This book is not a list of all the American films in which jazz musicians have appeared. David Meeker has already exhaustively and alphabetically undertaken that work. It is also not an attempt to write a complete history of jazz in the American cinema. Instead a few issues have been singled out that Krin Gabbard feels ought to be confronted in any serious account of how the movies have dealt with jazz…If important jazz films are left out, it is seldom because the author is unaware of them. Even some films with substantial jazz presences do not lend themselves to the types of analysis undertaken.

KRIN GABBARD is associate professor of comparative literature at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, and author of Psychiatry and the Cinema.

"Ranging from silent cinema to The Simpsons, Jammin' at the Margins is a thorough, highly readable look at how jazz and jazz musicians have been portrayed in American film and television. With a thorough knowledge of jazz wedded to a no less impressive command of the movies, Gabbard has produced what will be the standard survey of an overlooked subject." - DAVID DESSER, University of Illinois

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