MY BOOKS
I have written ten books on jazz thus far.  Please see below for information on each of them.  Prices for  
all books except Jazz On Record) are $25 plus $5 postage and include my autograph if requested.  Jazz
On Record 1917-76 is $60 plus $10 postage.  Unfortunately no copies of Duke Ellington, Jazz: A   
Regional Analysis and the All Music Guide To Jazz are for sale through me at this time.  

If you are interested in purchasing one of my books, please send an Email to Scott Yanow.  

My latest book, The Jazz Singers, has entries on 521 vocalists, the great majority of whom are   
currently active. In addition to the historic figures, it covers today's jazz scene in depth with   
original quotes from 270 jazz vocalists. It also includes a paragraph apiece on 198 other singers      
of today, short mentions of 55 often-surprising performers who recorded as a jazz singer on at   
least on one occasion, and entries on 30 jazz vocal groups. It also has my pick for the ten songs   
that all singers should try to avoid.






Jazz On Film is a book that was really needed. In it I review 1,400 films, documentaries,  
shorts,  videos and DVDs, all of which have at least a brief appearance by a jazz instrumentalist or
singer onscreen, not just on the soundtrack. I rate both the music and the quality of the movies,   
from 10 (classic) to 1 (stinks).







Jazz On Record – The First Sixty Years is over 800 pages and discusses what every key
jazz performer was up to during each decade. I put some humor and trivia in the time line   
sections, kept the thousands of record reviews very short, and portrayed the entire jazz world  
during every period. Swing did not disappear in 1945, bebop was still thriving in the 1960s and
70s, and newer styles did not replace older ones. I cut off the book in 1976 when every jazz style   
was alive and co-existing with each other.





Jazz: A Regional Exploration discusses the history of jazz and its different styles in an unusual   
way, by cities and regions. From New Orleans and Chicago to Kansas City and New York, jazz had
many regional styles, all of which are covered in this survey of the music's first 100 years.








The trumpet has always been my favorite instrument even though I cannot get a decent note out  
of that illogical horn. Trumpet Kings has biographies of 479 trumpeters from all styles and
covers every soloist of importance from 1901-2001. It includes many original quotes gathered
from questionnaires that I sent to all of the living trumpeters and there is a liberal amount of
humor since many trumpeters are simply crazy! From Buddy Bolden to Freddie Webster, from
Jack Sheldon to Dave Douglas, they are all here.





Afro-Cuban Jazz focuses on the history, current scene and legacy of Latin jazz, one of the most     
creative styles of music around today. I separated jazz from Cuba from that of Brazil (which could
be a separate book altogether), focusing on the former. The book discusses the main innovators of
each era in alphabetical order from Tito Puente and Cal Tjader to David Sanchez and Chucho
Valdes and has a section called “They Also Recorded Afro-Cuban Jazz” which talks about the Latin
recordings of more mainstream jazz musicians.




Since dixieland and early jazz are my first love, it was only right that I would write a book on the
1920s. Classic Jazz puts the spotlight on the 1917-33 period, from the hot soloists to the early big
bands, the classic blues singers to the famous ensembles. It was a pleasure really digging into that
period, and I do not think that I missed anyone of significance in my biographies or in my reviews
of the era's recordings.





In Bebop, I cover both the classic bop era (1945-49) and the bop-oriented soloists who matured in
later years. The most difficult part about writing this book was separating bop from cool jazz and
hard bop since many musicians and singers constantly cross those boundaries. In addition to
Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Fats Navarro, Thelonious Monk and their
contemporaries, this book discusses the more advanced stylists of the swing era, the swing big
bands’ individual reactions to bop and the many bebop recordings.




I wanted Swing to be a different type of book, not just sticking to the swing era but covering  all     
aspects of swing music through historic essays, biographies and record reviews. It discusses swing
of the 1920s, the band leaders, top soloists and singers of the Swing era (1935-46) and the top
swing stylists that came to prominence after the big band era ended. In addition, it was the first
mainstream book to take the Retro-Swing movement of the 1980s and ‘90s and groups such as the
Royal Crown Revue and Big Bad Voodoo Daddy seriously.




The third edition of the All Music Guide To Jazz gave me the opportunity to write thousands of
record reviews about everyone from Bix Beiderbecke to Cecil Taylor, Louis Armstrong to John
Coltrane. With its concise biographies and historic essays, it is one of the major jazz reference books.









Duke Ellington is a beautiful photo book that has many rare shots of Ellington and his sidemen
from the 1920s to the 1970s. I wrote a lengthy biographical essay that accompanies the classic
shots. Ellington was such a remarkable musician (pianist, composer, arranger and band leader)
and during every year of 1926-73, his orchestra ranked with the top five of the time.






In 2008, I wrote the text to a rather unusual book. The talented Dutch photographer Jaap van de
Klomp traveled the world taking beautiful photos of the graves of scores of jazz immortals. The
large book that resulted, Jazz Lives - Till We Shall Meet And Never Part, is a rather unique  
masterpiece and not downbeat in the slightest. I had the honor of writing the 180 or so biographies
and, in addition to the photos of the graves, there is a photo apiece of each musician and singer in
his or her prime. Published in the Netherlands by Bruna Uitgevers, this will not be an easy book to
find and it is not inexpensive, but it is a gem. Look for it on the Internet at www.JazzLives.nl