The Freedom Principle: Jazz After 1958

"The quest for freedom with a small f," writes John Litweiler, "appears at the very beginning of jazz and reappears at every growing point in the music's history." But Litweiler's book is about the upper-case variety of freedom--the Free jazz pioneered in the late 1950s by the likes of Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton, and Eric Dolphy. The author, who has also written a fine biography of Coleman, traces the rise and multiple ramifications of this firebreathing music. His judgements have held up superbly since the book's original 1985 publication, and his thumbnail portraits and fine-tuned analyses make this an essential volume.