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The companion book to Ken Burns’ ten-part television documentary Jazz, which began airing in January, 2001, is big and beautiful with over 500 photographs, many of them rare. The historical focus begins with the music’s blues and Dixieland origins in New Orleans and its later developments as it moved through Kansas City and Chicago to the east and west coasts.
There are chapters on the eras of Armstrong and Ellington and the big bands of the Swing Era as well as the influence of Gillespie and Parker on bebop, the movers and shakers of the avant garde, and an overview of jazz from 1960 to the present. There are several essays by jazz journalists such as Gary Giddins and Dan Morgenstern and an interview with trumpeter/educator Wynton Marsalis who served as a consultant to the TV series.
Burns casts jazz as a “...prism through which so much of American history can be seen....” He confronts the ugly side of our history--racial prejudice--and celebrates the extraordinary men and women who created and nourished a many-faceted music.
The book contains hundreds of portraits of jazz luminaries from Bix Biederbecke, Buddy Bolden, and Bessie Smith to Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and Sarah Vaughan.
Jazz “insiders” have criticized some of the omissions and the scant attention given to influential white players such as pianist Bill Evans and baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan. But this is a comprehensive, readable, well-researched history of the vital music we call jazz.
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