"You ever hear of the jazz-playin' man, the man with the cats who could swing with his band?"

Author: Andrea Davis Pinkney
Illustrator: Brian Pinkney
Format: Hardcover
Published: Little Brown, 1998

"You ever hear of the jazz-playin' man, the man with the cats who could swing with his band?" Andrea Pinkney fills this biography of Duke Ellington with jazzy metaphors, similes, and onomatopoeia, transforming words on the page into music - "jump-rope feet on the street," "sassy ride on his cymbal," "red-hot blips with a purple dash of brass." Brian Pinkney?s scratchboard illustrations are incredible.