Visions of Jazz

The First Century

Gary Giddins

Visions of Jazz

The First Century

Gary Giddins

Description

Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight. Writing with the grace and wit that have endeared his prose to Village Voice readers for decades, Giddins also widens the scope of jazz to include such crucial American musicians as Irving Berlin, Rosemary Clooney, and Frank Sinatra, all primarily pop performers who are often dismissed by fans and critics as mere derivatives of the true jazz idiom. And he devotes an entire quarter of this landmark volume to young, still-active jazz artists, boldly expanding the horizons of jazz--and charting and exploring the music's influences as no other book has done.

Visions of Jazz

The First Century

Gary Giddins

Part One: Precursors
1. Bert Williams/Al Jolson (Native Wits)
2. Hank Jones/Charlie Haden (Come Sunday)
3. Louis Armstrong/Mills Brothers (Signifying)
4. W.C. Handy (Birth of the Blues)
5. Irving Berlin (Ragging the Alley)
6. Spencer Williams (The Bard of Basin Street)
7. Ethel Waters (The Mother of Us All)
8. Bunk Johnson/George Lewis (Pithecanthropus Jazzman)
Part Two: A New Music
9. Jelly Roll Morton (Red Hot Dandy)
10. King Oliver (Working Man Blues)
11. Louis Armstrong (The Once and Future King)
12. Duke Ellington (Part 1: The Poker Game)
13. Coleman Hawkins (Patriarch)
14. Pee Wee Russell (Seer)
15. Chick Webb (King of the Savoy)
16. Fats Waller (Comedy Tonight)
Part Three: A Popular Music
17. Benny Goodman (The Mirror of Swing)
18. Jimmie Lunceford (For Listeners, Too)
19. Count Basie/Lester Young (Westward Ho! and Back)
20. Jimmy Rushing (Swinging the Blues)
21. Roy Eldridge (Jazz)
22. Ella Fitzgerald (Joy)
23. Artie Shaw (Cinderella's Last Stand)
24. Budd Johnson (Chameleon)
25. Bobby Hackett (Muzak Man)
26. Frank SInatra (The Ultimate in Theater)
Part Four: A Modern Music
27. Duke Ellington (Part 2: The Enlightenment)
28. Billy Strayhorn (Passion FLower)
29. Spike Jones (Chasin' the Birdaphone)
30. Charlie Parker (Flying Home)
31. Dizzy Gillespie (The Coup and After)
32. Sarah Vaughan (Divine)
33. Thelonious Monk (Rhythm-a-ning)
34. Bud Powell (Strictly Confidential)
35. Chico O'Farrill (North of the Border)
36. Stan Kenton (Big)
37. Dexter Gordon (Resurgence)
Part Five: A Mainstream Music
38. Miles Davis (Kinds of Blues)
39. Gerry Mulligan (Beyond Cool)
40. Art Blakey (Jazz Messenger)
41. Billie Holiday (Lady of Pain)
42. Modern Jazz Quartet (The First Forty Years)
43. Nat King Cole (The Comeback King)
44. Stan Getz (Seasons)
45. Sonny Rollins (The Muse is Heard)
46. Dinah Washington (The Queen)
47. Rahsaan Roland Kirk (One-Man Band)
Part Six: An Alternative Music
48. Art Tatum (Sui Generis)
49. Charles Mingus (Bigger Than Death)
50. Cecil Taylor (Outer Curve)
51. Ornette Coleman (This is Our Music)
52. John Coltrane (Metamorphosis)
53. Duke Ellington (Part 3: At then Pulpit)
54. Muhal Richard Abrams (Meet This Composer)
55. Roscoe Mitchell/Marty Ehrlich (The Audience)
56. Henry Threadgill (The Big Top)
57. Charles Gayle/David S. Ware/Matthew Shipp (Sweet Agony)
Part Seven:A Struggling Music
58. Hannibal Peterson (Out of Africa)
59. Jimmy Rowles (The Late Hurrah)
60. John Carter (American Echoes)
61. Dee Dee Bridgewater (Back Home Again)
62. Julius Hemphill (Gotham's Minstrel)
63. Don Pullen (Last Connections)
64. Gary Bartz (The Middle Passage)
65. David Murray (Profuse)
66. Dave Burrell (Brotherly Love)
67. Abbey Lincoln (Strong Wind Blowing)
Part Eight: A Traditional Music
68. Randy Weston (Afrobeats)
69. Rosemary Clooney (Going Her Way)
70. Joe Henderson (Tributes)
71. Tommy Flanagan (Standards and Practices)
72. Joe Lovano (The Long Apprenticeship)
73. Geri Allen/Jacky Terrasson (The Parameters of Hip)
74. Joshua Redman (Tenor of the Times)
75. Stephen Scott (Taking Time)
76. James Carter (All of the Above)
77. Louis Armstrong/Nicholas Payton (Interpreted)
78. Cassandra Wilson (A Different Songbook)
79. Don Byron (Musically Correct)
Acknowledgments
Index of Names
Index of Songs and Selected Albums

Visions of Jazz

The First Century

Gary Giddins

Author Information

Gary Giddins is the jazz critic for the Village Voice. He lives in New York City.

Visions of Jazz

The First Century

Gary Giddins

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award, the Bell Atlantic Jazz Award for Book of the Year, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year! Named a Jazz Book of the Century by Jazz Educators Journal

"The publication of Visions of Jazz is a major event because Gary Giddins is our best jazz critic...[It] is the finest unconventional history of jazz ever written--a brilliant, indispensable book."--Alfred Appel, Jr., The New York Times

"One of our most skillful jazz critics offers a monumental work of ambition...[Giddins] brings an unerring critical intelligence to his analyses of the music and a formidable grasp of music theory and practice...This is an important book, one that any serious student of jazz will want to own."--Kirkus Reviews

"This gigantic book of 79 essays amounts, willy-nilly, to a grand, brilliant history of the most American of arts."--The New York Times Book Review, A Notable Book of 1998

"No American writer has ever written better about music, as richly demonstrated in Giddins' Visions of Jazz. This splendid critical history is classic Giddins: breathtaking in its scope, audacious in its erudition, and profoundly mindful of the connection between biography and art."-- Fortune

"Giddins' eclectic range and meticulous attention to detail are nothing less than astonishing. Visions of Jazz is a landmark destined to occupy a permanent niche on the shelf of essential jazz literature."--Grover Sales, The Los Angeles Times Book Review