal Duke Ellington, plus seven more of the most notable names in twentieth-century jazz.