William Kennedy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and journalist based in Averill Park, N.Y. As a reporter for Albany's Times Union, Kennedy interviewed Louis Armstrong at the Kenmore Hotel. He shares about this conversation with Satchmo as well as his other run-ins with jazz greats including Frank Sinatra at Carnegie Hall and Duke Ellington at a prom in Upstate N.Y.
William Kennedy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and journalist based in Averill Park, N.Y.
As a reporter for Albany's Times Union, Kennedy interviewed Louis Armstrong at the Kenmore Hotel. He shares about this conversation with Satchmo as well as his other run-ins with jazz greats including Frank Sinatra at Carnegie Hall and Duke Ellington at a prom in Upstate N.Y.
The author also details these experiences in "Riding the Yellow Trolley Car," a collection of essays and interviews published in 1993.
In addition to his novels, Kennedy is renown for co-writing the "The Cotton Club," a 1984 movie directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The film focuses on a famous Harlem jazz club during the 1920s and 1930s.
Kennedy is the founder and former director of the New York State Writers Institute located at the University at Albany, SUNY.
Music: "Mama's Gone Goodbye" and "When the Saints Go Marchin' In," by Skip Parsons and the Riverboat Jazz Band.
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