"A biography of African American musician Melba Doretta Liston, a virtuoso musician who played the trombone and composed and arranged music for many of the great jazz musicians of the twentieth century"--Provided by publisher.

At the age of three, Mary Lou Williams taught herself how to play the piano. At the age of fifteen, she was considered a professional. An American jazz pianist and composer, Mary Lou Williams wrote hundreds of compositions, recorded hundreds of songs, and wrote arrangements for musicians, including Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman. Mary’s Idea is an exquisite picture book about Mary Lou Williams, an artist often overlooked in the canon of American...

In 1909 Dr. Laurence Clifton Jones opened a special home for African American orphans in Mississippi called Piney Woods Country Life School. There, students worked hard on their studies, and no one worked harder than the young musicians who played in the Sweethearts, the schools all-girl swing band. Their music had rhythms and melodies that got people dancing! When the Sweethearts left Piney Woods, they moved to Washington, D.C., to try to make it...