SwingDJs

Just wondering if anyone uses/has used any of the variety of books on swing/jazz music as hunting grounds for new and interesting music and

1. If you did which ones.

2. If you haven't why not

Di

I got Jazz Anecdotes by Bill Crow...

first off it's just a hilarious book and I love it. It's made me aware of a couple of other artists too, I wouldn't say though that I've used it to be aware of different artists out there.

What I've used to discover new artists is checking out play lists, talking to different DJs and such, that way I've been able to find out about different music I may not have been aware of at first. I have, now, a list of 53 artists that I would like to add and/or continue to add to my collection. And that list just keeps on growing every day.

Harrison

The World of Swing, Stanley Dance. Great, great book.

Any opinions on "Swing: Third Ear - The Essential Listening Companion" by Scott Yanow?

I skimmed one book (don't remember which one) of CD reviews, and I realized that it was written by a listener, for listeners. The observations sounded astute, but they had almost nothing to do with dancing. It may still be a useful book, but I'd rather start from a dancer's perspective.

An interesting side question:
Is the set of good dancing music a subset of the good listening music?
Or to put the question another way do the characteristics that make jazz music good to listen to act as a necessary prerequisite to being good dance music? (my inital answer would be yes).
If this is the case then you could use one of these "listening guides" as a way of weeding out bad jazz and looking for material which, as well as being good listening jazz, is also great dancing jazz.

russell wrote:Any opinions on "Swing: Third Ear - The Essential Listening Companion" by Scott Yanow?

Yes! It's incredibly good, both for listening and for dancing. Yanow evaluates the CDs (1500 of them) on a scale of 1 to 10 based on not whether it's good JAZZ necessarily -- although that, of course, helps -- but whether it SWINGS. Therefore Bing Crosby, George Gee, late Stephane Grapelli -- the kind of artists who would be excluded from a jazz book for not moving along towards more "advanced" music -- are all in Yanow's SWING with high ratings. Also highly regarded are the critic-approved jazz artists like Berigan, Ellington, early Armstrong, etc. Yanow definitely has a dancer's ear for the music. Also, each artist is listed with "LPs to look for" and "Movie appearances," very cool.

The book is divided into
BIG BANDLEADERS -- the biggest section, and probably the most valuable. includes lots of bands i've never heard
SIDEMEN (swing era) -- listed by instrument, and alphabetically. some people just have bios and some people have CDs listed also
SWING AFTER 1943 -- includes lots of our groovier and bluesier friends, as well as people who just wanted to play the stuff after the swing era ended, like john pizzarelli. this is also a very big section
RETRO SWING -- in the back is an interview and a smaller section on the current swing bands

the guy knows his shit.

PITFALL OF THIS BOOK: it was published in 1999. therefore lots of current reissue projects are missing, most noticeably the works of the budget-priced, perfectly-done PROPER RECORDS and JSP labels. For a lot of artists in the SWING book, six or eight recordings are listed as recommended but you could probably just do with the proper box.

Another caveat is that the TOC is really lousy (i wrote one in mine), and there's no cross referencing. Oh well.

some of the big bandleaders listed are: louis armstrong, charlie barnet, count basie (part 1; the other part is in "swing after 43"), bunny berigan, will bradley, randy brooks, les brown, willie bryant, blanche calloway, cab calloway, benny carter, casa loma orch, bob chester, dorsey bros orch, jimmy dorsey, tommy dorsey, duke ellington, benny goodman, lionel hampton, erskine hawkins...

from the sidemen section... some of the trumpeters listed: heny red allen, cat anderson, shorty baker, dud bascombe, billy butterfield, buck clayton, bill coleman, harry sweets edison, roy eldridge, ziggy elman, pee wee erwini, nat gonella, bobby hackett, freddie jenkins, taft jordan, al killian, yank lawson...

some of the post 1943 artists: howard alden, harry allen, ernie andrews, ray anthony, harold ashby, george barnes, dan barrett, count basie (II), louis belleson, tex benecke, bill berry, ruby braff, charles brown, milt buckner, john bunch, sam butera, lee castle, matt catingub...

the retro swing section interviews lavay smith and peggy cone, and reviews: blue plate special, the blue saracens, blues jumpers, shelly burns and avalon swing, cherry poppin' daddies (they get a hilariously negative review), chevalier brothers, peggy cone, cresent city maulers, chris daniels, the delegates, 8 1/2 souveniers, eric ekstrand, bill elliot...

also: there are a lot of lesser-known european artists. did you know Oscar Aleman was playing badass gypsy jazz guitar in france a year before Django?

yeah, so, i like this book.

-yakov.

russell wrote:An interesting side question:
Is the set of good dancing music a subset of the good listening music?
Or to put the question another way do the characteristics that make jazz music good to listen to act as a necessary prerequisite to being good dance music? (my inital answer would be yes).
If this is the case then you could use one of these "listening guides" as a way of weeding out bad jazz and looking for material which, as well as being good listening jazz, is also great dancing jazz.

There is no general answer to these questions other than "sometimes."

These considerations present things to keep in mind, but there really is no formulaic way of translating jazz ratings from a listener's/academic standpoint into a dancer's perspective. Some of the standards we love for dancing are also highly rated academically, whereas other recordings "we" might love (or at least some of us love) for dancing are considered redundant or poor by the academic/listening critics. The difference is that the tightness of the band and how relaxed and "swinging" the rhythm is is only a minor factor in their opinions, whereas it is a major factor (albeit not the only factor) for "us." Another difference is that many jazz critics consider disrupting the rhythm or playing over the rhythm to be an asset, not a distraction

That said, non-dancing jazz critics still know the music deeply and have something for even the most dance-oriented jazz fan out there.

The local Borders currently has Jazz by Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward on sale. The regular price is $65.00, and I picked it up today (brand, spankin' new) for $9.99! Some of it is the same as the film, right down to the narration, but there are plenty of stories that I don't remember from the film, and it's a huge amount of fun to be able to study the pictures.

I'm currently reading Stomping the Blues by Albert Murray, at Rayned's recommendation. It's awesome. Not really a book of suggested listening but it throws out artists and songs left and right.

Does anyone have any experience with Jazz Dance: The Story of American Vernacular Dance? Looks interesting.

That book's got just a few pages on lindy hop, although it has interesting bits. I heard that Leon and Al were telling big fibs to Stearns and he was just eating it up, though.

BEBOP by Scott Yanow is much like SWING by the same author but it has some later musicians, including many that are relevant to us -- Oscar Peterson, Clark Terry, LHR were a few i saw in the few seconds that i was flipping through it

Just found
The Essential Jazz Records: Ragtime to Swing Vol 1
by Max Harrison, Charles Fox, Eric Thacker
in a second store. Makes interesting reading. It is based off LPs so some of the stuff they refer to hasn't made it to CD.
It lists 250 records representative of the best of each type/era.
I intend to take it next time I go LP hunting

I was really disappointed by the Ken Burns CD I got. He uses a lot of original recordings with all the crackles and pops left in. A lot of times I already had a fixed up version of the song. It's great that it sounds all authentic and old for the film, but really, you think those musicians or sound engineers would prefer their music was full of cracks and pops? NO
take 'em out!