The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Ninth Edition

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Product Reviews

(1 stars) - Beg to differ
OK, I'll be the voice of dissent. Bear with me: I've been a dedicated jazzhead for 20+ years and have bought an ungodly number of CDs based on word-of-mouth, industry buzz and personal encounters. Today was the first time I've ever looked to the Penguin Jazz Guide for shopping advice. (I found a rare Bobby Hutcherson CD at Amoeba and consulted the store's 2008 Penguin Guide to determine the lineup.) Well, they didn't include it. So be it.

But then I started thumbing through it, looking up some of my recent favorites. Morton and Cook's smug, dismissive, snarky, often hostile reviews were appalling. Who are these guys and what are their musical credentials? If I'd been taking their advice these last twenty years, I would never have heard some of the best new jazz that's out there. (Kurt Rosenwinkel is "boring"? Please, that's as tonedeaf a statement as I've ever heard.) This guide does a tremendous disservice to jazz if it's dissuading buyers from taking chances on new artists. I'd advise jazz enthusiasts to trust their own ears, not the taste of these twits.

This "guide" is to jazz as "toilet paper" is to bathroom reading.

(3 stars) - An admirable effort, but flawed in several ways
The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings is the most comprehensive, and definitely one of the best guides for Jazz music. It includes over 14,000 reviews and benefits from the excellent writing skills and the encyclopedic knowledge of the authors. It uses a star rating method to rate recordings, provides at least a few lines (but sometimes much more) of information about each record, and includes discographical information and personnel lists. However, it has some flaws that you need to consider before buying. I will consider several possible goals that a guide book such as this can fill and discuss how well it does for each.

The first type of a guide book is a guide book for people who are new to Jazz and would like to learn where to begin and which records to buy in order to establish a modest collection of key recordings and recordings that are good introductions to jazz. The penguin guide will not serve this purpose well for several reasons. First, there is not much information on the artists themselves, their style, and even of a more basic level, what styles are there in jazz and how do they differ. It is more like a catalogue of reviews. Second, the authors are very experienced Jazz fans and it shows. Normally, people start listening to jazz after being introduced to relatively accessible artists such as Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and the like. Often, their taste develops over the years and they tend to focus more on avant-garde, complex recordings. This is definitely the case with the authors, who show a strong tendency to recommend complex and demanding works which are not suitable for beginners. For example, in order to help new comers, the authors list "core recordings" which should be in every basic collection, but include in this core collection artists like Cecil Taylor, who is a great pianist, but not very accessible. Charming albums which are great but undemanding get lower ratings. I think an album should be judged for what it is and how good it is in it's genre and compared to the other albums of the artist in question, but this is not what the Penguin Guide does. So, if you are a newcomer, this book is absolutely not for you. Try allmusic's guide to jazz or the rough guide instead.

The second type of a guide book is for extremely experienced collectors who are interested in a complete discography including all sessions for the relevant artists. This book is simply not complete enough to serve this purpose. For that, you should try Tom Lord's series of books.

The third type of guide book is for experienced collectors who are interested in recommendations, in learning about new artists and recordings, and in comparing their opinions about certain records to the opinions of others. In the past, the guide served such collectors quite well but I am sorry to say that this is no longer the case for several reasons. First of all, the fall out of copyright of many recordings presents the collector with a choice of several available versions (with different remastering) for the same record. It would be very useful to learn which is best, but the guide rarely lists more than one version of the same record. Are the Rudy Van Gelder remasters better than the original transfers? Do you want to buy your Django Reinhardt on JSP, Mosaic, Fremaeux, or another label? You will not get an answer. Worse than that, most of the time the authors simply recommend the "french classics" series, which (a) does not include alternate takes (b) usually has flawed remastering compared to other labels and (c) is quite expensive. Especially, the authors miss the fine efforts of labels such as JSP and Proper. A second controversial decision is to not include box sets by Mosaic records in the book. For any serious collector, Mosaic sets are indispensible, especially since in some cases they are the only good option to obtain the music (for example, Lionel Hampton's 1930's music.) A third controversial decision is to not include out of print CDs. While I can understand the motivation, including such CDs may help getting them reissued, plus the guide is not very well updated and includes many CDs that are out of print unintentionally. Fourth, the guide has more ommissions of new recordings than in the past. I realize that it is no longer possible to include everything, but a good way to progress would be to have a complete Kindle version, as well as a selected paperback version. Right now, the book simply cannot compete with the resources that are available online, and even not with simply checking the Amazon reviews for a record. If you know what artist and or record you are interested in, the web will be much more useful to you than this book.

So the usefulness of the book is currently limited to (a) experienced collectors, who want to learn about new artists and records from it, and are willing to then do more research online and find which version is the best (b) people who enjoy reading well written reviews about jazz records.

All this said, the effort is still admirable, and the book is fun (to me at least) but you better know what to expect before you buy.

(5 stars) - Want facts on jazz? This is the place!
Talk about information by the pound. This hefty volume has everything you were afraid to ask for. Indispensible reference for any true Jazz fan. I will wear it out using it.

(5 stars) - All you need to know is in here
You know the musician, but you don't know how to start savouring his music? This is the book. The most extensive guide on jazz records, year by year. Excellent!

(5 stars) - Awesome, But Weighs As Much As a Car Motor
Brian Morton and the late Richard Cook are as legendary as some of the jazzmen they write about, and this 9th Edition of the Penguin Guide will only increase their stature. Yes, there are omissions here, but what do you expect when the edition is already 22,000 pages long?

The problem with the words -- brilliant, moving, wrong-headed, and at times very funny -- is that they are contained within a book that's about as easy to carry around as your average concrete cinder-block. Match the weight with the tissue-like pages and well... You can imagine what happens when you drop the sucker. (And you'll be dropping it a lot!)

I would say this is the perfect bathroom book, except if you place it on your lap you'll never be able to stand up again.

Buy it anyway! :-)

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