Results by title

Texas musicians and jazz share a history that goes all the way back to the origins of jazz in ragtime, blues, and boogie-woogie. Texans have left their mark on all of jazz's major movements, including hot jazz, swing, bebop, the birth of the cool, hard bop, and free jazz. Yet these musicians are seldom identified as Texans because their careers often took them to the leading jazz centers in New Orleans, Chicago, New York, Kansas City, and Los Angeles.

In Texan Jazz, Dave Oliphant reclaims these musicians for Texas and explores the vibrant musical culture that brought them forth. Working through the major movements of jazz, he describes the lives, careers, and recordings of such musicians as Scott Joplin, Hersal Thomas, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Sippie Wallace, Jack Teagarden, Buster Smith, Hot Lips Page, Eddie Durham, Herschel Evans, Charlie Christian, Red Garland, Kenny Dorham, Jimmy Giuffre, Ornette Coleman, John Carter, and many others.

The great strength of Texan Jazz is its record of the contributions to jazz made by African-American Texans. The first major book on this topic ever published, it will be fascinating reading for everyone who loves jazz.

The story of jazz is more than a history of the music. The racial and cultural dynamics of American cities created the music, life, and business that was jazz. 

Burton W. Peretti's classic study charts the life of jazz culture from its origins in the jook joints of sharecroppers and the streets and dance halls of 1890s New Orleans to the eve of bebop and World War II. As Perett shows, jazz was the epic story of players who transitioned from childhood spasm bands to Carnegie Hall and worldwide touring and fame. It became the music of the Twenties, a decade of Prohibition, of adolescent discontent, of Harlem pride, and of Americans hoping to preserve cultural traditions in an urban, commercial age. Finally, jazz was where black and white musicians performed together, as uneasy partners, in the big bands of Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman. 

Drawing on archives and the firsthand testimony of more than seventy musicians and singers (among them Benny Carter, Bud Freeman, Kid Ory, and Mary Lou Williams), The Creation of Jazz offers a comprehensive analysis of the role of early jazz in American social history.

They may wear cowboy hats and boots and sing about "faded love," but western swing musicians have always played jazz! From Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys to Asleep at the Wheel, western swing performers have played swing jazz on traditional country instruments, with all of the required elements of jazz, and some of the best solo improvisation ever heard.

In this book, Jean A. Boyd explores the origins and development of western swing as a vibrant current in the mainstream of jazz. She focuses in particular on the performers who made the music, drawing on personal interviews with some fifty living western swing musicians. From pioneers such as Cliff Bruner and Eldon Shamblin to current performers such as Johnny Gimble, the musicians make important connections between the big band swing jazz they heard on the radio and the western swing they created and played across the Southwest from Texas to California.

From this first-hand testimony, Boyd re-creates the world of western swing-the dance halls, recording studios, and live radio shows that broadcast the music to an enthusiastic listening audience. Although the performers typically came from the same rural roots that nurtured country music, their words make it clear that they considered themselves neither "hillbillies" nor "country pickers," but jazz musicians whose performance approach and repertory were no different from those of mainstream jazz. This important aspect of the western swing story has never been told before.

The first book to trace the vast influence of Chicago jazz from its origins to today—from Louis Armstrong and Jelly Roll Morton to Anita O’Day, Herbie Hancock, and the AACM.

Author and Chicago native Howard Reich gives readers a front-row seat to the history of Chicago jazz as it roared forth in jazz clubs, concert halls, and festivals. Reich covered Chicago jazz for more than thirty years as the Chicago Tribune’s staff critic, and in this collection, he argues that jazz as an art form is inconceivable without Chicago. Carefully choosing from among his thousands of articles on jazz, Reich highlights twenty-five of the most important Chicago jazz artists who pushed the art form forward.

The Majesty of Chicago Jazz begins with two New Orleans visionaries who achieved their artistic pinnacles in Chicago in the Roaring Twenties: Jelly Roll Morton and Louis Armstrong. In the decades that followed, Chicago produced an uninterrupted line of innovators: revolutionaries Ahmad Jamal and Sun Ra, iconoclasts Von Freeman and Fred Anderson, populists Herbie Hancock and Ramsey Lewis, chameleons Patricia Barber and Kurt Elling, and the breakthrough band of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), among others. Reich offers two pieces on each of the book’s twenty-five visionaries, including profiles, reviews, appreciations, and obituaries. The book concludes with a beginner-friendly discography, perfect for those looking to listen along.

The Majesty of Chicago Jazz is captivating for jazz newcomers and aficionados alike—all are guaranteed to learn something surprising here. With a musician’s ear and a journalist’s expertise, Reich offers listeners a valuable guide to the groundbreaking jazz that has come out of Chicago, a city that remains a fertile breeding ground for musical experimentation. 

The Real Philadelphia Book, compiled by Jazz Bridge and editors David Dzubinski and Suzanne Cloud, is a collection of more than 200 original jazz and blues compositions. Arranged alphabetically by song title, the sheet music showcases work by generations of Philadelphia musicians. This volume, which is “what every aspiring jazz musician needs to know,” features tunes from Grammy Award-winners Jimmy Heath, Grover Washington, Jr., and Christian McBride, as well as legends such as Joey DeFrancesco, Ray Bryant, and Robin and Duane Eubanks. Also included are rare compositions by jazz greats Bobby Timmons, Hank Mobley, and Lee Morgan, in addition to music by local luminaries, Rhenda Fearrington, Monnette Sudler, and Kaylé Brecher.

The aim of The Real Philadelphia Book is to help the jazz community make deeper, stronger connections while also formally documenting much of the important music created in the Philadelphia metro area by both well- and lesser-known musicians.

Including an index of composers, The Real Philadelphia Bookwill enhance and add to the rich Philadelphia jazz and blues tradition and make the Philly jazz catalogue more easily available to musicians, jazz students and educators around the world.