Those Swinging Years: The Autobiography of Charlie Barnet

Charlie Barnet (1913-1991) had his first professional gig as a truant high school student, sneaking away after roll call to play three sessions a day with the dance band of a midtown Manhattan Chinese restaurant. After getting his union card, he played sax for several years as a sideman with second-rate bands across the country. But soon he was leading his own band in such hit songs as Cherokee, Pompton Turnpike, and Skyliner at the best clubs and ballrooms in the U.S. As a bandleader, Barnet had a fine ear for musical talent and a blind eye for racial prejudice. He was the first to break the color barrier in a popular dance b his black musicians included Clark Terry, Roy Eldridge, and singer Lena Hor his white musicians included Jack Purvis, Red Norvo, Maynard Ferguson, and Doc Severinson. But Barnet not only played jazz, he lived the jazz life. In Those Swinging Years he writes frankly of his own quart-a-day whiskey habit, of buying marijuana by the pillowcase, of visits to the whorehouses and back streets of the towns he played, and of his half-dozen very brief marriages. Charlie Barnet was not only one of the outstanding bandleaders, he epitomized the jazz age, and there are few jazz memoirs as warm and exciting--as jazzy--as Those Swinging Years. Book jacket.