You Can’t Steal a Gift is about the impact of American racism on America’s greatest gift to the world of music—jazz. In a work that combines memoir, oral history, and commentary, Gene
Lees has crafted minibiographies of four great black musicians whom he knew well—Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Milt Hinton, and Nat “King” Cole. Lees writes of them, “All are men who had
every reason to embrace bitterness . . . and didn’t.”
When Lees left Montreal to become the music and drama critic of the Louisville Times in 1955, he was shocked by the racism and segregation he found in the United States. In jazz he
found a community of like-minded souls who freely shared their gifts with all lovers of music, regardless of race and condition.
