Know It All Jazz

For non-aficionados, jazz can be slippery and difficult to grasp. Jazz can leave a novice baffled, unsure how to listen, and with the question “How is it that they know what to play?”

Know-It-All Jazz takes readers from the African-American roots and all the way to the global mix of styles and performers in today’s jazz scene. Along the way, it looks at the shape, style, and instruments of the discipline, key personalities and recordings in the jazz canon, and, finally, at what might be expected next from this most diverse of musical forms.

Punchy and engaging entries help readers understand the basics in under a minute, ensuring that this is the ultimate companion for newcomers to the instinctive and diverse world of jazz.


The Know It All series takes a revolutionary approach to learning about the subjects you really feel you should understand but have never gotten around to studying. Each book selects a popular topic and dissects it into the 50 most significant ideas at its heart. Each idea, no matter how complex, is explained in 300 words and one picture, all digestible in under a minute.

Other titles in this series include: Know It All Anthropology, Know It All Chemistry, Know It All Classical Music, Know It All Energy, Know It All Fashion, Know It All Great Inventions, Know It All Medicine, Know It All Shakespeare, Know It All Whiskey, Know It All Wine, Space In 30 Seconds, Sports in 30 Seconds.