History
Deep dives into the recordings, movements, and moments that shaped the jazz tradition.
The Women Who Built Jazz
Mary Lou Williams arranged for Ellington. Melba Liston wrote for Dizzy. Lil Hardin made Louis Armstrong's career possible.
The Classic Quartet: Coltrane's Four Years
Between 1961 and 1965, the John Coltrane Quartet made the most intense and spiritually ambitious music in jazz. Then it dissolved. Here is how it happened.
Detroit Jazz and the Strata Corporation
In 1969, pianist Kenny Cox founded Strata Records in Detroit. The label lasted five years and produced some of the most uncompromising jazz of its era. Its...
What Is Bebop? The Revolution That Made Jazz an Art Form
Bebop was not a genre. It was a declaration of independence — from dance floors, from entertainment, from the idea that jazz was background music.
How the 2010s Rebuilt Jazz: Kamasi, Kendrick, and the London Moment
In 2015, Kamasi Washington released The Epic, Kendrick Lamar released To Pimp a Butterfly, and jazz became the most urgent music in the world.
The Night Ornette Coleman Walked Into the Five Spot
Miles Davis heard Ornette Coleman's quartet at the Five Spot and said, in his customarily blunt way: 'He just came and f***ed up everybody.' That was the point.
The Blue Note Sessions: Building the Jazz Canon
They insisted on two things above all else: real takes, with the musicians warmed up and ready; and proper mastering time, with no corners cut.
On the Corner: The Record Miles Davis Made for Young Black America
On the Corner was savaged on release. Critics later praised it for everything they had hated. The music did not change — the context did.
Rudy Van Gelder's Studio: Where the Sound Was Made
Rudy Van Gelder recorded more of the jazz canon than any other engineer. He built his first studio in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey.
Kind of Blue: The Album That Changed Everything
Miles Davis walked into Columbia's 30th Street Studio in March 1959 with no written arrangements and a set of scales. What came out never stopped selling.
Jazz and the Civil Rights Movement
Jazz was always political. It was built by people whose humanity was being actively contested — and the music made that argument in public.
In a Silent Way: Miles Goes Electric
Recorded in February 1969, edited from hours of tape, released that summer. Nobody knew what to call it. Miles did not wait for a name.
Bitches Brew and the Birth of Fusion
Miles Davis recorded Bitches Brew in August 1969 with no written parts. He invented a genre in three days. He did not ask for permission.
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Blue Note's Proving Ground
Art Blakey ran the Jazz Messengers for thirty-five years. The roster of musicians who passed through reads like a who's who of jazz across five decades.
A Love Supreme: Coltrane's Spiritual Peak
John Coltrane recorded A Love Supreme in a single session on December 9, 1964. He was thirty-eight years old. He never made another record quite like it.
Charlie Parker and the Bebop Revolution
In the 1940s, Charlie Parker took swing music and remade it. What emerged was something that sounded like the future.
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