W. Royal Stokes’ Roundup of 130 or so Jazz, Blues, Beyond and other books published in the past year or so provides a useful guide for JJA members nominating Best Books for the 2016 Jazz Awards. Stokes, a longtime JJA member and Lifetime Achievement in Jazz Journalism honoree, only included books he received review copies of, so some jazz books of importance are no doubt missing. Below is a list excerpted from Stokes’ list, with nine additions. If you notice books that should be listed (from 2015 only, please!),  add them as a Comment, below.

• Strayhorn: An Illustrated Life (Bolden/Agate Publishing), edited by A. Alyce Claerbaut and David Schlesinger, Foreword by Ramsey Lewis, Afterword by Gregolry A. Morris
• Rhythm Is My Beat: Jazz Guitar Great Freddie Green and the Count Basie Sound (Rowman & Littlefield Studies in Jazz Series), by Alfred Green
• Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth (Viking/Penguin Publishing Company), by John Szwed
• Frank: The Voice (Doubleday), by James Kaplan
• Sinatra’s Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and His World (Harper/ Harper Collins) David Lehman
• Better Git It in Your Soul: An Interpretive Biography of Charles Mingus (University of California Press), by Krin Gabbard
• Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker, reprinted in paperback, (Harper Collins/Perennial) by Stanley Crouch,
• Jeru’s Journey: The Life & Music of Gerry Mulligan (Hal Leonard Jazz Biography Series) by Sanford Josephson
• Charles Lloyd: A Wild, Blatant Truth (Silman-James Press), by Josef Woodard
• Jive-Colored Glasses: A Jazz Memoir (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform), by John F Goodman
• Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin(Little, Brown and Company), by David Ritz
• Selected Letters of Langston Hughes (Knopf), edited by Arnold Rampersad and David Roessel
• Cousin Joe: Blues from New Orleans (Pelican Publishing), by Pleasant Joseph and Harriet Ottenheimer
• Early Blues: The First Stars of Blues (University of Minnesota Press), by Jas Obrecht
• Legends of the Blues (Abrams ComicArts), author and artist William Stout
• Eric Walrond: A Life in the Harlem Renaissance and the Transatlantic Caribbean(Columbia University Press) by James Davis
• Jazz Puzzles (Volume 2 (http://www.jazzedit.org/Pz2/jazz-puzzles2.html) by Dan Vernhettes, with Bo Lindström
• The Ivory Ladies: Aletha and Myrtyle and Other Melrose Pianists 1932-1942: A Discography (Chris Hillman Books/chbooks.info/Scottlededoo@gmail.com), by Christopher Hillman andDaniel Gugolz with Paolo Fornara,
• Crescent City Cornet (Chris Hillman Books/chbooks.info/Scottlededoo@gmail.com), by Christopher Hillman and Richard Rains
• Swingin’ on Central Avenue: African American Jazz in Los Angeles(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers), by Peter Vacher
• After Django: Making Jazz in Postwar France (University of Michigan Press Jazz Perspectives Series), by Tom Perchard
• Midnight at the Pera Palace: The Birth of Modern Istanbul (W. W. Norton & Company) by Charles King
• On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom, (Counterpoint) by Dennis McNally
• Spirits Rejoice!: Jazz and American Religion (Oxford University Press) by Jason C. Bivins
• America Dancing: From the Cakewalk to the Moonwalk (Yale University Press) by Megan Pugh
• What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Brian Seibert
• Microgroove: Forays into Other Music (Duke University Press), by John Corbett
• Fresh Music: Explorations with the Creative Workshop Ensemble for Musicians, Artists, and Teachers (YO! Publications), by Jon Damian
• Bebop, Swing and Bella Musica: Jazz and the Italian American Experience (Bella Musica Publishing) by Bill Dal Cerro and David Anthony Witter
• Free Jazz/Black Power (American Made Music Series) (University Press of Mississippi), by Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli and translated by Grégory Pierrot
• giving birth to sound – women in creative music (Renate Da Rin), by Renate Da Rin and William Parker
• Listen to This: Miles Davis and Bitches Brew (American Made Music Series) (University Press of Mississippi) by Victor Svorinich
• Love Songs: The Hidden History (Oxford University Press), by Ted Gioia
• Hear My Sad Story: The True Tales That Inspired “Stagolee,” “John Henry,” and Other Traditional American Folk Songs (Cornell University Press), by Richard Polenberg
• The Jazz Palace: A Novel (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday), by Mary Morris
• Music to Silence to Music, A Biography of Henry Grimes, Fforeward by Sonny Rollins, by Barbara Frenz, translated by J Bradford Robinson
• The Long Shadow of the Little Giant (Equinox), by Simon Spillett 
• Trombone Shorty (Abrams Books for Young Readers), by Troy Andrews, illustrated by Bryan Collier 
• How Jelly Roll Morton Invented Jazz (Roaring Brook Press) by Jonah Winter, illustrated by Keith Mallett 
• Five Night Stand (Lake Union), by Richard J. Alley 
• Tunes of the Twenties and All That Jazz (Rookwood House Publishing), by Robert Rawlins
• The Improvisation Studies Reader: Spontaneous Acts (Routledge), edited by Ajay Heble, Rebecca Caines
• Listening to Jazz (Oxford University Press), by Benjamin Bierman
• Jazz Sells: Music, Marketing, and Meaning (Routledge), by Mark Laver
• The Cultural Politics of Jazz Collectives: This is Our Music (Routledge), edited by Nicholas Gebhard, Tony Whyton
  
• Playboy Swings: How Hugh Hefner and Playboy Changed the Face of Music (Beaufort Books), by Patty Farmer, Will Friedwald