The Jazzmen

Starred review from February 12, 2024
Biographer Tye (Bobby Kennedy) presents a mesmerizing group portrait of American jazz greats Duke Ellington (1899–1974), Louis Armstrong (1901–1971), and Count Basie (1904–1984). Tracing each man’s influential career, Tye captures their intense work ethic and rigorous travel schedules (Armstrong alone averaged 300 nights on the road per year), their music’s deep gospel roots, and their artistic styles and gifts (Ellington and Basie flourished as conductors, while Armstrong thrived by communing with a live audience). Yet Tye’s main focus lies in how his subjects changed American culture at large: even as Armstrong, Ellington, and Basie endured the indignities of touring during the Jim Crow era, they brought alive in their music the “invisible stories of Black America.” In doing so, Tye contends, the jazz legends opened “white America’s ears and souls to the grace of their music and their personalities” and “the virtues of Black artistry,” and helped set the stage for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. With scrupulous attention to detail, Tye brings his subjects to life as both forces of social change and three-dimensional human beings who lived and breathed their art, from Ellington’s soulful, “Shakespearian” arrangements to Armstrong’s “heart as big as Earth” and Basie’s “Buddha-like” temperament. It’s a vibrant ode to a legendary trio and the “rip-roaring harmonies” that made them great. Agent: Jill Kneerim, Kneerim & Williams.

March 15, 2024
Although many books have been written about these iconic jazz artists, Tye (Demagogue, 2020) insists that "we don't know any of the three. Not really." Duke Ellington was the grandson of slaves. Louis Armstrong was raised by his grandmother, his great-grandmother, and a family of Lithuanian Jews. Count Basie dreamed of a world outside the one he was raised in and, with the help of pianist Fats Waller, was able to find it. Different in temperament, the three jazzmen made a collective impact, "elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom" even as they faced racial discrimination in Jim Crow America. None of these men were saints ("Not even close,"" Tye writes), but what matters is that "[t]hey gave us songs that were the ideal remedies for the blues of everyday life." In Tye's estimation, Ellington was "Shakespearean"; Armstrong, "the Mark Twain of song"; and Basie a "musical everyman." With descriptions of such key venues as Ellington's Cotton Club in Harlem, Basie's Reno Club in Kansas City, and Armstrong's Sunset Cafe in Chicago, Tye incisively portrays three seminal American artists.

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March 15, 2024
An examination of the lives of three kings of jazz and their impact on American society. Tye, the bestselling author of biographies of Satchel Paige, Joseph McCarthy, and others, embarks on his first voyage into music history. In a single volume, he has essentially produced fairly substantial biographies of Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, and Duke Ellington, contemporaries who became three of the most decorated and celebrated musicians in American history. The author capably delineates their struggles with, and impact on, the often harrowing and sometimes violent complexities and shifting dynamics of American race relations during the first half of the 20th century. The most striking aspect of the book is the astonishing amount of research Tye conducted, the sometimes overwhelming yield of which clears up myths that the golden trio themselves often perpetuated regarding their upbringings, their turbulent personal lives, and the technical evolution of their music. The author takes a fascinating look at the religious backgrounds and beliefs of Armstrong, Basie, and Ellington, who were the most prominent frontmen of the music that fanatics and public figures long blamed and targeted for societal degradation. Tye also explores the friendly but fierce professional rivalry among the three. The author's vivid style brings readers front and center into the myriad of clubs and studios where Armstrong, Basie, and Ellington played, as well as the social vibe of the cities and towns where their music left an indelible mark. This thoroughly enjoyable musical journey is succinctly titled, yet the scope of Tye's research demonstrates why and how Armstrong, Basie, and Ellington transcended jazz and even music itself to establish themselves in American culture forevermore in words that a young Ellington employed to describe himself: "beyond category." For Ellington, "it wasn't a contradiction to be an artist as well as a showman." A delightful read.

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Starred review from May 1, 2024

One might have thought that there wasn't much left to say about jazz's holy trinity, but Tye's thematic discursions on Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie have a fresh perspective and different angles. He draws on his previous works--including Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon--for some lenses through which he views these three men who've had a profound influence on American music and culture. The chapters navigating their travels through the American South (especially in Pullman cars) and contributions to the civil rights era are incredibly vivid. The thematic arrangement of the chapters and side-by-side comparisons of how each man navigated everything from racism to romance to the recording industry seem especially suitable for a book that is, after all, about jazz. It also makes each artist all the more distinctive compared to his peers. VERDICT A refreshing and attentive suite of composite portraits for jazz fans and readers interested in the intersection of art, culture, and politics in the 20th-century United States.--Genevieve Williams

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