Since, as everybody knows, Jazz is the greatest music on Earth, I'm not going to write much about it...
Among the enormous amount of information about jazz in the web it's better to start with some general site like All About Jazz, Jazz Resources on the Net, Jazz Studies Online, or Jazz House. A really great site containing a huge amount of serious information for the professional amateur (so to speak...) is the Jazz Discography Project. There are many interesting sites centering their attention in particular styles and/or epochs; some examples are The Free Jazz Collective, on free jazz, the Jazz Research, on jazz in California in 1945-60. Also interesting are some personal sites like the one of Ehsan Khoshbakht, of Pedro Cravinho, and many, many others.
There are a large number of sites (both official and unofficial) dedicated to particular artists. Musical preferences will clearly influence site preferences. As far as I'm concerned, I think the following ones are pretty cool: John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Dave Douglas, Dave Holland, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Andrew Hill, Billie Holiday, Italian Instabile Orchestra, the composers-in-residence of the Jazz Composers Collective, Lee Konitz, John Lewis, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, and Maria Schneider.
For Jazz in Portugal one should not miss Jazz Portugal. Some clubs and societies are very active and their activities deserve to be followed closely: the historical Lisbon's Hot Clube de Portugal is a must; but also the more recent Jazz ao Centro Clube in Coimbra, and the Porta-Jazz, in Porto, which, among other initiatives, is publishing in its label Carimbo Porta-Jazz what is arguably the most outstanding set of contemporary recordings by Portuguese jazzmen.
Finally, in what concerns online music shops relevant to jazz, essentially every record label (see next item) has its own online shop, and general record shops exist is such a large number that there's no point in trying to list them here; next I will only point out some that I've found rather good (either online or in their real physical locations):
Here follows links to a number of record companies relevant to Jazz. I would just draw your attention to Mosaic, a real must for every jazz lover!
Unfortunately some important publications about Jazz have died out since
I began listening to the music, in particular one I enjoyed very much: the Canadian
Coda Magazine. I enjoy reading the French Jazz Magazine
which, after
the closing of the paper version of Jazz Hot (although the online version still lives on)
and the merger with Jazzman, remains the only French jazz magazine of importance that I know of (and that
can be bought in Portugal.) In Portugal, in recent times, there was a number of regular albeit short lived publications entirely devoted to jazz, the last
to die was called
Jazz.pt. This first rate magazine is no more but an excellent homonym web site is apparently in good heath.
On top of these mass circulation magazines, there are a number of scholarly journals dedicated to jazz, but very
few are freely available online; one exception is the Spanish Jazz-hitz,
published by the Department of Jazz of the Centro Superior de Música del País Vasco.
A good deal of useful information about jazz can be found in the site
All Music Guide to Jazz. Useful general books_web_page are the
All Music Guide to Jazz, the Peguin Guide, the
New Grove Dictionary, and the
Guide to Classic Recorded Jazz. Reference to more specialist books are given in the next item.
Here you can find my brief critical assessment of books about jazz that I read from cover to cover since the fall of 1998. Books of which I read just parts are not commented below.
