The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945

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The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945

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This second volume of Gunther Schuller's comprehensive history of jazz covers the period from the 1930s to the late 1940s, decades which saw the transition from big band swing to the virtuoso bop style. The first half of the book concentrates on the band leaders, singers, and composers who dominated the popular music of their day: the jazz aristocracy of Ellington, Basie, and Goodman, as well as major soloists such as Billie Holliday, Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young. The second half focuses on the origins and early development of bop, the major jazz form of the 1940s, and its two great exponents, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

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a suitably Promethean study, densely packed with musical examples and expansively judgmental on the pros and cons of a generation of players ... his insistence on getting to the core of the music, on identifying the original virtues of the jazz musician's art, is something to be prized, especially in this depth

the second volume of his projected trilogy, is an even more impressive achievement - the long wait has been worthwhile

this is not a book to be digested at one sitting; instead readers will prefer to come back again and again to absorb the various monographs on soloists, big bands and small groups. There is more than enough to keep us busy until the arrival of Volume Three

a magisterial achievement, equally engrossing for musicologists, enthusiasts or the just plain curious ... Throughout, Schuller ... speaks with serene authority

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