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Miles Davis Kind of Blew It With His ‘Greatest Ever’ Jazz Album

Sixty-five years later, a critic argues that “Kind of Blue” is the least challenging of Davis' works.
by Colin Fleming via The Daily Beast on August 17, 2024
Ella Fitzgerald at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, Rhode Island, 1970.

The Genius of Ella Fitzgerald

She remade the American songbook in her image, uprooting the very meaning of musical performance.
by Sam Fentress via The Nation on May 28, 2024
Alice Coltrane

The Visions of Alice Coltrane

In the years after her husband John’s death, the harpist discovered a sound all her own, a jazz rooted in acts of spirit and will.
by Marcus J. Moore via The Nation on March 21, 2024
Miles Davis.

Not Not Jazz

When Miles Davis went electric in the late 1960s, he overhauled his thinking about songs, genres, and what it meant to lead a band.
by Ben Ratliff via New York Review of Books on January 13, 2024
A photograph of Pharaoh Sanders.

Feel-Ins, Know-Ins, Be-Ins

The most hypnotic piece of music released so far in 2023 was recorded forty-seven years ago in a barely adequate studio in Rockland County, New York.
by Adam Shatz via New York Review of Books on September 19, 2023
Albert Ayler (right) and his brother Donald Ayler, Harlem, 1966.

Escaping from Notes to Sounds

The saxophonist Albert Ayler revolutionized the avant-garde jazz scene, drastically altering notions of what noises qualified as music.
by Andrew Katzenstein via New York Review of Books on April 20, 2023
John Coltrane performing

‘It Didn’t Adhere to Any of the Rules’: The Fascinating History of Free Jazz

In the documentary "Fire Music," the hostile reaction that met the unusual genre soon turns into deep appreciation and a lasting influence.
by Jim Farber via The Guardian on September 7, 2021
Album cover for "We Insist!", which features African American men sitting at a lunch counter

The Sounds of Struggle

Sixty years ago, a pathbreaking jazz album fused politics and art in the fight for Black liberation. Black artists are taking similar strides today.
by Michael Beyea Reagan via Boston Review on June 24, 2021
Black-and-white image of John Coltrane writing on a piece of paper, with a saxophone in his lap.

How Malcolm X Inspired John Coltrane to Embrace Islamic Spirituality

Reflections on "A Love Supreme," artistic transformation, and the Black Arts Movement.
by Richard Brent Turner via Literary Hub on May 4, 2021
Andra Day as Billie Holiday in her dressing room

The Trials of Billie Holiday

Two new movies emphasize the singer’s spirit of defiance and political courage.
by Lidija Haas via The New Republic on February 26, 2021
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Why MLK Believed Jazz Was the Perfect Soundtrack for Civil Rights

Jazz, King declared, was the ability to take the “hardest realities of life and put them into music, only to come out with some new hope or sense of triumph.”
by Ashawnta Jackson via JSTOR Daily on October 16, 2019

How Smooth Jazz Took Over the '90s

And why you should give smooth jazz a chance.
by Estelle Caswell via Vox on December 3, 2018
Black and white photo of Ornette Coleman.

Seeing Ornette Coleman

Coleman’s approach to improvisation shook twentieth-century jazz. It was a revolutionary idea that sounded like a folk song.
by Taylor Ho Bynum via The New Yorker on June 12, 2015
Jazz album covers.
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How Jazz Albums Visualized a Changing America

In the 1950s, the covers of most jazz records featured abstract designs. By the late 1960s, album aesthetics better reflected the times and the musicians.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Carissa Kowalski Dougherty via JSTOR Daily on August 22, 2024
James Baldwin

Racism, Jazz, and James Baldwin’s “Sonny Blues”

Baldwin wrote with the knowledge that change would be hard and slow to achieve.
by Tom Jencks via OUPblog on August 2, 2024
Stylized illustration of a jazz trio.
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The Barrier-Breaking Ozark Club of Great Falls, Montana

The Black-owned club became a Great Falls hotspot, welcoming all to a music-filled social venue for almost thirty years.
by Ashawnta Jackson, Ken Robison via JSTOR Daily on July 10, 2024
Ella Fitzgerald performs at Lorton Reformatory in 1959.

