Few musicians have managed to change the course of music--trumpeter Miles Davis did it several times. An early disciple of Charlie Parker, Davis created an austere, understated approach that became the model for cool. His superb albums in the 1950s m…

Duke Ellington's gift for combining blues simplicity, gospel emotion, and sophisticated musical themes reflected a unique style that drew fans from around the world. From the 1920s to the 1970s, he created a huge body of work that ranks among the gre…

The quintessential jazz singer, Billie Holiday seemed to stamp her heart onto everything she sang. With a thin, reedy voice and almost laconic style, she could give even a throwaway pop song a gut-wrenching twist. Her most memorable music is loaded w…

Through unparalleled ability and judicious choice of repertoire, Ella Fitzgerald became the foremost female interpreter of the 20th-century Great American Popular Song Book. With producer Norman Granz she worked on the "songbook" series, placing on r…

Benny Goodman was among the first great jazz clarinetists, with a clear tone and hard-swinging, melodic style that is still dominant on the instrument. His big band of 1935 can lay claim to launching the swing era, as it brought the music of the Harl…

France's "Little Sparrow" was the stuff of legend. Edith Piaf remains one of the most influential singers of the 20th century. Her dramatic singing style and her anguished voice appealed to French audiences and by the outbreak of World War II she had…

Through both the force of his music and his personal character, saxophonist John Coltrane remains among the most influential jazz artists of all time. After a stint with the classic Miles Davis band of the late 1950s, the tenor titan embarked on a de…

Simply put, Count Basie led the most swinging of the classic big bands. His youthful education in playing stride piano in New York was meshed with a deep immersion in the hard-swinging Kansas City jazz scene of the early 1930s. As Basie moved from si…

Charlie Parker's combination of sheer genius and pure emotion on the soprano sax has few rivals, and after him, nothing would be the same. As one of the creators of bebop in the 1940s and 1950s (alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, and others), Par…

Thelonious Monk, underappreciated at the beginning of his career in the 1940s, was eventually recognized as one of the most brilliant figures in modern jazz, with a piano and compositional style that began in a classic stride and then veered off, glo…

Bob Dylan began as a Woody Guthrie acolyte, imitating the dust-bowl balladeer as faithfully as a baby boomer from Hibbing, Minnesota, could. It wasn't long before he found his own voice, spearheading the early-1960s folk revival as well as the singer…

Trumpeter/vocalist Louis Armstrong is perhaps the single most influential artist in the history of jazz. He started out in the "hot" bands of 1920s New Orleans, and was one of the first to introduce solo improvisation into the jazz idiom. Over the ne…

Dave Brubeck is one of the great post-bop jazz innovators of the 1950s, whose use of irregular time signatures, a restrained, classical-influenced approach to the piano, and exceptional composing skills have allowed him to make bold musical statement…

b. Jean Baptiste Thielemans, 29 April 1922, Brussels, Belgium. A child prodigy, Thielemans played the accordion at the age of three (a home-made version; a real one would have considerably outweighed him), switching to harmonica in his mid-teens. A f…

Wes Montgomery's warm sound and hard-driving swing are, for many listeners, the epitome of jazz guitar. Rising from relative obscurity in the late 1950s, he became a huge sensation in the '60s, to the point that his recording career veered increasing…

Tenor saxophonist Stan Getz possessed a full, luxuriant tone and a highly melodic improvisational sense. Though he produced consistently rewarding music for the duration of his near 50-year career, he achieved the greatest success in the early '60s w…

One of the seminal performers in 20th-century American music, Nat "King" Cole was a major figure in the development of jazz piano, the stylistic link between early jazz and pop of the sophisticated urban variety that emerged in the '30s, and finally …

One of the most original and influential pianists in jazz, Bill Evans possessed an intensely personal and lyrical approach. The release of his first records under his own name, as well as his appearance on Miles Davis's KIND OF BLUE, pushed Evans rap…

In the minds of most Americans, Glenn Miller's name is synonymous with big-band swing. His band of the late 1930s and early '40s was among the most popular of the time, and their instantly recognizable sound--marked by unusual arrangements for the wi…

Madeleine Peyroux is helping to keep classic jazz vocals alive in the new millennium, and while her voice and delivery owe a supreme debt to the legendary Billie Holiday, Peyroux puts her own hip spin on Lady Day's musical tradition. As much an Ameri…