Why Jazz Happened
This accessible history of jazz by frequent Wall Street Journal writer and blogger Myers focuses on the years 1942–72, when that music emerged from its beginnings into a period of ferment, from bebop to fusion. It is not necessarily for the musically sophisticated but rather for the layperson interested in the midcentury development of jazz, and Myers’ critical contribution is in the why of his title (which might have profited from a subtitle). Though utilizing interviews, Myers relies primarily on secondary sources; as a result, he offers little new in the way of detail or musicology, but he supplements the voluminous jazz literature by cogently analyzing the business and cultural contexts—technological (radio and jukebox, LP and 45 rpm records, electronics) and social (the GI Bill, suburbanization, the civil rights movement)—that enabled the growth of jazz in mid-twentieth-century America. --Mark Levine