Growing Up with Jazz

This is the third volume of Stokes's jazz essays we have published. The focus is on how these figures became jazz musicians. Like in Living the Jazz Life (Stokes's last volume), there is much focus on women instrumentalists (a group largely ignored in jazz studies) and European jazz players. The two most prominent U.S. jazz musicians discussed are the influential bop drummer Art Blakely and the famous jazz pianist and personality Dr. Billy Taylor.