Sometime in the late 1990s I read up on Jazz music. I went through a pile of books and my favorite overview came from Ted Gioia in his book The History of Jazz.

I thought about Gioia today when I read this review of his new book, The Jazz Standards, in The Los Angeles Times:

“The Jazz Standards” is an attempt to offer a kind of one-stop shop overview of the genre, looking not so much at the musicians as at the songs. An alphabetical survey of 252 classic pieces, it is to some extent an extrapolation of “The Real Book” — “the underground collection of jazz lead sheets that began circulating in the 1970s” that itself grew out of a series of “fake books,” bootleg compilations used by jazz players to work their way through the entire tradition. This history is fascinating, a reminder that jazz is at heart a vernacular medium in which the most essential skill for a musician may be the ability to think on his or her feet.

[Photo Credit: William Claxton]