Rhythm Man

The jazz biography of the year! A clear, fast-paced tracking of the rise of virtuoso drummer and bandleader William Chick Webb, Crease mobilizes exciting new archival research to reveal the rich cultural history of Black Baltimore and of Harlem itself-when jazz was in vogue up and down the streets of Upper Manhattan and then all over the globe...This critical biography dives deep, offering surprise after surprise. Crease offers fresh vignettes of Webb's fellow jazz-star Baltimoreans Blanche and Cab Calloway, Eubie Blake, and Billie Holiday. And we learn how a physically challenged man, hump-backed and standing four feet tall, could drive an all-star orchestra from his brightly lit drumkit throne, make a city-block size ballroom bounce under thousands of dancers' feet, and still play his role as the family man who supported relatives and friends... * Robert G. O'Meally, author of Antagonistic Cooperation: Jazz Collage, Fiction and the Shaping of African American Culture * Like Andrew Delbanco's work on Melville, Stephanie Stein Crease's Rhythm Man is sweeping, probing cultural history not to be mistaken for mere biography. Missing nothing worth knowing, Crease explores the whole world around the drummer and bandleader Chick Webb-the world that made him and the world he remade with his still dazzling, still under-appreciated musical art. * David Hajdu, author of Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn and Love for Sale: Pop Music in America * Chick Webb is arguably the greatest of big band drummers because he was an incredible technician, orchestrator, and bandleader; he created the template for what came after him. However, there is so little written about him in totality, and the passion and love that Stephanie Crease pours into this book will allow it to become the missing link to understanding the magnitude of Chick's contribution to the world of jazz big band drumming and beyond. Thanks to this book, we get to understand how and why Chick Webb was one of the greatest to ever play a drum set in the configuration of a big band, which is foundational to the creation of jazz music. * Ulysses Owens Jr., Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer, educator, creative entrepreneur * Though he was one of the true kings of the Swing Era, drummer and bandleader Chick Webb has never properly received his due. That wrong has definitively been righted thanks to the groundbreaking research uncovered in Stephanie Crease's Rhythm Man. In addition to being a world-class researcher, Crease is an expert storyteller with the uncanny ability to make worlds come alive, smartly relying on the words of those who were there to help tell the story. In the process, readers will be transported from the streets of Baltimore to the battles at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem and all places in between, all in incredible detail like no previous telling of Webb's story. This is a major work and exactly what Webb deserves. * Ricky Riccardi, Director of Research Collections at the Louis Armstrong House Museum and Grammy Award-winning author of Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong * Fiction couldn't have created a better hero than Chick Webb, and Stephanie Crease is the writer to tell the tale. A Black artist with a disability, in constant pain, Webb let nothing stop his momentum-the modernization of jazz drumming. Deeply researched and lovingly told, Crease places Webb at the center of American popular culture of the Swing Era. A fascinating read. * Linda Dahl, author of Morning Glory: A biography of Mary Lou Williams and An Upside-Down Sky * Jazz, above all, is about rhythm, and in this unique biography, Stephanie Crease has taken the time and pulse of Chick Webb's short but impactful life and made it swing. She is to biographers what Webb was to drummers-a shining light! * Loren Schoenberg, Senior Scholar and Founding Director of the Nation Jazz Museum, Harlem *