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Dream Lucky: When FDR was in the White House, Count Basie was on the radio, and everyone wore a hat...

The time: 1936-1938. The mood: Hopeful. It wasn't wartime, not yet. The music: The incomparable Count Basie and Benny Goodman, among others. The setting: Living rooms across America and, most of all, New York City.

Dream Lucky covers politics, race, religion, arts, and sports, but the central focus is the period's soundtrack — specifically big band jazz — and the big-hearted piano player William "Count" Basie. His ascent is the narrative thread of the book — how he made it and what made his music different from the rest. But many other stories weave in and out: Amelia Earhart pursues her dream of flying "around the world at its waistline." Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., stages a boycott on 125th Street. And Mae West shocks radio listeners as a naked Eve tempting the snake.

Critic Nat Hentoff praises the "precise originality" with which Roxane Orgill writes about music. In Dream Lucky, she magically lets readers hear the past.

  • Format
  • hardcover
  • Pages
  • 256
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 978-0-06-089750-5
  • EAN
  • 9780060897505
  • Genres
  • history, music
  • Release date
  • 2008