In this companion to his collections Riding on a Blue Note and Faces in the Crowd, Gary Giddins has assembled a mosaic of pieces that provide an essential guide to the jazz world. Moving with ease from sweeping surveys of jazz history to precise, vivid assessments of individual performers, including Thelonious Monk, the Marsalis brothers, Ornette Coleman, and David Murray, Giddins demonstrates once again why he is lauded as "the best jazz critic now at work" - WALTER CLEMONS, Newsweek

GARY GIDDINS is a columnist for the Village Voice and winner of the National Book Critics Circle award for Visions of Jazz. He is also the author of Riding on a Blue Note, Rhythm-A-Ning, Celebrating Bird, and Satchmo. His work has won numerous prizes, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Peabody Broadcasting Award, an American Book Award, and five ASCAP-Deems Taylor awards.

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