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Mike Fitzgerald's Jazz Discography Project

Jazz scholar Mike Fitzgerald, co-author of the Gigi Gryce biography Rat Race Blues, has been leading an effort to build a wonderful online jazz discography resource for the past several years. Recently he added 50 more leader discographies to his website, including pages for Kenny Dorham, Charles Tolliver, and Hal McKusick. If you're a jazz fan, it's easy to get obsessed with a certain artist (this has been my experience, anyway) and Fitzgerald's thorough, well-vetted work is an invaluable aid for learning more about what, when and where some of the Night Lights-era musicians recorded.

If you want to check out some of the discographies, just go to Jazzdiscography.com and click on the "Leader" tab in the upper lefthand corner. Here's Fitzgerald's statement of purpose for the project:

To make additional discographical information available even without the full treatment of including every appearance as a sideman, there are now many leader entries available. The format is exactly the same but these cover only sessions recorded as a leader. This presentation will be very familiar to some as it matches how general discographies are organized. However, general discographies lack the additional details of composer information, track timings, release dates, even many album titles. Some of these which are now leader-only may eventually be expanded into full artist discographies, but it is likely that most will not. Information regarding additional issues of the material listed or assistance in creating further leader entries, large or small, is always welcome.

Thanks to poster EKE BBB at the Organissimo jazz discussion board for the update.

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