Jazz Changes

Jazz Changes is the late Martin Williams's third and perhaps best collection of jazz portraits, interviews, narrative accounts of recording sessions, rehearsals, and performances, important liner notes, and far reaching discussions of musicians and their music. The collection includes thirty years of Williams's finest pieces taking readers on an engaging tour of the changing jazz world. There are appreciation-profiles and comments on such performers as Jelly Roll Morton--an historic and musical commentary on the massive Library of Congress Folklore Archives set recorded by Alan Lomax--greats like John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Ornette Coleman, Dinah Washington, Thelonious Monk, and interview with Ross Russell, founder of Dial Records and first to recored Charlie Parker at length. Williams also offers parodies of how jazz critics in 1965 might have assessed the Beatles, and reflections on the Ellington era. He concludes with an elegant plea for critics to pay attention to jazz history, always exhibiting his keen mind and gifted pen.