America's Jazz Heritage
"America's Jazz Heritage is a ten-year initiative to
research, preserve, and present the history of jazz
through exhibitions, performances, recordings, radio,
publications, and educational programs at the
Smithsonian and across the nation."
http://www.si.edu/ajazzh/
Source:
http://www.si.edu/ajazzh/
Big Bands: America's Romantic Era
"Welcome to this site which reprises and introduces the sound
of the classic big bands. The site is intended for the enjoyment of
that diminishing audience which remembers when the big bands were
king. But more so it is intended to interpret the big bands
to a younger audience unfamiliar with the full scope of the medium."
https://web.archive.org/web/
20060114135009/
http://cfelt.com/bigband.html
Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/
20060114135009/
http://cfelt.com/bigband.html
Jazz
"Jazz had been called the purest expression of American democracy,
a music built on individualism and compromise, independence and cooperation.
Join us for an exploration of jazz, America's greatest cultural achievement."
http://www.pbs.org/jazz
Source:
http://www.pbs.org/jazz
Jazz & Blues: NPR Music
An archive site for National Public Radio's
jazz programming. You can download featured
songs, listen to past jazz programs or
concert sessions, or read the music news.
http://www.npr.org/
templates/story/
story.php?
storyId=10002
Source: Eileen H. Kramer
Jazz – PBS Kids Go!
A multimedia site that explains jazz and jazz history to
K-12 students and those who teach them. The site
features a geographic and chronoligical timeline, video
clips of interviews with musicians,
lesson plans for teachers, and a band leader game.
http://pbskids.org/jazz
/index.html
Source: Eileen H. Kramer
JazzCorner
"JazzCorner.com is the largest portal for
the official websites of hundreds of jazz musicians
and organizations. New features on JazzCorner
include the jazz video share where you can
upload and share jazz and blues
videos, JazzCorner Jukebox, surf the net
with Jazz always on, submit your latest
jazz news, and check out what's hot at
JazzCorner's Speakeasy, the busiest bulletin board for jazz."
http://www.jazzcorner.com
Source:
http://www.jazzcorner.com
A Passion for Jazz
"Jazz and Blues are among America's greatest cultural
achievements and exports to the world commumity giving powerful
voice to the American experience. Born of a multi-hued society
it unites people across the divides of race, region, and
national boundaries, and jazz music history has always made
powerful statements about freedom, creativity, and American
identity at home and abroad."
http://www.apassion4jazz.net/
Source:
http://www.apassion4jazz.net/
Red Hot Jazz Archive
"The Red Hot Archive is a place to study and enjoy the
music of these early 'Jazzmen.' Due to recent
advances in technology it is now possible to
broadcast text, music and pictures around the world via
the Internet. This site is an experiment in using this new multimedia technology."
http://www.redhotjazz.com/
Source:
http://www.redhotjazz.com/
Smithsonian Jazz
"Our mission is to explore, present, promote, and
perpetuate the historical legacy of jazz. We enrich the public's
understanding of the character and importance of
this unique American treasure…"
http://www.smithsonianjazz.org/
Source:
Source: http://www.smithsonianjazz.
org/sjmo/sjmo_start.asp
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Call it a cultural achievement, a national treasure, or America's music, and all the superlatives are true. It is jazz, and April is National Jazz Month. Come celebrate this art form with books, articles, musical recordings, and web sites. |
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Acosta, Leonardo
Cubano be, Cuban Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba.
Washington DC, Smithsonian Books, 2003.
Call Nunmber: ML3509.C88 A2713 2003
Based on unprecedented research in Cuba, the direct
testimony of scores of Cuban musicians, and the author's
unique experience as a prominent jazz musician,
Cubano Be, Cubano Bop is destined to take its place among
the classics of jazz history. The work pays tribute not only
to a distinguished lineage of Cuban jazz musicians and
composers, but also to the rich musical exchanges
between Cuban and American jazz throughout
the twentieth century.
Source:
http://www.amazon.com
/Cubano-Be-Bop-Hundred-
Years/dp/158834147X
Haskins, James and Kathleen Benson.
