[Dixielandjazz] All About Jazz

[Jazzjerry@aol.com]

Hi Steve,

The posters are great and would look really good on my office wall. Pity they 
are a little pricey ($25 seems a lot to me!) and importing from the States is 
not that practicable.

The All About Jazz site is something else though. My jazz tastes are fairly 
wide but this is a joke surely. For anyone with jazz interests from Freddie 
Keppard to Freddie Hubbard and John Handy to John Handy this site is narrow 
indeed. I would think that the 'Building a jazz library' section would be a 
pretty good indication of the overall aims of the site and they surely cannot 
be serious in their suggestion. Eight artists are listed in that particular 
section and these included Tonny Bennett, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald. 
Great performers indeed but hardly the greatest jazz singers. In the  
instrument section the saxophone does not even get a mention yet there are 
three bits devoted to vocalists. The style selection is even more bizarre 
with only  'Smooth', 'Post-Bop, 'Blues', 'Bossa Nova', Classic Be-bop', 
'Classic Funk', Free Improv' and 'Funk Jazz' meriting a listing. The 'Drum & 
bass' instrument section does not mention and drummers or bass players at 
all. All very odd.

Yes there are some interesting and useful things about the site but it's 
outlook seems about as narrow as those who believe that 'without a banjo it 
ain't jazz' or 'John Coltrane is the true originator of jazz as an art form' 
and I have heard both views expressed by otherwise sane people.

Sites such as this are dangerous in that they set themselves as informative 
but fall down sadly on the scope of the contents.

Just a veiwpoint.

Cheers,

Jerry,
Norwich,
U.K.