The Rough Guide to Jazz

by Ian Carr

Written by musicians, The Rough Guide contains more than 1,600 biographies, from Ahmed Abdul-Malik (Brooklyn bass and oud player, 1927 to 1993, who played with Thelonious Monk, Herbie Mann, and Coltrane) to Axel Zwingenberger (German boogie- woogie pianist, born 1955, played with Joe Newman, Joe Turner, and Sippie Wallace, and has helped revitalize jazz piano). In addition to profiling a broad spectrum of jazz musicians (both famous and lesser-known composers and performers), it clarifies crucial jazz issues, gives historical perspective, and also serves as a buyer's guide, with discographies and pithy reviews of representative recordings. The Guide's alphabetical, encyclopedic organization makes it useful as a dependable jazz reference, and it's wonderfully browsable, too, illustrated with fine classic black-and-white photographs (of performers such as Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers) and beautifully written. A good starter text for jazz neophytes, the CD suggestions are a great help toward custom- building your jazz library. There's also a fine glossary that explains a cappella and acid jazz, Afro-Latin, airshot, and atonality. It's a safe source of education if you're ignorant about ballads, bebop, or B-flat. It's useful for learning about major jazz styles (Chicago, Dixieland, and dirty, Kansas City, ragtime, and scat), plus musical concepts such as harmony, improvisation, and tempo. Concise, accessible, and addictively readable, The Rough Guide is a great introduction to the world of jazz. --Stephanie Gold

Genres: Music, Reference, Nonfiction, Jazz

Paperback

First published November 1, 1995

About the author

Ian Carr was a Scottish jazz musician, composer, writer, and educator.

Apart from writing a regular column for the BBC Music Magazine, Carr wrote biographies of the jazz musicians Keith Jarrett and Miles Davis. He was also the co-author of the reference work The Rough Guide to Jazz which has passed through four editions from 1994 (originally Jazz, The Essential Companion, 1988). In addition he contributed sleeve notes for the albums of other musicians (eg "Indo-Jazz Fusions" by Joe Harriott/John Mayer).

In 1987, he was appointed associate professor at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he taught composition and performance, especially improvisation and was founder of the jazz workshop at the Interchange arts scheme, where pianist Julian Joseph, amongst others, was one of his students.

Reviews

[H (no longer expecting notifications) Balikov · Rating 4 out of 5]

This edition is a bit dated, but so are my primary tastes in jazz.

The thumbnail biographies are very useful.
The album recommendations, even more so.

The glossary has also been updated but is hit or miss. For instance there is a very complete bio of Django Reinhardt, but the style of music he was know for (jazz maouche, or gypsy swing, or sinti jazz) is not there to be explained.

Still I will keep this volume at the ready.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jazz The Topic, amongst it's enthusiasts, (as compared to Jazz The Music), is one tough jurisdiction to stake out. No one agrees on what it is. No one allows all candidates without asterisk, distinction or stipulation. Louis Armstrong peaked with the Hot Five / Hot Seven units and eventually sold out; Sarah Vaughan was great until the live Tivoli set, maybe not afterwards; Chet Baker was a great horn player, until he decided he was also a vocalist. The Ken Burns documentary called "Jazz" is excellent. Or it's completely wrong most of the time. Some of these assertions may be true, or true-ish, but not all. (Sarah had a kind of second bloom, in the late seventies on Pablo records, mature & vivid, no matter how you cut the deck).

For myself as a jazzfan, the music that matters has it's beginnings in the late 19th century and the viable history comes to a dead halt in, oh, say ...... precisely 1964. When Coltrane did A Love Supreme and afterwards changed his personnel to Mssrs Dolphy, Shepp, Pharoah Sanders et al, and when Miles changed his crew to the Herbie Hancock / Wayne Shorter unit, recording only a string of live dates. There are exceptions and exclusions, certainly, but fusion and further developments were a grand waste of time and good vinyl, in my slightly hardline view. Which is entirely true but only one opinion.

This being the case, it's hard to judge just what degree of inclusivity something like a Guide to Jazz should have, and when you pick up this one, it's a little mystifying at first. Nearly nine-hundred pages, and more than 2000 entries.... Surely Jazz isn't that elaborate, or maybe the completist instinct has gone haywire, something like the cinema credits that list caterers & personal drivers....

But looking closer you get the picture. If you grant that something like Jazz continued to be played in the 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond, and if you grant that new, central-euro and far-east participants among others shouldn't be ignored, you end up with this kind of gigantic encyclopedia, half of it focussed on marginal streams that take space away from the monumental pillars of the art. Let's have a look.

