We know the stars. Duke Ellington. Count Basie. Cab Calloway. Their names roll off the tongue. Their stories are told and retold. Their faces appear in documentaries and history books. But there’s another kind of legend in jazz history.

In The Last Side Man, Haywood Henry tells his own story. The book is not a third-person account or outside biography. It is Henry’s autobiography, a firsthand account of his life as a master reed player, whose journey from Birmingham, Alabama, to Harlem, New York, mirrors one of the most important movements in American history.

The Savoy Ballroom, which opened on Lenox Avenue in Harlem in 1926, was not just a venue. It was a proving ground. A nightly contest. A place where mediocrity had nowhere to hide, because the dancers on that floor could feel every wrong note through the soles of their shoes. In The Last Side Man, Haywood Henry writes about what it meant to take the stage there.