Copyright 2000 www.cosmopolis.ch Louis Gerber All rights
reserved.
Joachim-Ernst Berendt
1922-2000
Joachim-Ernst Berendt: The Jazz Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond.
Paperback, 6th-1997 revised ed. (1992), 541 p. Get the book from Amazon.com.
Joachim-Ernst Berendt, the author of the best selling
book on jazz ever (overall sale about 1,5 million copies), also known as the "Pope of Jazz" in Germany, died in Hamburg, Germany, on
Feburary 4, 2000, at
the age of 77, after being hit by a car. He was walking to an event to promote his new book
Nur Gehen (Only Walking), his version of experiences with nature. Prof. h. c. Joachim-Ernst Berendt was born 1922 in Berlin/Germany.
In 1945, he was one of a co-founder of the Südwestfunk, one of
Germany's big Radio and Television networks. Up to his
retirement in 1987, he had led more
than 10,000
broadcasts featuring the music he loved. He not only
wrote The Jazz Book, but in total 33 books,
translated into 16 languages, dealing mostly with music and philosophy. Berendt has produced more than
250 long-playing records for MPS, Columbia, World Pacific, Atlantic/WEA,
Electrola and other labels in Germany and Japan. He founded the „Berlin Jazz
Days“, directed many international festivals and concerts (at the
„World Expo Osaka“, the „Olympic Games Munich“, and the „World
Music Event 1982“ at New Yorks Lincoln Centre. In 1970 American-based music publication
Jazz
and Pop voted him Europe's best jazz producer.
In The Jazz Book Berendt points out that it was the Swiss
conductor Ernest Ansermet who wrote the first serious article on jazz, the
Belgian Robert Goffin wrote the first book on jazz in 1929 and the first jazz
review was published by the French Charles Delaunay at the end of the 1930s.
Berendt has all the arguments on his side against the thesis expressed by James
Lincoln Collier in The Reception of Jazz in America - A New View (New
York, 1988) that the jazz critic was born in the USA. So it is no surprise
that a European, German Joachim-Ernst Berendt himself, wrote the ultimate book
on jazz that should not be missing in any library. The Jazz Book tells the history of
jazz, its styles, musicians, big bands, combos and other ensembles as well as its
instruments. First published in 1952 as a 290-page book, it has become the most
comprehensive one-volume history of jazz (650 pages in the 1999 German edition).
Joachim-Ernst Berendt: The Jazz
Book: From Ragtime to Fusion and Beyond.
With a new American discography by Kevin Whitehead. Paperback,
6th-1997 revised ed. (1992), 541 p. Get the book from Amazon.com.
