Roy Eldridge

Description

"Roy Eldridge, Little Jazz Giant is the first biography of the spectacular trumpeter, Roy 'Little Jazz' Eldridge, whose style is universally recognized as the all-important link between the playing of Louis Armstrong and the achievements of modernist Dizzy Gillespie. Roy's daring harmonic approach and his technically awesome improvisations provided guidance and inspiration for countless jazz musicians, but he was also a star performer in his own right, whose recordings as a bandleader, and with Gene Krupa and Artie Shaw, gained him a durable international reputation. The indignities he experienced and overcame during the 1940's while working in otherwise all-white ensembles proved he was as bold a social pioneer as he was a performer." "John Chilton, who knew Eldridge for many years, presents a picture of a fiery yet sensitive individual, who never shunned candour and was at his happiest when playing the trumpet. New light is shed on the various occasions when Eldridge unwillingly became entangled with gangsters in New York and Chicago, and there are revealing details about Eldridge's uneven working relationship with Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Ella Fitzgerald and Count Basie."--Jacket.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Roy Eldridge: Little Jazz Giant (Bayou Jazz Lives)HardcoverContinuum International Publishing Group2002-09-01
• Roy EldridgePaperbackContinuum International Publishing Group2003-07-01