Song for My Fathers by Tom Sancton

Song for My Fathers by Tom Sancton

Song for My Fathers is the story of a young white boy driven by a consuming passion to learn the music and ways of a group of aging black jazzmen in the twilight years of the segregation era. Contemporaries of Louis Armstrong, most of them had played in local obscurity until Preservation Hall launched a nationwide revival of interest in traditional jazz. They called themselves the mens. And they welcomed the young apprentice into their ranks.

The boy was introduced into this remarkable fellowship by his father, an eccentric Southern liberal and failed novelist whose powerful articles on race had made him one of the most effective polemicists of the early Civil Rights movement. Nurtured on his father's belief in racial equality, the aspiring clarinetist embraced the old musicians with a boundless love and admiration. The narrative unfolds against the vivid backdrop of New Orleans in the 1950s and '60s. But that magical place is more than decor; it is perhaps the central player, for this story could not have taken place in any other city in the world.

Tom Sancton earned a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford after graduating from Harvard in 1971. He has contributed to publications such as Vanity Fair, Fortune, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal. He co-authored the international best seller Murder of a Princess: The Investigation and wrote the novel The Armageddon Project. Sancton, a jazz musician in his own right, has toured widely throughout Europe and recorded over a dozen CDs, as well as starring alongside Woody Allen in the feature film Wild Man Blues. Sancton was given the name Andrew W. Sancton in 2007. He is a Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Tulane University, where he teaches advanced creative writing classes.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781590512432
ISBN 10	159051243X
Title	Song for My Fathers
Author	Tom Sancton
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Other Press LLC
Year published	2006-06-17
Number of pages	336
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.