This is - to quote the lyrics of Dear Bix, pianist/composer Dave Frish berg's lovely ballad tribute to Bix Beiderbecke - "no ordinary, standard, B-flat, run-of-the-mill type" guide. Now in its fourth edition and third update, over the years it has gradually established itself as one of the great books on jazz.
It's not just that the basics of recording dates and full personnel, crucial in placing an album in the context of an artist's work, are so meticulously done, or even that the sheer weight of CDs and the breadth of idioms covered are, frankly, awesome.
Neither is it the scrupulous factual accuracy of discographical and biographical detail; these are simply the givens in what would be any first-class work of reference.
It's something way beyond that again. Cook and Morton are more than fans, whose musical knowledge matches their enthusiasm; they're an opinionated pair, pithy, funny and authoritative, who constantly challenge, stimulate and, not incidentally, write like angels. Even if you disagree with them, it's usually possible to go back to the music, hear what they're going on about and, if you're so inclined, to say "Thanks, but no thanks".
In other words, their book provokes debate in a way that few such works on jazz are capable of. Because the authors manage to be both fair and lucid in their analysis, any locking of critical horns with the reader stands a better than even chance of being constructive, especially as they are not afraid to modify opinions from edition to edition, if they feel it's necessary; like Oscar Wilde, they would probably agree that sometimes consistency is an infirmity of lesser minds.
Critically, their approach takes into account differences of idiom and style. For example, Muggsy Spanier's 1939 revivalist traditional band album, The Great 16, gets the highest accolade - four asterisks and a crown - as does Miles Davis's 1959 Kind of Blue. They don't suggest that Spanier's relatively simple music is comparable to the subtleties of Davis's, but that both are classics of their kind and, in their different ways, seminal recordings. And the comments illuminate why they think so. Which is not to say that Cook and Morton don't sometimes try to have their cake and eat it. Some of the writing about the later Coltrane works, notably on that inchoate cry of anguish that is Ascension, seems to face Janus-like in two directions. And, at times, their partiality for music on the more tenuous margins of jazz, if jazz at all, might raise eyebrows; the brilliant Irish-Swiss pianist, John Wolfe Brennan, is one who comes to mind. In previous editions they wondered if his work was jazz at all, but he's accepted into their fold now.
What it shows is how engaged with the subject the authors are and what a broad church they are prepared to accept as jazz; if it's good of its kind, let's have it in there. Such an approach has its dangers; there are obviously limits, essentially rhythmic, to what may be defined as jazz.
Trouble is, as soon as you put up the no-entry signs, you find that someone has already wriggled past them and produced music which, if lacking some of the obvious jazz qualities, would not have its particular character without jazz. And that's something Cook and Morton seem to have very much in mind throughout.
What their book also does is one of the great joys of jazz: it will direct the reader into fresh pastures and to musicians they may never have even heard of before - people like the brilliant Scandinavians Nils Lindberg, Thomas Clausen and Jan Johansson, or equally considerable, little-known Americans like Gil Melle and Michael Hashim, for example. There are, personally, disappointments. Two of America's most talented pianists, Jessica Williams and Lynne Arriale, are not covered, and the entry for the great Hank Mobley is woefully inadequate, considering how many of his recordings are now available on CD. But there are so many positives about this book that, ultimately, all there is to say is - do yourself a favour, get it, and enjoy. It's that good.
