Description
Book Synopsis
Taking up where Early Jazz (OPB, #6.95) leaves off, this second volume of Gunther Schuller''s history of jazz considers the swing era - the age of dance bands and radio shows. Tracing the origins of swing and its effects on American musical and social life, he assesses the distinctive sounds of great bandleaders like Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Woody Herman, instrumentalists such as Art Tatum, Cab Calloway, and Pee Wee Russell, and such vocalists as Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and Peggy Lee.
Trade Review
`Hardly anyone else can write on jazz with such authority...indispensable to serious jazz lovers...A monumental contribution to jazz literature.' New York Review of Books
`a magisterial achievement...a masterpiece and a source of pure joy' Washington Post Book World
`A touchstone of jazz literature...The most thorough and authoritative study ever undertaken on the period.' Philadelphia Inquirer
'Reading it is like listening to one of those hugely learned men with the gift of the gab, like Bronowski or A.J.P. Taylor, talking about his favourite subject. Every observation is backed by evidence, every generalisation judiciously qualified, every side-issue detailed in a footnote, but it is all done without a trace of pomposity. The real enjoyment in reading The Swing Era, as in reading Johnson's Lives of the Poets, comes from being taught more about something you love by an erudite, courteous and generous mind.' Dave Gelly, Jazz, Issue 12
