| Description |
xviii, 393 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages [323]-381) and index. |
| Contents |
Preface: a road map -- Jazzmen chronology -- Author's note -- Setting the stage -- Satchmo's battlefield -- The Count's shrouded roots in Red Bank -- Duke's capital experience -- Musical lives -- Nightspots -- Life on the rocky road -- Getting there -- Setting the themes -- The language of jazz -- On center stage -- It's an ensemble -- The sidemen -- Side women -- Managers and mobsters -- Critical audiences and professional critics -- Offstage -- Family unfriendly -- Mistresses and misogyny -- Keeping the faith -- Cravings and dependencies -- Toilet truths, food fetishes, and other medical matters -- Follow the money -- Race matters -- Artists and entertainers -- Resetting the themes -- Breakthrough battles -- Overseas ambassadors -- Last acts -- Long-lived -- Last days and lasting memories -- Legacies. |
| Summary |
A portrait of the longtime kings of jazz—Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie—who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers on the planet. 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. 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. |
| Subject |
Ellington, Duke, 1899-1974.
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Armstrong, Louis, 1901-1971.
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Basie, Count, 1904-1984.
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African American jazz musicians -- Biography.
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Jazz musicians -- United States -- Biography.
|
| Genre |
Biographies.
|
| Added Title |
Jazzmen |
| ISBN |
9780358380436 |
|
035838043X |
|
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