Jazz Discography 1958. Compiled by

Albert J. McCarthy. (Cassell, 18s.).

"Jazz Directory", edited by Albert McCarthy and Dave Carey, is established as the leading reference work where jazz records are concerned. Unhappily, though, the editors have only got as far as the sixth volume, so most people are still pretty hazy about recordings by anybody after Fred Longshaw. The editors' slowness has not been their fault but a result of the flood of new and reissued material on LPs and EPs. A new series of volumes, however, a kind of appendix to "Jazz Directory", is to keep us abreast of more recent recordings and should also help the editors to know where they are too. The first of these gives details (personnels, dates, titles, matrix numbers, etc.), of every jazz record issued in 1958, and the listing covers Japan, Brazil, Spain, and a dozen other countries as well as Britain and the United States. The work has been carried out with all the skill and thoroughness one expects from a discographer of Albert McCarthy's eminence. In fact the only weak spot (and the editor gallantly pinpoints it for us himself) is in the field of gospel and rhythmand-blues, but this is likely to be improved in the next volume. Meanwhile "Jazz Discography 1958" takes its place as an essential item for every jazz collector's library.