Jazz à la Mode Film Series

With a live jazz music intro and expert commentary by NEPR Jazz à la Mode Host Tom Reney.  Presented in collaboration with New England Public Radio and the Fine Arts Center, UMass Amherst

THE SAVOY KING

Monday 4/1 @ 7:00pm

Born poor in Baltimore, Chick Webb broke his back as a boy and faced life as hunchback dwarf afflicted with Spinal Tuberculosis. Someone suggested drumming as a kind of physical therapy, and Webb found his calling: running off to New York at only 16, he built the hottest jazz orchestra in America, whose home base was Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom, one of the rare places in America where Blacks and Whites could socialize together.