Trumpet Kings

With biographies of 479 jazz trumpeters, encompassing musicians from the unsung Australian trad instrumentalist Bob Barnard to the well-known American modern jazz revivalist Wynton Marsalis, in TRUMPET KINGS noted jazz writer Scott Yanow has created a remarkable encyclopedia of the instrument`s practitioners. Yanow sets the scene for the rest of his book with a succinct, scholarly, and informative preface on the history of the trumpet in jazz, noting that its popularity began with the cornet. As he explains, the early years of jazz are shrouded in mystery, but cornetist Buddy Bolden, who performed around the turn of the 20th century, is seen as the genre`s first popularizer. The trumpet rapidly became the instrument of choice for jazz soloists like Johnny Dunn and the immortal Louis Armstrong, and, as Yanow convincingly shows, each successive generation of musicians influenced more members of the next. Encompassing big band swing-era trumpeters like Bunny Berigan and 1960s and `70s British experimentalists like Ian Carr, TRUMPET KINGS is an exhaustive and informative overview of a vast cross-section of jazz performers that should prove invaluable to jazz fans and music scholars alike. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.