Nat King Cole: A Personal and Professional Biography.
Chelsea, MI: Scarborough House, 1990.
Call Number: ML420.C63 H3 1990
All the years have relegated to ancient history
the extreme paradox of being a black star in a racist society,
but Nat King Cole lived that paradox. His
records sold millions of copies, and women swooned
when he sang, but he couldn't be sure of getting
a room in a good hotel. This book tells of his life.
Source:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com
/Nat-King-Cole/James-S-Haskins
/e/9780812885224/?itm=1
Jenkins, Todd S.
I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus.
Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006.
Call Number: ML418.M45 J46 2006
Touching upon Mingus's many innovations as a jazzman,
I Know What I Know explores his advancement of the
art of bass playing; his assimilations of Ellington
and Monk with ideas leaning toward free jazz;
his experiments with ensemble dynamics,
instrumentation, and extended form; and his
working relationships with partners
such as Jaki Byard, Eric Dolphy,
Jimmy Knepper, and Dannie Richmond.
The book provides a broad, informative
overview of Mingus's work without
veering into technical musical terminology.
Readers without an extensive background
in music will thus understand and
appreciate the analyses provided,
and be able to use them to enhance
the experience of listening to the
brilliant work of this legendary jazz great.
Source:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com
/I-Know-What-I-Know/Todd-
S-Jenkins/e/
9780275981020/?itm=1
Lawrence, A. H.
Ellington and his World: A Biography
New York: Routledge, 2001.
Call Number: ML410.E44 L39 2003
Based on lengthy interviews with Ellington's
bandmates, family, and friends, Duke Ellington
and His World offers a fresh look at this
legendary composer. The first biography of
the composer written by a fellow musician
and African-American, the book traces
Ellington's life and career in terms of
the social, cultural, political,
and economic realities of his times
Source:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com
/Duke-Ellington-and-His-World
/A-H-Lawrence/e
/9780415969253/?itm=1
Margolic, David.
Strange Fruit: The Biography of a Song.
New York: Ecco Press, 2001.
Call Number: ML3551 M29 2001
A portrait of "Strange Fruit," a song describing a racial
lynching in the South which was recorded by Billie Holiday in
1939, examines the influence of the song on the growth of the civil rights movement.
Source:
http://gilfind.gsu.edu
Ratliff, Ben.
Coltrane: The Story of a Sound.
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2007.
Call Number: ML419 C645 R37 2007
A study of jazz saxophonist John Coltrane
and his musical development looks for the sources
of power in Coltrane’s music and examines his
important influence and legacy in shaping
the course of modern jazz music.
Source:
http://gilfind.gsu.edu
Reisner, Robert George.
Bird: The Legend of Charlie Parker.
New York: Da Capo Press, 1977.
Call Number: ML419.P4 R4 1977
For this first full-length reminiscence,
Reisner interviewed eighty-one of
Parker's friends, relatives, and fellow performers.
From Charlie Mingus, one of the few
real innovators since Bird, and
Dizzy Gillespie, whom Parker once
called 'the other half of my heart, ' to jazz historian
Rudi Blesh and Parker's mother,
each remembers Bird in his or her own special way.
Source:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com
/Bird/Robert-George-Reisner
/e/9780306800696/?itm=1
Shipton, Alvin L.
Groovin’ High: The Life of Dizzy Gillespie.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
Call Number: ML 419 .G54 S55 1999
Dizzy Gillespie was one of the most important and
best-loved musicians in jazz history.
With his horn-rimmed glasses, goatee, jive talk,
and upraised trumpet bell, he was the hipster
who most personified bebop. The musical heir to
Louis Armstrong, he created the modern
jazz trumpet-playing style and dazzled aficionados
and popular audiences alike for over 50 years.
Source:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com
/Groovin-High/Alyn-L-Shipton
/e/9780195144109/?itm=1
Simone, Nina.
Put a Spell on You: The Autobiography of Nina Simone.
Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003.
