I do like Jack Johnson btw, better than Agharta, though I might prefer side two (“Yesternow”) to side one. With Miles’s electric stuff, I tend to prefer the moody rambling stuff to the out-and-out rocking stuff.

Just came across your Jazz Bookshelf. It looks good, as far as it goes. The Penguin Guide is without doubt the best, most trustworthy guide going, though you need to buy the latest edition (I think it’s up to seven or eight now) in order to keep up with contemporary stuff — the latest reissues as well as recent new releases. Tom Hull, who does Christgau-inspired jazz Consumer Guides in the Village Voice, is also worth following. (He has a website where you can check out all the stuff he’s rated — in jazz and other genres — and he also maintains a helpful list of the highest-rated albums in the Penguin Guide.)
Baraka’s Black Music and (especially) Martin Williams’ Jazz Tradition are essential for sure. Also pick up any of Gary Giddins’ books, some of which I’m sure are out of print, but his fairly recent Visions of Jazz is a good, bible-sized anthology of his writings from throughout his career. He’s got good taste and is very readable. Francis Davis, who replaced Giddins as the Voice’s jazz critic (though he now seems to be vanished from the paper) is also really good and has published several books that compile his various reviews, profiles, etc. And the late New Yorker jazz critic Whitney Balliett is indispensible, if somewhat conservative in his tastes.
As for electric Miles, I can understand your impatience with Agharta, though I like it myself, largely because of Pete Cosey, who’s one crazy guitarist. You should get Jack Johnson, half of which (“Right Off”) consists of Miles’ most straightforwardly rocking music of the ’70s. Anyone who believes Wynton Marsalis’ claim that Miles didn’t know how to play rock music (and therefore should have stuck to “jazz”) will be convinced otherwise by “Right Off.”

Andrew, no, at least not my edition (maybe there’s a different collection?). This one is just called The Otis Ferguson Reader (on the front it says, “The Arts — Lively and Literary,” followed by a role call of subjects, but I don’t see this on the inside). I guess I should have mentioned that it’s not only jazz writing.

Andrew

Also recommended, the two books which helped form me as a writer, Andre Hodeir’s Towards Jazz, published in the fifties but still extremely relevant, and Max Harrison’s A Jazz Retrospect, a collection of the great man’s writings for Jazz Monthly and other places; his chapter on Gil Evans is a dazzling neoplasm of critical brilliance. Neither is easy to find but they are both findable.

There’s an entire chapter, more or less, about Ross Russell in Blowin’ Hot and Cool, and about his involvement with Parker, the decision to release the demos, etc.

I mention each together because of the similar grittiness. At least Art Pepper penned his own with the help of this third wife. In that regard you may find the same with the book by Parker’s widow rather than the ’70s sensationalism of Russell’s. I haven’t read hers yet, so I would be eager to know.