Shaun de Waal
THE BIOGRAPHICAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JAZZ by Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler (Oxford)
VISIONS OF JAZZ: THE FIRST CENTURY by Gary Giddins (Oxford)
THE HISTORY OF JAZZ by Ted Gioia (Oxford)
W ith the North Sea Jazz Festival about to swing on to the shores of our southern seas, this would seem a good week in which to take a look at three new jazz books from Oxford University Press – that is, Oxford’s American division, which has a market in universities where jazz is studied. As it should be in South Africa, one might argue.
The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz is co-written by Leonard Feather, the doyen of jazz criticism. It is a hugely comprehensive tome, squashing vast amounts of information about anyone you can think of into some 700 pages. It is short on evaluation, but big on facts:it gives dates, who played with whom, and the labels on which the relevant recordings appear. The squashing is accomplished by liberal use of vowel- shunning abbreviations, which can make one feel at times as though one is experiencing some strange new form of dyslexia.
Let’s look up one of the North Sea Jazz Festival guests -Herbie Hancock, say. “HANCOCK, HERBIE (HERBERT JEFFREY),”it says, “pno, kybds, comp, lead; b Chicago, IL, 4/12/40. First pno lessons at age 7; perf Mozart pno concerto w Chi Symph at age 11 …”and so on. What, no short form for “concerto”?There’s a list of what the abbreviations stand for, but regular use of the encylopedia should soon make them familiar to you. Rather like reading AClockwork Orange.
Ted Gioia’s History of Jazz is a synchronic overview that goes all the way from the “prehistory” of the form to “fragmentation” and “freedom and beyond”. It makes a very readable critical narrative that is almost as mind-boggling as the encyclopedia in its breadth. Alifetime’s listening, it would seem, has gone into the book.
Here he is on Hancock post-Headhunters, his fusion hit of 1973:”This release indicated a bifurcated career for Hancock, with his efforts now divided between mainstream jazz, often of the highest quality, and overtly commercial projects with little jazz substance.” Sounds apt; one wonders which prong of Hancock will be on display here.
Gary Giddins’s Visions of Jazz is the most selective and critical of these three tomes; another lifetime’s listening must underlie his careful, detailed appraisals of key jazz figures. He looks at the work of individuals in separate chapters, revisiting them if they span eras. Duke Ellington, for instance, gets three entries – “The Poker Game”; “The Enlightenment”; and “At the Pulpit”.
Giddins is concerned to sum up the precise nature of each figure’s unique contribution to the form, and he makes a compelling guide. He writes beautifully, with a light wit and considerable verve -describing music requires a vast adjectival range and a way with a nuance.
Giddins has no chapter on Hancock, but he does have a telling parenthesis in a section on someone else:”If Hancock had gone to the great beyond in 1968, he would now be solemnly regarded as a jazz god.”