Call Number: ML420 S5635 A3 2003
Simone grew up during the Depression in a small North
Carolina town where, thanks to a farsighted music teacher
and caring neighbors who paid for her lessons, she
was trained as a classical pianist. After attending
Juilliard on a scholarship she was rejected by the Curtis
Institute in Philadelphia (a setback she attributes to the fact
that she is black), and she became a nightclub
entertainer, singing and accompanying herself on the piano and,
with her skillful improvisations of popular songs in
classical style, quickly becoming a star.
Source:
http://www.amazon.com/Put-Spell-
You-Autobiography-Simone/
dp/0306805251
Townsend, Peter
Pearl Harbor Jazz: Change in Popular Music in the Early 1940's.
Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi, 2007.
Call Number: ML3918.J39 T7 2007
The book's central exposition—that before bop
emerged in the mid 1940s jazz was a hard-wired staple
of American mass culture, not a distinct and stand-alone
artform, and was inextricably linked to other styles of
music from which it took several of its supposed major
inventions—Townsend demonstrates conclusively and with much
illuminating detail. This is not, of course, a new insight,
but Townsend's exhaustive research brings to it
a heightened degree of verisimilitude.
Source:
http://www.allaboutjazz.com
/php/article.php?id=25479
Tucker, Sherrie.
Shift: "All-Girl" Bands of the 1940s.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000.
Call Number: ML82 .T83 2000
Tucker, who teaches women's studies at Hobart and
William Smith colleges and writes the
"Jazzwomen Jam" column for Jazz.
Now magazine, masterfully shows how
instrumental "all-girl" bands were in
changing social, sexual, racial, and economic attitudes toward women.
Source:
http://www.amazon.com/Swing-Shift
-All-Girl-Bands-1940s/
dp/0822328178
Gracyk, Theodore. "Jazz After Jazz: Ken Burns and
the Construction of Jazz History."
Philosophy and Literature 26(2002): 173-187.
MLA International Bibliography. Web. 5 January 2016.
Jazz, a film by Ken Burns, is a fascinating
and monumental achievement. In this essay, I
identify and critique some of the project's core
assumptions. My principal target is the assumption
that a specific essence of jazz underlies most (but not all)
of the music that is regularly identified as jazz and
that the historical unfolding of this essence
is the true subject of a historical investigation of jazz.
Source: Gracyk, Theodore -- the article.
Hagberg, Garry. "On Representing Jazz: An Art Form in Need of Understanding."
Philosophy and Literature 26(2002): 188-198.
Project Muse. Georgia Perimeter College Lib.,
Clarkston, GA. 10 April 2008 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
It is in any social context an achievement to gain an audience
for an undervalued artform of between three and four million
viewers for nineteen hours; to have done so against the
backdrop of the fact—one bitter to swallow for so many
American players of those years—that the country of origin for this
artform was so slow to significantly value it, makes this documentary
almost a form of cultural emergency-relief. But it also raises the
stakes in how jazz is represented, which of its features are focused
upon, and what kind of story is told about its development.
Source: Hagberg, Garry. -- the article.
Jackson, Jeffrey H. "Making Jazz French: The Reception of Jazz Music in Paris, 1927-1934."
French Historical Studies 25(2002): 149-170.
Project Muse. Georgia Perimeter College Lib.,
Clarkston, GA. 10 April 2008 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
That large audiences in Paris appreciate jazz music today is indisputable—a fact
confirmed by a brief glance through any issue of Pariscope,
where one can find jazz clubs and concerts to attend every night
of the week. But perhaps the obviousness of the acceptance of
jazz in Paris has obscured the need by historians of
France to ask how it came to be and to explore
what it can tell us about French culture.
Source: Jackson, Jeffrey -- the article.
Jerving, Ryan. "Jazz Language and Ethnic Novelty."
Modernism/Modernity 10(2003): 239-268.
Project Muse. Georgia Perimeter College Lib.,
Clarkston, GA. 10 April 2008 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
This essay derives from a book-length
project surveying the surprising range of
American writers who broached modernism's
not-so-great divide during jazz's limited life
as a popular national form, engaging it to
sound out anxieties about nation, ethnicity,
and the work of the artist in
an age of mechanical reproduction.
