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MUSIC OUT OF DIXIE by Harold Sinclair

MUSIC OUT OF DIXIE

By

Pub Date: May 8th, 1952
Publisher: Rinehart

.... and out of the onka and bordellos of New Orleans and Storyville, as a background for and the purpose in the life of Dade Tarrant, born in Algiers -- the 15th ward of New Orleans, orphaued at seven when his mother died of yellow fever, and a shoe-shine boy on Basin Street with a natural ear and a great feeling for the music he hears around him. Picking up the piano under the tutelage of Doc Peters, helped on by Jelly Roll Morton, Dade got a first job as player in a Storyville saloon. The way up and out, from Bitsy who kept house for him to Abby Case who sang her way North, from the piano in Emmy's dive to a five man band of his own, this forms a slim story-line for the backdrop on the birth of the blues, in the hands -- and the thick idiom -- of those who first played them... Keyboard black and white, and none of the unreasoning fever -- fervor -- of Young Man With .