A01=Bruce D. Epperson
adaptation
Author_Bruce D. Epperson
band
bibliography
brass
buyers guides
canon building
catalogs
Category=AVLP
Category=AVX
collectors
copyright
covers
digital
discography
documentation
ensemble
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_music
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
evaluation
history
index
interpretation
jazz
library
music
musicology
national identity
nonfiction
plagiarism
recordings
records
reference
rivalries
session musicians
sound
technology
vinyl
Product details
- ISBN 9780226067537
- Weight: 539g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 01 Oct 2013
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Today, jazz is considered high art, America's national music, and the catalog of its recordings-its discography-is often taken for granted. But behind jazz discography is a fraught and highly colorful history of research, fanaticism, and the simple desire to know who played what, where, and when. This history gets its first full-length treatment in Bruce D. Epperson's More Important Than the Music. Following the dedicated few who sought to keep jazz's legacy organized, Epperson tells a fascinating story of archival pursuit in the face of negligence and deception, a tale that saw curses and threats regularly employed, with fisticuffs and lawsuits only slightly rarer. Epperson examines recorded jazz from its careless handling as a novelty in the 1920s and '30s, through the deluge of 12-inch vinyl in the middle of the twentieth century, to the use of computers by today's discographers. Though he focuses much of his attention on comprehensive discographies, he also examines the development of a variety of related listings, such as buyer's guides and library catalogs, and he closes with a look toward discography's future.
From the little black book to the full-featured online database, More Important Than the Music offers a history not just of jazz discography but of the profoundly human desire to preserve history itself.
Bruce D. Epperson is an attorney and independent scholar and member of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. He is the author of Peddling Bicycles to America: The Rise of an Industry. He lives in Miami.
