The Jazzmen, Larry Tye
The Jazzmen, Larry Tye
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The Jazzmen
How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America

Author: Larry Tye

Narrator: Dominic Hoffman

Unabridged: 16 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 05/07/2024

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping and spellbinding 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.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.William James Basie, too, grew up in a world unfamiliar to white fans—the son of a coachman and laundress who dreamed of escaping every time the traveling carnival swept into town, and who finally engineered his getaway with help from Fats Waller.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 nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries 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.Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

About Larry Tye

Larry Tye is the New York Times bestselling author of Bobby Kennedy and Satchel, as well as Demagogue, Superman, The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails, and coauthor, with Kitty Dukakis, of Shock. Previously an award-winning reporter at the Boston Globe and a Nieman fellow at Harvard University, he now runs the Boston-based Health Coverage Fellowship. He lives on Cape Cod.


Reviews

How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America “Duke (had) …a simple formula: give crowds old favorites like “Mood Indigo” and “Take the A Train” and they’d be more receptive to his high-brow ballet or a pop arrangement from Mary Poppins. Even (his look and style of dress)…w......more

Goodreads review by Ann on February 11, 2024

Thank you Net Gallery, publisher Mariner Books and author Larry Tye for the opportunity to read the arc ebook, “The Jazzmen” Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie. How could three names elicit so much about music, history, culture, and human perseverance? Larry Tye has given us a book that, m......more

Goodreads review by Coleman on March 08, 2025

A toupee knocked off by a bagel, laxatives, and Blazing Saddles are all just random parts of the stories careers of America’s greatest and first superstar musicians.......more

Goodreads review by Kim on March 29, 2024

Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie are names as familiar as the founding fathers or Hollywood stars yet we know little of their struggles to become the greats of the Jazz Age. They all had to fight to play, not only because of competition, but because of their skin color. The three came......more

Goodreads review by Joanie on May 21, 2024

Lots of holes in this book, and tons of musical works and history left out (I don’t know why), but overall it was pretty good. Not the best biography on these men and certainly not the definitive by any means, but it’s worth picking up. I felt the author also focused on minuscule and worthless thing......more