Bill Evans: Time Remembered

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Time Remembered is an original composition by pianist Bill Evans, but in the context of the title of this feature it has an old and new connotation to it.

First the “old” which has three primary meanings for me: [1] I remember spending many nights listening to pianist Bill Evans while he was in residence at Shelly Manne Hole in Hollywood, CA for most of May, 1963; [2] I remember listening to my drum teacher Larry Bunker work his first night as a member of Bill’s trio along with bassist Chuck Israels during Evans’ stint at Shelly’s; [3] I remember Bill’s original Time Remember being performed for the first time while this version of Bill’s trio played the May, 1963 engagement.

In Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings [Yale University Press] Peter Pettinger’s seminal biography of Bill, he describes the context for the evolution of Bill’s original Time Remembered this way:

“During the late 1940’s, when pianist Bill Evans was a student in Louisiana, many young English jazz musicians worked the ocean liners to and from New York, drawn like moths to the beacon of bebop. One such musician was a tenor saxophonist named Ronnie Scott, who, bowled over by the proliferation of New York clubs, determined to start up one of his own in London. It took a while, but in 1959 Ronnie Scott's, destined to become one of the great jazz clubs of the world, began life humbly in a Soho basement. During the first year, West Coast drummer Shelly Manne dropped in, and Scott maintained that Manne opened his own club in Hollywood soon after as a direct response to the atmosphere at "Ronnie's."

That club was Shelly's Manne Hole, and Bill Evans spent all of May 1963 there, beginning in a duo with his old bass-playing friend Red Mitchell. Chuck Israels was on tour with "The Midgets of Jazz"  — [drummer] Ben Riley's name for the Paul Winter group —  but was able to wind it up in Denver and replace Mitchell for the last two weeks at the Manne Hole. Shelly Manne himself sat in from time to time — after all, it was his club. Israels said:

‘After a few nights I got to talking with many of the Hollywood musicians who were corning in to hear us and I paid particular attention to the pianist, Clare Fischer, who kept insisting that the dapper, elegantly bearded man, whom I had seen listening intently to Bill's piano playing, was the most sensitive possible drummer for us to have and that I should persuade Bill to invite him to sit in. To say that that first experience of playing with Larry Bunker was a revelation would only be half the story.... I smiled and Bill grinned broadly and dug in to play all the more and Larry was hired on the spot to finish out the job with us. The following week, Wally Heider came in to record the group for Riverside.’

Thus was fulfilled the one remaining project on the Evans-Riverside books. Both the pianist and his producer of almost seven years, Orrin Keepnews, wanted their final collaboration to be a live recording with the working trio, a logical follow-up to the 1961 Village Vanguard dates with LaFaro and Motian. But when the time came, Keepnews was disbanding his ailing company in New York and was unable to get out to Hollywood. The sessions, issued as Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne Hole and Time Remembered, were supervised by Los Angeles-based Richard Bock.

We have Israels's word for it that the events of those two evenings are accurately represented on the records. ‘You can hear Larry's hands through the wires on the brushes," he said, "feel the exact weight of his foot on the Bass drum and identify the timbre of each cymbal and tom-tom. The sound of the bass, too, is faithfully preserved. That was just before jazz bassists almost universally switched over to the metal strings most symphony players had used for years.’

The empathy between Israels and Evans was evident in these fine performances. Together with Larry Bunker they reveled in creative interplay and were obviously at home in the congenial surroundings of this intimate club, to date the pianist's second-favorite to the Village Vanguard. Israels was more relaxed than on the studio sessions of a year ago, swinging notably on his own Blues in F, and Bunker was clearly relishing a break from his habitual studio round, contributing a continuous web of sympathy and propulsion. There was the feeling that the trio was among friends, unpressurized to strive against any odds — for the odds were, indeed, stacked in their favor. Evans had at his disposal a baby grand, which, though thin and wiry on top, was capable in his hands of a pellucid middle-range tone.

Evans had brought new material, and his colleagues were thrown in at the deep end and left to surface as best they might, always to be the pianist's way of working. Another surprise was his harmonic rethinking of Lover Man, the middle eight of which was reconstructed outright. The pianist's motivation was sound, the usual chords being vapid at ballad tempo. He felt a need for a more densely changing (and deeper) key exploration by way of central contrast. His solution satisfied in a formal sense, as well as providing a firmer, yet more variegated foundation for fantasy.

