The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-45 (The History of Jazz, Vol. 2)

who provides the reader with an in-depth examination of key musicians and styles of the Swing eras. In conjunction with the Smithsonian Museum in Washinton, he assembled the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz. In short, this book is the business! If you are a sax or trumpet player, these kinds of analyses are really helpful in helping you learn other people's style and solos as a way of developing your own special sound.

From Publishers Weekly
Twenty years after the publication of Early Jazz , French hornist, conductor, composer, educator and broadcaster Schuller brings forth this 900-page second volume in his monumental "History of Jazz." He is perhaps better equipped to analyze style and technique than anyone else who has written about this music. No previous critic has delineated in as great detail how the various styles developed and coalesced. Schuller devotes 40 pages to Louis Armstrong, 110 pages and 62 musical examples to Duke Ellington. He identifies the unique characteristics of each of the big bandsamong them, Count Basie, Benny Carter, Lionel Hampton, Coleman Hawkins, Fletcher and Horace Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Lunceford and Chick Webb; of arrangers Mel Powell, Don Redman and Eddie Sauter; of such soloists as Bunny Berigan, Charlie Christian, Roy Eldridge, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, Jack Teagarden, Ben Webster and Teddy Wilson; of the small groups of Nate Cole, John Kirby, Red Nichols and Rex Stewart; even of the "territory bands" of the Middle West. He also explicates the contributions of the big white bands of Charlie Barnet, Bob Crosby, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Harry James, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller and Claude Thornhill, who, by codifying and expanding upon the innovations of their black counterparts, played as crucial a role and brought jazz to millions who otherwise would never have heard any jazz at all. Schuller's evaluations are original, trenchant and even-handed: He discusses shortcomingsstylistic stultification, topheavy sound, exuberant vulgarity, for exampleas well as achievements. And he demonstrates the gradual atrophying of swing by repetition, formularization, the reduction of improvisation and loss of spontaneity. More brilliantly than anyone before him, Schuller has explained a glorious period in the history of American music. Illustrated.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal
Successor to Schuller's Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development ( LJ 7/68), the present volume opens with three long chapters devoted to Goodman, Ellington, and Armstrong, then focuses on individual black and white bands and influential soloists. In contrast to the proliferating reminiscences and social histories of the big band era, Schuller's concern is purely with the music. His analyses of recordings are thick with musical transcriptions and other graphic representations. Iconoclastic in his critical analysis of the Basie-Young recording of "Lester Leaps In," presumptuous in his reharmonization of Ellington's "Lightnin'," Schuller is never absent from the text. Yet his unparalleled survey is one of the most far-reaching musical studies of jazz; his astute criticism deepens our understanding not only of the period but of jazz itself.William S. Brockman, Drew Univ. Lib., Madison, N.J.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Gunther Schuller 'The Swing Era' (6/6 people found this helpful)

The review Amazon publish of this book is largely incorrect and therefore misleading. There is, for example, no coverage of either Peggy Lee or Frank Sinatra. And it's focus isn't on American social history - it's an in-depth musicological study of the music of the Swing Era itself. Enough said: it's very, very good.

The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-45 (The History of Jazz, Vol. 2)

Gunther Schuller

Reader Reviews:

Gunther Schuller is a legendary musicologist (0/0 people found this helpful)

Gunther Schuller 'The Swing Era' (6/6 people found this helpful)

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