The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD

I have been acquiring The Penguin Guide to Jazz since the 4th Edition. The Ninth is an excellent continuation to the best publication for Jazz Collectors and new converts. What is great about The Penguin Guide is that it serves the collector audience as well as being the best guide for those who has been bitten by the Jazz bug but who are seeking a road map for what is a brand new immense universe. For the 2000+ CD Jazz collector, the exhaustive amount of information isn't gathered together and structured better in any other book built for the same purpose. The format which includes all of the necessary details such as dates, players, labels and locations fuels the avid collectors need for information. Without a doubt, recordings are presented that even the most thorough collector has missed or is reminded of in the Guide. Of course, the funnest part of this colossal book is the rating system. The star system with the peppered Crown scoring is both affirming and maddening, i.e. how could McCoy Tyner's, "The Real McCoy" not be granted a crown but some other lesser (in my opinion) album get the award. But the surprises are also great. A friend of mine sent me a copy of Steve Harris & Zaum's, "Above Our Heads The Sky Splits Open" a few months before I ordered the Ninth Edition. My friend from Texas noted that he thought this might be one of the best contributions to Improvisational Jazz in recent years. Finding it in the new edition rated as a Crown record was a high point. Of course, any avid Jazz fan will find artists not represented. Albert van Veenendaals absence particularly surprised me. All in all, this companion is 99% perfect and essential for anyone who considers themselves a fan of the greatest music. p.s. I am curious about any future plans to convert the Guide to an interactive software/DVD format ?!

I always look forward to the new edition of the Penguin Guide to Jazz, and Cook and Morton don't disappoint this time around. By this point, there's no need for me to comment on the quality of the reviews -- they are consistently well-informed, thoughtful, pithy, and with any dash of sarcasm always undercut by genuine affection and reverence for this music. This is essential for any jazz lover -- be he/she a neophyte or someone already waist-deep in the music. Their are some formatting developments in this edition. The index, absent from the last edition, has returned. I was pretty shocked and disappointed when it didn't make it into the last edition. They have introduced an "In Brief" section at the end of entries, which wraps up minor albums in an artist's ouevre. Generally it focuses on less essential titles -- works that are adequate but not spectacular -- and leaves the body of the entry to cover the highs and lows. Not a bad thing. I will say that this edition suffers from poor copyediting. Some albums appear twice in the artist entry, and some sentences are clearly missing nouns/verbs/adjectives. Compared to the golden standard of previous editions, this is a bit disturbing. And I guess Cook and Morton finally succumbed to all the nay-sayers who said that Michael Mantler is not jazz -- he is out of the book. That's too bad...

This is an excellent guide to Jazz. It's a great reference to the history of recorded Jazz. They also discuss the sound quality of many of the cd issues, which is most helpful. The only real flaw is the omission of Glenn Miller as an important Jazz/Swing figure. Miller's arranged swing music is as important to the history of Jazz as any other band leader. Miller was not the first to arrange jazz music, and by no means the last to do so. Many of these other arrangers are reviewed in this book, but not Miller! Glenn's Army Air Force band could swing as hard as any other. This is a great book, but why they left out one of America's most important bandleaders is a mystery. Glenn deserves better.

It's a tough job, sitting around listening to all the new jazz for Penguin, but someone's got to do it, and Cook & Morton have done it for the 5th time! The giant new edition has dropped, and it's a beauty, with a cool blue cover and over 1600 two-column pages of reviews. Some talk as if this book had any competition -- get real! That would be AMG, and it's online. This is THE ONE! A category of gripers seems to be the mainstream bop crowd, who want to stop the clock before 1959, but Cook & Morton simply do not leave out any serious jazz, which of course includes bop. Yes, they include the avant-garde, but if you don't like it, then don't read those reviews! Their approach is catholic -- inclusive. One type of "jazz fan" definitely won't like this guide, and that is people who think Kenny G plays jazz. Cook & Morton mince no words in their introduction: "We have decided again to dismiss many records which amount to little more than easy-listening, instrumental or vocal music with only the vaguest of jazz connotations. The radio format in America known as "smooth jazz" includes a great deal of this kind of thing." So it comes down to recommendations for 2 groups, those new to Cook & Morton, and those who already have an earlier edition: 1) If you haven't yet encountered Cook & Morton, and you either are or are becoming a serious jazz fan, then you must have this book -- it's that simple. You will be amazed at what you don't know, and will soon learn! 2) If you already have an earlier edition, it's chancier whether you "need" the new 5th or not. My first edition of C & M was the Third (purple, 1996). The Fourth (orange, 1999) just wasn't the same -- as many others have noted, some sort of update would be just the ticket when you've already been through most of the older releases. If you keep up with new releases by reading such publications as Down Beat (mainstream), Cadence, Coda, Signal to Noise or The Wire (all of which emphasize the avant-garde), then you are likely to find that the additions to the latest C & M are very patchy compared to what you already know. One last word for fellow enthusiasts of the avant-garde, who may just discovering it via/despite Ken Burns -- Cook & Morton is a bible of sorts, but here are three more indispensable introductions: A) "Free Jazz" by Jost, B) "The Freedom Principle" by Litweiler, and C) "As Serious As Your Life" by Wilmer. All three have recently been reprinted -- go for it!

I read most of two most talked about jazz-on-cd critical guides (Penguin and AMG). To be honest, the Penguin REALY stands out. Firt of all, it covers jazz outside the US of A. Yes jazz is global music. The Penguin realy gets you the information you need on a specific "period" or session of an artist. Important stuff like instrumentation and in depth discussion is negleted, we could say absent, in the All (American) Guide to Jazz on CD. Still the AMG gives another opinion (when it does, one wonders if they can motivate their ratings). Personnaly, i use both, BUT my PENGUIN is a mess - read it all the time.