Hardcover. NY, STEWART TABORI CHANG, 1ST, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 378 pages. Here is a musical history told in legends, facts, and rumors every bit as colorful as the images that illustrate the book. The story is filled with characters such as O.V. Wright, a singer deemed "too ugly to tour"; Frnakie Lymon, who received a hot dog as full payment for some of the greatest R&B songs of all time; LaVern Baker, a.k.a. "Little Miss Sharecropper"; Bille Holiday shooting dice with the boys on the bus; Solomon Burke, R&B immortal and Doctor of Mortuary Sciences; soul ghoul Screamin' Jay Hawkins locked in his coffin by the Drifters; and many otehr talented and unique entertainers. Illustrated with more than 400 original photographs, publicity shots, posters, programs, advertisements, program covers, magazine covers, album covers and sleeves, sheet music, and record labels in full color, this is a story of hot music and high style, of people who made history by being themselves and made the world a richer, wilder and definitely cooler place for the rest of us.

Hardcover. NY, Oxford University Press, 1st, 1977, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers, gilt lettering on spine. 263 pages, no dust jacket. Most of these essays appeared in The New Yorker over the course of 15 years. A tight, bright copy, clean.

Softcover. Tubingen GR, Advance Music, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 98 pages plus publisher's ads. This book/CD set addresses the development of improvisation in all its forms, individual and collective, textural and structural, and is designed to open up the mind to all the players in any jazz situation. 11 recordings on the CD. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics, 1st, 2015, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 200 pages. Throughout Les McCann's incredible jazz career, he took hundreds of photos at clubs, studios, and festivals around the world and documented the vibrant cultural life of jazz and soul between 1960 and 1980. These photos include a very young Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sammy Davis Jr., John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, Nancy Wilson, Richard Pryor, Quincy Jones, Tina Turner, Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, B.B. King, Errol Garner, Stanley Clarke, Bill Evans, Lionel Hampton, and many more. 200 pages with sampled works and photography index.

Softcover. San Francisco, Miller Freeman Books, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 263 pages, b&w illustrations. This story of a musician hailed as a genius and dismissed as a madman will appeal to anyone intrigued by the fine line between creative inspiration and insanity. the author looks deep inside the life and music of this talented but tormented bass player who revolutionized his instrument and became one of the most potent forces in modern music. "Like his heroes Charlie Parker and Jimi Hendrix, Jaco didn't make it to age 40. But by the time he died at 35, the music world was indebted to him. Jaco had reinvented the role of the electric bass. Includes is the CD, "Jaco Pastorius: The Birthday Concert" in a pocket in the back of the book and is in excellent condition.

Hardcover. Somerville MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Illustrated throughout in color by Paul Rogers. Light shelf-wear to boards, else a clean, tight copy. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. Somerville MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Illustrated throughout in color by Paul Rogers. Light shelf-wear to boards, else a clean, tight copy. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. Somerville MA, Candlewick Press, 1st, 2005, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Illustrated throughout in color by Paul Rogers. Light shelf-wear to boards, else a clean, tight copy. No dust jacket.

Hardcover. University Of Iowa Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 168 pages. Using jazz as the key metaphor, Porter refocuses old interpretations of Ellison by placing jazz in the foreground and by emphasizing, especially as revealed in his essays, the power of Ellison's thought and cultural perception. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Taschen, 2nd Ed., 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Two white folio volumes in a slipcase, 559 pages, b&w illustrations (chiefly color). Vol. 1: Interviews. Bob Ciano ; Fred Cohen ; Michael Cuscuna -- Record covers. A-K by artist -- v. 2: Interviews. Rudy Van Gelder ; Ashley Kahn ; Creed Taylor -- Record covers. L to Z by artist. Vinyl mania: Jazz LP covers from the 1940s to 1990s. This volume features a broad selection of jazz record covers, from the 1940s through the decline of LP production in the early 1990s. Each cover is accompanied by a fact sheet listing performer and album name, art director, photographer, illustrator, year, label, and more.

Hardcover. NY, Da Capo Press, reprint, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, red cloth with silver gilt lettering. First published in 1962 Jazz Panorama presents roughly forty short articles from the pages of The Jazz Review from the late 1950s and early 1960s, selected by respected jazz historian Martin Williams, the magazine's co-founder (with Nat Hentoff).This is the type of book that one can dip into from time to time and always find something both enjoyable and educational. Written in clear, understandable prose, the book collects short essays, record reviews (usually of multiple LPs), and two interviews. A wide range of jazz styles and movements is covered here, everything from Dixieland to "third stream" and the avant-garde of Ornette Coleman.The jazz musicians included for discussion range from King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton to Bix Biederbecke. Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, and Miles Davis. 318 pages, clean copy. No dust jacket.

Softcover. San Francisco, CA, Chronicle Books, reprint, 1996, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 124 pages, softcover with French flaps. Bright b&w photos of Jazz legends. Light rubbing to wraps. Unmarked. Bright and clean; a tight copy.

