| Abstract |
"Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America is the first complete biography of William Henry "Chick" Webb (1905-1939), the innovative father of modern jazz drumming and a leading bandleader of the Swing Era, whose band and music thrilled dancers and audiences across the country. Webb was born in East Baltimore and had chronic spinal tuberculosis as a child, leaving him only four feet tall with a hump on his back. He moved to Harlem in 1925, in the midst of the Harlem Renaissance and, thanks to Duke Ellington, formed a jazz dance band that expanded and became resident band at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom in the early 1930s. The Savoy, the "World's Most Famous Ballroom," was the trendsetting place for advances in jazz and the dance that evolved along with swing music, the Lindy Hop. In 1935 Webb hired unknown teenage singer Ella Fitzgerald; by 1937 they topped polls and radio charts, and in the next two years packed theaters and ballrooms across the country, breaking through racial barriers. Webb's band was in the era's most legendary band battles, with Benny Goodman and Count Basie. His life was cut short tragically, and he died in June 1939, age 34, of complications from his chronic disease, at the height of his band's national popularity"-- Provided by publisher. |