Time Remembered, the only Evans original issued from these evenings, received its first trio exposition on disc. The piece's harmonic structure is notable for studiously avoiding the dominant seventh. As a result, a modal feeling permeates the timeless progression of its predominantly minor sevenths. In this performance the floating chords at the end of the piano solo spilled gently and seamlessly over the beginning of the bass solo, the overlapping another feature of the chamber approach, the desire to get away from a "blowing list." That three-way discourse, highly developed in the First Trio, was now operating more naturally, less self-consciously, the result arguably a more convincing vindication of the Evans ‘creed of interplay.’

The traditional night off was Monday, but Shelly asked Bill to take Tuesdays off instead so that the local musicians could hear him. Israels told me: "I saw most every California musician that I had heard of in the club during that engagement, some of them (like [pianist] Terry Trotter and [drummer] Bill Goodwin) almost every night." Goodwin himself recalled Evans's condition: ‘He wasn't in very good shape, physically. That was when I first met him, and he was beautiful — a wonderful guy. It was really incongruous that he could be so messed up and yet be such a normal, regular person.’

Like Dave Jones before him, the engineer Wally Heider captured the trio, and the ambience of the club, to perfection. (Ironically, the club was eventually forced to move, as the sound of the heavier electric bands began spilling through into the echo chamber of Heider's own recording studio next door.) These recordings formed a fitting farewell for Evans and Orrin Keepnews at Riverside, one of the great recording partnerships in jazz. Though they bid adieu professionally, Orrin continued to follow Bill's career avidly, and they remained friends until the end.

Evans later reflected on the value of small record companies at the start of an artist's career; ‘You need those companies; actually jazz needs those companies because, until you establish yourself, [they] offer an entranceway. ...To sign a standard union contract for scale, with Riverside, for two records, was to me the biggest thrill that could happen at that time. ... I never got a royalty statement, not even as by law every three months — never saw one, never expected one— didn't care really, because at that point you want to get your records out there. So it works for both.’

Late in 1963, Bill Grauer, in charge of business at Riverside, died of a heart attack. Evans had had little to do with him but had always found him rather a rough character. The pianist's sense of black humor prompted him to observe: ‘I figure he must have died in self-defense.’  The company had been sliding steadily toward bankruptcy, and finally folded in mid-1964.”

The “new” Time Remembered that prompted this retrospective involves the recent issue of the film Bill Evans: Time Remembered by Bruce Siegel.

For the last 25 years, Bruce Spiegel has been a producer/editor at CBS News/48 Hours. During that time, he’s also produced, edited and directed a number of films and documentaries. In 2002 he co-produced the award winning TV documentary “9-11” which won both an Emmy (2002) and Peabody Award (2003). In 2012, alongside Wynton Marsalis (jazz musician and artistic director at Jazz at Lincoln Center) and Hugh Masakela (South African music legend), Spiegel co-produced a CBS News/48 Hours TV documentary titled “Nelson Mandela: Father of a Nation”. The documentary explored the South African music that was used for Nelson Mandela’s eulogy, and won The National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Excellence Award in 2014.

In Bill Evans: Time Remembered Bruce Spiegel has produced a complete documentary giving you insights into Bill Evans; not just the musician, but also the person. The film moves chronologically starting with Bill's childhood in New Jersey and culminating with details about his death.

As Bruce recounts: "The film Bill Evans, Time Remembered took me 8 years to make. Eight years of tracking down anybody who knew Bill and who played with him, to try and find out as much as I could about the elusive and not easy to understand Bill Evans. I feel very honored to have had the chance to interview and get to know good guys that spent a lot of time with Bill: Billy Taylor, Gene Lees, Tony Bennett, Jack DeJohnette, Jon Hendricks, Jim Hall, Bobby Brookmeyer, Chuck Israels, Paul Motian, Gary Peacock, Joe LaBarbera. It was a once in a life time experience talking to these gifted talented guys about their time in jazz music, about their “Time Remembered“ with Bill Evans."

