For both scholars and jazz enthusiasts, Waters's monograph stands as a definitive account of an essential but still understudied body of music, full of ideas that can be fruitfully adapted to examine related repertoires. I hope and expect that numerous scholars-including Waters himself-will continue to leverage this potential in coming years.
Keith Waters is Professor of Music at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is author of the book The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet 1965-68 (Oxford University Press), co-author of the jazz history textbook Jazz: The First Hundred Years, and a contributor to the recent edition of the Grove Dictionary of American Music. He has published numerous articles on jazz, particularly jazz in the 1960s. As a jazz pianist, he has recorded and performed throughout the United States, Europe, and in Russia, and appeared in concert with James Moody, Bobby Hutcherson, Eddie Harris, Chris Connor, and others.