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There are only a few writers who are able to write well and with authority on all aspects of jazz. Philip Larkin pleaded for a "belle-lettriste of jazz, a Newman or Cardus". Whilst there is an expanding jazz bibliography, only rarely does a book satisfy completely. Much writing about jazz is ordinarily biographical in approach, usually written by adoring fans with a tendency to mythologize; this approach is more at home in Hollywood, for instance Clint Eastwood's biopic of Parker based on Ross Russell's Bird Lives! Much else strives too hard at a pseudo-musical approach and sees jazz as a restless musical etiquette of enriched harmonies: Armstrong's stomping, flattened sevenths of the '20s, distressed by Parker's bebop in the '40s, made dissonant courtesy of Ornette Coleman in the '60s, dissolute by the '80s, today dewy-eyed and retrospective. Many of these writers have limited musical knowledge and fall back on a litany of stock phrases. Lastly there is the sociological (or 'Mingus') school of writing, as expounded by Ken Burns in his lengthy documentary series shown last year on BBC, which looks on Jazz as a nutty professor might.

The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, LP and Cassette is an essential reference book edited by Richard Cook and Brian Morton, now in its 5th edition (Penguin, £20). Not an exhaustive discography, it attempts only to list what is available currently but alas offers a rather cursory glance at British jazz (only polite nods at Alan Barnes, Matt Wates and Michael Garrick, although Garrick is rightly described as a "national asset"). It is background information for building a CD collection, compulsive reading and a minefield of assembled fact and apposite commentary, fuelled, of course, by opinion - always to be disapproved unless one's own. Pianist Ahmad Jamal, a great influence on the younger Miles Davis, is afforded less than a page; yet Mal Waldron, a sound but unspectacular sideman, has an entry twice as long as Art Tatum and almost as long as Oscar Peterson, and nearly all his recordings are attributed (incorrectly!) the highest rating. Jamal sold out the Barbican this April; I last saw Waldron perform in a small room above a pub in Abingdon.

In the Groove by Eric Kohler, a visual feast, is the most delightful collection of album covers (Chronicle Books, £13.99) and as a general history of LP cover design takes in more than jazz. But jazz, perhaps the most overtly sensual of contemporary musical forms, greatly excited record companies and designers alike in a world yet to discover cheap reproduction photography, and the likes of David Stone Martin and Alex Steinweiss thrived. L'Oeil du Jazz (Filipacchi, £20) by Herman Leonard, the doyen of jazz photographers, is another delight.

Gary Giddins' Visions of Jazz (Oxford, £15) and Whitney Balliett's Collected Works (St Martin's Press, £20), heavyweight tomes both, take broad brushstrokes and are full of insight and knowledge. A truly compelling single-volume history of jazz is yet to be written. Ted Gioia's History of Jazz (Oxford, £9.99), really a who's who in narrative form, and A New History of Jazz by Alyn Shipton, not long published, are the best. Jazz a Crash Course by Simon Adams (Simon & Schuster, £9.99) is conveniently hip flask sized, visual and entertaining. The Rough Guide to Jazz (Penguin, £17.99) is the best popular encyclopaedia available, although enthusiasts might get more from the larger New Grove Dictionary of Jazz (Macmillan, £35). The Oxford Companion to Jazz (Oxford, £30) is particularly useful on jazz instruments and ensembles.

Ross Russell, founder of the label that recorded Charlie Parker in the mid-40s, accounts for Parker's life in Bird Lives! (Quartet, £10), a spellbinding book if not always reliable or impartial. Giddins' The Genius of Louis Armstrong (Da Capo, £12.99), has been reissued recently and is worth reading; so too Brian Priestley's Charles Mingus (Da Capo, £13.95) which is full of musical insight and is still more accomplished than Gene Santoro's recent book on Mingus. Without doubt the most readable of all biographies is Ian Carr's Miles Davis (Collins, £8.99), which is a lengthy book worthy of its subject's stature. Ashley Kahn's Kind of Blue (Granta, £20) is a very entertaining account of Davis and the making of this seminal album. Having made telling contributions to jazz over five decades, Davis (true hipsters refer to him only as Miles, of course) was a true jazz statesman, and played alongside or influenced most major stars since the bebop era. His own abrasive Miles the Autobiography (Picador, £9.99) reflects this, expletives and all, and explores his restless innovation, innovation that led him to change ceaselessly his approach to the music, not merely to chase an audience but to keep it alive.

Anthologies can be doubtful beasts, but if you take on one jazz book only let it be Reading Jazz, edited by Robert Gottlieb (Bloomsbury, £20). This is a wonderful all-embracing mouth-watering melee of writing, incorporating over 1,000 pages of autobiography, reportage and criticism. It is an American collection to be sure (Gottlieb is a former editor of the New Yorker), but jazz is definitively American and, in almost every creative first instance, black American. The gamut of jazz experience is conveniently condensed in to gobbet form, extracts, 10 page essays and album liner notes. There are disturbing chapters from autobiographies by Anita O'Day and Hampton Hawes, Jelly Roll's boasting, Miles Davis on Charlie Parker, cutting sessions in Kansas City, the unique Sun Ra, and much, much else. Art Pepper's account of a classic recording session in 1957, from his Straight Life (Canongate, £12.99) which recounts honestly a disturbed life ravaged by heroin, prison and alcohol, is chillingly memorable. Dudley Moore's loving liner note to an issue of previously unreleased tracks by Erroll Garner is my personal favourite:

"They say that certain types of genius are the result of untiring practice and application - terms which of course double to mean enthusiasm or passion - but what exactly Garner had to do to acquire this unique tonal vocabulary is hard to understand completely. Suffice it to say that his persona is streaked in bold and subtle flashes across his music. You didn't have to know the man to feel, what is certainly for one very brief moment in history, a unique singing voice. To achieve all this on a piano is no mean feat, but it is not the technical aspect of his playing that astonishes, although that is one thing to knock one off one's feet. It is the fact that the technical aspect evaporates in this spectacular contact that is made through a music that is entirely Garner's own… Passion…that's what all great artists have. A sprinkling of the demonic, a yearning for the tender, and a straight line to joy."

What more, really, is there to say about jazz?

copyright 2002 Dennis Harrison

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