Jazz Series Episodes

Return to Archives

Episode 1: Gumbo (beginning to 1917). Jazz is born in New Orleans and leads to the launching of the Jazz Age

Episode 2: The Gift (1917-1924). Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and the Roaring Twenties

Episode 3: Our Language (1924-28). Great jazz artists of the period.

Episode 4: The True Welcome (1929-1935). Jazz grows in spite of the Great Depression, eventually giving birth to the Swing Era.

Episode 5: Swing: Pure Pleasure (1935-1937). Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, and other great swing artists.

Episode 6: Swing: The Velocity of Celebration (1937-1939) Count Basie reignites the spirit of Swing, and Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Ella Fitzgerald create new sounds in jazz.

Episode 7: Dedicated to Chaos (1940-1947) Jazz during World War II years, and the birth of bebop

Episode 8: Risk (1945-1956). Bebop legends like Dizzy, Monk, and Bird add their distinctive voices to postwar jazz and Brubeck heads the move toward Cool Jazz.

Episode 9: The Adventure (1956-1961). Jazz in transition--Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey and other virtuosos. Is it still jazz?

Episode 10: A Masterpiece by Midnight (1961-The Present). Jazz divides into ³schools² and searches for relevance as avant garde and fusion expand the boundaries of the music.

Return to Archives