Softcover. Camden NJ, RCA Records, 1st, circa 1939, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 44 pages staple bound wraps. 9 1/4 tall x 6 3/4 ". Edited by John Reid. Illustrated with B&W photos. Lists by musicians and bands with descriptions and reviews of specific records. Lists of personel and recording dates. A bit of wear and soiling to cover. Panassie was an important writer about Jazz of the 1930's and he gives interesting reviews of the music of the great of the period who mostly recorded with RCA.
Hardcover. NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. INSCRIBED BY RUFF on the front fly leaf. Ruff traces his odyssey from the hills of north Alabama to the halls of Yale University with stops along the way with some the jazz greats. B&w illustrations. Clean copy.
Hardcover. London, Soul Jazz Books, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 192 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to laminated boards. Black and white pictures throughout. At the start of the 1960s, jazz entered a unique period of revolution as African-American musicians redefined the art form in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, Afro-centric rhythm and thought and an ideology of black economic empowerment. John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler and others developed a new cosmology of sound that was as revolutionary as the social and political changes that took place in America throughout the decade. From the musical explorations of John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman to the collective and community concerns of Chciago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and the black science fiction of Sun Ra, the new jazz musicians created a musical and cultural landscape from which jazz never looked back. This large-format deluxe hardback book features hundreds of stunning photographs of the new jazz musicians in the USA throughout the 1960s, presented with an introductory essay and biographies on the many artists included in the book.
Hardcover. Chicago, University Of Chicago Press, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 320 pages. Light marking to several pages in margins, otherwise clean. In Blue Chicago, David Grazian takes us inside the world of contemporary urban blues clubs to uncover how such images are manufactured and sold to music fans and audiences. Drawing on countless nights in dozens of blues clubs throughout Chicago, Grazian shows how this quest for authenticity has transformed the very shape of the blues experience. He explores the ways in which professional and amateur musicians, club owners, and city boosters define authenticity and dish it out to tourists and bar regulars. He also tracks the changing relations between race and the blues over the past several decades, including the increased frustrations of black musicians forced to slog through the same set of overplayed blues standards for mainly white audiences night after night. In the end, Grazian finds that authenticity lies in the eye of the beholder: a nocturnal fantasy to some, an essential way of life to others, and a frustrating burden to the rest.
Softcover. San Francisco, Backbeat Books, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 271 pages, b&w illustrations. Chasin' That Devil Music has the feel of a documentary about the making of a thrilling motion picture. The main focus is on the Delta blues singers of the early 20th century--artists such as Charley Patton, Tommy Johnson, Son House, and Blind Lemon Jefferson who've achieved near-mythic status in blues circles. In addition, many of the articles gathered in this splendidly illustrated volume capture the process and people involved in tracking long-lost recordings nearly as elusive as the performers who made them. Here, for example, is the story of author/blues scholar Gayle Dean Wardlow's three-year hunt for the death certificate of Robert Johnson, the celebrated Mississippi bluesman and a figure whose legend has grown greater with each year since his much-debated death in 1938. The text here is nearly as raw in spots as the music that sparked it, but, as with those sounds (which can be heard on a terrific CD sampler included with the book), enthusiasts will find Chasin' That Devil Music riveting. Clean, bright copy.
Hardcover. NY, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 250 pages. B&W photos in text. Fine. What was the essence of John Coltrane's achievement that makes him so revered 40 years after his death? What was it about his place within his era of jazz, that left so many musicians and listeners so powerfully drawn to him? What would a John Coltrane look like now - or are we searching for the wrong signs? The acclaimed jazz writer Ben Ratliff addresses these questions in this book. Clean copy.
Hardcover. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 276 pages, in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Condon has brought a half century of jazz into focus with his published scrapbook of photographs and recollections. This particular volume contains 16 original autographs obtained by a patron of his jazz clubs. Includes the signatures of all four house band leaders: drummer Buzzy Drootin (1947-1951), pianist Ralph Sutton (1948-1956), pianist Johnny Varro and cornetist Ed Polcer (1957). Also Johnny Blowers, Dick Cary, Peanuts Hucko, Cliff Leeman, Jack Lesberg, Rosy McHargue, Joe Muranyi, Red Norvo, Jess Stacy, Dick Wellstood, Spiegel Wilcox, and Teddy Wilson.
