Whitney Balliett's new book contains many of the shorter pieces he has done for The New Yorker during the past ten years. (The pieces on the pianist Bill Evans and on the classic 1957 CBS television show, "The Sound of Jazz," have not been published before.) Balliett gives brilliant final summings-up of many of the irreplaceable musicians who died in the eighties, among them Count Basie, Earl Hines, Thelonious Monk, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and...