Source: Abstract -- Project Muse.
McRae, Richard. "‘What is hip?’ and Other Inquiries in Jazz
Slang Lexicography."
Notes 57(2001): 574-584.
Project Muse. Georgia Perimeter College Lib.,
Clarkston, GA. 10 April 2008 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
Among musicians themselves, the jam session exists as
the central agency for communicating in a common
musical language, in an atmosphere of collective spontaneity.
Source: McRae, Richard -- the article.
Saul, Scott. "Outrageous Freedom: Charles Mingus and the Invention of the Jazz Workshop."
American Quarterly. 53(2001): 387-419.
Project Muse. Georgia Perimeter College Lib.,
Clarkston, GA. 10 April 2008 <http://muse.jhu.edu/>.
The music was arguably born on 30 January
1956, a well-nigh apocalyptic moment when jazz
composer Charles Mingus set in motion a novel but durable
experiment in musical orchestration and simultaneously
unveiled a menacing critique of modernist authority.
Mingus had assembled his Jazz Workshop in
the Atlantic studios to
record "Pithecanthropus Erectus,"
a &qot;jazz tone-poem" that was simple in the primordial sense.
Source: Saul, Scott -- the article.
Acoustic Alchemy.
This Way.
New York: Narada Jazz, 2007.
Call Number: MR3 .T349.8
It's an album that pulls a Burt Bacharach-style melody
on one song and utilizes tricky modern time schemes
on the next. Programming is plentiful but restrained,
placing the emphasis where it should be:
on the clever writing and enthusiastic playing.
Source:
http://www.amazon.com/
This-Way-Acoustic-Alchemy/
dp/B000PHX55K
Format: CD.
Armstrong, Louis
The Essential Louis Armstrong.
Paris: Vangaurd, 1965.
Call Number: MR5 Es74.4
Beautifully packaged 3CD box set featuring five complete studio albums from the great Louis Armstrong recorded in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. Included here are his small group recordings with the Oscar Peterson Quartet, his legendary dates with Duke Ellington at the piano, two splendid big band albums on which Louis performs spirituals and well-known standard songs, and a wonderful tribute to Fats Waller he recorded with his All Stars.
Source:
https://www.amazon.com/Essential-Original-Albums-Louis-Armstrong/dp/B01LTHMZ9G/
Format: Vinyl LP.
Billie, Ella, Lena, Sarah!
New York : Columbia, p1980.
Call Number: MR5 B495
A wonderful opportunity to compare the art and craft of four great song stylists--Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lena Horne. The songs were recorded over the period from 1935 to 1950.
Source:
https://www.amazon.com/Billie-Ella-Lena-Sarah-Columbia/dp/B004SHZNX0/r
Format: Vinyl LP.
Connick, Harry
Oh my, Nola.
New York: Columbia, 2007.
Call Number: MR4 .C762 Oh4Vo
Fresh off his Broadway stint in The Pajama
Game, Harry Connick went back to his New Orleans
roots and recorded a pair of albums in tribute
to his hometown. Released the same day
as the similarly themed but mostly instrumental Chanson
du Vieux Carré, Oh, My Nola is a loose, effortlessly
swinging album that ranks among Connick's best.
Source:
http://www.amazon.com
/Oh-Nola-Harry-Connick-Jr/
dp/B000I2KNU2
Format: CD.
Spyro Gyra.
Good to Go-Go
Cleveland, OH: Heads Up International, 2007.
Call Number: MR3 .G598
Spyro Gyra leader Jay Beckenstein credits the addition
of Trinidadian drummer Bonny B with juicing the long-running
contemporary jazz band's sound, making it
more "live-sounding."
Wherever the stimulus came from, Good to Go-Go is
one of the more forceful albums by Beckenstein and company.
Source:
http://www.amazon.com
/Good-Go-Go-Spyro-Gyra/
dp/B000P28KXW
Format: CD.
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