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. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Hardcover. Minneapolis, University Of Minnesota Press, 1st, 2016, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. The year 2016 will mark the centennial of the birth of Albert Murray (1916-2013), who in thirteen books was by turns a lyrical novelist, a keen and iconoclastic social critic, and a formidable interpreter of jazz and blues. Not only did his prizewinning study Stomping the Blues (1976) influence musicians far and wide, it was also a foundational text for Jazz at Lincoln Center, which he cofounded with Wynton Marsalis and others in 1987. Murray Talks Music brings together, for the first time, many of Murray's finest interviews and essays on music--most never before published--as well as rare liner notes and prefaces. For those new to Murray, this book will be a perfect introduction, and those familiar with his work--even scholars--will be surprised, dazzled, and delighted. Highlights include Dizzy Gillespie's richly substantive 1985 conversation; an in-depth 1994 dialogue on jazz and culture between Murray and Wynton Marsalis; and a long 1989 discussion on Duke Ellington between Murray, Stanley Crouch, and Loren Schoenberg. Also interviewed by Murray are producer and impresario John Hammond and singer and bandleader Billy Eckstine. All of thse conversations were previously lost to history. A celebrated educator and raconteur, Murray engages with a variety of scholars and journalists while making insightful connections among music, literature, and other art forms--all with ample humor and from unforeseen angles.
Hardcover. London , Jazz Book Club/ Andre Deutsch, reprint, 1963, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 242 pages, in a very good dust jacket.
Hardcover. NY, Dominic Books, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in pictorial glossy boards. When a jazz-loving kitten named Nicky meets a legendary trumpet player, he learns how to play jazz and word travels fast--soon all the top musicians hear about this jazz cat and want to play with him. This charming story is illustrated with photographs of Nicky with jazz greats Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Lena Horne, Quincy Jones, Abbey Lincoln, and Gerry Mulligan as they meet and make friends. The colorful graphics and rhyming text--call and response conversation between Nicky and his new musician friends--reflect the humor, rhythm, and spirit of jazz itself. Nicky the Jazz Cat teaches children about the magic of jazz, the value of friends and mentors, and the power of imagination and originality. Children and adults alike will delight in his journey from curious jazz kitten to acclaimed jazz cat. This is the true first edition published 2 years before the poerHouse edition.
Hardcover. Boston, Beacon Press, 1st, 2006, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket, 274 pages. The legendary bandleader Count Basie once said of a Blue Devils performance, "It was the greatest thing I ever heard." Now, in One O'clock Jump, historian Douglas Henry Daniels tells the fascinating story of this incredible jazz band from Oklahoma City. Though the Blue Devils survived in various forms from 1923 to 1933, their legacy has been largely overlooked. Individuals who played with the band-including writer Ralph Ellison (as a teenager), trumpeter Oran "Hot Lips" Page, saxophonist Lester "Prez" Young, and bandleader Basie-went on to become celebrated artists of the twentieth century. Utilizing interviews -with the six surviving Blue Devils and with others- government records, and lively newspaper accounts of various performances, Daniels explains the importance of the band to both the individual musicians and the larger American cultural landscape.
Hardcover. San Francisco, Pomegranate, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 164 pages. Hardcover. Black & white photographs by Jazz musician Milt Hinton. Dust jacket with light wear. Clean, tight copy.
Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Art Gallery, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 207 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in shrink wrap. Images of New Orleans and the city's jazz culture, performers, bands, and clubs between 1957 and 1982. Over 200 black and white photographs taken by Friedlander. Tight copy.
Hardcover. New Haven, CT, Yale University Art Gallery, 1st, 2014, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 207 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy still in shrink wrap. Images of New Orleans and the city's jazz culture, performers, bands, and clubs between 1957 and 1982. Over 200 black and white photographs taken by Friedlander. Tight copy.
Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 160 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. A celebration of jazz legend Sonny Rollin's incredibly prolific career. This intimate appreciation in pictures and words combines the images of John Abbott, who was Rollin's photographer of choice for the past twernty years has captured the saxophonist at home and at work, and the essays of Bob Blumenthal, a jazz critic who has chronicled Rollins and his art for nearly four decades.
