Author name: Thomas Cunniffe

In the early 1920s, future jazz giants like Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton and Bix Beiderbecke endured long train rides to record for a tiny company in rural Indiana. Rick Kennedy’s newly expanded and revised book Jelly Roll, Bix and Hoagy offers the history of Gennett Records with discussions of their jazz, country and blues recordings. Thomas Cunniffe provides his impressions in this month’s book review.

The title of Ted Gioia’s new book might strike many long-time jazz fans as too elementary for their needs. However, JHO book reviewer Thomas Cunniffe asserts that How to Listen to Jazz should be required reading for all jazz fans, because Gioia proves that the best way to revitalize our own passions for jazz is to share the music with others. Gioia recalls his early experiences with the music, and then applies his thirty years of experience as a critic and historian to clarify and amplify these events.

Ted Gioia is one of today’s finest music historians. Since he usually focuses on American music, it’s a little surprising that his latest book Love Songs is not limited to modern love songs, but is a comprehensive history of the subgenre going back to the 23rd century BC. Thomas Cunniffe’s review states the book contains many fascinating and controversial theories, but that the section on American music should have been expanded.