A complete musical analysis of one of the greatest jazz masters of all time. This comprehensive text studies and analyzes the works, provides transcriptions of the solos, and much more. For all music enthusiasts. Songs covered include: All Blues * Four * Freddie Freeloader * My Funny Valentine * Nardis * So What * Solar * Stella by Starlight * Tune Up * and more!
List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $18.87 Used Price: $15.00
"Very moving, emotional material." -Gordon Meltzer, Miles's last road manager and executive producer of the Doo-Bop album
"An important book." -Brian Priestley, jazz pianist, critic, reviewer, and co-author of The Rough Guide to Jazz
"Bravo! Thank you for telling it like it was!" -Randy Hall, singer/guitarist
"George Cole's writing, his choice of references, his descriptions of many incidents---it is all so clear and respectful, and shows a deep understanding." -Palle Mikkelborg, composer, arranger, and producer of the Aura album
The Last Miles is the first book to center exclusively on the music Miles Davis made in the last decade of his life.
Author George Cole spotlights the final period of Davis's career, when Davis emerged from a five-year hiatus. The focus is on the music Davis recorded and played and how it evolved in the eyes of the musicians with whom he played.
Thousands of new facts are uncovered, including a lost Miles Davis album, how Miles got into hip-hop, and how he worked in the studio and on stage. Cole devotes at least one chapter to each album Davis recorded during this period, and the full track-by-track descriptions contain the stories behind the songs.
Sure to satisfy the most serious Miles Davis fans, The Last Miles offers nearly 100 interviews with some of Davis's closest associates and musical friends, including Paul Buckmaster, George Duke, Chaka Khan, Branford Marsalis, Easy Mo Bee, Steve Porcaro, Wallace Roney, David Sanborn, and many more, as well as interviews with thirty-one of the thirty-six band members Miles had in this period, including Bob Berg, Robben Ford, Darryl Jones, Marcus Miller, John Scofield, and Mike Stern, among others.
In addition, the book includes new photos of Miles, a discography, details of unreleased material, Davis's guest recordings, soundtrack recordings, tribute albums, artists who covered Davis's 1980s music, compilations, and more.
List Price: $35.00 Amazon Price: $22.05 Used Price: $23.45 Customer Review: Lots and lots of first-hand perspectives
Cole really went all out to get interviews with the band members and other key people in this phase of Miles' life. If you don't like the music of the period covered (1976-1991), this book isn't going to change your mind about the records. But you will still get a great deal of insight about Miles as a person from many voices (I think 31 band members, road crew members, producers, and others). In cases where memories have dimmed and conflicting accounts have been given by different interviewees, Cole puts those quotes together and makes a best guess about what really happened in the instance being discussed. It's extremely thorough writing--Cole also cross references his interview material with published accounts from magazines and other books on Miles. It's worth a look, and isn't a second rate rehash of the other books on the electric Miles period.
Customer Review: Enthralling Must Read for all Miles Davis and Music Lovers
The music covering the period 1980-1991 of Miles Davis tour de force career is perhaps the most overlooked and least documented of them all. In his book "The Last Miles", author George Cole meticulously documents this controversial period through countless interviews with the thiry-plus musicians of the period as well as producers, engineers and nearly anyone else who had a hand in the music of this time. Also included are interviews with members of Miles family as well as close friends.
I call it controversial because many critics didn't give Miles the respect he was due and much of the music was just immediately dismissed without further review. Cole writes the book in direct chronological order from recording session to recording session and from the shifting perspectives of the ever changing members of Miles Davis' bands throughout this period. Much insight is given to not only the music that was created and released, i.e., "Tutu", "Amandla" and "Doo Bop", but also all of the wonderful gems that are setting in the Warner Brothers vault mind-numbingly unreleased. Cole also goes in depth about the unreleased materials that are out there from this period available through imports and previously unreleased.
