Jazz is

by Nat Hentoff

Book Overview

"A beautifully written, evocative tribute to an elusive art... Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Teddy Wilson, Gerry Mulligan, Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, and Gato Barbieri." - Performing Arts

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 039440095X
• ISBN13: 9780394400952
• Release Date: January 1976
• Publisher: Random House (NY)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.38 lbs.

Customer Reviews

classic

What is jazz? Good question. This book won't give you a definative answer. That is impossible. How can an art form that includes both Benny Goodman and Cecil Taylor be defined in absolutle terms? What Nat Hentoff's book will do is give you many perspectives on the music from the people who made it. This is not a beginners book, but will give the converted new ways to think of the music. Hentoff wrote the liner notes on many a jazz album in the 1960s. We now know him as a liberaterian political scribe, but jazz was his first love. He wrote about the form with consicion and beauty. Read the gatefold of most 60s Coltrane albums, and that is Nat. Great book. Jazz is? Nat can't tell you, but get this book. Listen to the music. Feel it. You'll know.