How Duke Ellington and Other Jazzmen Became America’s First Globally Famous Musicians

The first globally famous American musicians weren’t part of the 50s rock wave that included Elvis Pressly or Chuck Berry. They were three 3 jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America: Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie.

While their music is well-known, their background stories aren’t. Duke Ellington was the grandson of slaves whose composing, piano playing, and band leading transcended category. Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield and, at age seven, got his first musical instrument, a ten-cent tin horn that drew buyers to his rag-peddling wagon and set him on the road to elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom. William James Basie was son of a coachman and laundress who dreamed of escaping every time the traveling carnival swept into town, and who finally engineered his getaway with help from Fats Waller.

To explore their stories is today’s guest, Larry Tye, author of “The Jazz Men: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America.