Discover the greatest stories from jazz history
The best stories and anecdotes from more than 100 years of jazz
The Louis Armstrong Concert a High School Student Taped in 1957 Is Finally Being Released
In March 1957 a student stage manager recorded Louis Armstrong and His All Stars in a Chicago-area high school auditorium. Nearly 70 years later, Verve is releasing the tape as One Night in Highland Park.
The Pistol, the Piano and Erroll Garner: How Art Blakey Became a Jazz Drummer
Art Blakey started out as a pianist. In the early 1930s, while still a teenager, he was playing piano for money … Read more
“So Long Eric” – Watch Charles Mingus & Eric Dolphy on Belgian Television
Before Charles Mingus took his band to Europe in April 1964, Eric Dolphy told him that when the tour finished, he … Read more
Nina Simone’s “Four Women”: The Song Radio Stations Rejected — and Jay-Z Sampled 50 Years Later
In 1966, Nina Simone released a song about four Black women. There was no conventional chorus and no attempt to make … Read more
The Best Post-Bop Albums of All Time
Some of jazz’s most loved albums belong to a genre many listeners could not name. Maiden Voyage, Speak No Evil and … Read more
Rudy Van Gelder: The Optometrist Who Recorded Half of Jazz
If you own twenty classic jazz albums, there is a fair chance the same man recorded eight of them — in … Read more
Strata-East and Black Jazz: The Labels Musicians Built Themselves
Two independent labels started in 1971 with the same basic idea: that musicians should own their own recordings. Their catalogues have … Read more
Ethio-Jazz: The Best Albums and Where to Start
Ethio-jazz is one of the most distinctive sounds in the whole of recorded music, and for decades almost nobody outside Ethiopia … Read more
The Best South African Jazz Albums of All Time
South African jazz produced some of the most powerful music of the twentieth century — yet its greatest albums remain far … Read more
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