Jazz category: 919 books

This book gives you all the basic principles underlying solid walking bass lines. Comprehensive, easy to understand, with page after page of great transcriptions of the author's walking lines on the accompanying CD. The CD of NY professional jazz players can also be used as a swinging play-along CD....

Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) was one of the most accomplished composers in American music, the creator of such standards as "Take the 'A' Train", yet all his life he was overshadowed by his friend and collaborator, Duke Ellington. Through scrutiny of Strayhorn's private papers and more than...

For a half century, Ben Webster, one of the "big three" of swing tenors-along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young-was one of the best-known and most popular saxophonists. Early in his career, Webster worked with many of the greatest orchestras of the time, including those led by...

In the 1930s, swing music reigned, and the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra was the hottest and hippest attraction on the black dance circuits. Known for its impeccable appearance and infectious rhythms, Lunceford's group was able to out-swing and outdraw any band. For ten consecutive years, they were the...

He was always elusive, on and off the stand; like his music, he was constantly moving, incessantly changing. Just as Charlie Parker stood astride the jazz world of the late 40s and 50s, so did John Coltrane in the late 50s and 60s. Trane was a giant of the saxophone and a major composer. ...

(Fake Book). The Real Books are the best-selling jazz books of all time. Since the 1970s, musicians have trusted these volumes to get them through every gig, night after night. The problem is that the books were illegally produced and distributed without any copyrights or royalties paid to the master...

For jazz historians, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings mark the first revolution in the history of a music riven by upheaval. Yet few traces of this revolution can be found in the historical record of the late 1920s, when the discs were made. Even black newspapers covered Armstrong...

Edited by prominent musician and scholar Leonard Brown, John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music is a timely exploration of Coltrane's sound and its spiritual qualities that are rooted in Black American music-culture and aspirations for freedom. A wide-ranging...

(Fake Book). Since the 1970s, The Real Book has been the most popular book for gigging jazz musicians. Hal Leonard is proud to publish completely legal and legitimate editions of the original volumes as well as exciting new volumes to carry on the tradition to new generations of players in all styles...

The basis of a full-length documentary. "Moondog is one of America’s great originals."-Alan Rich, New York Magazine Here is a revised edition of a book that celebrates one of the most improbable lives of the twentieth century: a blind and homeless man who became the most...

Theforgotten history of the “all-girl” big bands of the World War II era takes center stage in Sherrie Tucker’s Swing Shift. American demand for swing skyrocketed with the onslaught of war as millions—isolated from loved ones—sought diversion, comfort, and social contact through music and...

The book reviews the blues structures and how these have evolved from the beginning of the last century to present day. The book first analyzes the standard progression. This progression, as defined in its primordial form of the Country Blues, crystallized in the Classic Blues period and was used...

Microgroove continues John Corbett's exploration of diverse musics, with essays, interviews, and musician profiles that focus on jazz, improvised music, contemporary classical, rock, folk, blues, post-punk, and cartoon music. Corbett's approach to writing is as polymorphous as the music, ranging from...

Listen to This stands out as the first book exclusively dedicated to Davis's watershed 1969 album, Bitches Brew. Victor Svorinich traces its incarnations and inspirations for ten-plus years before its release. The album arrived as the jazz scene waned beneath the rise of rock and roll and as Davis...