"The film was a bull's eye at capturing as much as one can capture of someone's music, pain, and life story. My family is forever grateful to your outstanding work." - Debby Evans (Waltz for Debby)"

"The film is musically intriguing and sensitively crafted. Not soppy with just the right amount of honesty regarding his personal life." - Nenette Evans

The film is available for preview, rental or purchase at the following website - http://www.billevanstimeremembered.com/

If you are a Bill Evans fan, the film is a must view.

Oh, and if you haven’t heard them, you might also want to pick up copies of Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne Hole and Time Remembered which are both available as Original Jazz Classics CDs.

"Criticism" - by Martin Williams

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Read anything of Williams you can lay your hands on.. . . His knowledge of jazz is all but unmatched."            

- Washington Review

"Martin Williams persistently gets at essences, and that is why he has contributed so much to the very small body of authentic jazz criticism."                               

- Nat Hentoff

"The most knowledgeable, open-minded, and perceptive American jazz critic today."               - The Washington Post

Back when the world was young, I had a university professor who railed at us to include the “Who, what, when, where, why and significance.” for each answer that we entered into our essay examination booklets.

In this way, we would be “set on a course to” explain the importance of the event, person or problem that was the focus of the examination question.

“Think critically; describe and discern; look for multiple causes; come at the thing from a number of perspectives,” he would say.

Little did I know at the time, that this was the perfect formula for training as a Jazz critic, for as the late, distinguished Jazz critic Martin Williams asserts “ … it is the critic’s business to be as perceptive and knowledgeable as he/she can. And critical perception (however much training it needs) is ultimately either there or not there.”

Of course, I understand rationally what Martin is saying, but experientially I rarely put myself in the position of becoming a Jazz critic.

As you may have noticed, I describe and annotate recordings, films and books about Jazz on these pages, but I rarely critically evaluate them in the way that Martin describes as the functional basis for Jazz criticism.

Maybe it’s because I know how hard it is to play this stuff and I don’t want to put down other musician’s efforts and attempts. Or perhaps it is because of a lack of training and/or practice in Jazz criticism

Perhaps, too, my reluctance is the result of not having a clear and complete understanding of exactly what is it that a critic does.

Enter Martin Williams who provides this explanation of “Criticism” in an essay which can be found in his compilation - Jazz In Its Time [New York: Oxford University Press, 1989].

To put the piece in perspective, it was written in 1958, at the height of the modern form of Jazz’s popularity in the USA.

Criticism

“A musician is supposed to have said recently that the criticism of jazz is a kind of joke and that there are no jazz critics. Without agreeing with him entirely, I am very sympathetic to his statement. But I say this to indicate that to me the words critic and criticism are rather special ones. A man who makes comments or reports on jazz records (or books, or plays, or movies) is not necessarily worthy of the title of critic.

The criticism of jazz is, like the criticism of any other art, "popular" or "fine," a kind of criticism. It is not a branch of publicity, nor a sideline of journalism. And a critical ability is not a natural consequence of an enthusiasm for jazz or of a knowledge of jazz, although it needs both of these things.

Philosophers would have us believe that criticism is a branch of philosophy, and some artists that it is a branch of creativity. But criticism has its own muse, and however much enlightenment he constantly gets from both the philosopher and the artist, the critic needs a distinct, innate critical talent, a special sensibility and way of looking at things. His task is of an order much lower than that of either philosopher or artist, of course, but the ability he needs for his job is unique and uncommon, and a man either has it or doesn't have it. If the philosopher or artist (or journalist or historian) also has this critical ability, so much the better.

I think that the state of criticism of jazz in America is low, but I also think that the criticism of movies, plays, music in general, and painting is also low. Literature is lucky — it has a top level of criticism which is an excellent counter to the average American book review.

The innate critical ability is not enough in itself. It needs to be trained, explored, disciplined, and tested like any other talent.

If I recommended that this training should begin with Plato, Aristotle, and Lucretius and end with Eliot, Tovey, and Jung, I would not be saying something academic or pretentious but merely stating the most ordinary commonplace of Western civilization as it exists. And the critic should also know as much as he can of the best criticism being written around him in all fields.

But it is also the critic's business to be as perceptive and knowledgeable as he can. And critical perception (however much training it needs) is ultimately either there or not there.

The critic's questions are "How?" and "Why?" not merely "What?"

The points which follow come, with some changes, from Matthew Arnold. I present them not because I am especially interested in promoting Arnold's attitudes nor in promoting any "system," but because they seem to me to have something to say at this moment to the jazz writer and his reader.

