It didn't take long before my toes started tapping.
They knew what was going to happen as soon as the band took their seats. They knew it before the first note was played, and Hepcat and Jazz Baby pounded the floor, cutting the rug. Dad, it was the bee's knees, but Larry Tye's new book, The Jazzmen, says that if you're the boss on stage, it's not so fancy to make cabbage.
Louis Armstrong lived circa 1900 in a “four-room frame house on a dirt lane” in a section of New Orleans called “Back O' Town…the blackest, swampiest, poorest part of the city.” was born. His mother was a “chippy” and the boy grew up running around barefoot, the latter causing problems. When Mr. Armstrong was 12 years old, he was sent to the Colored Waifs Home for rebellious black boys, which changed his life. At “home” he found a mentor, a father figure, love, and music.
Bill “Count” Basie has claimed for years that he grew up in an environment with “no drama, no mystery, no one cared about anyone but himself,” but the truth is that he was “sanitized.” was. He hated school and dropped out of junior high school hoping to join the circus. Instead, he took a job working in a “movie theater” as a general laborer. One day, when the theater's piano player didn't show up for work, Basie volunteered to sit in. He eventually realized, “I had to get out of Red Bank (New Jersey). Music was the ticket for me.”
Edward Ellington was still a teenager, but he insisted on being treated like a superstar. By then, his friends had nicknamed him “The Duke” because of his insistence on dressing elegantly and acting like royalty. And to his mother, and to the millions of female fans who swooned over the rest of his life, he certainly was.
The three men, born around the same time, had more in common than basic age. Two of them had “mothers who doted on him.” All three were performance addicts. And for all three, “race…disappeared as America listened.”
Want to travel back in time over a century? You don't even have to leave your seat. Pick up “The Jazzmen” and hang in there.
In his foreword, author Larry Tye explains why he wanted to tell the stories of these three musical giants so much, and how the lives of Basie, Ellington, and Armstrong are so important to the world that all three of them lived in at around the same time. It explains how they intersected and diverged because they were playing to an internal audience. Their stories fascinated him, and his excitement comes through strongly in this book. Among other attractions, readers accustomed to today's star-power gossip will learn about a largely forgotten era when performers single-handedly took the country by storm without dozens of retinues. You will enjoy it.
And what about the racism the three performers encountered? It magically disappeared at times, and that's a good story in itself here.
This is a musician's dream book, but it's also a must-read story for anyone who's never heard of Basie, Ellington, or Armstrong. Please note that your music library may be searched when you hear “The Jazzmen.”