Jazz Masters Of The 30s (Macmillan Jazz Masters Series)

Although he cut his teeth playing trumpet with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra, Rex Stewart was best known for his tenure with Duke Ellington--particularly for the sort of delicious half-valving he applied to showpieces like "Boy Meets Horn." But Stewart was a gifted writer, too. He brought an insider's authority to his considerations of Art Tatum, Red Norvo, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, and Ellington himself (for whom Stewart also functioned as barber and poker companion). And his essays on other musicians often contain flashes of appealing autobiography. Here, for example, he uses his own hero-worshipping impulses as a measure of Louis Armstrong's early impact: "I tried to walk like him, talk like him. I bought shoes and a suit like the Great One wore. I remember a time that a few of us ... thought it would be a good idea to stand under Louis's window and serenade him. This occurred to us in the wee hours after we had emerged from a bar. We had just got started when the cop on the beat discouraged us by saying, 'Get the hell off the streets before I run ya in.'"