BiblioVault - Books about Jazz

Goin' to Kansas City

Nathan W. Pearson, Jr.

University of Illinois Press, 1987

Kansas City jazz thrived on the anything-goes vibe of a town on the make and the talents of a generation of visionary artists. From titans like Charlie Parker and Count Basie to classic bands like the Blue Devils and the Clouds of Joy, the Paris of the Plains was home to a potent style of jazz music that bridged big bands and bebop in the 1920s and 1930s. Nathan W. Pearson Jr. threads eyewitness stories from musicians of the era into a narrative history of Kansas City's distinct jazz--and the corruption, organized crime, and vice that helped its players pay the bills. Throughout, Pearson reveals how the great bands of the era drew on many styles to create a distinctive music that was among the finest expressions of swing and laid the groundwork for modern jazz. A portrait of a community of artists and a jazz history that's both intimate and expansive, Goin' to Kansas City tells the story of how music remade a city into a mecca for performers and fans alike.

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Going for Jazz

Musical Practices and American Ideology

Nicholas Gebhardt

University of Chicago Press, 2001

Jazz is one of the most influential American art forms of our times. It shapes our ideas about musical virtuosity, human action and new forms of social expression. In Going for Jazz, Nicholas Gebhardt shows how the study of jazz can offer profound insights into American historical consciousness. Focusing on the lives of three major saxophonists—Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, and Ornette Coleman—Gebhardt demonstrates how changing forms of state power and ideology framed and directed their work.

Weaving together a range of seemingly disparate topics, from Frederick Jackson Turner's frontier thesis to the invention of bebop, from Jean Baudrillard's Seduction to the Cold War atomic regime, Gebhardt addresses the meaning and value of jazz in the political economy of American society. In Going for Jazz, jazz musicians assume dynamic and dramatic social positions that demand a more conspicuous place for music in our understanding of the social world.

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The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz

Samuel F., Jr. Piazza

University of Iowa Press, 1995

Here is a brilliant and deeply informed overview of jazz history, one which gives a rich sense of who the major figures were and how they fit in with one another while showing the reader what to listen for and which recordings are indispensable for a full experience of the music. No other book fuses a singular examination of the key recordings with a presentation of the entire sweep of the music's classic period to provide the listener with such a useful and spirited companion.

Winner of the ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award, presented annually by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers to American authors and journalists whose books and articles on the subject of music are selected for their excellence.

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