reading list

Indianapolis and Central Indiana

David Leander Williams — Indianapolis Jazz. A key source for understanding Indianapolis, Indiana Avenue, and the Black musical community that produced and nurtured major Jazz artists.

Rick Kennedy — Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy. An essential source on Gennett Records in Richmond, Indiana, and the early recording world that captured Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, King Oliver, Hoagy Carmichael, and others.

Duncan Schiedt — The Jazz State of Indiana. A valuable regional work on Indiana’s Jazz history and musicians.

Jazz History, Jazz Standards, American Popular Song

Gerald Horne — Jazz and Justice. A history of how Jazz and Jazz musicians flourished despite systemic cultural exploitation.

Amiri Baraka / LeRoi Jones — Blues People: Negro Music in White America. A foundational argument that blues and Jazz must be understood through Black American history, social pressure, exploitation, and transformation. Also: Black Music. A passionate account of modern Jazz, especially post-bop and avant-garde music, as Black artistic self-definition.

Ted Gioia — The History of Jazz. A broad, readable history of Jazz from early forms through modern developments. Also: The Jazz Standards. A guide to major songs in the Jazz repertoire, with historical background and recommended recordings.

Alec Wilder — American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950. Essential reading on the craft of classic American song: melody, harmony, structure, and invention.

Deeper Context: Race, Blues, Jazz & American Culture

These works help further frame the cultural and emotional forces behind the music.

Ralph Ellison — Shadow and Act. Essays on race, art, folklore, literature, music, and American identity. Ellison helps us understand Black culture as both deeply particular and central to the larger American story.

Albert Murray — Stomping the Blues. A joyful, profound treatment of Blues and Jazz as elegant, resilient, life-affirming cultural forms.

Stanley Crouch — Considering Genius. Essays arguing for Jazz as a major American art form rooted in Black experience, blues feeling, discipline, Swing, and individual mastery.

A. B. Spellman — Four Jazz Lives / Four Lives in the Bebop Business. Portraits of modern Jazz artists navigating creativity, race, commerce, recognition, and survival.

Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. — Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-Hop. Connects Bebop, Black community, family life, church, nightlife, Pop music, and Hip-hop.

Eileen Southern — The Music of Black Americans. A major historical survey of Black music in America.

Samuel A. Floyd Jr. — The Power of Black Music. A study of Black musical aesthetics, memory, call-and-response, signifying, and cultural continuity.

Angela Y. Davis — Blues Legacies and Black Feminism. A powerful reading of Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, and the freedom expressed by blues women.

Agust Wilson — Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. A play (not a history book), but essential to understanding Black music inside a white-controlled recording industry.

W. E. B. Du Bois — The Souls of Black Folk. Not a Jazz book, but indispensable for understanding the spiritual, historical, and emotional world from which Black American musical expression emerged.

Zora Neale Hurston — Mules and Men. A landmark collection of Black folklore and oral culture, rich with storytelling, humor, ritual, and vernacular intelligence.

Gene Lees — Cats of Any Color: Jazz Black and White. A candid collection of essays on race, Jazz, musicianship, and the tension between Black centrality and cross-racial participation.

Jazz Criticism, Memory & Musicianship

These books offer additional ways to think about Jazz as art, history, personality, and lived experience.

Dan Morgenstern — Living with Jazz. Essays and criticism from one of Jazz’s important commentators.

Nat Hentoff — Jazz Is. A personal, musician-centered account of Jazz as expression, struggle, identity, and freedom.

Gary Giddins — Visions of Jazz. A wide-ranging critical work placing Jazz musicians in historical, cultural, and artistic context.

Jazz Singers, Jazz Singing

Will Friedwald — A Biographical Guide to the Great Jazz and Pop Singers. A major reference on singers, interpretation, style, personality, and recorded legacy. Also: Jazz Singing. A deeper look at Jazz singing as an art form, from blues and swing through bebop and beyond.

Scott Yanow — The Jazz Singers. A useful guide to vocalists across eras, styles, and levels of fame.

Bruce Crowther & Mike Pinfold — Singing Jazz. A helpful source on Jazz singing and the relationship between vocal performance and Jazz language.

Gene Lees — Singers and the Song II. Lees writes from inside the world of singers, songwriters, lyricists, and musicians. Also: Meet Me at Jim & Andy’s. A personal, anecdotal look at musicians, singers, and the social world around Jazz and popular song.