Amazon.com: jazz music in Amazon.com

Reviews and rates more than 20,000 sizzling recordings by over 1,700 musicians - from New Orleans jazz to bebop, fusion and beyond. "Music Maps" chart the evolution of jazz instruments, plus the influence of significant players, vocalists and sidemen.

Paperback: 1400 pages
Company: Backbeat Books (2002-11-01)
ISBN: 087930717X
List Price: $32.95
Amazon Price:
Used Price: $11.13

Jazz Violin

A comprehensive method for playing "hot fiddle," including accurate transcriptions of solos as played by Grappelli, Joe Venuti, Eddie South, Jean-Luc Ponty, and others. Plus revealing interviews and photos, many never-before published.

Author: Matt Glaser
Paperback: 144 pages
Company: Oak Publications (1981-12-31) (1981-12-31)
ISBN: 0825601940
List Price: $21.95
Amazon Price: $13.99
Used Price: $11.00

Jazz: A History of America's Music

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.

From the Hardcover edition.

Author: Geoffrey C. Ward, Ken Burns
Paperback: 512 pages
Company: Knopf (2002-10-08) (2002-10-08)
ISBN: 0679765395
List Price: $35.00
Amazon Price: $18.00
Used Price: $7.23

Teaching Music Through Performance in Jazz

Hardcover: 589 pages
Company: G I a Pubns (2007-06-30)
ISBN: 1579997139
List Price: $43.95
Amazon Price: $43.95

The Jazz Ear: Conversations over Music

An intimate exploration into the musical genius of fifteen living jazz legends, from the longtime New York Times jazz critic

Jazz is conducted almost wordlessly: John Coltrane rarely told his quartet what to do, and Miles Davis famously gave his group only the barest instructions before recording his masterpiece “Kind of Blue.” Musicians are often loath to discuss their craft for fear of destroying its improvisational essence, rendering jazz among the most ephemeral and least transparent of the performing arts.

In The Jazz Ear, the acclaimed music critic Ben Ratliff sits down with jazz greats to discuss recordings by the musicians who most influenced them. In the process, he skillfully coaxes out a profound understanding of the men and women themselves, the context of their work, and how jazz—from horn blare to drum riff—is created conceptually. Expanding on his popular interviews for The New York Times, Ratliff speaks with Sonny Rollins, Ornette Coleman, Branford Marsalis, Dianne Reeves, Wayne Shorter, Joshua Redman, and others about the subtle variations in generation, training, and attitude that define their music.

Playful and keenly insightful, The Jazz Ear is a revelatory exploration of a unique way of making and hearing music.

Author: Ben Ratliff
Hardcover: 256 pages
Company: Times Books (2008-11-11) (2008-11-11)
ISBN: 0805081461
List Price: $25.00
Amazon Price: $14.81
Used Price: $13.99

How To Play Chord Symbols In Jazz And Popular Music

The purpose of this book is to develop facility in reading alphabetical chord symbols at the keyboard, with the ultimate goals being the ability to play fakebook leadsheets and understand popular sheet music chord symbols.

Author: Lee Evans
Plastic Comb: 64 pages
Company: Hal Leonard Corporation (1991-02-01)
ISBN: 0793578965
List Price: $14.95
Amazon Price: $8.15
Used Price: $8.18

Harmonic Foundation for Jazz and Popular Music

This book teaches the student how to construct, embellish and notate chords that will enable him/her to create chord voicings and harmonize melodies applicable to jazz and commercial music.

Author: Jimmy Amadie
Plastic Comb: 168 pages
Company: Thornton Publishing (1981-01)
ISBN: 0961303506
List Price: $39.95
Amazon Price: $39.95
Used Price: $145.06

Just Jazz Real Book, C Edition (Real Books)

· 250 Songs

· Just Classic Jazz Standards

· Just The "Right" Changes

· Suggested Chord Substitutions

· Lyrics Included

· Extensively Cross-Referenced

· Discography

Author: Warner Bros.
Plastic Comb: 400 pages
Company: Alfred Publishing Company (2001-07-01)
ISBN: 0757901689
List Price: $39.95
Amazon Price: $25.05
Used Price: $11.55

The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Ninth Edition (Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings)

The essential guide to recorded jazz, now in its ninth edition

Firmly established as the world’s leading guide to jazz, this celebrated reference book is a mine of fascinating information and insightful—often wittily trenchant—criticism. For this completely revised edition, Richard Cook and Brian Morton have reassessed each artist’s entry and updated the text to incorporate thousands of additional CDs and artists. The result is an endlessly browsable companion for jazz aficionados and novices alike.

Author: Richard Cook, Brian Morton
Paperback: 1600 pages
Company: Penguin (Non-Classics) (2008-12-02) (2008-12-02)
ISBN: 0141034017
List Price: $35.00
Amazon Price: $23.10

Jazzology: The Encyclopedia of Jazz Theory for All Musicians

A one-of-a-kind book encompassing a wide scope of jazz topics, for beginners and pros of any instrument. A three-pronged approach was envisioned with the creation of this comprehensive resource: as an encyclopedia for ready reference, as a thorough methodology for the student, and as a workbook for the classroom, complete with ample exercises and conceptual discussion. Includes the basics of intervals, jazz harmony, scales and modes, ii-V-I cadences. For harmony, it covers: harmonic analysis, piano voicings and voice leading; modulations and modal interchange, and reharmonization. For performance, it takes players through: jazz piano comping, jazz tune forms, arranging techniques, improvisation, traditional jazz fundamentals, practice techniques, and much more! Customer reviews on amazon.com for Jazzology average a glowing 5 stars! Here is a typical reader comment: "The book's approach is so intuitive, it almost leads you by the hand into the world of jazz. Certainly jazz is freedom of expression, but you have to know what you're doing and this book is the tool for that ... (it) should be standard in every high school with a jazz program and every college lab band."

Author: Robert Rawlins, Nor Eddine Bahha
Paperback: 266 pages
Company: Hal Leonard (2005-07-01)
ISBN: 0634086782
List Price: $17.95
Amazon Price: $11.91
Used Price: $14.01