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Recordings: for Jazz
 
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
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Product Description
This comprehensive 4-CD set features 75 works recorded from 1916 to the present. Carefully selected by Giddins and DeVeaux and produced by Sony with attention to top quality audio, these recordings of both landmark works and innovative departures from the standard canon showcase the breadth and scope of jazz. .

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A continuation of Gunther Schulller's work
 
Review Date: February 6, 2010
Reviewer: US jazz fan in CH, Thalwil, ZH Switzerland
I've always been disappointed that Gunther Schuller never extended his series of excellent works analyzing jazz history: "Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development" (first edition 1968, 400+ pages) and more than 20 years later "The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945" (1991, 940 pages). These seminal works go into extensive detail with plenty of musical notation to illustrate points yet they have appeal at all levels. I desperately wanted him to move on to my favorite periods, all after 1945. But this hasn't happened yet, and I suspect it may not.

Now Giddens and Deveaus have done so. True, their analysis is not as detailed as Schuller's, but they're covering a lot more territory. Besides, such a book would be thousands of pages long. They found the right level of depth for this treatment at this length.

I've been listening to (and reading about) jazz for 40 years, and this is the best overview covering all the periods that I've ever seen. I learned lots of interesting things, and it will help anyone except probably a professional jazz musician to put all the pieces and trends into perspective.

The use of technology with the downloadable applet from the book publisher (no charge) that works with the related series of CDs is also quite interesting. It's nice to have the screen pop up with an explanation of what's happening just as it is happening so you don't have to constantly refer to the book to get the description or compare the minute:second in the book with what's on your file player.

Given this, I do recommend also purchasing the CD set. No, it's not cheap, and you could probably find most of the cuts somewhere else -- but it would take a great deal of effort (something I had to do as far as I could with the Schuller books). And while the CD set contains a large number of songs I already have in my collection, I would miss not having those few that he also describes. Besides, the cuts on the CD are designed to interface directly to the free applet.

Summary: The book/CD set is one of the best jazz investments I've ever made. It has brought me immense enjoyment, and it's something I know I'll go back to again and again. I suspect this will become the standard resource of jazz history for many years to come.
THOUGHTFUL AND WELL NEEDED
 
Review Date: February 28, 2010
Reviewer: David Keymer, Modesto CA
Jazz scholar Scott DeVeaux and premiere jazz critic Gary Giddins (The Village Voice) compiled this four-CD collection to accompany their advanced level jazz primer, Jazz (2009). At $60.07 from Amazon.com, it's pricey but worth it for the serious jazz listener or student of jazz. I could cavil at some of the choices they made: I would have preferred less pop jazz, for instance. (Nothing against Sinatra or Getz and Byrd's "Samba Dees Days," for instance, but there are other pieces and other musicians I'd like to hear. And while Horace Silver's hard bop quintet deserves to be spotlighted, so do Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers: what about the 1958 quintet -Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, etc., what a group!--doing "Moanin'"?) In some cases, I would have preferred different selections by the musicians or different groups being spotlighted. From the twenties, I'd like to have heard one of violinist Joe Venuti and guitarist Eddie Lang's hot jazz groups from Chicago, or maybe Adrian Rollini. And there is a great 30s pickup group with trombonist Jack Teagarden and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. (The same album has another group with clarinetist Peewee Russell playing with James P. Johnson on piano and Zutty Singleton on drums!) On the modern end, I missed hearing a cut by Roscoe Mitchell or the full Art Ensemble of Chicago, ditto the World Saxophone Quartet or ROVA. The jazz-fusion group Weather Report was good, but I feel that John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra blew them out of the water when they were hitting it. But this is small potatoes for a collection that is both generally representative and singularly informative.

Most of the cuts on the first CD are stunning: Ghanaian drummers, a black Baptist or Pentecostal choir, killer guitar and vocal by oldtime bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell, a piece by ragtime's little know clarinet virtuoso Henry Sweetman, great King Oliver and Louis, and Louis on his own and with Earl Fatha Hines. The second CD, which takes the music up through the 30s, is equally good. Hell, it's all good!

Each of the selections is pegged off an analysis of the performance in DeVeaux's and Giddin's book. The analyses are not uniform in quality -some seem close to trivial--but over all, reading along in the text while listening to the musical cuts will teach the reader/listener a great deal. Hurrah for you, Scott and Gary! Something like this has been needed for a long time.

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