THE STORY: SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF is a one-man, three-character play in which the same actor portrays Louis Armstrong, the greatest of all jazz trumpeters; Joe Glaser, his white manager; and Miles Davis, who admired Armstrong's playing but disliked his onstage manner. It takes place in 1971 in a dressing room backstage at the Empire Room of New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, where Armstrong performed in public for the last time four months before his death. Reminiscing into a tape recorder about his life and work, Armstrong seeks to come to terms with his longstanding relationship with Glaser, whom he once loved like a father but now believes to have betrayed him. In alternating scenes, Glaser defends his controversial decision to promote Armstrong's career (with the help of the Chicago mob) by encouraging him to simplify his musical style, while Davis attacks Armstrong for pandering to white audiences.

Public Radio personality Tom Schnabel spotlights giants of the global genre like the late Sufi singer Nusrat Feteh Ali Kahn and this year's Grammy winner Milton Nascimiento, making "Rhythm Planet" both an antidote to the latest flavor of pop and an affirmation of music's power. 125 illustrations, 25 in color.

In this richly detailed and prodigiously researched book, jazz scholar and musician Ricky Riccardi reveals for the first time the genius and remarkable achievements of the last 25 years of Louis Armstrong’s life, providing along the way a comprehensive study of one of the best-known and most accomplished jazz stars of our time. Much has been written about Armstrong, but the majority of it focuses on the early and middle stages of his career. During the last third of his career, Armstrong was often dismissed as a buffoonish if popular entertainer. Riccardi shows us instead the inventiveness and depth of his music during this time. These are the years of his highest-charting hits, including “Mack the Knife” and “Hello, Dolly"; the famed collaborations with Ella Fitzgerald and Duke Ellington; and his legendary recordings with the All Stars. An eminently readable and insightful book, What a Wonderful World completes and enlarges our understanding of one of America’s greatest and most beloved musical icons.

"Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Norman Granz, Oscar Peterson, Ray Charles, Don Ellis, and Miles Davis--these are the dozen j"

Certain to be the definitive word on Louis Armstrong, "Pops" paints a gripping portrait of the man, his world, and his music. Drawing on a cache of new sources, the author has crafted a sweeping new narrative biography of this towering figure.

Lester Young was one of the great jazz masters, and his impact on the course of the art form was profound. He fundamentally changed the way the saxophone was played--his long, flowing lines brought new levels of expressiveness and subtlety to the jazz language, setting the standard for all modern players. In Being Prez, renowned British critic Dave Gelly follows Lester Young through his life in a rapidly changing world, showing how the music of this exceptionally sensitive man was shaped by his experiences. The reader meets a complicated, vulnerable, gentle individual who was brought up in his father's traveling carnival band. His early career was spent in the nightclubs and dancehalls of Kansas City and the Southwest, and he made his landmark recording debut at the peak of the Swing Era. But at the height of his powers, he was drafted into the US Army, where racism and his own unworldliness landed him in military prison. Following these events, Young grew increasingly withdrawn and suspicious, changes in his character reflected in the darkening mood of his music. Gelly, himself a jazz saxophonist, examines many of Young's classic recordings in illuminating detail. He reveals how as a saxophonist--and as major contributor to the Count Basie band--Young created a strong personal voice, a cool modernism, and a new rhythmic flexibility in the freely dancing rhythms of 4-beat swing. With his sax jutting oddly to one side, his bizarre oblique use of language, and his unique musical rapport with Billie Holiday (who famously nicknamed him "Prez"), Lester Young has become an icon and a cult figure. This marvelous biography illuminates the life and work of this giant of jazz.

In a career that spanned 60 years, Paul Whiteman changed the landscape of American music, beginning with his million-selling recordings in the early 1920s of “Whispering,” “Japanese Sandman,” and “Three O’Clock in the Morning.” Whiteman would then introduce “symphonic jazz,” a powerful blend of the classical and jazz idioms that represented a whole new approach to modern American music, influencing generations of bandleaders and composers. While some hold that at the close of the Roaring Twenties Whiteman’s musical hegemony quickly waned, Don Rayno illustrates in this second volume of Paul Whiteman: Pioneer in American Music how much of a dominant figure Whiteman remained. A major figure on the American music scene for decades to come, he would continue to lead critically-acclaimed orchestras, filling theaters and concert halls alike and diligently seeking out and nurturing musical talent on the largest scale of any orchestra leader in the 20th century. In this second volume of Rayno’s magisterial treatment of the life and music of this remarkable maestro, Whiteman’s career during the second half of his life is explored in the fullest detail, as Whiteman conquers the worlds of theater and vaudeville, the concert hall, radio, motion pictures, and television, winning accolades in all of them. Through hundreds of interviews, extensive documentation, and exhaustive research of over nearly three decades, a portrait emerges of one of American music’s most important musical figures during the last century. Rayno paints a stunning portrait of Whiteman’s considerable accomplishments and far-reaching influence.