The Rough Guide to Jazz Book

Written by musicians, Jazz: The Rough Guide contains more than 1,600 biographies, from Ahmed Abdul-Malik to Axel Zwingenberger. In addition to profiling a broad spectrum of jazz musicians (both famous and lesser-known composers and performers), it clarifies crucial jazz issues, gives historical perspective, and also serves as a buyer's guide, with discographies and pithy reviews of representative recordings. The Guide's alphabetical, encyclopaedic organisation makes it useful as a dependable jazz reference, and it's wonderfully browsable too, illustrated with fine classic black-and-white photographs (of performers such as Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers)and beautifully written. A good starter text for jazz neophytes, the CD suggestions are a great help toward custom-building your jazz library. There's also a fine glossary that explains a cappella and acid jazz, Afro-Latin, airshot, and atonality. It's a safe source of education if you're ignorant about ballads, bebop, or B-flat. It's useful for learning about major jazz styles (Chicago, Dixieland, and dirty, Kansas City, ragtime, and scat), plus musical concepts such as harmony, improvisation, and tempo. Concise, accessible, and addictive and readable, Jazz: The Rough Guide is a great introduction to the world of jazz. --Stephanie Gold. This text refers to an earlier edition of this title.Read More