Drinking scotch straight out of the bottle with Lady Day; listening to Hoagy Carmichael's signature drawl as he reveals the real inspiration for his songwriting; inciting the irrepressible Dinah Washington to recount a knockdown, lick-swapping, vocal showdown triumph.

These vivid, unrehearsed moments with some of jazz's greatest are but a sample of the pleasures to be found in Max Jones's Jazz Talking. This collection of interviews is the culmination of nearly four decades of insightful, ardent writing on jazz by the renowned English journalist and broadcaster who was the principal jazz contributor to Melody Maker. Here are the voices of artists such as Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, and Mary Lou Williams in conversation with Jones, who was able to turn a casual chat into an indelible portrait and who gives American readers a view of these musicians they have never had before.

INTERVIEWS WITH:
CLARINET:
Paul Barnes; Barney Bigard; Bob Wilber; Edmond Hall; Albert Nicholas.
SAXOPHONE:
Bud Freeman; Stan Getz; Johnny Griffin; Coleman Hawkins; Johnny Hodges; Gerry Mulligan; Flip Phillps; Zoot Sims; Lucky Thomson; Ben Webster.
BRASS:
Red Allen; Ruby Braff; Buck Clayton; Lee Collins; Harry 'Sweets' Edison; Bobby Hackett; Preston Jackson; Thomas Jefferson; Jonah Jones; Max Kaminsky; Wingy Manone; Jimmy McPartland; Sy Oliver; Jim Robinson and Kid Howard.
RHYTHM SECTION:
Piano: Mary Lou Williams; Joe Bushkin; Hoagy Carmichael. Guitar: Eddie Condon. Bass: Joe Benjamin; Slam Stewart.
SINGERS:
Billy Eckstine; Billie Holiday; Sarah Vaughan; Dinah Washington.

"Incidents and encounters from half a century of observing the great men and women of jazz. Built around interviews, the book adds a substantial amount of flesh to the skeleton of jazz history." - THE TIMES

MAX JONES (1920-1993) wrote and broadcast about jazz from 1942 to his death. In the 1940s he co-founded Jazz Music, and he was the principal jazz contributor to the British magazine Melody Maker for forty years.

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