Concerto for Cootie: The Life and Times of Cootie Williams

Jazz legend Cootie Williams left home to start his career as a professional musician at the age of fifteen. In 1940, after eleven years as one of the major soloists with the Duke Ellington orchestra, Williams was lured away to the band of Benny Goodman, one of the most popular bands in the country. At the time, it was a controversial move--it was still taboo for African Americans to share the bandstand with white people. Current references to the move usually reduce it to a song written by ...