SOBERSCOVE PRESS

$24

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER. Orders will ship in mid-November.

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER. Orders will ship in mid-November.

Want List

by John Corbett

Want List follows the exploits of two music fans stationed in different camps—a record collector and a tape trader—whose friendship is predicated on charting a vast network of artists and recording sessions, as well as exchanging the stories that haunt each of their beloved media. A unique form of fact-fiction with nods to classic noir, Want List brims with references to jazz and improvised music rarities (some real, some invented), while touching on deeper questions of love and loss, the phantasmagoria of the archive, and various flavors of freedom.

Drawing on John Corbett’s extensive research and writing on music, this is a book for jazz and improvisation aficionados as well as readers new to the genres  Much of this is shared by way of anecdotes and stories traded by the characters in the way music fans often do—while listening to music, inspired in the moment to remember a tale they’ve heard or a situation they’ve experienced.  In this way, Want List is also a narrative about narratives, about storytelling and hagiography, about musical mythologies.

Want List Double LP
As a loose sidecar to his novel, John Corbett has produced a Want List double-LP set, which will be released November 20, 2026 and can be pre-ordered through our co-publisher Pre-Echo Press. Some of the tracks on the main characters’ “want lists,” including the Don Cherry Trio recordings of central concern to the narrative, are reproduced on the LPs, many of them for the first time on record. Artists included: Don Cherry Trio, Peter Brötzman Trio, Peter Brötzman Nonet, Sun Ra, Le Sun Ra and His Band, Tommy “Madman” Jones, Phil Seaman, Mats Gustafsson. Liner Notes

John Corbett is a writer, curator, and co-owner of Corbett vs. Dempsey, an art gallery and record label in Chicago. He is the author of several books, most recently Bullets for Dead Hoods: An Encyclopedia of Chicago Mobsters, c. 1933 (Soberscove Press, 2020), Pick Up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music (University of Chicago Press, 2019), A Listener’s Guide to Free Improvisation (University of Chicago Press, 2016), and Microgroove: Forays Into Other Music (Duke University Press, 2015). Corbett contributes a regular column to Jazz Podium.

Praise


There are freaks about many things, but I share with John Corbett’s characters a freakiness about music. Music is how I explore virtually everything, including music itself. I can’t recall reading a book that presented the beautiful hows and whys of our relationship to recorded music in such a thorough, unique, and inspiring way. And pleasurable. A wonderful few mystery-genre books are explorations of finesse and philosophy disguised as pulp. The whole microcosm Want List paints is a vibe. The dialogue is top-shelf comedy noir à la Nick and Nora Charles, and the environs the characters inhabit are almost (but never) painfully recognizable geographic and psychological settings. Want List is as valid a hybrid philosophy/ethnomusicology textbook—and a great one—as it is a (gently-paced) thriller. —Will Oldham, musician and actor

Brilliant! Who doesn’t dig a whodunnit? I had never thought of diggers as detectives, but there’s a deep truth there. Corbett’s use of the detective story is double-edged, suspended between reality and myth, leading the reader on a passionate, obsessive journey through a secret history of jazz. Want List is an existential investigation into why we collect, a love letter to the search for the perfect beat, for the heart-rhythm of life itself. —Gilles Peterson, disc jockey, broadcaster, and record producer

Chicago’s creative music scene intersects through six degrees of John Corbett, but it usually doesn’t require nearly so many. A music journalist, archivist, curator, producer and avid record collector, Corbett now adds “novelist” to his CV. Equal parts love letter and absurdist sendup, this whodunnit follows two music obsessives as they track down a stolen Don Cherry trio acetate. —Hannah Edgar, Chicago Tribune
Co Westerik (1924–2018), Gramophone Player, 1971. Oil and tempera on canvas, 1110 × 1455 mm, Collection of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Courtesy the Estate of Co Westerik.