In Black and Blue, author and radio per­son­al­i­ty Stan­ley Péan guides us through a his­to­ry of jazz, stop­ping at a num­ber of high points along the way. He takes us behind the scenes with anec­dotes that tell much about the mis­un­der­stand­ings that have sur­round­ed the music. How could Jean-Paul Sartre have mixed up Afro-Cana­di­an song­writer Shel­ton Brooks with the Jew­ish-Amer­i­can bel­ter Sophie Tuck­er? What is the real sto­ry behind the sear­ing clas­sic ​“Strange Fruit” made immor­tal by Bil­lie Hol­i­day, who at first balked at per­form­ing it? And since this is jazz, there is no short­age of sad ends: Bix Bei­der­becke, Chet Bak­er, Lee Mor­gan, to name a few. Péan also shows how musi­cians like Miles Davis worked with the emerg­ing voic­es of hip- hop to widen jazz’s audi­ence, as well as how the movies, Hol­ly­wood and Euro­pean cin­e­ma alike, tried to use jazz, often whiten­ing it in the process. Like jazz itself, Péan’s essays are spon­ta­neous, thought­ful, and refined.