The Guitar in Jazz: An Anthology

Although the guitar has played a sizeable role in jazz since at least the early 1920s--when Eddie Lang added his six-string expertise to recordings by the Mound City Blue Blowers--there have been surprisingly few books on the subject. James Sallis's fine anthology covers all the bases, from early pioneers like Lang and Charlie Christian to latter-day virtuosi like Jim Hall and Bill Frisell. Hardly a single significant player is overlooked. In addition, there's an attractive variety to the essays themselves, which include both close-focus examinations of particular performances such as Django Reinhardt's "You Rascal You," and wide-angle historical pieces such as Leonard Feather's introductory ramble, which crams seven decades into 11 pages.