American Musicians II: Seventy-One Portraits in Jazz

by Whitney Balliett

Book Overview

When Whitney Balliett's American Musicians first appeared in the fall of 1986, the acclaim it received was universal. Leonard Feather, writing in The Los Angeles Times, said "no other writer now living can write with comparable grace and equal enthusiasm about everyone from Jack Teagarden and Art Tatum to Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman." And Bruce Cook in The New Leader called the book "the quintessential Whitney Balliett, the cream of the cream,...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195095383
• ISBN13: 9780195095388
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Whitney Balliett's elegant solos.

If Whitnet Balliett were a musician, he'd probably be someone like Teddy Wilson, whose sometimes spare but dancing lines were always distinct, no matter the context. Balliett's musings on the more important jazz musicians, published originally in The New Yorker, are models of criticism that never betray his love and admiration for the music. It is unlikely that anyone will ever write as well as he has about America's most important contribution to the arts.