"Richard Cook (with Brian Morton) of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, takes the reader on a tour of the musical terrain, past and present. Richard Cook's Jazz Encyclopedia is at once a rivetingly opinionated A to Z of every major figure from Louis Armstrong to John Zorn; a clear guide to the various techniques and styles, ranging from boogie woogie to scat singing; and a witty dictionary of terms, whether explaining the meaning of ghost bands, harmolodies or vocalese."--BOOK JACKET.

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide information on significant events in the history of jazz, jazz artists and bands, and styles.

Publisher description

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

Includes entries on jazz artists, record labels, and musical concepts in addition to providing a 20-page chronology of jazz and extensive bibliographies for different jazz styles and jazz artists.

Today, jazz is considered high art, America’s national music, and the catalog of its recordings—its discography—is often taken for granted. But behind jazz discography is a fraught and highly colorful history of research, fanaticism, and the intense desire to know who played what, where, and when. This history gets its first full-length treatment in Bruce D. Epperson’s More Important Than the Music. Following the dedicated few who sought to keep jazz’s legacy organized, Epperson tells a fascinating story of archival pursuit in the face of negligence and deception, a tale that saw curses and threats regularly employed, with fisticuffs and lawsuits only slightly rarer. Epperson examines the documentation of recorded jazz from its casual origins as a novelty in the 1920s and ’30s, through the overwhelming deluge of 12-inch vinyl records in the middle of the twentieth century, to the use of computers by today’s discographers. Though he focuses much of his attention on comprehensive discographies, he also examines the development of a variety of related listings, such as buyer’s guides and library catalogs, and he closes with a look toward discography’s future. From the little black book to the full-featured online database, More Important Than the Music offers a history not just of jazz discography but of the profoundly human desire to preserve history itself.

Jazz is thriving in the twenty-first century, and The New Face of Jazz is an intimate, illustrated guide to the artists, venues, and festivals of today's jazz scene. This book celebrates the living legends, current stars, and faces of tomorrow as they continue to innovate and expand the boundaries of this great musical legacy. In their own words, artists such as McCoy Tyner, Arturo Sandoval, Diane Schuur, Terence Blanchard, Charlie Hunter, Nicholas Payton, George Benson, Maria Schneider, Christian McBride, Randy Brecker, Jean-Luc Ponty, Joe Lovano, Lee Ritenour, and more than 100 others share intimately about their beginnings, musical training, inspiration, and hard-earned lessons, creating a fascinating mosaic of the current jazz community. Photographer Ned Radinsky contributes 40 amazing black-and-white portraits of these musicians doing what they do best—playing. An appendix offers resources for jazz education; an exclusive reading list; and the lowdown on those organizations and societies doing their part to promote jazz as a living, breathing art form. With an introductory word from Wynton Marsalis, a foreword by Marcus Miller, and an afterword by Sonny Rollins, The New Face of Jazz is an unprecedented window onto today's world of jazz, for everyone from the devotee to the new listener.