More Important Than the Music (eBook)

A History of Jazz Discography

Bruce D. Epperson (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2013
304 Seiten
University of Chicago Press (Verlag)
978-0-226-06767-4 (ISBN)

Infos

Today, jazz is considered high art, America's national music, and the catalog of its recordings-its discography-is often taken for granted. But behind jazz discography is a fraught and highly colorful history of research, fanaticism, and the intense desire to know who played what, where, and when. This history gets its first full-length treatment in Bruce D. Epperson's More Important Than the Music. Following the dedicated few who sought to keep jazz's legacy organized, Epperson tells a fascinating story of archival pursuit in the face of negligence and deception, a tale that saw curses and threats regularly employed, with fisticuffs and lawsuits only slightly rarer.Epperson examines the documentation of recorded jazz from its casual origins as a novelty in the 1920s and 30s, through the overwhelming deluge of 12-inch vinyl records in the middle of the twentieth century, to the use of computers by today s discographers. Though he focuses much of his attention on comprehensive discographies, he also examines the development of a variety of related listings, such as buyer s guides and library catalogs, and he closes with a look toward discography s future. From the little black book to the full-featured online database, More Important Than the Music offers a history not just of jazz discography but of the profoundly human desire to preserve history itself.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 1.10.2013
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Musik ► Jazz / Blues
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Technikgeschichte
• ISBN-10: 0-226-06767-X / 022606767X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-226-06767-4 / 9780226067674