1.  The critic's first question is what is the work trying to do? Notice that this does not say, what do you think the artist ought to be trying to do. It also has little to do with a clairvoyant view inside the artist's head. And it assumes that the critic has observed the form of the piece and that he absorbed it with his feelings as well.

2.  The second is, how well does it do it, and how and why so?

3.  The third is, is it worth doing? Notice that this is the last question and not the first.

4.  The critic should compare everything with the best that he knows whenever the comparison seems just and enlightening.

The questions are not easy, but no one ever said that criticism was easy, and even the very best critics can and will fail on at least some of them.

Ultimately, the critic makes a judgment, an evaluation. Value is based, in the final analysis, on feeling, not reason. But by feeling I mean a rational, conscious, individual function. I do not mean emotion which is irrational, impersonal, and can be irresponsible.

We have all heard it said that the criticism of jazz was once left to amateurs. That is not entirely true, nor is there any lack of amateurs today. But we do have now several writing about jazz who, although they really know what criticism is, don't know enough about music. On the other hand, there are some who know music, but don't know what criticism is. In jazz, of course, there is danger in knowing music since we are apt to apply the categories and standards of Western music rigidly and wrongly thereby. And there is also danger in knowing jazz: we may reject truly creative things because our knowledge of the past makes us think we know what a man ought to be doing — but that is true in any art.

The man who reviews jazz records has a terrible task: he can never, like his "classical" brother, judge an interpretation or performance against a norm because every jazz record is, in effect, a new work. Also, as George Orwell said of the hack book reviewer, day after day he must report on performances to which he has had little or no reaction worth committing to print — and that is true of the best critics and is neither a reflection on them nor necessarily on the music.

On the other hand, there could not possibly be as much true creativity in jazz as we are constantly told that there is, even though the medium is very much alive. How many novels, plays, poems, symphonies, paintings done in a year are really excellent?

And I wonder how many promising careers—and lives—have been wrecked because of indiscriminate over-praise. I know of a few personally. Even if a musician is wise enough to discount what passes for criticism in jazz, he would have to be inhuman not to be somehow affected by it.

There is one job in jazz criticism that is neglected and which needs to be done, I think. It is also one which, since jazz is music and music the most abstract of the arts, is very difficult.

It is a better job on content and meaning. I am not opposed to technical analysis. We need more of that, too, and it can also help us with meaning, of course.

But especially now that jazz is so sophisticated, we need to talk frankly and honestly about what it is saying.

By an examination of content, I do not mean a kind of enthusiastic impressionism. Nor do I mean the kind of clever, chi-chi adjective-mongering we are all too familiar with. The critic's duty is accuracy and he should not sacrifice it for cleverness.

Of course, such an examination cannot be made with prejudice or prejudgment. The first question is, what does this music express, not whether or not it should be expressing it.

The thing that separates listeners and commentators into "schools," I am convinced by the way, is not musical devices — passing chords, diminished ninths or sixteenth notes, or the lack of them —

but the content that such devices enable a given style to handle. I think that jazz should be able to express as much as it can possibly learn to express in its own way.

Of course, the artistic and musical expression of emotion is not the same as its communication. A snarl, a sigh, a scream — these things communicate emotion, but they are not art, only a part of the raw material of art which the artist transforms.

I recommend this first, because greater consciousness is a part of growth in an art as well as in an individual.

I also recommend it because the appeal of jazz is still so very irrational, and I do not think it should be so much so any longer. (Of course, the appeal of all art is ultimately irrational, by definition, because it is art. But to many who like jazz, its appeal is almost entirely so.) It is the critic's business to make it less so, and unless he does, both he and jazz may be trapped. And dealing with content is the only way to give a good answer to that third question: is it worth doing?

As it is, we assure ourselves that jazz is an "art" and often proceed to talk about it as if it were a sporting event, an excuse for us to be verbally clever, a branch of big-time show biz, or an emotional outburst that affected us in a way we are not quite sure of. Perhaps we can at least do our best to create the kind of climate in which a jazz critic could function and which an art deserves.” (1958)

Jerry Coker - "How To Listen To Jazz"

© -  Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Since 1900, when jazz - a uniquely American music form - began to evolve, much of its allure and artistic growth has depended on the creative freedom and expressive force that improvisation allows its performers.

