Dream Lucky
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Overview
The time: 1936-1938. The mood: Hopeful. It wasn't wartime, not yet. The music: The incomparable Count Basie and Benny Goodman, among others. The setting: Living rooms across America and, most of all, New York City.
Dream Lucky covers politics, race, religion, arts, and sports, but the central focus is the period's soundtrack—specifically big band jazz—and the big-hearted piano player William "Count" Basie. His ascent is the narrative thread of the book—how he made it and what made his music different from the rest. But many other stories weave in and out: Amelia Earhart pursues her dream of flying "around the world at its waistline." Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., stages a boycott on 125th Street. And Mae West shocks radio listeners as a naked Eve tempting the snake.
Critic Nat Hentoff praises the "precise originality" with which Roxane Orgill writes about music. In Dream Lucky, she magically lets readers hear the past.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Orgill unleashes verve and rhythmic riffs to capture the mood of the pre-WWII years, when "the radio was always on." An ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award winner, Orgill, who has written about music for young readers (Mahalia), recalls radio programs. big band music, comedians, art, sports, the struggle for racial equality and a nod to the Depression and Europe's gathering storm. To recreate radio, she listened to recordings rather than using transcripts because she "needed to hear the voices and the music" herself. The format is chronological, covering 48 eventful days framed by Joe Louis's loss to Max Schmeling on June 19, 1936, and the June 22, 1938, rematch, which Louis won. In between, we hear Rudy Vallee introducing Edgar Bergen to radio listeners and Count Basie at Roseland, and Amelia Earhart soaring. Langston Hughes opens his theater, Orson Welles is The Shadowand FDR watches Disney cartoons. Orgill concludes this rhapsodic time-travel tour guide with a "Suggested Listening" list, cueing readers to play Basie as a background for her lilting language. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Library Journal
During the depths of the Great Depression, life was harsh and forbidding for a large swath of the population. But not all was hopeless-people followed President Roosevelt's fireside chats on the radio, listened to the new swing music coming out of the heartland from such artists as Count Basie, and were inspired by events like Joe Lewis's 1938, triumph over the German boxer Max Schmeling. Focusing on 1936-38, YA author and music journalist Orgill brings forth these and other people and events from the depths of time. Her evocative story line, with a running narrative centered on Basie's struggles for national recognition in July 1938, gives a clear indication of life under the specter of Depression-era troubles and the events that kept people's minds focused on a hopeful future. This short book-Orgill's endnotes suggest where to seek out information for further exploration-resurrects more or less forgotten figures for a wide audience of readers and would fit well into U.S. history, music, and popular culture collections. Recommended for public and academic libraries.
—William G. Kenz