The Penguin Jazz Guide

Authors: Brian Morton,Richard Cook

PENGUIN BOOKS

Richard Cook was born in Kew and spent virtually all of his life in or around that part of London. An early passion for record collecting helped push him towards jazz and both interests endured. He got paid for a piece of music writing in 1979 and was so impressed that he kept going. He edited the
Wire
for seven years and was founding editor of
Jazz Review
; he also wrote for the
Sunday Times
, the
New Statesman
and
Punch
at different times and, in addition to the first eight editions of this book, was the author of a ‘biography’ of the Blue Note label, a study of Miles Davis and
Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia
, published by Penguin. He also presented a well-liked and thoroughly idiosyncratic jazz programme on London local radio, and made some documentaries for BBC Radio 3; didn’t like cameras much, though. Horse racing and malt whisky were his other passions and the only subjects on which he and his co-author ever disagreed. Sadly, Richard Cook succumbed to cancer in the late summer of 2007. He is greatly missed.

Brian Morton was born in Paisley. He was first published at the age of sixteen and has never stopped, though he has also worked as an academic, a newspaper journalist and a broadcaster on BBC Radios 3 and 4, and on BBC Radio Scotland, where he presented a daily arts programme for eight years. Jazz and improvisation gradually won out over other musical enthusiasms. Writing gradually won out over playing, and his improvising ensembles The Golden Horde, Phlogiston and People Without Government are now a distant memory. He lives with his wife, the landscape photographer Sarah MacDonald, and son John on a small farm in the west of Scotland. His older girls Fiona and Alice are there much of the time, too. Unlike Mr Cook, who was a devoted Islay malted man, Morton favours the great Speysides. With a good few drops of gypsy blood in his veins, he reckons he was a better judge of horseflesh, too. He misses the arguments.

Brian Morton
and
Richard Cook

The Penguin Jazz Guide

THE HISTORY OF THE MUSIC IN THE 1,001 BEST ALBUMS

PENGUIN BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand
(a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

www.penguin.com

First published 2010

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

The Penguin Jazz Guide

Other books