DUNBAR

When I decided to create a book about the Dunbar Hotel I expected—as one always does on a project like this—to discover many fascinating things, but I expected all of those things to be ultimately centered around jazz. To those in the know, that’s what the Dunbar is, the place where jazz luminaries performed, partied and rested their heads while visiting the city of Angels.

The Dunbar though, is a microcosm of the very shaping of America—it is about self-determination, religion, social unrest, migration and immigration, segregation and desegregation, wealth distribution and class politics, and of course, jazz.