Take your brain back thirty years

Here’s an updated review of a book I skimmed through a few years back and have since revisited and read cover-to-cover in the last month.

Although The 101 Best Jazz Albums is getting quite long in tooth, I still found it to be one of the most useful and interesting looks at jazz records, possibly second only to Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings. (Or maybe third after Leonard Feather’s Encyclopedia of jazz, although that, too, is getting quite dated and as an "encyclopedia", is not a "sit down and read" type of book.) Still, as a study of jazz and jazz recordings, 101 Best has a lot of value and impact, in part because it was written so long ago, before CD’s and way before MP3’s, iTunes, and the digital music era. So, when Mr. Lyons says something like, “This was a great recording that, sadly, (some record company) has decided to take out of its catalog”, the reader can discount such comments and although one maybe can’t assume it’s available somewhere, you can still fire up Google and maybe track down a vinyl, or even digital, copy. So, if you’re using this book as a buying guide, it becomes a little tricky, but if you’re using this just to learn about the history of jazz through records, this book is unparalleled.

The author breaks the book down chronologically, but as most historians and jazz fans will know, dividing up jazz chronologically leads to easy divisions of the kind of jazz being talked about. So, in Mr. Lyons’s telling you end up with (roughly) Pre-1920: Ragtime, Dixieland; 1920’s: swing; 1930’s: big band, dance; 1940’s: swing to be-bop; 1950’s: bop and post-bop; 1960’s: modal; 1970’s: fusion; later than that: free jazz. Again, roughly. In addition to the 101 albums cited in the book, Mr. Lyons makes mention of many other albums that were recorded, either as precursors to the ones mentioned in the text, or as follow ups. He is careful, also, to provide some reflection and analysis on the impact the recordings had on the artists’ careers and their overall outlook on jazz. There are black and white graphics of the albums that are called out, and there’s a section of black and white photos of some of the more famous musicians during their more “impactful” sessions. (Serious jazz fans will have seen most of these photos before.) Sometimes the author allows himself to get a little subjective, and there were a few (just a few) times where he made what I thought were rather personal statements and comments that really had no place in discussion of the recording or were just plain wrong. But everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, and this is Mr. Lyons’ book, so I’m willing to look past that and move on to the next discussion. (Plus it was fun to read what the author thought about, for example, Miles Davis’ hiatus and what sort of music Miles might break into in the twilight of his career – before he died, of course.)

I like this book for how it ties the history of jazz to the recordings that were made over the years, and I like how it weaves together the recordings, players, studios and producers to give an overall tapestry of the business of jazz recordings from its inception to the modern day (in the late 1970’s, mind you). It provides lots of ideas and suggestions for adding to one’s jazz music collection, and for fans of specific genres of jazz, it provides a lot of ideas for introduction of, study of, and listening to genres with which the reader might not be so familiar. For whatever reason you choose to read this book, it’s a clear and open window to some interesting jazz history, so even in its dotage, I give it five stars. (If this were my Amazon review...)