The mood is tense and Paris “grim” and you can’t really blame the city of light for looking wan. The real star of the group, we learn, is the 19-year-old Afro-German Hieronymous “Hiero” Falk, whose trumpet playing is so inspired, it even impresses the legendary Louis Armstrong, who makes an extended (if a bit Forrest Gump-ish) cameo in the novel. The least talented, Sid’s also the least successful. Sid is a Baltimore boy, the son of “two quadroons” and so “light-skinned,” “straight-haired and green-eyed” that he’s mistaken for white in Europe. The story is told by one member of the Hot-Time Swingers, the now 83-year-old Sidney Griffiths. In the present-day portion of the novel, it’s all about transforming the survival instinct into something finer - forgiveness and reconciliation. In the past, Half-Blood Blues concerns itself with the attempts of the musicians - the Hot-Time Swingers - to not only record a song, also called Half-Blood Blues, but also to survive while the rest of Europe is imploding. That, folks, is called a double-whammy.The novel goes back and forth between the present (1992, in the novel) and the past (1939-40), its action circulating among the cities of Berlin, Paris and Baltimore. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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