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| Authors: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
Publisher: Knopf
Category: Book
List Price: $65.00
Buy Used: $6.10
You Save: $58.90 (91%)
New (24) Used (80) Collectible (5) from $6.10
Avg. Customer Rating:  26 reviews
Sales Rank: 323384
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 512
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.6
Dimensions (in): 11 x 9.6 x 1.6
ISBN: 067944551X
Dewey Decimal Number: 781.6509
EAN: 9780679445517
ASIN: 067944551X
Publication Date: November 7, 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Total and complete jazz retrospective. January 19, 2001
5 out of 9 found this review helpful
It's a shame that jazz isn't as popular a music form as it was from it's beginning to the late 50's. There's something about the syncopation, improvisation, and vocal styling combination that I think is unsurpassed in today's techno, bubblegum pop inundated culture. This book is for both the true jazz aficionado and the jazz amateur. From its New Orleans start to today's foremost jazz artists, Wynton Marsalis and Cassandra Wilson, it's all there. As mentioned in a couple of reviews, the book does give a short shrift to contemporary jazz...I feel that the main reason for that is that jazz, unfortunately, doesn't enjoy near the popularity it did in its hey-day. What you will come away with, however, is a feel for the social, historical, and ethnic backgrounds that shaped jazz as an American art form. These lavish pictures, quotes, and biographies of the greats...Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Count Basie...you know who they are! will captivate you and make you feel as if you have always been a part of this musical phenomenon.
 The gospel according To Wynton January 18, 2001
18 out of 21 found this review helpful
Ken Burns is an engaging personality and easy on the ear as a public speaker. He is also a consumate salesman. I attended one of his "personal appearances" prior to the beginning of the TV series. He is a perky and positive elf when selling his point of view. In this book as in the series his view is that of Wynton Marsalis. Burns has admitted to not knowing much about Jazz before embarking on this project at Marsalis' suggestion. He takes Marsalis at his word on some highly debatable areas of Jazz. Overall the book is too long,unbalanced,wandering,inconsistent, opionated and surprisingly inaccurate. A perfect copy of the TV series. Most distressing are Gerald Early's racist comments regarding Big Band leader, Stan Kenton. Kenton is lambasted and singled out for not having enough Black musicians in his band, that his music didn't "swing" and basically attacked with the same tired litany of wrongdoings that chracterize these personal smears on a more global level. Kenton is totally ignored in the TV Series despite keeping Jazz on life support within college music departmentsts for many years. His innovative Jazz education programs and clinics deserve respect whether you care for his music or not. This type of digression is what hampers the book from its true goal of presenting all the history of Jazz.
 Can you spell "HYPE"? January 16, 2001
5 out of 24 found this review helpful
Recommended for those who know nothing about jazz.
A must have for any Jazz fan January 11, 2001
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Ken Burns has done another excellent job of bringing to light the unsung heroes of America's musical tradition. Jazz has not recieved much attention the last couple decades or so with the possible exception of Winston Marsalis and a couple others and while the main focus of the book deals with the roots and founders of Jazz (as well it should) it does skimp on present day Jazz. But the flavor of the book captures the smooth essence of what Jazz is and the pictures within the book make it worth the price alone. The book is well written and well illustrated and sure to please even those who are not familiar with Jazz. I highly recommend this book to any music fan, especially Jazz, but it is sure to please anyone and it makes a great conversation starter. Finally glad to see Jazz get some good mainstream publicity with this one.
Not perfect, but wonderful nonetheless January 3, 2001
32 out of 36 found this review helpful
I loved this book; it's well-balanced and has plenty of cultural perspective. There were lots of anecdotes and photos that I have never seen before (the pictures of blacks dancing at an outdoor big band show at Randalls Island in 1938 are almost worth the price of the book alone). The main criticism about this book (and the Ken Burns Jazz series in general) is that it gives short shrift to jazz since the 1960s. First off, as Ken Burns has said himself, he's an historian, so this project will obviously focus more on the origins and development of the music rather than present-day musicians. And as much as today's jazz musicians and fans like to tell you otherwise, there haven't been too many groundbreaking developments in the music since the free jazz movement of late Coltrane and early Ornette Coleman, or the funk/rock excursions by Miles Davis. Furthermore, and more importantly, jazz is simply no longer a big part of the present-day American landscape. Although jazz records rarely sold as well as more pop-oriented music (a jazz record that sold 20,000 copies was considered a big hit), the music was always written about in mainstream publications and talked about by just about anyone. Heck, guys like Miles, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Coltrane were occasionally featured on prime-time television. Today, the biggest (and perhaps only) jazz star is Wynton Marsalis, a bland neo-traditionalist who hasn't forged any new ground himself. For myself, I'd rather read about Satchmo, Bird, Billie Holiday and Monk.
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