The Black Musician and the White City: Race and Music in Chicago,1900-1967

Amy Absher’s The Black Musician and the White City tells the story of African American musicians in Chicago during the mid-twentieth cent...

7:53 AM

Ride, Red, Ride: The Life of Henry "Red" Allen (Bayou)

A biography of jazz trumpeter and singer Henry "Red" Allen exploring his place as Armstrong's chief rival. Both men were bor...

8:33 AM

Oscar Peterson: The Man and His Jazz

Called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, Oscar Peterson released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, r...

8:14 AM

Incredible African-American Jazz Musicians

Readers will learn about a variety of African American jazz musicians including Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy G...

9:35 AM

The Coltrane Church: Apostles of Sound, Agents of Social Justice

The John Coltrane Church began in 1965, when Franzo and Marina King attended a performance of the John Coltrane Quartet at San Francisco...

11:07 AM

Josephine Baker and the Rainbow Tribe

Creating a sensation with her risque nightclub act and strolls down the Champs Elysees, pet cheetah in tow, Josephine Baker lives on in p...

3:33 AM

The Jazz Life of Dr. Billy Taylor

Legendary jazz ambassador Dr. Billy Taylor's autobiography spans more than six decades, from the heyday of jazz on 52nd Street in 1940s ...

8:21 AM

Benson: The Autobiography

Over the span of his illustrious five-decade career, George Benson has sold millions of records, performed for hundreds of millions of fan...

6:57 AM

The Many Faces of Josephine Baker: Dancer, Singer, Activist, Spy

With determination and audacity, Josephine Baker turned her comic and musical abilities into becoming a worldwide icon of the Jazz Age....

11:23 AM

Freedom Is, Freedom Ain't: Jazz and the Making of the Sixties

In the long decade between the mid-fifties and the late sixties, jazz was changing more than its sound. The age of Max Roach's Freedom...

8:37 AM

Jazz Country: Ralph Ellison in America

This title reassesses Ralph Ellison and explores his writings and views on American culture through the lens of jazz music. Horace Porter...

8:31 AM

Billie Holiday: The Musician and the Myth

When Billie Holiday stepped into Columbia’s studios in November 1933, it marked the beginning of what is arguably the most remarkable and ...

10:54 AM

I Know What I Know: The Music of Charles Mingus

From the mid-1940s until his death in 1979, Charles Mingus created an unparalleled body of recorded work, most of which remains available ...

9:51 AM

Billie Holiday: Wishing On The Moon

Certainly no singer has been more mythologized and more misunderstood than Billie Holiday, who helped to create much of the mystique herse...

12:34 PM

Strange Fruit: Billie Holiday, Cafe Society, And An Early Cry For Civil Rights

From four-time Pulitzer Prize nominee David Margolick, STRANGE FRUIT explores the story of the memorable civil rights ballad made famous b...

12:19 PM

On Highway 61: Music, Race, and the Evolution of Cultural Freedom

On Highway 61 explores the historical context of the significant social dissent that was central to the cultural genesis of the sixties. T...

4:23 PM

Hear Me Talkin' to Ya: The Story of Jazz As Told by the Men Who Made It

"A work of considerable substance." — The New Yorker. In this marvelous oral history, the words of such legends as Louis Armstro...

7:38 AM

Bricktop's Paris: African American Women in Paris Between the Two World Wars

Tells the fascinating story of African American women who traveled to France to seek freedom of expression. During the Jazz Age, France b...

8:41 AM

The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz

If Benny Goodman was the "King of Swing," then Fletcher Henderson was the power behind the throne. Now Jeffrey Magee offers a fa...

11:29 AM

A Life in Ragtime: A Biography of James Reese Europe

In 1919, the world stood at the threshold of the Jazz Age. The man who had ushered it there, however, lay murdered--and would soon plunge ...

11:25 AM