It's quite obvious that Cole is a writer that took his subject matter very seriously and was careful to be accurate with the facts and all quotations. I have read nearly every book written on Miles Davis in various states of his career including his famous autobiography written with Poet/Author Quincy Troupe. It is my opinion as an avid reader and jazz afficianado that Cole's book is the most objective look into this much neglected final phase of Miles brilliant career ever written. Cole gives detailed insight to each band member, the recordings, the tours and even details leading up to Miles' premature death with compassion, objectivity and accuracy.
I would recommend listening to each of the recordings which are broken down cut by cut as you read the book. I found this method of reading the book enjoyable and I listened to some recordings that I've heard a hundred times in a brand new light.
If you don't take my word for it, read some of the reviews that the reputable members of Miles last bands have written at www.thelastmiles.com
From John Scofield, to Kenny Garrett, Adam Holzman, Darryl "The Munch" Jones, Bill Evans and Mike Stern, just to name a few. This is a MUST read for all Miles historians and music lovers alike. Don't hesitate, order this book today!
The companion volume to the ten-part PBS TV series by the team responsible for The Civil War and Baseball.
Continuing in the tradition of their critically acclaimed works, Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns vividly bring to life the story of the quintessential American music—jazz. Born in the black community of turn-of-the-century New Orleans but played from the beginning by musicians of every color, jazz celebrates all Americans at their best.
Here are the stories of the extraordinary men and women who made the music: Louis Armstrong, the fatherless waif whose unrivaled genius helped turn jazz into a soloist's art and influenced every singer, every instrumentalist who came after him; Duke Ellington, the pampered son of middle-class parents who turned a whole orchestra into his personal instrument, wrote nearly two thousand pieces for it, and captured more of American life than any other composer. Bix Beiderbecke, the doomed cornet prodigy who showed white musicians that they too could make an important contribution to the music; Benny Goodman, the immigrants' son who learned the clarinet to help feed his family, but who grew up to teach a whole country how to dance; Billie Holiday, whose distinctive style routinely transformed mediocre music into great art; Charlie Parker, who helped lead a musical revolution, only to destroy himself at thirty-four; and Miles Davis, whose search for fresh ways to sound made him the most influential jazz musician of his generation, and then led him to abandon jazz altogether. Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Artie Shaw, and Ella Fitzgerald are all here; so are Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and a host of others.
But Jazz is more than mere biography. The history of the music echoes the history of twentieth-century America. Jazz provided the background for the giddy era that F. Scott Fitzgerald called the Jazz Age. The irresistible pulse of big-band swing lifted the spirits and boosted American morale during the Great Depression and World War II. The virtuosic, demanding style called bebop mirrored the stepped-up pace and dislocation that came with peace. During the Cold War era, jazz served as a propaganda weapon—and forged links with the burgeoning counterculture. The story of jazz encompasses the story of American courtship and show business; the epic growth of great cities—New Orleans and Chicago, Kansas City and New York—and the struggle for civil rights and simple justice that continues into the new millennium.
Visually stunning, with more than five hundred photographs, some never before published, this book, like the music it chronicles, is an exploration—and a celebration—of the American experiment.
List Price: $65.00 Amazon Price: $40.95 Used Price: $10.00 Customer Review: Should be "Jazz Origins: Popular Jazz & It's Evolution."
I really liked this book because it gave great detail to the Founding Giants of Jazz. I get disapointed with books that try to be all things to all people and end up just skiming over everything. I like that this book went in-depth with the most popular artists. To try to fully cover the "Complete History of Jazz" would take about 10,000 pages of similairly over-sized books broken into about 20 volumes. Critics I have read on this page do a lot of name dropping to show off some knowledge. Perhaps they should write a book or two on the subject; I would love to read such a book. "Fusion: The Complete Evolution" would be a great volume in the above mentioned theoretical 10,000 pager, but most people have no interest in fusion. If you start going into Anthony Braxton's complex sheet music you are just going to loose people. This book sticks to the popular art form which is an evolution of sorts on it's own. An evolution of popular music and the evolution of the "musician's music" are two different things. I think the authors gave people what they wanted with this book. The REALITY of publishing a book like this is that it has to have broad appeal. You just aren't going to get funding to do a book that spends 25 pages on an extremely talented yet popularly obscure artist. This book is great for the novice or for the more educated jazz historian who wants to read some great stories and see some great photo's even if many of them are "common jazz knowledge" and repeats. (The story of Armstrong running into Oliver while selling tomatoes is a classic. I hadn't heard that one.) It is not as comprehensive with the modern era but I feel that it is proportional to the popularity of Jazz. If you want a complete Jazz history, you will need a library of about 100 books. This book should be in that library.
