Gary Giddins - Visions of Jazz: The First Century

Gary Giddins' idiosyncratic series of essays on key figures in 20th-century jazz doesn't pretend to be an all-inclusive guide to the key players in the first century of the music's history; his introduction makes plain that, aside from obvious inclusions like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, he regards generally unsung candidates like Bert Williams, who wrote and performed in the first all-black musical on Broadway, and pioneering early jazz vocalist Ethel Waters, among a host of others, as equally worthy of attention, as much for their " inventiveness, irreverence, and canny involvement with other musics and life as we live it " as for their musical contributions. Consequently, VISIONS OF JAZZ contains a plethora of lively and engaged jazz writing, with chapters on the little-known Cuban composer and arranger Chico O'Farrill, who worked with Benny Goodman, Machito, and Count Basie, and the blind saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk, who played three horns simultaneously and sampled liberally from idioms rangin