When Whitney Balliett's American Musicians appeared in the Fall of
1986, the acclaim it received was universal. Leonard Feather, writing in
the Los Angeles Times, said "no other writer now living can write with
comparable grace and equal enthusiasm about everyone from Jack Teagarden
and Art Tatum to Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman." And Bruce Cook in
The New Leader called the book "the quintessential Whitney Balliett,
the cream of the cream, a collection that leaves no doubt about his
strength."
That book gathered together all of Balliett's profiles of jazz
instrumentalists. Here, in the revised edition of American Singers,
Balliett has added thirteen new biographical profiles to double the size
of the book and provide the perfect complement to American Musicians.
It now contains all the profiles on singers that Balliett has written
for The New Yorker. Alongside original chapters on such great
vocalists as Ray Charles, Tony Bennett, Joe Tur