A Jazzman's Tale

A Jazzman's Tale is a screenplay memoir of bebop trumpeter and pianist Charles Freeman Lee, who is listed in Leonard Feather's Jazz Encyclopedia, as he tries to make it on trumpet in 1950s New York.

He falls in love with another jazzman's wife and marries her after a quickie divorce. They both face tough challenges as they establish a matrimonial life together.

Freeman, as he was better known, was one of the jazzmen who joined the jazz revolution called bebop at Minton's Playhouse and the Paradise Club in Harlem, New York City in the 1950s. Freeman came out of Wilberforce Collegians, an important band in jazz history formed in 1926 at Wilberforce University in Ohio, with famous alumni like Benny Carter, Frank Foster and Ben Webster.

He played with Thelonious Monk, James Moody, Sonny Stitt and others in the bebop era and made two albums with bebop pianist, Elmo Hope, and ex Wilberforce Collegians bandmate, saxophonist, Frank Foster.

A Jazzman's Tale grew from an interview with Freeman in Paris in 1993 and contains verbatim excerpts from the interview and is full of jazz slang and improvisational storytelling, adding another layer of texture to the narrative of this screenplay memoir.

As a bonus, the book includes an interview with Freeman by his sister, Professor Jane Lee Ball where he shares his ideas on bebop, jazz and musicians like Charley Parker, Thelonious Monk, Elmo Hope, Bud Powell and Billie Holiday with humor and wit.

Several beautiful vintage photographs show Freeman as a young jazzman and students at Wilberforce University between 1895 and 1965.