Hardcover. US, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 160 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. a celebration of jazz legend Sonny Rollin's incredibly prolific career. This intimate appreciation in pictures and words combines the images of John Abbott, who was Rollin's photographer of choice for the past twernty years has captured the saxophonist at home and at work, and the essays of Bob Blumenthal, a jazz critic who has chronicled Rollins and his art for nearly four decades.
Hardcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1st, 2016, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, still in publisher's shrinkwrap. This stunning book charts the rich history of the blues, through the dazzling array of posters, album covers, and advertisements that have shaped its identity over the past hundred years. The blues have been one of the most ubiquitous but diverse elements of American popular music at large, and the visual art associated with this unique sound has been just as varied and dynamic. There is no better guide to this fascinating graphical world than Bill Dahl--a longtime music journalist and historian who has written liner notes for countless reissues of classic blues, soul, R&B, and rock albums. With his deep knowledge and incisive commentary--complementing more than three hundred and fifty lavishly reproduced images--the history of the blues comes musically and visually to life.
Hardcover. NY, Knopf, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 268 pages. After having a breakdown in the midst of working on a photo-essay on Pittsburgh in 1957, legendary photographer W. Eugene Smith holed up in a loft in New York's Chelsea, in the Tin Pan Alley area. There, over the next several years, he became deeply embroiled in the New York City jazz scene, opening his home as a practice and performance space for some of the great artists of mid-century jazz, including Thelonious Monk, Zoot Sims and many others. Of course, he took pictures--both of musicians and of a window-size view of mid-century New York--and also wired the place for recording, logging hours and hours of tape, capturing the music and the talk around it. These photos and tapes had been thought lost--the stuff of rumor, buried in Smith's archive--until Stephenson dug them out and culled the best, along with transcriptions of material from the tapes, for this landmark book. Smith's stunning use of contrast makes figures like Monk seem dramatic and completely ordinary at the same time. The photos of the city offer a rare glimpse into a neighborhood being itself when it thought no one was watching. This will be an essential book for jazz fans, photography lovers and those interested in the history of New York.
Softcover. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, reprint, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 883 pages.The author reveals how musicians, both individually and collectively, learn to improvise. Chronicling leading musicians from their first encounters with jazz to the development of a unique improvisatory voice, Paul Berliner documents the lifetime of preparation that lies behind the skilled improviser's every idea. The product of more than fifteen years of immersion in the jazz world. Interviews with more than fifty professional musicians: bassists George Duvivier and Rufus Reid; drummers Max Roach, Ronald Shannon Jackson, and Akira Tana; guitarist Emily Remler; pianists Tommy Flanagan and Barry Harris; saxophonists Lou Donaldson, Lee Konitz, and James Moody; trombonist Curtis Fuller; trumpeters Doc Cheatham, Art Farmer, Wynton Marsalis, and Red Rodney; vocalists Carmen Lundy and Vea Williams; and others. Clean copy.
Softcover. Lake Front Editions, 1st, 2002, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Memoirs of Vermont's own "Big" Joe Burrell with inscription by Big Joe on front fly leaf. Illustrated with photos in b&w. Light wear and rubbing to covers and spine, else a very nice, tight, clean copy.
Hardcover. NY, Skira Rizzoli, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 224 pages. Illustrated in color and b&w. The most comprehensive book on the artist to date, offering an insightful look into the legendary musician and his enormous impact on the development of jazz. Miles Davis explores the life and art of one of the greatest visionaries in jazz history--through photographs, handwritten musical scores, album covers, posters, and more--cementing his reputation as the embodiment of cool, both on- and offstage. To examine his extraordinary career is also to examine the history of jazz from the mid-1940s through the early 1990s, as Davis was crucial in almost every important innovation and stylistic development during that time. His genius paved the way for these changes, both with his own performances and recordings, and by choosing collaborators with whom he forged new directions. Miles Davis--trumpeter, bandleader, and composer--was one of the most important figures in jazz history. He was born in a well-to-do family in St. Louis in 1926 and died in a Los Angeles hospital in 1991. He was at the forefront of several major developments in jazz music, including cool jazz, hard bop, free jazz, and fusion. Davis worked with many of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, including Ron Carter, John Coltrane, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Quincy Jones, Charlie Parker, and Max Roach, among numerous others.
