Books: Scott Yanow’s “The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide”

By Don Heckman

The jazz encyclopedist is at it again.  Scott Yanow, who must have reviewed every jazz recording released since 1975, when he turned 21, has published his eleventh jazz book. Not to mention the myriad of magazine and newspaper reviews, bios, press releases and more that he has written along the way.

Following in the pattern of  his previous books, The Great Jazz Guitarists:The Ultimate Guide is filled with detailed information.  But this tome is an even more remarkable accomplishment than such Yanow works as as his previous books on Swing, Bebop, Jazz Singers, Afro-Cuban Jazz, Trumpet Kings and Jazz on Film.

In it, Scott includes biographies, musical commentaries and comprehensive recording data about his subjects, managing to assemble an extraordinary amount of information about an equally extraordinary number of guitarists.

He opens with a thoughtful essay about the role of the guitar — and the banjo, as well — in the history of jazz.  Next up, he offers five far-reaching, all-inclusive guitar player segments:

- “The 342 Great Jazz Guitarists”

- “44 Other Historic Guitarists”

- “175 Other Jazz Guitarists on the Scene Today”

- “They Also Played Jazz Guitar” (including such multi-instrumentalists as Bobby Hackett and Bobby Sherword, and such genre-crossover players as Willie Nelson and Peter Frampton).

- “Jazz Guitarists On Film”

In total, it all adds up to just about everything one could ever want to know about the guitar in jazz — from its earliest role to the present, from the banjo to Pat Metheny’s Pikasso Guitar.  In short, like all of Scott Yanow’s previous books, The Great Jazz Guitarists: The Ultimate Guide is a vital reference source, one that belongs in the library of every serious jazz fan.

Book Review: “101 Essential Rock Records” by Jeff Gold

 101 Essential Rock Records: The Golden Age of Vinyl from the Beatles to the Sex Pistols

by Brian Arsenault

Thank you, Jeff Gold.

The vinyl LP needed someone to wax poetic about it and do a big book about it and you did. You notice I didn’t say coffee table book because that phrase has been used mostly pejoratively for a long time. So I’ll just say go get a copy of this big beautifully illustrated book and put it on a table where you can pick it up frequently and know what an art form once looked like.

There also are some neat essays done mostly by people you know — like Graham Nash, Iggy Pop, Suzanne Vega and some you may not.

David Bowie’s is one of the most intriguing wherein he observes that The Velvet Underground and Nico “. . . was so savagely indifferent to my feelings. It didn’t care if I liked it or not. It could give a fuck.” Exactly so and that’s what was scraping at my mind at a less articulated level for all these years since I first heard Warhol’s evil little band of demons.

Not all the writing is as good a Bowie’s and there’s a lot of “the first record I bought” stuff here but I think that’s what they all were asked to write about so no complaint. And the memories are just as dear to famous boomers as the rest.

So are the album covers.  One of the things I think Gold and Jac Holzman, both record executives, understate in their introductions is the importance of the jacket — its size, its pictures, its often wildly artistic presentation.  Compare that to something as small as a CD with its tiny lettering and postage stamp photos. With LPs, you could look at the band and read about them and there were the song titles and who produced it and all that good stuff.

Have you noticed that after shrinking to elf size, cell phones have suddenly grown larger to give you a screen on which you can actually see something. LP jackets gave you a lot to see.

What I think Gold and Holzman may overstate is the resurgence of vinyl. Thanks, Jac, for validating my long standing feeling that LP sound is “warmer and more sensual” but I’m not sure the vinyl record (what a quaint word, record) “is alive and doing well.”

Thanks again, Jeff, for the book but I’m not sure what it means that in 2011 vinyl sales were up more than 37 percent over the prior year.

I checked with the young, anyone under 40, and they aren’t abandoning iTunes and downloads. I think your optimism may just be based on boomers having enough disposable income to indulge their taste for vinyl.  It may not be all that different from collectors of first editions, old locks and keys or even model trains, God forbid.

The reissue, or even loving preservation or restoration of the classic Thunderbird, won’t stop the coming and ultimate dominance of the Prius and other such modernities.

Still, whatever its ultimate fate, those of us who love vinyl cannot help but dig (old vinyl word) its seeming current comeback and appreciate the presentation of so many of the great albums of that era. An era stretching from the coming of the Beatles in the mid 1960s to 1979 when cassettes — now there was a truly despicable technology — had their brief run as king of the music buying public.

Jeff — you invited readers to point out oversights in your listing of 101, so I will.

I understand the reasoning behind your presentation of the version of a record from its country of origin.  But really, Jeff, only the USA and the islands off the coast of Europe, England and Ireland, really matter.

To omit Meet the Beatles in favor of its British counterpart Please Please Me is to ignore the greatest musical force that ever hit America. Nothing was the same after its arrival, as you well know.

Another odd omission is Quicksilver Messenger Service’s Happy Trails, almost certainly rock’s first true concept album and a simply fantastic rock LP. “Who Do You Love?” and “Mona” taken to guitar operatic levels.

And how about the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty, an album of exceptional grace and beauty on which the band actually sings on key (most of the time) and creates a true piece of Americana music.

Yet much credit is earned for including the Butterfield Blues Band’s East-West, which gave many Beatles fans their first look into the complexity possible in rock and the blues base from which it came. I mean Bloomfield and Bishop were the other two B’s in that remarkable band.

