GOFFIN, Robert (1898-1984). Jazz From The Congo To The Metropolitan. Introduction by Arnold Gingrich. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc., 1944.

First edition, first impression, signed by jazz and bebop greats including Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach, the signatures in black ink on the second blank, additionally signed by pianists George Wallington and Cyril Haynes, guitarist Al Casey and bassist Al Matthews, the autographs likely acquired in early 1944, when Dizzie Gillespie and Oscar Pettiford’s early bebop group appeared opposite Billie Holiday and the Al Casey Trio at the Onyx Club in New York.

Robert Goffin was a Belgian lawyer, author and poet, who fled to the USA during the Second World War and is credited with writing one of the first serious analyses on jazz Aux Frontières du Jazz in 1932. In 1942, he collaborated with Leonard Feather to teach what is considered the first course ever on jazz history and analysis at the New School for Social Research in New York. Brown, 200.

Octavo (202 x 13 mm). Original cream linen, spine lettered in purple, with the dust-jacket.