Following on from the author's previous work, "Early Jazz", this detailed history of jazz covers the crucial era which saw the rise of big band swing and the transition to the more "avant-garde" bop style which revolutionized jazz in the 1940s.



Taking up where Early Jazz (OPB, #6.95) leaves off, this second volume of Gunther Schuller's history of jazz considers the swing era - the age of dance bands and radio shows. Tracing the origins of swing and its effects on American musical and social life, he assesses the distinctive sounds of great bandleaders like Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Woody Herman, instrumentalists such as Art Tatum, Cab Calloway, and Pee Wee Russell, and such vocalists as Billie Holiday, Frank Sinatra, and Peggy Lee.