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

 

 

Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie were all born within a few years of one another and overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers on the planet. Drawing on more than 250 interviews, Tye contends that by opening America’s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music, they also wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement.

Larry Tye is The New York Times bestselling author of Bobby Kennedy and Satchel and five other books. He was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and runs the Boston-based Health Coverage Fellowship.