Akron Public Library

Presents a short study of singer, songwriter, and jazz musician Louis Armstrong and chronicles his childhood in New Orleans and rise in the entertainment industry.

Jack and Annie must travel back in time to New Orleans in 1915 to help a teenaged Louis Armstrong fulfill his destiny and become the "King of Jazz."

From bebop to New Orleans, from ragtime to boogie--and every style in between--this collection of energetic poems, accompanied by bright and exhilarating paintings, celebrates different styles of the American art form, jazz.

Joe Gardner is a middle-school band teacher who gets the chance of a lifetime to play at the best jazz club in town. A misstep takes him from New York City to The Great Before, a fantastical place where new souls get their personalities before going to Earth. Determined to return to his life, Joe teams up with a precocious soul, 22, who has never understood the appeal of the human life. As Joe tries to show 22 what's great about life, he may discover...

When Hannah Swensen hears that the Cinnamon Roll Six jazz band will be playing at a festival in Lake Eden, Minnesota, she bakes up a supply of their namesake confections to welcome them. But tragedy strikes when their tour bus overturns on its way into town. And keyboard player Buddy Neiman's minor injuries turn deadly serious when someone plunges surgical scissors into his chest. Turns out, Buddy Neiman isn't the victim's real name. In fact, no one...

Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.

A brief recounting of the career of this jazz musician and composer who, along with his orchestra, created music that was beyond category.

After letting his band down by missing rehearsal, Shorty has some serious questions about what it means to be a leader so he hits the New Orleans streets to find some answers.

Learn about this popular music form and hear each instrument play on a specially produced CD.

The first of two volumes tracing the life of one of the most influential musicians of the twentieth century draws on interviews with family, peers, and collaborators to reveal Charlie Parker's Depression-era childhood and his early career in Kansas City and New York.