6 x 9. 344 pgs. 20 B&W photographs - 12 page plate section. (2006) Cloth 978-0-472-11553-2 $29.95T  Available Add to Cart Paper 978-0-472-03359-1 $22.95T  Available Add to Cart Search this Book's Content About the Book Praise Look Inside Series Jazz Perspectives Subjects African-American and African Studies / Biography / Music--Jazz

Rhythm Is Our Business
Jimmie Lunceford and the Harlem Express

Eddy Determeyer

Winner of the 2007 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Best Research in Recorded Jazz Music, Best History

The life and times of famed band leader, entrepreneur, and entertainer Jimmie Lunceford

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Praise for the Book

"This must be the definitive word on Lunceford's life, his music and his place in jazz history."
—Ray Templeton, Blues & Rhythm

"[Determeyer] has collected an impressive body of both factual record and colorful (sometimes inconsistent) oral history . . . . [A] definitive document about a major musical ensemble."
---Choice

"Rhythm Is Our Business is Eddy Determeyer's painstakingly researched chronicle of the rise, peak and collapse of Lunceford's orchestra. . . . [a] finely written book. Readers interested in jazz history will certainly want to add this volume to their collections."
---www.bookpleasures.com

“Jimmie Lunceford was a key swing-era figure, and no book covers his biography and music like this one does. Grounded in years of research and inspired by the writer’s love of his subject, the book fills a critical gap in the jazz literature and will be essential reading for all swing aficionados.”
---Jeffrey Magee, Associate Professor of Music, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and author of The Uncrowned King of Swing: Fletcher Henderson and Big Band Jazz

"The first detailed study of one of the Swing Era's most important bands and the first biography of its leader, Jimmie Lunceford. This is a most welcome and significant contribution to the literature of jazz, to our understanding of a vital period in jazz history, and to the music of an outstanding and unique ensemble that was emblematic of the Swing Era."
---Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, and author of Living with Jazz (Pantheon Books)

"It was Jimmie Lunceford and his orchestra that inspired me to become a musician. I was eleven years old at the time. When I heard that band play I said to myself, 'that's for me. I want to become a musician.' I still get inspired when I listen to some of their recordings. The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra is one of the great jazz orchestras of all time."
---Horace Silver

"Jimmie Lunceford has the best of all bands. Duke is great, Basie is remarkable, but Lunceford tops them both."
---Glenn Miller

"We were more popular than Benny Goodman! We were the first black band that played the Paramount Theater, downtown New York. Not Duke Ellington, not Count Basie. Six weeks in a row, four or five shows daily, and it was packed every day, people lining up around the corner constantly! We could outdraw any band in the country."
---Gerald Wilson

" . . . gives an in-depth picture of just how important Lunceford was."
---Jazzwise

"Meticulously and exhaustively put together. . . . The book is especially rich in quoting distinguished jazzmen on the precision, power and swing of the band . . . . Perhaps Determeyer's most impressive achievement is the living detail in which he has reconstructed the actual creation of the Lunceford sound . . ."
---The Mississippi Rag