Ask Your Mama: 12 Moods for Jazz

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.