Stride!

Rating:
Summary: Could Be Better
Review: Harlem stride piano is one of the most joyous of all jazz styles, and there has long been a need for a good book on the subject.

The book offers a number of historical and contextualising chapters before a series of profiles of the major players. It is the profiles that are the real problem. Firstly, Earl Hines, great as he was, was not a stride player. Second, the profiles offer very little new information or analysis. Many of them are largely given over to identifying out-of-print LPs by the artists concerned, information that would be better presented in a table. Some of the profiles make use of interesting original interview material, and some, such as the profiles of Luckey Roberts and the great Donald Lambert, usefully add to the body of knowledge about the player. Others are little more than digests of well known information.

Th book contains a number of transcriptions, including solos or choruses by James P. Johnson, Donald Lambert, Hank Duncan and Fats Waller.

This book is rather a missed opportunity. It is well worth reading for those interested in the area, but it is by no means a serious academic study of the stride style and its practitioners.This book is a useful addition to the literature, but we still await a definitive work.