Jazz Singing: America's Great Voices From Bessie Smith To Bebop And Beyond
The exhaustive research, useful discographies, and absence of a comparable study on the subject assures this work a place in many collections, but the eccentricities of style and the labyrinth of facts make it, at best, a difficult read and, at worst, annoying. Those with only a casual knowledge of the subject might find themselves lost in the sudden shifts from figure to figure and might also fall easy prey to the author's flippant dismissal of certain performers whose work he holds in undisguised contempt. To become what it pretends to be, this work needs a big infusion of objectivity and an editor with as big an aversion to the parenthetical phrase as Friedwald has to the Ink Spots.- Mark Woodhouse, Elmira Coll., N.Y.Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.