Customer Review: Start Here
As a jazz fan and a professional music retailer, I can recommend this book as a wonderful place to begin one's discovery of jazz or gain more knowledge of the cultural legacy of the music. In conjunction with the excellent video series and a box of cds by the titans written about by Ward, ie. Armstrong, Ellington, Davis, Parker, Holiday, etc., one can have a wonderful adventure either discovering the music for the first time or revisiting and expanding old passions. Those who quibble with its incompleteness run the risk of branding themselves cynics after the fashion of Wilde's definition: "A man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing."
Despite the plethora of writing about jazz, little attention has been paid to what musicians themselves wrote and said about their practice. An implicit division of labor has emerged where, for the most part, black artists invent and play music while white writers provide the commentary. Eric Porter overturns this tendency in his creative intellectual history of African American musicians. He foregrounds the often-ignored ideas of these artists, analyzing them in the context of meanings circulating around jazz, as well as in relationship to broader currents in African American thought. Porter examines several crucial moments in the history of jazz: the formative years of the 1920s and 1930s; the emergence of bebop; the political and experimental projects of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; and the debates surrounding Jazz at Lincoln Center under the direction of Wynton Marsalis. Louis Armstrong, Anthony Braxton, Marion Brown, Duke Ellington, W.C. Handy, Yusef Lateef, Abbey Lincoln, Charles Mingus, Archie Shepp, Wadada Leo Smith, Mary Lou Williams, and Reggie Workman also feature prominently in this book. The wealth of information Porter uncovers shows how these musicians have expressed themselves in print; actively shaped the institutional structures through which the music is created, distributed, and consumed, and how they aligned themselves with other artists and activists, and how they were influenced by forces of class and gender. What Is This Thing Called Jazz? challenges interpretive orthodoxies by showing how much black jazz musicians have struggled against both the racism of the dominant culture and the prescriptive definitions of racial authenticity propagated by the music's supporters, both white and black.
List Price: $24.95 Amazon Price: $24.95 Used Price: $11.90 Customer Review: Required Reading for Anyone Interested in Jazz Criticism
As many fans realize, jazz music (and even the term "jazz" itself) is the source of much critical and cultural debate. There has always been a peculiar tension between the critics who define the music with culturally loaded terminology and the musicians who often view the art as something that cannot be adequately reduced in such a manner. Things have certainly become more complicated in the last thirty-five years, with the rise of the avant-garde. Many critics and even some musicians (e.g., Wynton Marsalis) have dismissed the most innovative developments in the music as being "non-jazz," which has culminated in a perspective whereby jazz has been codified, historicized, and, to some people, seems to be "swallowing its tail." Eric Porter's excellent academic work delves deeply into the current debates on jazz, as well as provides a thorough overview of how musicians have defined their art in their own terms throughout the history of jazz. As with the history of any art (e.g., painting, photography, literature), it becomes apparent that what we get in jazz criticism is a series of narratives that occasionally correspond to one another but often tend to diverge markedly at various points. Porter's book is extremely valuable because it focuses on the voices that have not been adequately represented in the discourse on jazz-the voices of the musicians themselves. What I particularly enjoy about Porter's book is its even-handed tone. The book is exhaustively researched and follows a logical progression from the rise of jazz in the early twentieth-century to modern times. His discussions of the essays of Duke Ellington, WC Handy, and prominent intellectuals (Zora Neale Hurston, WEB Dubois, Alain Locke et al.) are all placed in the context of a larger discussion of race, gender, economics, and American culture. At the same time, Porter's role is clearly that of a