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Episode One- Gumbo: Making Of JAZZ - A Special Featurette Episode Two- The Gift: Performance - Louis Armstrong "I Cover The Waterfront" (1933) Episode Three- Our Language Episode Four- The True Welcome Episode Five- Swing-Pure Pleasure Episode Six- Swing-The Velocity Of Celebration Episode Seven- Dedicated To Chaos: Complete Performance - Duke Ellington "C-Jam Blues" (1942) Episode Eight- Risk Episode Nine- The Adventure Performance - Miles Davis "New Rhumba" (1959) Episode Ten- A Masterpiece By Midnight Jazz: A History of America's Music (Paperback) Here are the stories of the extraordinary men and women who made the music: Louis Armstrong, the fatherless waif whose unrivaled genius helped turn jazz into a soloist's art and influenced every singer, every instrumentalist who came after him; Duke Ellington, the pampered son of middle-class parents who turned a whole orchestra into his personal instrument, wrote nearly two thousand pieces for it, and captured more of American life than any other composer. Bix Beiderbecke, the doomed cornet prodigy who showed white musicians that they too could make an important contribution to the music; Benny Goodman, the immigrants' son who learned the clarinet to help feed his family, but who grew up to teach a whole country how to dance; Billie Holiday, whose distinctive style routinely transformed mediocre music into great art; Charlie Parker, who helped lead a musical revolution, only to destroy himself at thirty-four; and Miles Davis, whose search for fresh ways to sound made him the most influential jazz musician of his generation, and then led him to abandon jazz altogether. Buddy Bolden, Jelly Roll Morton, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Count Basie, Dave Brubeck, Artie Shaw, and Ella Fitzgerald are all here; so are Sidney Bechet, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and a host of others.
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