Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author George, Kathleen, 1943- author.

Title The blues walked in / Kathleen George
Published Pittsburgh, Pa. : University of Pittsburgh Press, [2018]
©2018

Copies

Description 1 online resource (viii, 294 pages)
Contents Intro; Title Page; Acknowledgements; Chapter One; Chapter Two; Chapter Three; Chapter Four; Chapter Five; Chapter Six; Chapter Seven; Chapter Eight; Chapter Nine; Chapter Ten; Chapter Eleven; Chapter Twelve; Chapter Thirteen; Chapter Fourteen; Chapter Fifteen; Chapter Sixteen; Chapter Seventeen; Chapter Eighteen; Chapter Nineteen; Chapter Twenty; Chaoter Twenty-One; 2016
Summary In 1936, life on the road means sleeping on the bus or in hotels for blacks only. After finishing her tour with Nobel Sissel's orchestra, nineteen-year-old Lena Horne is walking the last few blocks to her father's hotel in Pittsburgh's Hill District. She stops at a lemonade stand and meets a Lebanese American girl, Marie David. Marie loves movies and adores Lena, and their chance meeting sparks a relationship that will intertwine their lives forever. Lena also meets Josiah Conner, a charismatic teenager who helps out at her father Teddy's hotel. Josiah often skips school, dreams of being a Hollywood director, and has a crush on Lena. Although the three are linked by a determination to be somebody, issues of race, class, family, and education threaten to disrupt their lives and the bonds between them. Lena's father wants her to settle down and give up show business, but she's entranced by the music and culture of the Hill. It's a mecca for jazz singers and musicians, and nightspots like the Crawford Grill attract crowds of blacks and whites. Lena table-hops with local jazzmen as her father chaperones her through the clubs where she'll later perform. Singing makes her feel alive, and to her father's dismay, reviewers can't get enough of her. Duke Ellington adores her, Billy Strayhorn can't wait to meet her, and she becomes "all the rage" in clubs and Hollywood for her beauty and almost-whiteness. Her signature version of "Stormy Weather" makes her a legend. But after sitting around for years at MGM as the studio heads try to figure out what to do with her, she isn't quite sure what she's worth. Marie and Josiah follow Lena's career in Hollywood and New York through movie magazines and the Pittsburgh Courier. Years pass until their lives are brought together again when Josiah is arrested for the murder of a white man. Marie and Lena decide they must get Josiah out of prison--whatever the personal cost
Notes Online resource; title from PDF title page (EBSCO, viewed May 24, 2018)
Subject Horne, Lena -- Childhood and youth -- Fiction
SUBJECT Horne, Lena fast
Subject Singers -- Fiction
Young women -- Fiction
African Americans -- Fiction
Lebanese Americans -- Fiction
Female friendship -- Fiction
Racism -- Fiction
FICTION -- Historical.
FICTION -- Biographical.
FICTION -- Coming of Age.
FICTION -- General.
Childhood and youth of a person
African Americans
Female friendship
Lebanese Americans
Manners and customs
Racism
Singers
Young women
SUBJECT Pittsburgh (Pa.) -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
Subject Pennsylvania -- Pittsburgh
Genre/Form Biographies
Bildungsromans
Biographical fiction
Fiction
Historical fiction
Biographical fiction.
Historical fiction.
Bildungsromans.
Biographies.
Biographies.
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780822983439
0822983435