Jazz 101
A Complete Guide to Learning and Loving Jazz

They say that writing about music is a bit like dancing about architecture. It just doesn't translate well, and that certainly is the case for this book. I listened to the audiobook, narrated by Grover Gardner. While the narration is very good, you might expect that some musical examples could be pl......more

Any intro to jazz is going to disappoint some jazz lover somehow, but Szwed does better than most all other writers in getting down to the basics in clear language for the beginning jazz listener, and jazz thinker. I use excerpts from this in classes about American culture, where students have only......more

The author begins with a wonderful disclaimer that gives the reader the proper expectation for how to interpret the information within. The first part of the book describes basics of jazz music: elements of its sound, musical composition, etc. I found this the most interesting part of the book. The......more

Not really a 101 of the music but certainly a very good history of the genre. Music, being another language, doesn't always translate well into words especially when it is as complex and intellectual as jazz can be. The language used in this book is often very technical, rendering it difficult to gra......more

This is a very smart book written by a very smart man and these brief comments will fail to do either of them justice. Szwed argues that because so many different forms of music evolved from southern and ultimately African music, it is all jazz, it is just that fusion, standards, swing, remixes, beb......more