Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat That Changed America

Jazz historian Crease (Duke Ellington: His Life in Jazz) investigates the life of Black bandleader/drummer Chick Webb (1905–39). Starting with his childhood in Baltimore, she describes Webb’s debilitating spinal tuberculosis, which stymied his growth, left a hump on his back, and led to his death at the age of 34. The book describes Webb’s formative musical education in ragtime, his music business struggles, and, by the 1930s, his success with radio broadcasts, tours, recordings, and battles of music with other orchestras led by Benny Goodman and Count Basie. Facing a dearth of material about the self-effacing Webb, the author masterfully expands upon the people and places central to the drummer, including band members such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, trumpeter Mario Bauzá, jump-blues great Louis Jordan, and Ella Fitzgerald, who recorded her first breakout hit, “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” in 1938 with Webb’s orchestra. Crease also vividly depicts venues such as Harlem’s Lafayette Theater, the Apollo, and the country’s first truly integrated ballroom, the Savoy, which became synonymous with the Webb band and the athletic Lindy Hop dancers.