The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to the 21st Century

For fifty years The Jazz Book has been the most encyclopedic interpretive history of jazz available in one volume.

 

In this new seventh edition, each chapter has been completely revised and expanded to incorporate the dominant styles and musicians since the book’s last publication in 1992, as well as the fruits of current research about earlier periods in the history of jazz. In addition, new chapters have been added on John Zorn, jazz in the 1990s and beyond, samplers, the tuba, the harmonica, non-Western instruments, postmodernist and repertory big bands, how the avant-garde has explored tradition, and many other subjects.

 

With a widespread resurgence of interest in jazz, The Jazz Book will continue well into the 21st century to fill the need for information about an art form widely regarded as America’s greatest contribution to the world’s musical culture.

Joachim-Ernst Berendt (1922–2000) was an internationally known authority on jazz and the author of more than 20 books. His Jazz Book was first published in 1952 and has been translated into many languages. Günther Huesmann studied musicology, film and television, and pedagogy; a festival organizer and writer for jazz radio shows, he was responsible for the previous revision of The Jazz Book.