Jazz Veterans is a celebration of America's famous jazz musicians in words and photographs. It brings you inside the lives and the art of Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Lionel Hampton and dozens of others. Previously unpublished portraits of many of the greatest names in jazz history are presented in more than 200 brilliant photographs which complement the stories. Award-winning jazz critic Chip Deffaa shares his love of the music and his intimate knowledge of the lives and times of the musicians in this magical book. Starting with the artists whose careers began during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, continuing through the big band years and the bebop era to the age of modern jazz, over one hundred jazz greats are examined and illuminated in the context of the music they created.
Many of the photographs in this book are extremely rare: Artie Shaw, Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Chet Baker, Stuff Smith, Maxine Sullivan, Roy Eldridge - the table of contents reads like a hall of fame listing. Photographer Nancy Miller Elliott shoots the celebrities offstage and intimate, while John and Andreas Johnsen more often strive to document the performers in action. "You can catch the personality of a musician if you can catch the way he's doing an improvisation," John Johnsen says.
This is the first jazz gallery devoted exclusively to the veterans of the art form, and one of a very few books in which words and photos are so beautifully balanced.