
A lifetime of writing from the dean of jazz writers--who has covered the major artists, recordings, and performances for "The New Yorker" for more than 40 years--this volume is the result of Balliett's lifelong love affair with the only music that is considered truly American...

Jazz critic for The New Yorker since 1957 and the author of some fifteen books, Whitney Balliett has spent a lifetime listening to and writing about jazz. "All first-rate criticism," he once wrote in a review, "first defines what we are confronting." He could as easily have been...