Volume I. Summary of the history of music -- Biographical dictionary of musicians. A - J -- Volume II. continues Biographical dictionary of musicians K - Z.

This book is comprised of essays, reviews and liner notes, which the author wrote from 1959-1967, and it spotlights such musicians as the late John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Albert Ayler, Don Cherry and Archie Shepp. From the beginning of his career, the author has been a correspondent at the jazz front, and his writing captures the essence of the jazz world--the sense of change; the early promise of young musicians, sometimes spectacularly fulfilled, sometimes tragically unrealized. The final essay, "The Changing Same," analyzes the relationship of rhythm and blues to the "new thing" in jazz.