Those Swinging Years

Charlie Barnet (1913-1991) is best known as the popular bandleader whose hits included Cherokee, Pompton Turnpike, and Skyliner. But he was also the first to break the color barrier in a popular dance band, and his black musicians included Clark Terry, Roy Eldridge, and singer Lena Horne; his white musicians included Jack Purvis, Red Norvo, Maynard Ferguson, and Doc Severinson. Barnet not only played jazz, he lived the jazz in this book, he writes of his whiskey and marijuana habits, of his whorehouse visits and his half-dozen marriages. Charlie Barnet epitomised the jazz age, and there are few memoirs as lively as Those Swinging Years .