Verve: The Sound of America - Tapa dura

'Loaded with images, album covers and profiles of artists, producers and album-cover illustrators. Every essay by Havers includes information you may not have known ... A ton of colour, and all photos are dramatic and probably not familiar ' - JazzWax 'Lavish. Amongst the 1,000 plus rare, famous and unseen photographs in this lovingly assembled history are images more profound than any other music-related output in 2013 ... Designed to foreground the painterly lines of Verve's peerless cover artist, David Stone Martin, [this book] is a beautiful object, bringing together high-quality reproductions of album sleeves, master tapes, telegrams, contracts, tour photos and dreamy 8 x 10's of everyone from Herbie Hancock to Blossom Dearie' - Mojo 'Rare and unseen material captured for an in-depth book tracing the history of the legendary jazz label' - Music Week 'I was sooooo inspired just holding the book and turning the pages that I decided to pick a couple of Verve tracks to play ... I'll never stop reading this instantly historical and beautifully written book' - Bruce Johnston, The Beach Boys 'The assemblage of glorious archive photographs, tour posters, album sleeves and ephemera is eye-poppingly beautiful' - Daily Telegraph 'Lavishly illustrated ... Granz, who died in 2001, would be proud' - The Times Literary Supplement 'A fitting testament to one of the most important imprints in jazz' - Record Collector 'Turns the story of a record label into a gloriously lively history of jazz; the book's design almost makes you hear the music as you read' - Peter Conrad, Observer (Books of the Year)

The entire story of jazz – from its earliest days in New Orleans to the 1970s and beyond – told through archival material from Verve, the genre’s most important label. Verve signed practically every major jazz artist of the 1950s and 1960s and is home to some of the greatest music ever recorded. Charlie Parker, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald all released records through Verve. This superb new volume presents some of the rarest records and unseen ephemera from the label that helped define the world of jazz. Hundreds of the best examples of iconic seven-inch, ten-inch, and twelve-inch records appear, along with publicity reports, news clippings, posters, telegrams, and programmes. The ultimate music guide, the book includes features on key artists and key albums as well as insightful timelines that connect Verve with wider musical history. Looking beyond the music scene, the book discusses segregation in America, the missions to take jazz to Europe and the world, the clubs, the places, and the people who made Verve great and jazz cool. Commentary from the biggest names in jazz today, including some of Verve’s own artists, complements the text. 1,200 illustrations in color and black and white.