The Rough Guide to Jazz - Softcover

Priestly, Brian; Fairweather, Digby; Carr, Ian; Rough Guides

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1858285283 ISBN 13: 9781858285283

Publisher: Rough Guides, 2000

Synopsis

This reference book covers the whole range of jazz from Buddy Bolden, pioneer of jazz trumpet, to young players of the 1990s, like Roy Hargrove. Completely revised, it features more than 250 new artist biographies and reviews of their key recordings.

About this title

Review

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.

Review

If you want to talk knowledgeably, this is the book for you. -- Jazz FM, London, UK

Pithy insights make the rough guide to jazz a good read. -- Jazz FM, London, UK

Reflects both the changing nature of jazz and the personal engagement of the contributors, enhancing the book's undoubted vigour and authority. -- BBC Music Magazine, London, UK

The book most of us will turn to first...the long-established market-leading single volume...handsomely updated...No other book combines well-researched background, clear prose and musicianly update in quite such a readable and reliable way...the best collection of snapshot career summaries currently available. -- Jazzwise, June 2000

Written by musicians rather than musicologists - and it shows! -- Jazz FM, London, UK

Edition details

• Publisher: Rough Guides
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1858285283
• ISBN 13: 9781858285283
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 912