researcher and scholar; he is not someone who passes judgment on the thoughts of the musicians. He simply presents us with the information. In addition to analyzing thoroughly the roots of jazz, there are lengthy and informative chapters on the development of bebop, the music and thought of Charles Mingus, and that of 60s stalwarts such as Leo Smith and Anthony Braxton. The discussion of Braxton's massive tomes (the Tri-axium Writings) is particularly welcome, since his universalist approach to music has put him in an unusual position with the regard to the jazz community, arguably since his contract with Arista expired over two decades ago. The discussion of the neo-conservative movement in jazz, led by Wynton Marsalis and Stanley Crouch, appropriately follows the discussion of Braxton's work and illustrates the challenges that jazz critics face as the music increasingly draws upon a myriad of musical forms that draw attention to the inadequacies of conventional criticism. What I particularly enjoyed was Porter's lucid discussion of the similarities as well as the differences in the thought of Braxton and Marsalis. Porter's organized presentation of such topics certainly enabled me to appreciate the thoughts of all the jazz musicians discussed in the book, whether I agreed with them or not. The value of this book is that it not only shows the reader the viewpoints of the often neglected musicians, but also does not shy away from the critical, theoretical, and cultural complexities with which critics and musicians must deal in the future of jazz music. It is a valuable step indeed to understanding, if not definitively answering, "What is this thing called jazz?"
This entertaining, easy-to-use reference now reviews and rates more than 18,000 sizzling recordings by over 1,700 musicians in all jazz styles - from New Orleans jazz to bebop, fusion, and beyond. Colorful profiles describe the artists' lives and careers, while anecdotal histories portray selected jazz legends. "Music Maps" chart the evolution of jazz instruments, plus the influence of significant players, vocalists, and sidemen. Providing essays on styles plus details on labels, producers, and more, this definitive guide will help readers begin or fine-tune a great jazz collection.
List Price: $32.95 Amazon Price: $20.76 Used Price: $9.76 Customer Review: Get it and don't forget it
All you need to know at your fingertips. Largely trustworthy
advice and insights on artists and albums. Handy biographical
info too.
Customer Review: Better than peguin, but still sucks
There are a ton of errors in this book (including listing Roland Hanna playing piano of Charles Mingus's Mingus ah Um, when it was actually Horace Parlan). Plus ALLMUSIC.COM will list a cd at 3 stars, and this book will list it at 5, and vice versa. The reviews are supposed to be in chronological order, but are frequently out of order. But THE MOST ANNOYING, is the enormous amount of 2 or 3 star reviews that end with, "essential music", "great music", "must have". Then the next review will be 5 stars and end with "not all that essential" or a causual "worth a listen". Buy music, not this
This collection of interviews and photos celebrates some of the most outstanding artists in these genres. The book is divided by instrument, and for each artist there is a biography, an interview by Julie Coryell, an outstanding photo by Laura Friedman, and a selected, cross-referenced discography. Legendary players covered here include: Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius, Michael Brecker, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stanley Clarke, Freddie Hubbard, Roy Ayers, Ron Carter, Chick Corea, George Benson, Flora Purim and many others. Also features a stunning section of full-color photos, and a preface by Ramsey Lewis. 368 pages.
List Price: $64.50 Used Price: $3.40 Customer Review: A who's who of fusion's players at it's peak
Jazz-rock fusion brought a musical vocabulary that affects the music of today. Every player in this book contributed to the musical landscape of fusion. To those who not only lived through mid to late 70's music but experienced it during their formative years electronic jazz today seems a homogenized, watered down version of the forceful experimentation and freedom embodied by Weather Report, Return to Forever, Mahavishnu and others. More than mere nostalgia, this book may be seen as a record of the players who created a disavowed genre.
