The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz
by Tom Piazza

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Book Reviews of The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz

Book Review: I concur: it's the best
Summary: 5 Stars

His book is divided into halves. The first half covers the recordings of the great jazz ensembles from dixieland through the 1960s avant-garde. (There's no coverage of 1970s jazz-fusion, the 1980s young lions, or later, which are too recent to be "classic.") The second half covers the recordings of the most important jazz soloists on each instrument over the same period. An advantage of this structure is that it gives an overall sense of history in a way that books like the All-Music Guide, organized alphabetically by artist, can't.

Piazza does have an ideological leaning. He is part of the current Wynton Marsalis/Stanley Crouch camp, which feels that much recent jazz should not be called jazz at all, because it is not based on the blues. The free jazz of the 1960s and the jazz-fusion of the 1970s are without merit to this camp, and this is probably why Piazza does not reach into the 1970s. (He does say, of 1960s free jazz, that "people who like this sort of thing like the following albums.") It's a mark of Piazza's excellence that while I do not belong to this camp, I still think his guide is the best for the period it covers. Fans of free jazz and jazz-fusion will want other books to supplement Piazza's guide, but Piazza's book should be the first purchase for your jazz library.

Summary of The Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz

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