Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz
Langston Hughes
First edition. 18 x 22.5 cm, original beige cloth spine, patterned boards, dust jacket. New York, Alfred A. Knopf. 1961
An excellent copy, with some rubbing to dust jacket edges
Langston Hughes was interested in jazz from the very beginning of his writing career, incorporating its syncopated rhythms into his work and reading his poetry to jazz music. In Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods For Jazz Hughes even gives indications for the musicians who would accompany the text and dedicates the book to "the greatest horn blower of them all", Louis Armstrong.