A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album; by Ashley Kahn, Viking, New York, 2002
Africa Speakes, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times; by Robin D. G. Kelley, The Nathan I. Huggins Lectures, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, 2012
The Art of Jazz: A Visual History; by Alyn Shipton, Imagine, Watertown, 2020
As Serious As Your Life: Black Music and the Free Jazz Revolution, 1957-1977; by Val Wilmer, Serpent's Tail Classics, Serpent's Tail, London, 2018
Como Se Eu Tivesse Asas: As Memórias Perdidas; by Chet Baker, VS. Vasco Santos Editor, Lisboa, 2019
DC Jazz: Stories of Jazz Music in Washington, DC; edited by Maurice Jackson and Blair A. Ruble, Historical Society of Washington, D.C.; Georgetown University Press, Washington, DC, 2018
Different Drummers: Jazz in the Culture of Nazi Germany; by Michael H. Kater, Oxford University Press, New York, 2003
The Ghetto Swinger: A Berlin Jazz-Legend Remembers; by Coco Schumann, with Max Christian Graeff and Michaela Haas, Doppelhouse Press,Los Angeles, 2016
Harlem in Montmartre: A Paris Jazz Story Between the Great Wars; by William A. Shack, Music of the African Diaspora vol. 4, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2001
The History of Jazz; by Ted Gioia, Oxford University Press, New York, 1998
The House That TRANE Built; The Story of Impulse Records; by Ashley Kahn, Granta Books, London, 2006
How to Listen to Jazz; by Ted Gioia, Basic Books, New York, 2016
I Didn't Make a Million: How Jazz Came to China; by Whitey Smith, with C.L. McDermott, Earnshaw Books, Hong Kong, 2017
Improvisando: A Nova Geração do Jazz Português; by Nuno Catarino and Mácia Lessa, Hot Clube de Portugal, [Lisboa,] 2019
Jazz em Cascais: Uma História de 80 Anos; by João Moreira dos Santos, Casa Sassetti, Cascais, 2009
Le Jazz et les Gangsters 1880-1940; by Ronald Morris, Abbeville, Paris, 1997
The Jazz Exiles: American Musicians Abroad; by Bill Moody, University of Nevada Press, Reno, 1993
Jazz Italian Style: From its Origins in New Orleans to Fascist Italy and Sinatra; by Anna Harwell Celenza, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2017
Jazz on the River; by William Howland Kenney, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2005
The Jazz Pilgrimage of Gerald Wilson; by Steven Loza, University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 2018
The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire; by Ted Gioia, Oxford University Press, New York, 2012
Kind of Blue: The Making of the Miles Davis Masterpiece; by Ashley Kahn, Granta Books, London, 2000
Lisboa e o Jazz: Uma Pequena História da Relação da Cidade Com o Jazz nos últimos 80 Anos; by António Rubio, Colecção Os Vicentes, vol. 2, Apenas, Lisboa, 2008
Live at The Village Vanguard; by Max Gordon, Da Capo, New York, 1980
O Livro de Jazz em Portugal: 90 Anos de Swing nas Letras, 1923-2013; by João Moreira dos Santos, Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Lisboa, 2013
Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s; by Michael C. Heller, University of California Press, Oakland, 2017
Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Interwar Paris; by Jeffrey H. Jackson, Duke University Press, Durham, 2004
Marabi Nights: Jazz, `Race' and Society in Early Apartheid South Africa; by Christopher Ballantine, University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg, 2012
Mas É Bonito; by Geoff Dyer, Quetzal, Lisboa, 2014
Message To Out Folks: The Art Ensemble of Chicago; by Paul Steinbeck, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2018
Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and "Inventor of Jazz"; by Allan Lomax, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2001
Monk! Thelonious, Pannonica, and the Friendship Behind a Musical Revolution; by Youssef Daoudi, First Second, New York, 2018
Myself When I Am Real: The Life and Music of Charles Mingus; by Gene Santoro, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000
Ornette Coleman: The Territory and the Adventure; by Maria Golia, Reaktion Books, London, 2020
Red and Hot: The Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union, 1917-1980; by S. Frederick Starr, Oxford University Press, New York, 1983
Red Jazz, ou la vie extraordinaire du camarade Rosner; by Natalie Sazonova, Parangon, Paris, 2004
Le Siècle du Jazz: Art, Cinéma, Musique et Photographie de Picasso à Basquiat; directed by Daniel Soutif, Musée du Quai Brainly / Skira Flammarion, Paris, 2009
Sittin' in: Jazz Clubs From the 1940s and 1950s; by Jeff Gold, Harper Design, New York, 2020
Some Hustling This! Taking Jazz to the World, 1914-1929; by Mark Miller, The Mercury Press, Toronto, 2005
Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon; by Maxine Gordon, University of California Press, Oakland, 2018
Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Café Society, and an Early Cry for Civil Rights; by David Margolick, Running Press, Philadelphia, 2000
Swingin' the Dream: Big Band Jazz and the Rebirth of American Culture; by Lewis Erenberg, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1998
This is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture; by Iain Anderson, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2007
West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960; by Ted Gioia, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1998
What Jazz Is: An Insider's Guide to Understanding and Listening to Jazz; by Jonny King, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1998
Why Jazz? A Concise Guide; by Kevin Whitehead, Oxford University Press, New York, 2011
Jazz inspires many other art forms. And ways of living. Some of both are patently clear in the utter beautiful photographs in web site about Tokyo Jazz Joints.
Many jazz inspired creations in the visual arts can be seen in the very nice Smithsonian web page.
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Last Update: March 22, 2023.