Welcome to our podcast series ‘On The Bookcase’, featuring female authors from across the world, with host Fiona Ross and original music from Hannah Horton. You can find our podcasts at number 9 in the top 60 Best Jazz Podcasts in FeedSpot!  In this episode we welcome Stephanie Stein Crease, to talk about her new book, Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America

You can listen to the episode on Spotify Apple Player FM

Stephanie Stein Crease is a jazz historian, author, editor, and former Senior Jazz Coordinator for the Jazz Arts Program, Manhattan School of Music. Her books include Gil Evans: Out of the Cool (2002 ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award), and Duke Ellington: His Life in Jazz (2009). She was literary editor for the Grammy-a warded Duke Ellington Centennial Edition. She was a 2020 Scholar-in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL, and 2018 Berger-Benny Carter-Berger Research Fellow at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University.

Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America, a biography of Chick Webb, one of the first jazz drum virtuosos, and the innovative Harlem bandleader whose music helped launch the Swing Era of the 1930s. The book paints a nuanced portrait of Webb's life, from his early years in Baltimore, to top bandleader in Harlem during the Great Depression, and on to national fame as big band swing music swept across the country. Features previously unpublished material that sheds new light on the early jazz and dance scene in Baltimore, New York and Harlem during the 1920s, the Swing Era, and Webb's interactions with his family and many noted musicians.

Available to purchase here