As the description states, this is a reproduction of the original book, and if it’s true that the preproduction is sometimes unclear, I do like it anyway, because it gives that sense of the old copy, with a none-too-clear typographical aspect. It’s not true that this book was published prior to 1923, though. As the credits state inside, it was in fact published in 1961.

This is a short, agile book, easy to read even for someone who has no musical preparation like me.

The first part presents Dodds’ life and it’s quite short and skimpy. I would have like a more detailed narration, but that’s just time.

The biggest chunk of book is devoted to Dodds’ music and probably this is the right way to do it. It’s a long section with details about all the available recordings where Dodds appears, with a short but pertinent comment on the cut itself and on the contribution Dodds makes to it.
The author is clearly very prepared, but he also has the ability to make the reading easy, even when he uses technical words and expressions. I was always able to follow his reasoning, and he certainly made me curious to listen to at least some of the pieces he talks about.

There’s a sort but very interesting section about Dodds’ contribution to subsequent jazz, together with a very clear-cut analysis of his music, insert in the time period. The author is thus able to explain why a musician who was generally considered average, was actually a master of jazz as it was played in his days. Very interesting.

The last part is a list of the songs cited in the book. It’s funny to think as how many of them were unavailable at the time the book came out, because then music was only available on records. Today, I could find nearly all of the pieces cited here browsing the net.
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