Equal praise for the often overlooked Forever Changes by Love, an album of heartbreaking beauty and poetry within a psychedelic enigma.

Well, I could go on and on. This is a book as much about the music of a generation (or two or three) as it is about the vinyl form and there’s much pleasure to be gained.

If  Kramer(of Seinfeld) ’s concept of a coffee table book that’s an actual coffee table were to be realized, this would be my choice for enshrinement.

To read more posts, reviews and columns by Brian Arsenault click HERE.

An Appreciation: Ray Bradbury

By Michael Katz

The news that Ray Bradbury passed away this week hit close to home for several reasons. Bradbury, though born in Waukegan, had long ago qualified as an Angelino native. I had seen him several times at UCLA Live music events at Royce Hall, and by now most people know what a great supporter he was of the LA Library system and the arts in general. Self-educated – he was a Depression era kid who couldn’t afford college, Bradbury had little use for university writing programs. He immersed himself in literature of all types and wrote prolifically, keeping to a self-imposed regimen of 1,000 words a day even, by all accounts,  into his eighties. I thought it was ironic that, on his death, the obituary writers all flocked to literature professors to assess his impact. Better they should have gone to a library and asked some kid sitting at a carrel, reading a story from Something Wicked This Way Comes, or The Cat’s Pajamas.

Ray Bradbury

Those of us who have written in “genres” have a special admiration for someone who elevates the writing into something special, at least in the eyes of the literary establishment. Bradbury didn’t consider himself a science fiction writer, but let’s not quibble. How many of us were drawn into reading by futuristic stories, or tales of fantasy with a touch of the macabre? When I was a teenager it was Bradbury and Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, not to mention Jules Verne,  H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe. That literature, often in the form of short stories perfected by Bradbury and others, has stoked the imagination of countless kids, not just for literature but for science, art, math, the whole academic spectrum. In these days of recession, huge public debts and talk of austerity, the arts are always the first to face budget cuts, as if cutting off the dreams and inspirations of kids will somehow make us more productive. Bradbury knew how ridiculous that concept was.

It was also ironic that Bradbury, the personification of futuristic writing, had such little use for the Internet and insisted for the longest time that his work not be available as E-books. But really, who can blame him? His life had been shaped in libraries, the physical act of holding a book and reading it was central to his existence. And truthfully, even for those of us who somewhat reluctantly embrace the new technology, the comfort of holding a dog-eared book (even if it has been dog-eared by someone else) remains at the core of our experience.

Reading a story by Bradbury was always a pleasure, the release of a new collection, usually including some older gems, was always a literary event. He loomed above the artistic community here, like an extra sun on a fictional planet. Or maybe a full moon on Halloween, grinning at us as he typed another thousand words.

We’ll miss him.

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To read more iRoM  posts by Michael Katz, click HERE.

To visit Michael Katz’s personal blog, “Katz of the Day,” click HERE.

Books: The Complete Quincy Jones – My Journey & My Passions

By Don Heckman

Say this about Quincy Jones: When he does something, he does it with style and class. Who else could produce a book with a Preface by Maya Angelou, a Foreword by Clint Eastwood, and Introduction by Bono and an Afterword by Sidney Poitier.

But, in fact, calling this package a “book” doesn’t really begin to describe what’s going on behind its coffee table size cover.  The concept is simple enough: an overview of Q’s remarkable life, replete with photographs and memorabilia.  And the key word is “memorabilia.”  Because, in addition to its extraordinary collection of photos, and the narrative reaching from Q’s childhood in the ’30s to the present day, the book – superbly produced by Insight Editions — also includes exact replications of items from every stage of his journey.

Part 1, The Early Years, for example, inserts a small family photo album of images of family and friends; a Quincy Jones report card from 1951 (almost all A’s).

Part 2, The Music Business, features a reproduction of a few pages from Q’s Month at a Glance Calendar for 1955, with references to recordings and meetings with the likes of Ray Charles, Milt Gabler, Sonny Stitt, Lionel Hampton and dozens of others.  Equally fascinating, there is an account book, revealing the specifics of payments Q received for dates with Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Milt Jackson, Dinah Washington, etc. There’s also a Visual Discography with covers from his albums, and the reproduction of a sheet of manuscript paper on which composers such as David Raksin, John Williams, Henry Mancini, Benny Carter and others have autographed their brief sketches of a few bars from one of their significant works.

Part 3, Film & Television, offers a black and white contact sheet of photos from the making of “The Color Purple,” and a reproduction of a thank you note from Oprah Winfrey.

Part 4, Mentoring A Better World, features a smudged reproduction of the sheet music from “We Are The World,” signed and scribbled on by most of the high visibility performers on the classic date.

Part 5, Life and Legacy, concludes with another photo album, this time in full color, surveying Q’s complete history.

Would it be possible to view this luxe package as a grand gesture of ego?  Sure. But ultimately, isn’t that the case with all autobiographies?  Or personal journals.  Or, ahem, blogs?  The simple truth is that Quincy Jones has been one of the iconic figures of our time – present, contributing and influential in so many ways that it’s impossible not to be fascinated by his story.

By the way, for those in the Los Angeles area, I’ll be having a conversation with Q about “The Complete Quincy Jones: My Journey and Passions” tomorrow night – Thursday, Dec. 4 – at the Barnes & Noble on 3^rd St. in Santa Monica, at 7 p.m.