The History of Jazz – serie

Early Jazz is one of the seminal books on American jazz, ranging from the beginnings of jazz as a distinct musical style at the turn of the century to its first great flowering in the 1930s. Schuller explores the music of the great jazz soloists of the twenties--Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and others--and the big bands and arrangers--Fletcher Henderson, Bennie Moten, and especially Duke Ellington--placing their musicin the context of the other musical cultures of the twentieth century and offering analyses of many great jazz recordings.Early Jazz provides a musical tour of the early American jazz world. Aclassic study, it is both a splendid introduction for students and an insightful guide for scholars, musicians, and jazz aficionados.

Early Jazz is one of the seminal books on American jazz, ranging from the beginnings of jazz as a distinct musical style at the turn of the century to its first great flowering in the 1930s. Schuller explores the music of the great jazz soloists of the twenties--Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and others--and the big bands and arrangers--Fletcher Henderson, Bennie Moten, and especially Duke Ellington--placing their musicin the context of the other musical cultures of the twentieth century and offering analyses of many great jazz recordings.Early Jazz provides a musical tour of the early American jazz world. Aclassic study, it is both a splendid introduction for students and an insightful guide for scholars, musicians, and jazz aficionados.

This second volume of Gunther Schuller's comprehensive history of jazz covers the period from the 1930s to the late 1940s, decades which saw the transition from big band swing to the virtuoso bop style. The first half of the book concentrates on the band leaders, singers, and composers who dominated the popular music of their day: the jazz aristocracy of Ellington, Basie, and Goodman, as well as major soloists such as Billie Holliday, Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young.The second half focuses on the origins and early development of bop, the major jazz form of the 1940s, and its two great exponents, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.