Bricktop is truly one of the most legendary and enduring figures of twentieth-century American cultural history. Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Waugh wrote about her. T.S. Eliot put her in a poem, and Cole Porter wrote Miss Otis Regrets for her to sing. She gave Duke Ellington his first New York break and shepherded a young Josephine Baker. Everybody who was anybody haunted Bricktop's club in the Paris of the 1920s and 1930s, and the Mexico City and Rome of the three decades following. And she was friend, entertainer, confidante, mother hen, and sometimes banker to them all.

Hers is the candid, high-spirited story of a scrappy redhead "coloured girl" from West Virginia and Chicago who combined her unerring eye for talent and chic with a uniquely American brashness and an eminently European sophistication to become the toast of two continents. Her book is crammed with anecdotes about the rich, powerful, and famous of several decades, from Jack Johnson, John Barrymore, Jelly Roll Morton, and Legs Diamond to Edward G. Robinson, Tallulah Bankhead, Gloria Swanson, Johns Steinbeck, Django Reinhardt, Frank Sinatra, and a dazzling array of kings and princes.

JAMES HASKINS is one of the world's foremost experts on African-American cultural history. A professor at the University of Florida, he lives in Gainesville and New York City.

"This book sounds just like the Bricktop I know - charming, tough, independent…Bricktop's book is a key to that very special time in history. Her book unlocks the door to memories and secrets she has kept hidden in her heart for many years." - DIANA ROSS

CONTENTS:
Early Years; On the Road; Saloon Singer; The War Years; Prohibition; Paris, Cole Porter & Josephine Baker; Bricktop's; Saloonkeeper Par Excellence; The Golden Era; And We All Played On; The Crisis; New York; Mexico Ciy; Return To Paris; The Holy Hustler; Hollywood-on-the-Tiber; Old Warhorse

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