Charles Alexander contributed to Classic Guitars of the '50s and Classic Guitars of the '60s, and is the publisher of Jazzwise Publications and Jazzwise magazine. Also a jazz guitar teacher, he narrates the BBC radio series The Guitar in Jazz.
These two books provide contrasting approaches to jazz photo collections. Masters of Jazz Guitar, an oversized volume, skillfully mixes more than 200 color photos of musicians and album-cover art with 25 insightful essays by notable writers. Beginning with jazz guitar roots, Alexander--publisher of Jazzwise magazine--traces the use of the guitar from swing to bop to bebop, cool, hardbop, and fusion. It contains chapters on such icons as Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Joe Pass, and Wes Montgomery; devotes sections to specialty areas such as Brazilian guitarists; and showcases some of the new talent on both sides of the Atlantic. Hardly just a coffee-table adornment, this volume provides all types of readers with a visually stunning, informative compendium of the many styles of jazz guitar during the last century. Highly recommended. Is This To Be My Souvenir? more modestly compiles over 300 black-and-white photos from the collection of Danish journalist and one-time New York jazz aficionado Rosenkrantz. It includes photographs of prebop giants such as Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong as well as lesser-known artists like Rube Bloom. Bchmann-Moller (You Got To Be Original, Man!) adds paragraph-length biographies of the musicians pictured. Though littered with many stock publicity head shots, the book occasionally rises above a drab effort with revealing, never-before-published photos such as the picture of a happy-go-lucky Fats Waller eating a hot dog on a New York street before a session. Hardly indispensable and suffering in comparison to Masters of Jazz Guitar, this title will appeal mainly to fanatics of prewar jazz.--David P. Szatmary, Univ. of Washington, Seattle Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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