Jazz Giants: A Visual Retrospective

Gathers portraits of jazz singers, musicians, and bands, including Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, and Charlie Parker

This handsome oversize volume is an assemblage of 359 relatively unknown photographs (52 in color), compiled by a Japanese designer, mainly from the work of 14 photographers but including nearly 40 of his own pictures as well. Jazz instrumentalists, singers, composers and some unidentified people are shown in formal and relaxed poses. The images, spanning more than 60 years and focusing on the mainstream period from 1940 to 1960, are in no particular order, but they capture what Hentoff refers to as "the spontaneity and individuality that are the essence of the music and those who make it." Some of the captions, near the margins, are hard to locate and decipher, but the pictures make up perhaps the best single compilation of jazz photos in print.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Similar to Frank Driggs and Harris Lewine's classic Black Beauty, White Heat: A Pictorial History of Classic Jazz, 1920-1950 ( LJ 2/15/83), this work extends the story into the 1980s, but with several differences. Abe omits his predecessors' extended captions in favor of brief identifications. His nonchronological layout emphasizes a visual, not a documentary, approach. And visually, Jazz Giants is a feast. Its 359 photographs, 48 in color, have been reproduced with wonderful clarity in a large format on coated paper. Although some are familiar, all the imagesthe work mostly of 14 contemporary photographers, including Abe, William Gottlieb, Jay Maisel, Bob Parent, and Charles Stewartare as vivacious as the music itself. William S. Brockman, Drew Univ. Lib., Madison, N.J.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.