All Music Guide to Jazz (1998, Paperback)

My old third edition had split in half, so I needed to replace it. This volume is far better than the fourth edition, which was single-handedly ruined by the excessive rewrites and ridiculously wordy contributions of AMG editor Thom Jurek. The appendix to the third edition includes a number of valuable essays and book reviews that were either omitted or badly rewritten in the fourth edition. Also, the third edition is far more inclusive of mainstream jazz than the later volume, which shows a pronounced bias toward adding too much avant-garde.

I am puzzled as to why musicians like Bill Charlap are still omitted from the AMG Guide to Jazz, yet there are a number of musicians who have recorded a lot less who are still included, even though their contributions to jazz are insignificant by comparison.