The Penguin Guide To Jazz On Cd (Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD)

Rating:
Summary: The best of its kind: witty, erudite, magnificent
Review: Many US readers complain that Cook & Morton are "biased" or that the book isn't helpful to them because there's a lot of material available in the US that isn't in Europe. The fact that this is the most well-written, coherent, tightly argued and wide-ranging reference book covering jazz CDs currently available in *any* world market seems to escape some of these readers. Of course it must be frustrating; but nothing is getting in the way of a scholar or two doing the same thing in the US... except perhaps for the existence and sheer authority of this very work. The AMG volume is the only contender, but its breadth is not quite compensated by the often dire quality of the commentary it contains. The accusation of "bias" is an interesting one - it presupposes the possibility of something called "objectivity". Of course the Penguin guide is highly opinionated; it's also full of wit, irony, wisdom and all the qualities that make great writing and criticism a joy to read. Criticism is after all nothing but cleverly expressed opinion. No other book helps you to make sense of the present and future of your jazz collection more ably and persuasively than this one.

Rating:
Summary: Intentional Oversights?
Review: Prior to purchasing this book, I went on a Jazz CD buying spree
(SunRa- Futuristic Sounds Of, Nothing Is; Pharoah Sanders- Tauhid; Art Ensemble Of Chicago- Americans Swinging in Paris; Dollar Brand- Portrait of a South African Village) I was excited to see the reviewers take on these great discs, and to get some suggestions for future purchases. To my surprise, NONE of these Cds were reviewed or even mentioned in this book! What is the reason for this? ...this book only covers recordings that are in print at the time of publication. Obviously, this is more of an annoyance than a service. Certain albums go in and out of print all the time, and even then one can easily purchase used CDs on the web, so why not just cover all bases, and give a complete view of each artists' oeuvre?

Rating:
Summary: It could be better...
Review: This the best guide to jazz available. The authors are intelligent, witty and biased - just the way they should be. I have all editions except the first one, so I obviously like their book. Nevertheless, I want to focus on the worst aspects of this remarkable piece of jazz scholarship.

1) Cook & Morton use a star-system to evaluate the CDs. Unfortunately, the ratings are inflationary. A mainstream record usually gets at least three (i.e. good) stars. This makes it useless to compare recordings by different artists; in other words, the ratings can be used only when one wants to know what might be the best recordings by a particular artist. Are jazz records really always good or very good? Of course not. It is simply absurd to read e.g. pages devoted to Chet Baker in the fifth edition: 76 records and only 8 of them is rated worse than 3 stars! Perhaps the authors, after all, have not had enough time to listen this vast amount of music?

2) Cook & Morton are very fond of both avantgarde jazz (especially european) and classic jazz of the 1920s. No problem with that. But they really should include more jazz fusion. I don't mean easy-listening instrumental pop, but serious jazz, like Allan Holdsworth. It seems to me that if an artist has flirted with rock music he will not be included even if he starts to make mainstream jazz. For instance, why isn't Bill Bruford included? The Earthworks records, not to mention the album with Eddie Gomez and Ralph Towner, have not found favour with Cook & Morton - probably because "Bill is not a jazz drummer". Is this just a coincidence or spiteful discrimination, I cannot tell.

3) The latest edition (5th) has too many errors. Of course there are always minor errors in a book this size. I give two examples. Coltrane's Ballads album hasn't got "I fall in love too easily" in it. Is the Navarro-Parker collaboration (Bird and Fats - Live at Birdland) worth 3 (cf. Navarro's entry) or 4 stars (cf. Parker's entry) and what actually is the quality of Navarro's playing on this record? More serious trouble has risen when the aurhors have edited their text more than once in order to update the entries. Sometimes they have failed and the text has thus become incoherent.

But never mind my complaints. This is a great book!