Mark C. Gridley is an active jazz musician who lectures widely on jazz history. He has done field research in Africa, the Carribbean, and all the jazz centers of the United States. His books have been translated into five foreign languages. His articles appear in the Grove Dictionaries of Music, Encyclopaedia Britannica, The Musical Quarterly, The Black Perspective in Music, the Instrumentalist, and Jazz Educators Journal. Gridley's Jazz Styles book is America's most widely used introduction to jazz. The Educational Press Association of America gave him its Distinguished Achievement Award.