HUGHES, Langston.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Ask Your Mama. First edition, first printing. Ralph J. Gleason's copy, with his ink stamp on the front pastedown printing his name and Berkeley address. Gleason was a pioneering critic of jazz, pop, and rock, best known for co-founding Rolling Stone magazine with Jann Wenner in 1967. He was also the co-founder of Jazz Information, the first American jazz magazine, wrote the first syndicated weekly newspaper column on jazz, and produced a television series, Jazz Casual, which featured John Coltrane, B. B. King, and Wes Mongomery, among others.Hughes was a leader of the Harlem Renaissance and one of the earliest jazz poets. Ask Your Mama is a collection of poems designed to be read to jazz, with instructions for the band and the performer, dedicated to Louis Armstrong, "the greatest hornblower of them all". Loosely inserted are two printed Christmas cards from Hughes, one dated 1945 in pencil on the verso (not in Hughes's hand).

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