Hardcover. Koln GR, Taschen, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Huge hardcover volume in a slipcase, 551 pages, In 1959 and 1960, photographer William Claxton and noted German musicologist Joachim Berendt traveled the United States hot on the trail of Jazz music. The result of their collaboration was an amazing collection of photographs and recordings of legendary artists as well as unknown street musicians. The book "Jazzlife", the original fruit of their labors, has become a collector's item that is highly treasured among Jazz and photography fans. They will be delighted to be able to take a Jazz-trip through time, both seeing and hearing the music as Claxton and Berendt originally experienced it.It features photographs of Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Muddy Waters, Gabor Szabo, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Miles Davis, Charlie Mingus, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and many more. It also includes a bonus CD of digitally remastered period recordings. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Softcover. NY, Pathfinder Press , Revised Ed., 1998, Softcover in pictorial wrappers, 500 pages, b&w photos. Coltrane's role in spearheading the last major innovative development in jazz, and how the 1960s jazz revolution reflected an intense cultural, political, and ideological ferment -- marked especially by the rise of resistance to racial discrimination. Also contains the best-known interview with John Coltrane -- recorded in 1966, a year before his death. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 2nd pr., 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 265 pages, b&w illustrations. The first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in America. Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four. Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker's Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Clean copy.

Softcover. Kansas City, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1st pbk, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 120 pages, profusely illustrated. The Kansas City Jazz Museum traces the evolution of jazz music in America, from the early 1920s to the present day, focusing on the contributions of such Kansas City-based musicians as Count Basie, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, and other jazz greats. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Gottingen GR, Steidl, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Biography mostly comprised of color and B&W photos of the famed blues musician, and ephemera related to him. Introduction by Tom Waits, foreword by Glenn O'Brien, and poems by Tyehimba Gess. 256 pages.

Softcover. Evanston IL, Northwestern University Press, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 390 pages. INSCRIBED BY AUTHOR on title page. A swing note is, to the listener of the rhythm, an unexpected note, and it is the spark of life in jazz and its relatives. Whether playing the standards or the most experimental piece, it is how a musician handles these notes--fearlessly or safely--that determines the fate of the performance. Howard Reich's critical writing is similarly unexpected and fearless, and Let Freedom Swing is a collection of the articles from the past three decades that best capture this spirit. Each section of Let Freedom Swing composes a suite, focusing on either a person, place, or scene. Reich gives new life to the standards with his profiles and elegies for such giants as Gershwin, Ellington, and Sinatra. A profile of Louis Armstrong brings out the often angry side of Satchmo but also reveals a more remarkable musician and human being. His open-mindedness makes Reich a particularly astute observer of the experimental and new, from Ornette Coleman to Chicago experimentalist Ken Vandermark. And his observations about street music open our ears to the songs of everyday life. Reich's fearlessness is evident in his writing about daunting subjects, such as the New Orleans music scene after Katrina, the lost legacy of jazz in Panama, and the complicated legacy of "race music" in America. Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Broadway Books, 1st, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 564 pages, b&w illustrations. A definitive biography of this giant among jazz musicians - based on previously unexplored archives of Armstrong's writings. Photographs, discography, bibliography, endnotes, index. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Boston, Little Brown , 1st US, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 1st published in the UK 1971.

Softcover. Berkeley CA, University of California Press, 1st pbk, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 398 pages. Alex Stewart's excellent book tackles a subject which has been hidden in plain sight: the central importance of the big band, not as dead artifact of the Swing Era, but as a seminal and nurturing force through the entire history of jazz down to our own time. Through an attractive blend of ethnographic participant-observation, historiography, and formal analysis, Stewart puts the big band at the center of jazz, arguing for its indispensability as a locus of instrumental training and rehearsal, composition, legitimation, and professional networking. Informed and enriched by his own experience as a performer in those worlds. Light crease to front cover, clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Viking Studio, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 175 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in publishers shrink-wrap, though part of shrink-wrap is slightly torn. A collection of photographs taken in Memphis brings to life the legends of blues, jazz, rock and roll, and soul, including W.C. Handy, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Al Green, Isaac Hayes, and others.

Hardcover. NY, Henry Holt, 1st, 1993, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn, price-clipped dust jacket. 192 pages including index. Traces the life and career of the influential jazz musician from the 1920s to his death in 1991. Profusely illustrated with b&w, some color photos.

Softcover. Lanham MD, Scarecrow Press, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 331 pages, b&w illustrations. Like most ground-breaking art forms, contemporary creative music is rarely understood or accepted in its own time, and for those reasons, can largely go unheard. Music and the Creative Spirit: Innovators in Jazz, Improvisation, and the Avant Garde aims to give today's brightest music innovators due recognition and respect, celebrating their work and creativity. Through personal interviews, artists such as Pat Metheny, Regina Carter, Joshua Redman, Fred Anderson, Dave Holland, Bill Frisell, David Murray, and John Zorn-to name just a few-offer clear, frank discussions about music, creativity, work, society, culture, current events, and more. Clean, bright copy.