Chip Deffaa – författare

"Somebody has to pay the dues," says LaVern Baker. Here are the remarkable stories of six dazzlingly talented performers who blazed the R & B trail,the story of the performers' music and also of their struggle against racism and financial exploitation: Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker, two of the most popular female black singers of the 1950s Little Jimmy Scott, whom Madonna calls the only singer who ever really made her cry Charles Brown, master of the club blues" style Floyd Dixon, a more rambunctious fellow-traveller and the earthy, urbane Jimmy Witherspoon, who recorded some of the biggest R & B hits ever.

Chip Deffaa presents the recollections of eighteen musicians, covering a wealth of American musical history.

In the 18 profiles that make up this book, the reader will hear the stories—mostly in their own words—of a lively array of contributors to mainstream jazz and popular music. New York Post jazz critic Chip Deffaa has interviewed musicians both famous and not so famous—big band leaders like drum whiz Ray McKinley, Andy Kirk, and "Twentieth Century Gabriel" Erskine Hawkins; celebrated sidemen like clarinetist Johnny Mince and bassist Bob Haggart; 1920's trumpeter Doc Cheatham and arranger Bill Challis; 30's trumpeter Bill Dillard; 40's saxist George Kelly; and drummer Sonny Igoe, pianist Dick Hyman, and drummer Jack Hanna of more recent years; plus Buddy Morrow, Oliver Jackson, Mahlon Clark, Joe Wilder, Bucky and John Pizzarelli, and Ken Peplowski.