List Price: $15.95 Used Price: $7.34 Customer Review: General Observations and really great vignettes
This book is a useful expose of how the music business scams and exploits all artists, not just Black artists. It is vitally important at a time when the Wynton Marsalis/Albert Murray school of Jazz history is trying to claim that Jazz is a "celebration" of American capitalism. Kofsky shows Jazz musicians have been and continue to be victims of capitalism! And as someone with a background in studying the history of country music and western swing, I can agree with another reviewer here that the same tales of exploitation can be told about white musicans as well. Kofsky is most effective in the individual stories he tells in the separate articles in this book where as has already been pointed out he "names names." Kofsky unmasks a lot of people who have manufactured images that they were friends of the jazz musician like Blue Note Records. One of his most interesting vignettes is his exposure of Vanderbuilt heir, self-praising liberal, and paternalist interferer with Jazz John Hammond. He exposes how Hammond's phoney story about Bessie Smith's death was part of the legend that helped net the already-wealthy Hammond scores of thousands of dollars, back when a dollar was a dollar, while Smith and her estate got zilch. Just the Bessie Smith story is worth the price of the book!
Customer Review: An important illumination of the way jazz has worked
As the pithy title suggests, African-American culture has been the primary source of jazz music -- and folks who hail from that culture have had prescious little influence over where the profits from the music have gone... and, even, over who has gotten work and who has been heard. This book illuminates that ugly side to the jazz world. The first three chapters get things rolling in fits and starts without adequate evidence to demonstrate that the explotation of black musicians has been markedly different from that of other musicians. If this were the bulk of the work it would be interesting reading but would not do much more than preach to the choir. The rest of the book builds on those chapters, deepens them, broadens them, and creates an inarguable portrait of exploitation that goes so far as to names names *and* provide well-researched explanations that refute, for example, the notion that race is what one should focus on when exploring the history of jazz. The "black" and "white" of the title may appear to refer to genetics or race -- but the text makes it clear that these are cultural categories and are inextricably bound up within the history of jazz, what it has sounded like, what it sounds like now, and how it has been made.
Perform timeless Flute works! Perfect for practice, rehearsal, auditions, contest solos, performances, and more! This Suite, when first introduced, was performed by Claude Bolling and Jean-Pierre Rampal. It swiftly became the most successful chamber music recording in history with over one-half million copies purchased. Comprised of seven movements, it cleverly exploits the differences between each instrument in a wonderfully effective way. We are delighted to make it available to you, the soloist. Claude Bolling has endorsed this recording.
Includes a high-quality printed music score and a compact disc containing a complete performance with soloist, in split-channel stereo (soloist on the right channel); then a second version in full stereo of the accompaniment, minus the soloist.
MMO CD 3342 Performed by Suzanne Kirton, flute and bass flute Accompaniment: Michael Junkroski, piano; Kevin Mauldin, bass; Tim Miller, drums
List Price: $29.98 Amazon Price: $29.98
The only professional-level Latin fake book on the market. Features classic and contemporary salsa tunes, great Brazilian songs, and Latin Jazz classics. Bb and Eb versions contain many horn parts that wouldn't fit in the C version. Like all Sher Music fake books, it features composer-approved transcriptions, easy-to-read calligraphy, and many extras (sample bass lines, chord voicings, drum appendix, etc.) not found in conventional fake books.
List Price: $40.00 Amazon Price: $25.20 Used Price: $24.65
The jazz guitar and its master players have had vast influence in a genre of uniquely provocative 20th century music. Written by some of the world's leading jazz authorities and featuring over 200 gorgeous photographs, this book spotlights remarkable musicians whose artistry have made the guitar fundamental to jazz. From 1930s electric pioneer Charlie Christian, to 1960s fusion visionary Larry Coryell and beyond, Masters of Jazz Guitar celebrates the achievements of players who changed the sound of jazz.
List Price: $29.95 Amazon Price: $18.87 Used Price: $6.17 Customer Review: A MUST have for any jazz guitarist or fan.
This is quite an excellent book and is surprisingly done in soft cover now. My copy is hard cover and is a prized possession. It's thoughtfully and knowledgably written, has excellent references, recommendations, photos and discussions. I love this book, and it would be a GREAT present for ANY jazz guitarist. If you love one, buy it for them and they'll never forget it! (-: -d
Jazz
Books and Jazz Educational Materials...
