The Jazz Scene - Softcover

Hobsbawm, Eric

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571320104 ISBN 13: 9780571320103

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2014

Synopsis

From 1955-65 the historian Eric Hobsbawm took the pseudonym 'Francis Newton' and wrote a monthly column for the New Statesman on jazz - music he had loved ever since discovering it as a boy in 1933 ('the year Adolf Hitler took power in Germany'). Hobsbawm's column led to his writing a critical history, The Jazz Scene (1959). This enhanced edition from 1993 adds later writings by Hobsbawm in which he meditates further 'on why jazz is not only a marvellous noise but a central concern for anyone concerned with twentieth-century society and the twentieth-century arts.'

'All the greats are covered in passing (Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday), while further space is given to Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk, Mahalia Jackson, and Sidney Bechet ... Perhaps Hobsbawm's tastiest comments are about the business side and work ethics, where his historian's eye strips the jazz scene down to its commercial spine.' Kirkus Reviews

About this title

From Library Journal

Written by noted historian Hobsbawm early in his career, this book was originally published in Britain in 1959. At the time it was an excellent complement to Marshall Stearn's standard, The Story of Jazz (1957), providing the first social history of jazz from a British perspective. A brief history of jazz through the 1950s, it dealt with the music business, included a still-interesting section on jazz fans, and ended with an essay about jazz as protest. This new edition, the first published in the United States, contains 23 brief essays Hobsbawm wrote during the late Fifties, early Sixties, and mid-Eighties. It also features two provocative introductions to jazz written during the last 30 years. Although most of the text is somewhat outdated, the book can be recommended for large jazz history collections because of its useful perspective.
- David Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571320104
• ISBN 13: 9780571320103
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 462