Dream Lucky: When FDR was in the White House, Count Basie was on the radio, and everyone wore a hat... (Hardcover)
Description
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.
About the Author
Roxane Orgill is the author of a number of notable books for children and young adults, including the recent Footwork: The Story of Fred and Adele Astaire. She has also been an award-winning music critic whose reviews and articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Billboard. She lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Praise for Dream Lucky: When FDR was in the White House, Count Basie was on the radio, and everyone wore a hat...…
[Orgill’s] evocative story line, with a running narrative centered on Basie’s struggles for national recognition in July 1938, gives a clear indication of life under the specter of Depression-era troubles…[it] resurrects more or less forgotten figures for a wide audience of readers”
-Library Journal
“A vivid and stirring panorama of America on the brink of World War II--an epic on the head of a pin.”
-Daniel Mark Epstein, poet and biographer
“Roxane Orgill is a kick--to read and to watch riffing on a whole era and its cool heroes. This book is danceable.”
-Raymond Sokolov, columnist, The Wall Street JournalRaymond Sokolov, columnist, The Wall Street JournalRaymond Sokolov, columnist, The Wall Street JournalRaymond Sokolov, columnist, The Wall Street Journal
“A firecracker of a book as tight, ebullient and raucous as a classic Basie arrangement”
-Wall Street Journal
“Orgill unleashes verve and rhythmic riffs to capture the mood of the pre-WWII years when ‘the radio was always on.’ … [A] rhapsodic time-travel tour guide.”
-Publishers Weekly
Like the jazzmen and swell gals from the swinging late 30s she resuscitates with verve and moxie, Roxane Orgill is a kick--to read and to watch riffing on a whole era and its cool heroes. This book is danceable.
-Raymond Sokolov
Roxane Orgill fully captures the spirit and truth of the era with a great, breezy style full of snazzy lingo and spot-on details. In the word of the day, the book is swell. Makes me want to wear a hat.
-Kaenan Oliver, prize-winning author and co-screenwriter of a film-in-progress about Chick Webb