In the 1960s, Prison Chaplains Created a Star Studded Music Festival at Lorton Reformatory

Syncopation and swing reigned supreme at the annual Lorton Reformatory Jazz Festival in the 1960s.
by Dominique Mickiewitz via Boundary Stones on March 1, 2024
Leonard Bernstein smoking a cigarette

The Bernstein Enigma

In narrowly focusing on Leonard Bernstein’s tortured personal life, "Maestro" fails to explore his tortured artistic life.
by Philip Clark via New York Review of Books on January 17, 2024
Shirley Horn in a publicity shot, 1960.

How to Take It Slow

Following the rhythm of Shirley Horn.
by Lauren Du Graf via Oxford American on December 5, 2023
George C. Wolfe.

George C. Wolfe Would Not Be Dismissed

A conversation with the longtime director about “Rustin,” growing up in Kentucky, and putting on a show.
by Vinson Cunningham, George C. Wolfe via The New Yorker on November 5, 2023
Collage of Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet, waving, and smoking, and a picture of his home in Queens.

Louis Armstrong Gets the Last Word on Louis Armstrong

For decades, Americans have argued over the icon’s legacy. But his archives show that he had his own plans.
by Ethan Iverson via The Nation on October 30, 2023
Painting by Beauford Delaney featuring white outlines of people in front of a red, yellow, orange, and white patterned background.

In Old Wilmington

How the failed search for a silent film uncovered a lost musician of the Harlem Renaissance.
by John Jeremiah Sullivan via Oxford American on September 5, 2023
At the microphone: Louis Armstrong, surrounded by his orchestra, 1931

De-Satch-uration

Louis Armstrong’s complicated relationship with New Orleans.
by Ricky Riccardi via 64 Parishes on August 31, 2023
Sonny Rollins playing saxophone.

The Monumental Improvisations of Sonny Rollins

Rollins never wavered in his determination to get things right, and often that meant reinventing himself and, along the way, jazz as well.
by Gene Seymour via The Nation on July 24, 2023
Illustration of McCormick at his desk, hunched over a typewriter.

Hellhounds on His Trail

Mack McCormick’s long, tortured quest to find the real Robert Johnson.
by Michael Hall via Texas Monthly on April 4, 2023
Black and white photo of Camp Washington Carver, opened in 1942, with a crowd of Black children standing outside the front with an American flag in the forefront.

The Forgotten History of the US's African American Coal Towns

One of the US's newest national parks has put West Virginia in the spotlight, but there's a deeper history to discover about its African American coal communities.
by Stephen Starr via BBC News on October 24, 2022
A mural of a Black musician wearing a pinstripe suit, hat, and playing guitar.

The Devil, the Delta, and the City

In search of the mythical blues—and their real urban origins.
by Alan Pell Crawford via Modern Age on October 17, 2022
Bar chart of different musical genres on a timeline of when they were popular.

A Timeline of African American Music: 1600 to the Present

An interactive visualization of the remarkable diversity of African American music, with essays on the characteristics of each genre and style.
by Portia K. Maultsby via Carnegie Hall on May 25, 2022
John Bubbles dancing and Buck Washington playing keyboard, performing in Brooklyn, New York, 1930.

Never the Same Step Twice

Where previous generations of dancers arranged their steps into tidy, regular phrases, John Bubbles enjambed over bar lines, multiplying, twisting, tilting, turning.
by Brian Seibert via New York Review of Books on April 21, 2022
Dancers performing the Cakewalk.

Reconsidering Scott Joplin's 'The Entertainer'

The king of ragtime published his hit tune 120 years ago. Pianist Lara Downes believes the piece helped shape the future of American music.
by Lara Downes via NPR on February 7, 2022
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