Setting the Tempo: Fifty Years of Great Jazz Liner Notes

Liner notes from jazz albums dating from the 1940s to the present offer insight into the background of musicians, the recordings, the historical context of the music, and personal views of the artists

troduction of the long-playing record, some of the best writing about jazz has appeared on the backs of record covers. Over the years, jazz writers and prominent jazz musicians have annotated record albums with background on the musicians and the recordings, historical context and musical analysis. These annotations, or "liner notes," provide a window on the recording process, as well as intimate anecdotes and personal views of the musicians that have an immediacy and warmth rarely found elsewhere--setting the tempo, in a sense, for the listener's appreciation of the music.

Jazz liner notes, both for new releases and classic material, comprise a rich and vibrant genre of jazz writing that has never been collected--until now. In Setting the Tempo, author and jazz authority Tom Piazza presents fifty of the finest and most distinctive notes from the beginning of the genre, in the 1940s, through the present.  Among them are Duke Ellington's moving reminiscence