Originally I looked for a few favorites, and found that they were represented very compactly by tiny entries....

Dexter Gordon 0.5 pgs.
Lennie Tristano 0.5
Bill Evans 0.5
Tadd Dameron 0.5
Jimmy Giuffre 0.5

This didn't seem fair to the artists, but they weren't widely known, I guess. How about some of the big names ?

Louis Armstrong 2.0 pgs.
Charlie Parker 2.0
Dizzy Gillespie 2.5
Duke Ellington 2.25

Okay, that's somewhat better, but what about these guys, giants in anybody's estimation ...

Ben Webster 1.0 pgs
Sidney Bechet 1.25
John Coltrane 1.5
Lester Young 1.5
Johnny Hodges 1.0
Django Reinhardt 1.25
Thelonius Monk 0.75

This didn't seem right. I looked at the entry for Miles. Four pages here, but seriously. Let's look for a few lesser-knowns. They're all here, true enough, but represented by short, short blurbs.

Bix Beiderbecke 1.0 pgs
Ron Carter 1.0
Max Roach 1.0
Milt Jackson 1.25
Eddie Lang 0.5
George Wallington 0.25

All that would be okay if the buyer of this Guide wasn't also signing on for entries on Louis Prima, Astrud Gilberto, Ray Conniff, Kevin Eubanks and Harry Connick Jr. Something out of balance there.

In the end, not a bad generic encyclopedia of Jazz, really, that tries at least to err on the side of inclusion. And, there is a really great Glossary covering everything from 'circular breathing' to Free Jazz, a personal favorite of mine, referencing

"... the agressive anarchism of, eg., Peter Brötzmann and his associates which expressed itself in Violent, Non-Tonal, Collective Improvisation ... "

You don't need to be able to play two saxophones at once to enjoy many of the numerous entries in the Rough Guide To Jazz. But you need to be willing to ignore half the entries. Good quick reference, not deep or discerning enough.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Go on ask me. Ask me anything you need to know. Go on. I dare you. See if you can catch me out.
This is what this book seems to be saying to me. This is not a complete discography of jazz, nor is it a full biogrpahy of all artists, some of whom only just make an appearance, but it does cover a huge amount of music from the last 80+ years, with informed articles about anyone who has had an influence on jazz music and offers advice on what is probably their best, or at least most representative, material. Naturally, when it comes to artists that you maybe an expert in, you may disagree with some of those choices, such is the nature of an encyclopedia written to appeal to as many music lovers as possible. However, if there is anyone from the classic periods of jazz that I hear about, or a new artist who comes to my attention, I find this book to be of immense unfailing value.
Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in this genre.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm using this book as a study guide to great jazz albums and musicians I would probably never hear of though the mainstream media.

Still on the A's, and so far haven't been disappointed.

Really like the recommended albums/compositions per artist, it means you buy what's worth listening to, not what's on the display shelf!

[Samuel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhaustive, comprehensive, a little dated, but very useful for when you're listening to a jazz record and want to find more information about a certain player. Does not provide much context in terms of the different jazz movements - it's better to use this as a dictionary of notable jazzmen (and only a handful of women).

[Gilles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lu en anglais

Un répertoire de 2000 musiciens de Jazz et de 3000 disques.

Comme on peut voir par le nombre de musiciens et de disques, il s'agit d'une oeuvre de référence exhaustive sur les musiciens de Jazz et leurs oeuvres.

Par contre, on finit par se noyer dans tous ces noms, sans compter que l'ouvrage, selon moi, est biaisé pour les nombreux musiciens anglais dont le seul fait d'arme de plusieurs est d'avoir accompagné de grands noms américains lors de leurs passages en Europe.
Et il y a le biais fréquent, mais moins pire dans ce cas-ci, qui place la virtuosité et la jeunesse au dessus de la musicalité et l'expérience.

Enfin, il s'agit d'un livre dont il est difficile de déterminer le public. Les musiciens sont en ordre alphabétique, sans identifier les figures marquantes par sous-genre, les maîtres par instrument, etc.
Mon commentaire général est qu'il faut déjà connaître le Jazz pour apprécier ce livre, et encore. Cet essai ressemble beaucoup à un dictionnaire; on cherche un mot (musicien) pour en connaître plus sur lui, mais on n'est pas guidé pour en apprendre plus sur le Jazz.

J'ai beaucoup aimé comme oeuvre de référence sur les musiciens, mais je ne le conseillerais pas à ceux qui n'ont pas déjà une très bonne base sur le Jazz et ses musiciens.