Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America

Join us for a night of conversation with author Stephanie Crease on her recent book Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat that Changed America. The night will include rare photos and audio that will paint a new picture of the often under recognized innovator of the swing era.

Event hosted and moderated by NJMH Senior Scholar, Loren Schoenberg.

Stephanie Stein Crease is a jazz historian, author, and editor. Her books include Rhythm Man: Chick Webb and the Beat That Changed America, Gil Evans: Out of the Cool (2002 ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award), and Duke Ellington: His Life in Jazz. She was a 2020 Scholar-in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NYPL, and 2018 Berger-Benny Carter-Berger Research Fellow at the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University. She has been a featured guest at events at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Enoch Pratt Free Library, Baltimore, the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, and on WKCR, WBGO and other NPR stations.

Rhythm Man is listed on “The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2023.”