The Oxford Companion to Australian Jazz is a book in the series of Oxford Companions published by Oxford University Press, its first edition dated 1987. The first 75 pages is devoted to the history of the music in Australia as six eras, followed by around 220 pages of "dictionary", mostly biographies or articles on bands, alphabetically arranged. There is a detailed index at the back of the book. It is a hardcover book, bound uniformly with The Oxford Companion to English Literature but with a distinctive cover.
It was written and edited by Professor A. J. B. "Bruce" Johnson, an academic, prolific author and jazz trumpeter from New South Wales, with some specialist articles by guest contributors.
"Johnson is an academic, and the first 76 pages provide a high-flown essay on "The Evolution of the Concept of Jazz in Australia" . . . written in a self-conscious style, with some convoluted syntax . . . may have a limited appeal for some readers."[1]