An Evening of Jazz History with Larry Tye and Chuck Haddix

EVENT OVERVIEW: Rainy Day Books with co-sponsor, The American Jazz Museum present Larry Tye in conversation with Chuck Haddix (host of The Fish Fry, KCUR's blues, jazz, and soul program) to celebrate the launch of Tye's new book, The Jazz Men: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Base Transformed America on Thursday, May 16, 2024 at 6:00 PM at The Ambassador Hotel, Reno Club.

There will be a cash bar on site as well!

ABOUT THE BOOK: The Jazz Men: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Base Transformed America

From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping and spellbinding portrait of the longtime kings of jazz—Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie—who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers on the planet.

This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America.

• Duke Ellington, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a man whose story is as layered and nuanced as his name suggests and whose music transcended category.

• Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield and, at age seven, got his first musical instrument, a ten-cent tin horn that drew buyers to his rag-peddling wagon and set him on the road to elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom.

• William James Basie, too, grew up in a world unfamiliar to white fans—the son of a coachman and laundress who dreamed of escaping every time the traveling carnival swept into town, and who finally engineered his getaway with help from Fats Waller.

What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like nearly all Black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries by opening America’s eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement.

Based on more than 250 interviews, this exhaustively researched book brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid 1900s through the singular lens of the country’s most gifted, engaging, and enduring African-American musicians.

REVIEWS:

• “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.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

• “Like the best music created by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Count Basie, The Jazzmen SWINGS. As Tye makes clear, their story is the story of America in the twentieth century.” — RICKY RICCARDI, Grammy Award–winning author of What a Wonderful World and Heart Full of Rhythm

• “The Jazzmen begins with colorful people and flows to rich history so beautifully it is musical.” — JUAN WILLIAMS, author of Eyes on the Prize

• “Proud and important history, beautifully told.” — DEVAL PATRICK, former governor of Massachusetts, assistant attorney general for civil rights under Bill Clinton

• “The Jazzmen reveals how these three musicians, when they express themselves through their instruments, become magical.” — MERCEDES ELLINGTON, dancer, choreographer, and Duke’s granddaughter

• “Larry Tye has written a masterpiece. These three are not only the most important people in American music, but they changed the whole world in their individual ways.” — WENDELL BRUNIOUS, New Orleans bandleader and trumpeter

• “The Jazzmen tells an uplifting and unifying story that is especially important now, when times are so fractured.” — SONNY ROLLINS, Grammy Award–winning tenor saxophonist

• “Entertaining and engrossing, and a warm invitation to an essential part of American history.” — TRACY KIDDER, Pulitzer Prize–winning author

• “I thought I was already well-informed about these jazz heroes, but Larry Tye reveals so much more about their musical journeys and personal experiences. It’s like meeting them all over again. I couldn’t put it down.” — GARY BURTON, Grammy Award–winning jazz vibraphonist

• “Tye has found that there are new things to say about The Three Musketeers of Jazz. Read, learn, and enjoy.” — DAN MORGENSTERN, jazz author, historian, editor, educator, and former director of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Larry Tye is a New York Times bestselling author whose latest book — a joint biography of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Count Basie — looks at how these three maestros wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights revolution. It will be released by HarperCollins on May 7. 2024.

Tye’s first book, The Father of Spin, is a biography of public relations pioneer Edward L. Bernays. Home Lands looks at the Jewish renewal underway from Boston to Buenos Aires. Rising from the Rails explores how the black men who worked on George Pullman’s railroad sleeping cars helped kick-start the Civil Rights movement and gave birth to today’s African-American middle class. Shock, a collaboration with Kitty Dukakis, is a journalist’s first-person account of ECT, psychiatry’s most controversial treatment, and a portrait of how that therapy helped one woman overcome debilitating depression. Satchel is the biography of two American icons – Satchel Paige and Jim Crow. Superman tells the nearly-real life story of the most enduring American hero of the last century.

Tye’s most recent books look at how two U.S. senators helped shape their times. Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon explores RFK’s extraordinary transformation from cold warrior to fiery leftist. Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy probes America’s prolonged love affair with bullies.

In addition to his writing, Tye runs the Health Coverage Fellowship, which helps the media do a better job reporting on critical issues like pandemics, mental health, and high-tech medicine. Launched in 2001 and supported by a series of foundations, the fellowship trains a dozen medical journalists a year from newspapers, radio stations, TV, and online outlets nationwide.

From 1986 to 2001, Tye was an award-winning reporter at The Boston Globe, where his primary beat was medicine. He also served as the Globe’s environmental reporter, roving national writer, investigative reporter, and sports writer. Before that, he was the environmental reporter at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, and covered government and business at The Anniston Star in Alabama.

Tye, who graduated from Brown University, was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993-94. He taught journalism at Boston University, Northeastern, and Tufts.

Tye is currently writing, for HarperCollins, a book entitled, The Forger of Paris: Adolfo Kaminsky and Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust.

EVENT DATE & TIME: Thursday, May 16, 2024, at 6:00 PM

EVENT LOCATION: The Ambassador Hotel, The Reno Club, 1111 Grand Blvd, Kansas City, MO 64106

ADMISSION PACKAGE: $36.00 (plus Eventbrite Ticket Fee) includes 1 copy of The Jazz Men, 1 Admission Reservation, and 1 Guest Admission Reservation. General Admission Seating.

EVENT FORMAT: Larry Tye will be in discussion with Chuck Haddix for his new book The Jazz Men. The discussion will last approximately one hour with book signing to follow.

DISCLAIMER: All author event sales are final and non-refundable. Eventbrite ticket fees are non-refundable.