Books like Django — picked by fans

This is such a gorgeous book! Beautifully told by Pam Muñoz Ryan, this is the story of Marian Anderson, a little girl with a beautiful voice who battled racial prejudice in the pre-Civil Rights era to become one of America’s greatest singers. Brian Selznick’s illustrations are exquisite, done in soft sepia tones to give a feel for the period. And the book’s unique format will delight readers of any age. This is a book that inspires, touching hearts, and teaching young readers what courage, perseverance, and generosity can accomplish.

Winner of the prestigious Schneider Award, Parker's text and artwork celebrate the genius of the great Art Tatum - who just happened to be blind. The words are poignant and effective, but it is Parker's watercolor paintings that glow and amaze with a balance of sophistication and childlike elegance. In short, a master of one medium is being honored by another. 

Susanna is an award-winning writer of many picture book bios, but I have a special fondness for this one about Pete Seeger, a standout musician, activist, and human being. Adam Gustavson's marvelous acrylic paintings are a perfect backdrop for a beautifully-written text about a man who believed in the power of Music, and who dedicated his life to the cause of civil and social equality for all Americans. 

Deservedly, this book received 6 starred reviews for a superb pairing of text and artwork recounting the story of a historic photograph. Taken in 1958 for Esquire Magazine, A Great Day in Harlem captured the gathering of outstanding jazz musicians on a city street, and Orgill's book brings the magic of that summer day to life for young readers. How I wish this idea had been mine! ;]

The epic life of French jazz guitarist Django Reinhart deserves a Spielbergian biopic treatment. After the cart fire where he damaged his hand and the personal epiphany of hearing a Louis Armstrong record, the Gypsy guitarist would bring jazz to Europe with his near magical musical improvisations. He lived a wild, carefree life, full of big cars, large dreams, and sensual pleasures. When the Nazis took over Paris, he returned to his homeland, opened one of the city’s most dazzling nightclubs, and made hit records that flooded the French airwaves during the Occupation. When the war was over, his career went out like a light switch and Django repaired to a quiet life in a remote riverfront village, spending his time fishing and painting nudes. 

Do you want to play some of the most flashy, virtuosic, exciting, and emotionally charged guitar music around? Then this book is for you. When the great Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt fused American Jazz with the stylings of the French Musette Bal and his native Gypsy melodies, little did he know he had created a whole new musical genre. This book will teach you how to emulate and create within the Gypsy Jazz style which has evolved in the generations since Reinhardt’s early death in 1952. Prepare to be awed, humbled, and inspired.

I came across this book when I decided to focus my graduate study on the history of jazz and was reading everything I could find. It’s a short book, full of incredible vintage photographs, and it taught me so much about what swing is, how music and dance are joined at the hip. How it’s all rooted in the blues. And about the link between the “Saturday Night Function” of celebrating life with music and dance, followed a few hours later by the “Sunday Morning Function,” singing and celebrating God and community in church. The two are not all that far apart. Along with Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray was probably the first author to write about jazz with a real sense of lyricism and poetry. In this book, the writing itself carries the energy and exuberance of jazz.

When I began my book I’d been out of graduate school for 25 years. I read deeply to see what I’d missed and discovered what is now called cultural history. It seems to me that a great deal of it is written to a template rather than directly from the facts as discovered. Even though DeVeaux comes out of the academic world, I get no such sense from Bop. It’s brilliant. Immaculately researched and nicely written, it addresses the extraordinary transition of Black music from entertainment-driven (however artful) to art (however entertaining). It’s an important story, and DeVeaux tells it beautifully.

I love this book because it provides many musical examples from the author’s own voluminous repertoire. The examples illustrate various arranging techniques, presented in condensed concert scores for ease of sight-reading. I love the relaxed, conversational tone of the book, which illustrates the musical techniques in the music itself without resorting to academic lists and charts.

I love the way Sammy presents the material in an informal, easy-going manner which has the effect of making the reader feel like they’re sitting in a room with the author listening to music, while various techniques and styles are illustrated from within the music.

A book about the creation and meaning of the one jazz album that every music fan seems to own, Miles Davis’s meditative and miraculous 1959 masterpiece Kind of Blue—and how it connects to a whole lot more. Loudly trumpeted on its back cover as the record that “influenced the whole course of late twentieth-century music,” The Blue Moment takes the album as a starting point and expands ever outwards to trace its wider roots, contexts, echoes, correspondences, undercurrents, and legacies. It’s quite a ride: from Bauhaus to Brian Eno; from the existential modernism of Antonioni to the minimalism of La Monte Young; from Picasso’s Blue Period to the aesthetics of esteemed German record label ECM. For me, not all of the links and associations, some of which are tenuous at best, stand up. Yet Williams is one of music writing’s most elegant chroniclers and insightful thinkers, and The… show more.