Reading Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now » (1 VINTAGE)

"Comprehensive and intelligently organized. . . .  Jazz aficionados . . . should be grateful to have so much good writing on the subject in one place."—The New York Times Book Review

"Alluring. . . . Capture[s] much of the breadth of the music, as well as the passionate debates it has stirred, more vividly than any other jazz anthology to date."—Chicago Tribune

No musical idiom has inspired more fine writing than jazz, and nowhere has that writing been presented with greater comprehensiveness and taste than in this glorious collection. In Reading Jazz, editor Robert Gottlieb combs through eighty years of autobiography, reportage, and criticism by the music's greatest players, commentators, and fans to create what is at once a monumental tapestry of jazz history and testimony to the elegance, vigor, and variety of jazz writing.  
        Here are Jelly Roll Morton, recalling the whorehouse piano players of New Orleans in 1902; Whitney Balliett, profiling clarinetist Pee Wee Russell; poet Philip Larkin, with an eloquently dyspeptic jeremiad against bop. Here, too, are the voices of Billie Holiday and Charles Mingus, Albert Murray and Leonard Bernstein, Stanley Crouch and LeRoi Jones, reminiscing, analyzing, celebrating, and settling scores. For anyone who loves the music—or the music of great prose—Reading Jazz is indispensable.  

"The ideal gift for jazzniks and boppers everywhere. . . . It gathers the best and most varied jazz writing of more than a century."—Sunday Times (London)

Publishers Weekly

The former Knopf and New Yorker chief was a late but vastly enthusiastic convert to the joys of jazz, as he explains in his introduction, and this vast compendium is certainly a labor of great love. It is also, at this size, unwieldy and, it would seem, priced rather high for the market it deserves. There are more than 100 pieces here, most of them culled from out-of-print books, as well as magazines both prominent and obscure. The effort to pull together so large a collection of such pieces, on a subject that in general has defied analysis, has clearly been prodigious, and jazz buffs owe a great deal to Gottlieb for rescuing so much of this material from obscurity. There are plenty of dashing portraits, autobiographical and otherwise, of jazz greats ranging from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker (rightly seen as the twin pillars in jazz history to date), such curios as an early essay by the Swiss classical conductor Ernst Ansermet on the impact of jazz in Europe right after WWI and many fine accounts of memorable nights on the bandstands of the '30s and '40s. The reportage section reminds us again of how sterling a stylist the New Yorker's Whitney Balliett is, and there is a definitive piece on the essential differences between classical and jazz criticism by Winthrop Sargeant. Almost everything is worth its weight, including the reminders of the great debate that used to rage over the merits of bop versus classical New Orleans style, exemplified here in pieces by the French critic Hugues Pannassie and English poet Philip Larkin (himself a noted buff). It's a feast that also enshrines a great deal of American social history; but perhaps a Best of Reading Jazz selection, at a third of the size and about half the price, would be more realistic. (Nov.)

PART 1: AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Jelly Roll Morton Sidney Bechet Louis Armstrong Willie "The Lion" Smith Duke Ellington Sonny Greer Leora Henderson Art Hodes Buck Clayton Hoagy Carmichael Eddie Condon Mary Lou Williams Cab Calloway Lionel Hampton John Hammond Count Basie Billie Holiday Mezz Mezzrow Artie Shaw Charlie Barnet Max Gordon Anita O'Day Milt Hinton Art Blakey Milt Gabler Miles Davis Willie Ruff Art Pepper Charles Mingus Hamton Hawes Paul Desmond Cecil Taylor Anthony Braxton

PART 2: REPORTAGE
King Oliver: A Very Personal Memoir by Edmond Souchon, M.D.
A Music of the Streets by Fredrick Turner The Blues of Jimmy by Vincent McHugh Jack Teagarden by Charles Edward Smith Even His Feet Look Sad by Whitney Balliett The Cutting Sessions by Rex Stewart Thomas “Fats” Waller by John S. Wilson Sunshine Always Opens Out by Whitney Balliett The Poet: Bill Evans by Gene Lees Black Like Him by Francis Davis The House in the Heart by Bobby Scott The Big Bands by George T. Simon Homage to Bunny by George Frazier The Spirit of Jazz by Otis Ferguson The Mirror of Swing by Gary Giddins Jimmie Lunceford by Ralph J. Gleason Two Rounds of the Battling Dorseys by Tommy Dorsey and Jimmy Dorsey Jazz Orchestra in Residence, 1971 by Carol Easton Flying Home by Rudi Blesh The Fabulous Gypsy by Gilbert S. McKean Minton’s by Ralph Ellison Minton’s Playhouse by Dizzy Gillespie At the Hi-De-Ho by Hampton Hawes Bird by Miles Davis Waiting for Dizzy by Gene Lees An Evening with Monk by Dan Morgenstern Theloious and Me by Orrin Keepnews John Coltrane by Nat Hentoff Bessie Smith: Poet by Murray Kempton Mahalia Jackson by George T. Simon Lady Day Has Her Say by Billie Holiday The Untold Story of the International Sweethearts fo Rhythm by Marian McPartland A Starr is Reborn by Gary Giddins Moonbeam Moscowitz: Sylvia Syms by Whitney Balliet The Lindy by Marshall and Jean Stearns A Night at the Five Spot by Martin Williams You Dig It, Sir by Lillian Ross Johnny Green by Fred Hall Jazz in America by Jean-Paul Sartre Don’t Shoot—We’re Americans! by Steve Voce Goffin, Esquire, and the Moldy Figs by Leonard Feather

PART 3: CRITICISM
Bechet and Jazz Visit Europe, 1919 by Ernst-Alexandre Ansermet Harpsichords and Jazz Trumpets by Roger Pryor Dodge Conclusions by Winthrop Sargeant Has Jazz Influenced the Symphony? by Gene Krupa and Leonard Bernstein No Jazz is an Island by William Grossman The Unreal Jazz by Hugues Panassié
All What Jazz? by Philip Larkin The Musical Achievement by Eric Hobsbawm King Oliver by Larry Gushee Bix Beiderbecke by Benny Green James P. Johnson by Max Harrison Coleman Hawkins by Dan Morgenstern Not for the Left Hand Alone by Martin Williams Time and the Tenor by Graham Colombé
Bop by LeRoi Jones On Bird, Bird-Watching, and Jazz by Ralph Ellison Why Did Ellington “Remake” His Masterpiece? by André Hodeir On the Corner: The Sellout of Miles Davis by Stanley Crouch Space Is the Place by Gene Santoro Easy to Love by Dudley Moore Bessie Smith by Humphrey Lyttelton Billie Holiday by Benny Green Cult of the White Goddess by Will Friedwald Ella Fitzgerald by Henry Pleasants The Divine Sarah by Gunther Schuller The Blues as Dance Music by Albert Murray Local Jazz by James Lincoln Collier Fifty Years of “Body and Soul” by Gary Giddins Everycat and Birdland Mon Amor by Francis Davis Bird Land by Stanley Crouch Louis Armstrong: an American Genius by Dan Morgenstern A Bad Idea, Poorly Executed...by Orrin Keepnews