Gary Giddins and Scott DeVeaux sing jazz's many strains
By JON GARELICK | December 1, 2009
-Cla.jpg "0911_giant-mainf")
MODERNISTIC: For Giddins and DeVeaux, Jason Moran's broad reach contains jazz's multitudes, from James P. Johnson to Afrika Bambaataa. |
Full-length written histories of jazz can be a slog. Especially since "the story of jazz" (as critic Marshall Stearns titled his 1956 tome) only gets longer and more complicated. Personally, on these prose-narrative trips along the New Orleans–New York axis of musical development, I usually bog down somewhere outside Chicago. With a few exceptions, I'd rather get my written jazz history in volumes of essays and profiles, or from biographies, books on a single topic, or liner notes.
But now comes Gary Giddins & Scott DeVeaux's Jazz (Norton). Despite its intimidating heft (620 pages, not counting appendices and notes) and textbook mien, it reads like a shot. Or, at least as much of a shot as you could expect from a brick like this.
In part, they achieve this velocity through admirable compression. The project was indeed first published as a textbook — in a larger format, with greater focus on musicology. But Norton's trade edition is the one that will become classic. Giddins and DeVeaux split duties: DeVeaux provides blow-by-blow, laymen-friendly listening guides to musical examples (there's an accompanying four-CD set, though you have to buy that separately) and Giddins writes the historical narrative.
In a season that also includes two major new jazz biographies — Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) and Robin D.G. Kelley's Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (Free Press) — here, in no particular order, are five other jazz titles worth reading. 1. Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings | Ben Ratliff [Times Books, 2002] | The New York Times critic, equally at home writing about Monk or Mastodon, stretches out with essays more speculative than his normal fare for the paper of record. 2. Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development | Gunther Schuller [Oxford, 1968] | Despite its forbidding title, this is for fans and musicians alike. After Schuller deconstructs Louis Armstrong's sound and puts it back together, you'll never hear it the same way again. 3. Is Jazz Dead? (Or Has It Moved to a New Address) | Stuart Nicholson [Routledge, 2002] | What begins as a rehash of the culture wars becomes one of the most provocative essays yet on jazz as a global style, and its economics, post–Lincoln Center. 4. American Musicians II | Whitney Balliett [Oxford, 1986] | The New Yorker's late jazz critic was also one of the music's finest prose stylists — some would say at the expense of his subjects. But criticism as literature doesn't get any better than Balliett describing what it's like to sit in Bobby Hackett's back yard on Cape Cod. 5. Wishing on the Moon: The Life and Times of Billie Holiday | Donald Clarke [Penguin, 1994] | At once demythologizing and compassionate, and a superb example of biography as history. |
The jazz critic at the Village Voice from 1973 to 2003, Giddins restrains his natural literary exuberance but not his flair. There's a pointed introductory chapter, "Musical Orientation," that covers things like instrumentation and form — just enough to sustainmeaningful, demystifying discussions on how particular pieces of music work. But ultimately, the book also provides the key to how these pieces of music mean.
Related:
Covering Lacy, Summer treats, Miles Davis | The Complete Columbia Album Collection, More 
- Covering Lacy
For Josh Sinton, Steve Lacy stood out almost from the beginning.
- Summer treats
From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.
- Miles Davis | The Complete Columbia Album Collection
Given the consensus that the CD era is drawing to a close, labels have begun to look increasingly toward the well-heeled — those who not only still buy their music on something they can hold but aren't averse to buying it in supersized, extravagant configurations they can show off and savor.
- Best in their field
The jazz scene continues to struggle — along with everyone else — through hard times.
- Reeling in the years
Call John Pizzarelli a mensch — he's smart, chatty, and a hot ticket. Hell of a guitarist, too.
- Into the groove
The 2010 Best Music Poll nominees announcement is fast approaching, but we do know all of the '09 victors will return to defend their titles, including jazz/funk reigning champs Funkatronic, who are looking for a three-peat.
- The onliest Sonny
Sonny Rollins has held the unofficial title of world’s greatest living improviser at least since the early ’70s, following the death of John Coltrane and the second of two extended Rollins sabbaticals from public performance.
- Steampunk and Lima Beans
The hook for Darcy James Argue's Secret Society — who come to the Regattabar Thursday the 25th — is that they're a "steampunk big band."
- Pardon the interruption
Maybe it was when saxophonist Kelly Roberge, instrument in hand, leapt off the Cambridge YMCA Theatre stage in the middle of a performance by the Ayn Inserto Jazz Orchestra and fled the auditorium — as if in extreme gastro-intestinal distress.
- One night, one jazz trifecta
True, there aren't enough paying gigs for musicians, but the live music is out there — and last Wednesday, I had to scramble to make three promising shows.
- Erik Deutsch | Hush Money
Having played in projects from jam bands to jazz and as a singer-songwriter accompanist, keyboardist Erik Deutsch led an acoustic jazz album for his debut.
- Less
Topics:
Jazz
, Entertainment, Entertainment, Bobby Hackett, More
, Entertainment, Entertainment, Bobby Hackett, jazz music, Books and Literature, Donald Clarke, Stuart Nicholson, Music, Music, Jazz and Blues, Less
