An Autobiography of Black Jazz

by Dempsey J. Travis

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0941484106
• ISBN13: 9780941484107
• Release Date: December 1983
• Publisher: Urban Research Press
• Length: 543 Pages
• Weight: 2.15 lbs.

Customer Reviews

An Autobiography of Black Jazz

I am a voracious lover of music hstory and this book has it. Chicago was the recording center during the 1920s, home to King Joe Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Paul Whiteman, Bix Biederbeck, Benny Goodman, the Austin High Gang, plenty of refugees from New Orleans. Dempsey Travis was a child in Chicago during this golden age, growing up in the mean Southside and skipping school to go to the theaters that featured the great bands. A pianist, he was fronting his own orchestra before he was old enough to be a union member. The biographers of the jazz age are generally people looking from the outside in. Not Travis, a successful businessman and survivor of every era of music. His memories include rubbing shoulders with Nat Cole, before he became a king, Nancy Wilson's growth years in the 1960s, Gene Ammons, Riley Blues Boy King and the tens of thousands of players who made the show business game with the tough audiences on the Southside. His rememberances of the owners of the clubs and theaters are as colorful as the entertainers. This book will hit you deep in your soul. I have read all the classic jazz history biographies and this one put me closer to the action that anything else. Travis also has a biography on Red Foxx which didn't move me near as much as An Autobiography of Black Jazz. Two thumbs up.