Description: Stride! traces the stride piano style from its roots in minstrel shows and ragtime, through the contributions of itinerant entertainers, to its joyful birth in Harlem, where it became known as Harlem Piano. With its speakeasies, night clubs, and rent parties, Harlem's social history, provided a fitting setting in which hot-blooded stride could blossom and swing full. Stride! provides a carefully documented, accurate, yet colorful account of that world and players at the origin of stride piano. The development of stride spans a period from World War I to the depression years, though younger players maintain its traditions today. It is a musical style marked by friendly rivalry and shared pleasures.

Drawing on the author's personal interviews and biographies, the book traces stride from generation to generation, from the originators Eubie Blake, Luckey Roberts, and James P. Johnson, through a succession of pianists like Willie the Lion Smith, and its influence on Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Joe Sullivan, and Johnny Guarnieri, concluding with a third and fourth generation that includes Ralph Sutton, Dick Hyman, and Dick Wellstood. Throughout, influences are traced and documented by way of CD and LP Stride! finishes the tune with appendixes that itemize the compositions of Luckey Roberts, Fats Waller and Willie the Lion Smith.

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