Home › Books › The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong,…
The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America
by
46/99
Critics
46/99
Readers
n/a
Scholars
41/99
Rating
52/99
Volume
53/99
Rating
40/99
Volume
—
Sign in to add to your shelf, rate, or review this book.
About This Book
From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy , a sweeping group portrait of the pioneers and longtime kings of jazz—Duke Ellington, Satchmo Armstrong, and Count Basie—who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers in America. This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America. What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like so many black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries not by waging war over every slight, which never would have worked in that Jim Crow era, but by opening America's eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement. Based on more than 250 interviews, this exhaustively researched book brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid 1900s through the singular lens of the country's most gifted, engaging, and enduring African-American musicians.
Preview
Reviews
"With scrupulous attention to detail, Tye brings his subjects to life as both forces of social change and three-dimensional human beings who lived and breathed their art."
"Tye has an easy way of telling a story, a knack for characterization and a pacing that feels right."
"With descriptions of such key venues as Ellington's Cotton Club in Harlem, Basie's Reno Club in Kansas City, and Armstrong's Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Tye incisively portrays three seminal American artists."
"If the structure of the book is repetitive, with chapters divided into an Armstrong section, a Basie section, and an Ellington section, the content is never dull, thanks to Tye's assured style and the unique lives these men lived."
"This thoroughly enjoyable musical journey is succinctly titled, yet the scope of Tye's research demonstrates why and how Armstrong, Basie, and Ellington transcended jazz and even music itself to establish themselves in American culture forevermore."
Reader Reviews
0 reviewsSign in to write a review.
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!