Jerry Coker himself a teacher composer/arranger and noted saxophonist, has written How To Listen To Jazz to fill the need for a layman's guide to understanding improvisation and its importance in the development of this artistically rich yet complex music form Without relying on overly technical language or terms, Jerry Coker Shows how you can become a knowledgeable jazz listener-whether you are an aspiring musician, student, jazz aficionado, or new listener. In addition to looking at the structure of jazz and explaining what qualities to look for in a piece, the author provides a complete chronology of the growth of jazz, from its beginnings in the rags of Scott Joplin. the New Orleans style of the 1920s made famous by Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong, the Swing Era with Benny Goodman, and Art Tatum Be-Bop, post Be-Bop, to the greats of Modern Jazz, including Miles Davis. Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, and Wes Montgomery.

Also including a list of suggested recordings, a section on the improvised solo, and a complete glossary of jazz terms, How To Listen To Jazz offers you a complete introduction to the entire jazz experience ... the music and those who make it.”

- Back cover annotation to the paperback edition of Jerry Coker, How To Listen To Jazz

2016 saw the publication of Ted Gioia’s masterful How To Listen To Jazz [Basic Books] about which we posted two reviews: one was written by the editorial staff at JazzProfiles and the other was featured in The Economist magazine.

While revisiting both of these recently, I was reminded of a pioneering work on the subject of How To Listen To Jazz: Revised Edition that was compiled about twenty-five years earlier by Jerry Coker [New Albany, Indiana: Jamey Aebersold Jazz, 1990] which, incidentally, is still in print. [Actually, the initial version was first published in 1978].

Like Ted [piano], Jerry is also a musician [tenor sax], an educator and a frequent publisher of books about Jazz.

Here’s an overview of Jerry’s career at the time of his writing of  How To Listen To Jazz:

JERRY COKER is an educator of wide experience. He has developed studio music and jazz programs for Indiana University, Sam Houston State University, the University of Miami, and the University of Tennessee, where he is a Professor of Music.

He has taught and directed in locations around the world for National Stage Band Camps, Tanglewood Camp of the New England Conservatory, Jerry Coker Summer Camps, and Jamey Aebersold's Summer Jazz Workshops. Jerry is also well known as a professional musician, composer, and author. He has been featured soloist with Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Clare Fischer, Frank Sinatra, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

Jerry's books include Improvising Jazz, Listening to Jazz, Patterns for Jazz, The Complete Method for Improvisation, Jazz Keyboard, and Coker Figure Reading (Studio PR-Columbia Pictures Publications). His most recent book is titled The Teaching of Jazz (Advance Music).”

Jerry explains the purpose of his book in the following excerpt from its Preface:

This book was written in the belief that jazz music, when approached with understanding and an absence of prejudice, appeals to virtually anyone and everyone. Reaching an understanding of the music, though, can be difficult for the average listener. A number of fine books written to aid the growing jazz musician are often too technical in language and approach to serve the reader who simply wants to know what is transpiring in the average jazz performance. Other books that are directed to the jazz listener fail to give the reader understanding of the music. A chronological approach to jazz history doesn't quite work. The reader ends up with a "who's who" knowledge of jazz, laced with a lot of unnecessary facts and a gross absence of information that would enable the reader to perceive jazz performances in the same manner as the performers themselves.

This, then, is not a book about the great bands of Count Basie and Duke Ellington, nor about the commercial successes of the Benny Goodman or Stan Kenton bands or the Dave Brubeck Quartet. Nor is it a book about great singers, such as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughn, although all those performers have contributed considerably to the field. The real crux of the matter lies in achieving an understanding of improvisation, the creative source for all jazz.

The main thrust of this book is, then, to help the reader understand the objectives and accomplishments of the best of the jazz improvisers with a bare minimum of technical language.

As the Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, edited and annotated by Martin Williams is, in my estimation, by far the best collection of jazz recordings ever assembled, I have referred the reader to selections from that collection whenever possible. The Smithsonian Collection includes a choice of LPs, Cassettes or CDs and an excellent guide to using the collection, written by Martin Williams, along with many explanatory notes about the music. The package may be ordered from Smithsonian.

