Black and Blue Jazz Stories

Author and radio personality Stanley Péan is a jazz scholar who takes us seamlessly and knowledgeably through the history of the music, stopping at a number of high points along the way. He gets behind the scenes with anecdotes that tell much about the misunderstandings that have surrounded the music. How could French existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre have mixed up Afro-Canadian songwriter Shelton Brooks with the Jewish-American belter Sophie Tucker? What is the real story behind the searing classic “Strange Fruit” made immortal by Billie Holiday, who at first balked at performing it? Who knew that an Ohio housewife named Sadie Vimmerstedt was behind the revenge song “I wanna be around to pick up the pieces when somebody breaks your heart?” And since this is jazz, there is no shortage of sad ends: Bix Beiderbecke, Chet Baker, Lee Morgan, to name a few.

Stanley Péan is the author of eight novels for adult and young readers and seven short story collections. He has been piloting “Quand le jazz est là” every week night on ICI Musique, Radio-Canada’s all-music radio network for the last thirteen years, building up the knowledge behind this book. David Homel is the author of nine novels and a memoir, as well as a series of books for younger readers co-written with Marie-Louise Gay. A prize-winning writer and translator, he has worked in documentary film, print, and radio journalism. He lives in Montreal.