Marian McPartland at the piano with “the lady who swings the band”, Mary Lou Williams!

Marian McPartland has done more to edify jazz lovers than anyone alive, we’d have to say, with her radio interviews — collaborations, really — with jazz pianists heard weekly around the world through the magic that is NPR (one more reason we’re ecstatic that President Obama romped to victory on Nov. 6!).

McPartland is a very fine pianist and has an insatiable thirst for insight into the work of her peers, with whom she has ceaselessly and eagerly interacted in her 65+ years in the business. The young, proper, ambitious and talented English pianist Marian Page met and married Chicagoan Jimmy McPartland (a key American “trad” jazz cornet player 11 years her senior) while barnstorming with the USO through the war-torn WWII European terrain entertaining the troops.  Ever since, she’s explored, absorbed and brilliantly played jazz of all styles with an ear that gets her right to the heart of the music. No sheet music needed for this pianist! Just sit her down on the piano bench next to another of the greats in the music, and marvel at the transmission of musical knowledge from one set of hands to another…

De Barros has written a terrific book, brimming with detail but sailing along through eras and milieus without bogging down for a moment. He paints a vivid and full picture of the pianist, the formation of her art and the accomplishments of her career.  In addition, de Barros obviously has a deep affection for and knowledge of the early jazz that Jimmy McPartland embodied, and a thorough appreciation for the transformation of jazz that began in the late 1940s.

Come to the shop November 25th to hear jazz writer Paul de Barros, whose deep research has led to a marvelously detailed biography of the first lady of the jazz piano!