About this item
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.Duke Ellington, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a man whose story is as layered and nuanced as his name suggests and whose music transcended category.Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield and, at age seven, got his first musical instrument, a ten-cent tin horn that drew buyers to his rag-peddling wagon and set him on the road to elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom.
About the Author
Larry Tye was a longtime journalist -- at the Boston Globe, Anniston (AL) Star, and Louisville Courier-Journal -- and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard. Tye's books have ranged from biographies of PR pioneer Edward L. Bernays, Negro Leagues legend Satchel Paige, and Superman, to explorations of the Jewish diaspora, the Pullman porters, and ECT, the most stigmatized treatment in medicine. Tye runs a Boston-based fellowship program for health reporters.
