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JAZZ by Nat Hentoff

JAZZ

New Perspectives On The History Of Jazz By Twelve Of The World's Foremost Jazz Critics And Scholars (da Capo Paperback)

by Nat Hentoff & Albert J. McCarthy

Pub Date: Dec. 3rd, 1959
ISBN: 0306800020
Publisher: Rinehart

An ensemble of jazz musiocologists have written these pieces especially for this book, intended to "place jazz, its history and its language in fuller perspective". Jazz, from its source in West African music to its transposition here, its variations (it is a "collective creation"), its form and its content, to some of its performers and some aspects of its performance today is discussed with considerable musicianship throughout. There are interesting, differentiating pieces on jazz styles- ragtime and the blues, boogie-woogie and bebop; tributes to Jelly Roll Morton and Charlie Parker and Ellington; evaluations of some of the current writing on jazz, as well as its new "respectability" as an art form; etc., etc. For the collector-connoisseurs who are probably familiar with other books under the aegis of these editors and to whom the biblio and discography will be important.