BOOK REviewS

This section includes reviews of books on jazz subjects by a number of writers. Reviewers interested in contributing are welcome to contact the editor by filling out the form in the CONTACT tab. When contributing please include the title of the book and its author, the name of the publisher, the date of publication, the book’s ISBN number, and the number of pages in the book. Please also provide, if possible, a high resolution scan of the book’s cover. Readers can click on the INDEX button for a list of reviews in this folder.

THE REMARKABLE MR MORRISON: THE VIRTUOSITY AND VERSATILITY OF AUSTRALIA'S MASTER MUSICIAN

by Mervyn E Collins

Reviewed by John Shand

https://australianjazz.net/2014

Biographers tend to set to work because they are fascinated by their subjects, the odd can’t-say-no commission aside. Whether that fascination takes the form of admiration or abhorrence, however, the writer is expected to bring some objectivity to bear in trying to make a subject’s life and character three-dimensional. Mervyn E Collins is such an unabashed fan of trumpeter, trombonist and multi-instrumentalist James Morrison that in his opening sentence he tells us that Morrison ‘first dumfounded me back in the late 1980s’. By page two his subject is ‘a man for whom “virtuoso” seemed too small a word’, and by the fourth page he is a ‘musical genius’ of ‘freakish abilities’…

THE ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO DIASPORIC JAZZ STUDIES

Ádám Havas, Bruce Johnson, and David Horn (eds)

Reviewed by Ted Nettelbeck

This book presents 45 essays by 51 contributors. It is organised within seven parts: 1/ What is Diasporic Jazz?; 2/ Histories and Counter-Narratives; 3/ Making, Dissemination, and Consuming Diasporic Jazz; 4/ Culture, Politics, and Ideology; 5/ Communities and Distinctions; 6/ Presenting and Representing Diasporic Jazz; and 7/ Challenges and New Directions. The editors have recruited contributors from an extremely diverse range of countries. About 40 per cent of the authors are located in the UK or Australasia but the others cover a large number of European, Asian, South American and African countries; and the small number of authors located within North America are focussed on jazz played in countries other than the US. Overall, then, coverage of diasporic jazz is justifiably described as “world-wide”…

ODE TO A RUMPLED “JAZZ” OVERCOAT

by Keith Hownslow

Reviewed by Ted Nettelbeck

October 21, 2025

Although the frontispiece states that the book has been published in 2020, this is not (yet) the case. It is likely that Keith Hounslow worked on assembling the book over a fairly protracted period following his retirement, aged 76, in 2004; and only finally finished it after 20171, perhaps close to his death on February 14, 2020 – at which time he may have believed that arrangements for publication were secure. I do not know what the title refers to; it may be a metaphor for life, as Keith saw it. Something of a lay philosopher, his prose is sometimes difficult to follow as he invites the reader to engage with him when considering social policy, family life and all manner of life’s challenges. Given to witticisms, adages, aphorisms, the odd impenetrable acronym, and all kinds of asides, his writing style is somewhat scatter-gun and laced with dry humour -- much of which passed me by. However, although the tone is occasionally self-deprecating, some aspects are deeply personal and it is obvious that he intends to be taken seriously…