New Penguin Guide

[jostber]

The Penguin guide has been useful for me through the years as it is so full of cross references, and because of it's comprehensiveness. Though I agree that some of the reviews was not always on the spot, the sheer volume of worthwhile reviews made up for it.

I also think the Penguin guide has done a useful job in getting lesser known artist's and albums recognized for their value. The guide has also been prominent in showcasing jazz musicians from other countries than US, especially some British jazz artists.

[BillF]

When I bought my first Penguins I was more than a fleeting jazz listener

[Face of the Bass]

I just picked up a Kindle copy of this for my IPhone, and have been reading through it today here and there. I have to say, I think making these changes was a really smart move. The more recent editions of this book had been plagued, IMO, by hopeless attempts to cover everything superficially. Inevitably they couldn't cover everything (or even close to everything) and what they did cover was usually very truncated and somehow lacking.

Now they've reorganized the book so it reads more like a history of jazz on record, with recordings organized chronologically instead of alphabetically. The writing for each entry is much more thorough, and even more awesome, they've added these pretty interesting quotations from the musicians themselves, or sometimes from other musicians about each musician. These quotes are also unique sources: they all come from Brian Morton's personal collection of interviews, so it's not just a reprinting of something that was published somewhere else.

The result, for my money (and the e-version of this was less than $18), is much more of a "book", much less a "reference guide." Given how many recordings there are out there now, I think this is a shift in the right direction. Only 1001 recordings are covered in this version, but reading through this I will have much better information, and much better writing, about those recordings than I had for the 14,000 recordings that were touched on in the ninth edition. Also, I'm glad they got rid of the star rating system, which really obscured more than it enlightened.

I have to say, I'm liking having a version of this book on my cell phone. No, I can't just randomly start flipping the pages as easily as I could a physical book, but I can carry it with me when I go to record stores or I can pick it up and read it easily for a few minutes when I have the time. Plus, I save a lot of shelving space.

One continuing source of annoyance, though, is their categorical refusal to include anything by Mosaic. Their reasons (that the sets are targeted to a niche audience, that they go out of print after a few years) just don't wash. The same could be said for a lot of recordings that they do cover.

Edited December 11, 2010 by Face of the Bass

[David Ayers]

FoB posts the case for the defence! I'm going to take a look...

[Face of the Bass]

I don't know if this new format will be for everyone, but I can definitely say that it's much more thought out than some of the early posters in this thread seemed to assume. I've been reading through it a bit tonight, and I'm only up to the 1920s, but what strikes me again is the wonderful quality of the writing. Morton (and Cook when he was alive) are both very good writers, and I feel that this really got lost to some extent in the more recent versions of the Penguin Guide.

[JohnS]

Thanks FoB. I will take a look as soon as my local bookshop gets one back in stock. The one copy they had seems to have been sold and not replaced.