Early Jazz by Fumi Tomita

Early Jazz, a paperback book by Fumi Tomita, has as its subtitle “A Concise Introduction, from Its Beginnings through 1929.” Tomita conceived of his book as an overview of the early days of jazz (which he considers neglected in most jazz history classes) and a modernization of Gunther Schuller’s late 1960s work which was also called Early Jazz. It states on the back cover that it is “the first book on early jazz history in over fifty years.” Since I wrote Classic Jazz in 2001 and a few other books by others covering similar topics have also came out during the past few decades, this is one of several inaccuracies in this well-intentioned work. In Early Jazz, Tomita does a good job of summing up pre-jazz (including ragtime and the blues), the Chicago and New York jazz scenes in the 1920s, the development of stride piano and New York dance bands, Louis Armstrong in the 1920s, the Chicagoans, and Bix Beiderbecke. He includes brief summaries of many soloists and bands, some of which are rarely mentioned in jazz history books. He goes out of his way to be even-handed about the contributions of African-American and white musicians and tips his hat to the often-overlooked female jazz players. He even includes a brief chapter on Jazz Around The World which, along with mentioning Americans who played in Europe, has a bit on jazz in Asia. The text overall is quite readable and Fum