The History of Jazz (Second Edition) Ted Gioia Hardcover; 452 pages ISBN: 0195399706 Oxford University Press 2011

For the past 25 years, author and teacher Ted Gioia has provided the most succinct and contemporary histories of America’s native musics: blues and jazz. He has done this through his exceptional facility for taking all the previous literature, separating the wheat from the chaff, correcting the errors and myths, and burnishing a brand new shine on the music whole. His four histories: West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California 1945-1960 (Oxford University Press, 1992), The History of Jazz (Oxford University Press, 1997), Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music (W.W. Norton and Co., 2009) and The Birth (And the Death) of the Cool (Speck Press, 2009) remain the appropriate starting places for a written introduction to blues and jazz…