On Jazz

Shipton, AlynAlyn Shipton is a writer, publisher, broadcaster and jazz double bassist. He has broadcast about jazz since 1989, and currently hosts BBC Radio 3's long-running and much loved programme Jazz Record Requests. His biographies of Dizzy Gillespie (1999) and singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson (2013) both won Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) Awards for Excellence; and Nilsson also gained an American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Foundation Deems Taylor/Virgil Thompson Award. His New History of Jazz (2001) was the Jazz Journalists' Association (JJA) book of the year and named 'the most outstanding single-volume history of jazz' by the Jazz Institute of Chicago. His most recent work, The Art of Jazz: A Visual History (2020), was described as 'indispensible' by Publishers Weekly. He leads the Buck Clayton Legacy Band, and is a research fellow of the Royal Academy of Music in London.

Few musical genres inspire the passionate devotion of jazz. Its mystique goes far beyond the melodies and rhythms, with its key players and singers discussed by aficionados with a respect that borders on reverence. Some books on jazz offer little more than theory or dry facts, thereby relinquishing the 'essence' of the music. This book is different. One of the most influential and internationally known writers on the subject describes, through vivid personal contacts, reminiscences and zesty anecdotes, his life in jazz as a player, broadcaster and observer. Alyn Shipton recalls friendships with legendary musicians, while revealing fresh discoveries about such luminaries as Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Abbey Lincoln and Geri Allen. On Jazz powerfully evokes the atmosphere of clubs and dancehalls, and takes us behind the scenes and up onto the stage, so that this electrifying world is unforgettably spotlighted as never before.

A vivid and fascinating up-close encounter with jazz, brim-full of anecdote and personal reminiscence, by an internationally known broadcaster and writer.

1. Getting started; 2. New Orleans 1976; 3. Before Katrina; 4. Women of new Orleans; 5. Finding fats; 6. Swing era legends; 7. Louis Armstrong; 8. Count Basie; 9. Duke Ellington; 10. Dizzy and bird; 11. The modern jazz quartet; 12. The 'Swing Drummer'; 13. Jackie McLean and Sonny Rollins; 14. Oscar Peterson and his trios; 15. The dawn of fusion; 16. A taste of freedom; 17. Looking back and looking forward; Bibliography; Index.