Appendices are provided in this book to help the reader retain a clear focus on names, dates, and terms. Appendix A is a chronology of players, Appendix B is a condensed overview of jazz history, and Appendix C is a glossary of terms used in the book.

It is my sincerest hope that every reader will come to understand and feel the universal appeal of jazz music and that this book will bring the listener closer, in spirit, to the attitudes, conceptions, and expressions of the extraordinary musicians discussed in these pages.

[Editor’s Note: Unfortunately, the Smithsonian no longer issues new copies of its collection of Classic Jazz but used copies of LP’s and CD’s both as boxed sets and individual CD’s can be found through online retailers.]

The following excerpt from the first chapter of Jerry’s book will give you a sense of how informed his writing on the subject is and the clarity and simplicity of his explanations.

HOW TO LISTEN TO JAZZ

Music is an art form that combines pitches with rhythms. [Vibrational frequencies of sound, or simply what we call "notes" in music.]

Although it can be prepared on paper in a notated fashion, a musical composition does not become music until the moment of performance, when it becomes sound. Music is an aural art. After the performance, when the sounds have ceased, the music ends, even though the written score, the instruments of performance, and the performers still exist. Only in the memory does the music continue to exist in the minds of musicians and their audience.

The aural memory, however, is not to be dismissed lightly. In fact, it may be the most powerful agent contributing to the success of the phenomenon we call music. It is the memory which enables us to hear music inwardly, replaying endlessly the sound sensations heard in prior listening experiences. Only a repeat of the aural experience itself can improve upon the impression made by the version that is

replayed in the memory. Hence it is largely the memory that enables us, by transforming repetition into familiarity, to develop a longing to repeat and enlarge the aural experience through recordings and live performance).

Dr. Joseph Murphy states that "Man is what he thinks all day."#2 [see below]

Concurrently, religious and philosophical disciplines and goals are often achieved through repetitive affirmations. And so it is in music: We are what we hear all day, including live or recorded performances as well as what we hear inwardly through memory. There will be significant differences among individuals exposed to the same diet of listening, in that their attitudes, understanding, and personal involvement with music will vary. Their memory replays will vary with respect to selectivity, according to personal tastes and reactions. Our musical personalities can best be understood in terms of what we have heard in performance and what our memory chooses to replay inwardly.#3 [see below]

There are many musical styles to hear, each having given rise to great performances and each possessing stylistic validity. Stylistic snobbery in music is entirely unnecessary. It may, in some cases, be necessary for a musician to focus on a particular style for a lifetime, in order to achieve mastery or success in that style. But he must not, in the process, become negative toward other styles. A great performer in any style will have certain standards in common with others of his kind:

1.    Craftsmanship

a.    understanding of musical fundamentals

b.    instrumental/vocal techniques

c.    well-developed ear

2.    Awareness (from listening to others in field)

3.    Creativity

4.   Spirit (emotional drive, appropriateness)

Frequently the listener is confronted with a reputedly great performance he cannot understand or evaluate, usually because his memory bank of aural experiences does not encompass what he is now hearing. Perhaps the style is unfamiliar or the techniques too complex or too different from what he's heard previously. Chances are that if the listener had gathered, stored, and replayed the aural experiences that were in the minds of the performers, awareness and familiarity would have urged him onto a path of patient acceptance, understanding, and perhaps even approval and enjoyment. The gulf sometimes created between the performer and his audience is often directly related to the differences in their listening habits and choices. A performer tires of being held back, and his audience tires of feeling ignorant. The solution lies in the performer's desire to communicate and the audience's desire to understand.

#2 Dr. Joseph Murphy, The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1963.

#3 For a more complete discussion of the potential of the ear for development, see pp. 145-150 of The Teaching of Jazz, Coker, Advance Music, Rottenburg, Germany, 1989.

The remainder of the book is made up of chapters on: What Is Jazz?, Formal Structures in Jazz, The Rhythm Section, The Improvised Solo, and The Improvisers’ Hall of Fame.

These are followed by an Appendix of Jazz Greats, an Appendix of Jazz History by Periods and a Glossary of Terms.

In future blog postings, I plan to bring up additional features about the instructional aspects of Jerry’s book along with more insights and observations from Ted Gioia’s in the hopes of helping visitors to these pages listen to Jazz in a more discerning manner and get more out of the music.