The life of the unparalleled purveyor of the Great American Songbook, Marian McPartland, is celebrated in this engrossing biography. In this book, Paul de Barros considers McPartland's full life and shows her to have been a courageous compositional innovator as well as an immensely talented popularizer and educator.

"The life of the unparalleled purveyor of the Great American Songbook, Marian McPartland, is celebrated in this engrossing biography. From Bobby Short to Esperanza Spalding, across the 33-year run of the acclaimed radio show, Piano Jazz, Marian McPartland conversed and played piano duets with jazz greats and, via National Public Radio syndication, brought the best of jazz standards to listeners. In his sympathetic and insightful biography, Paul de Barros considers McPartland's full life and shows her to have been a courageous compositional innovator as well as an immensely talented popularizer and educator. Her standing among the jazz artists and her advocacy for women jazz musicians made McPartland a natural to host the Piano Jazz show conceived of in 1978 and first broadcast on WLTR out of Columbia, South Carolina, in 1979. That show secured her reputation in the musical form, and allowed her to introduce American and then global audiences to a diverse array of musicians developing the Great American Songbook. McPartland's advocacy, her commitment to her musical craft, and her interpretative work are all explored by de Barros, a knowledgeable guide to 20th century jazz"--