A reviewer for the New York Times singled out the opening section on Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington as the book's strongest, bringing especial notice to Morgenstern's defense of Armstrong's later work, which infuriated purists with its Tin Pan Alley style.
The German-born and Austria-bred Morgenstern is the former editor of the magazines Metronome, Jazz, and Downbeat and has been a reviewer at the New York Post and Chicago Sun Times, as well as contributing to a number of music encyclopedias and anthologies. He has been the director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University since 1976.