And All That Jazz

The other week, a country and blues guitarist I jam with (I am a drummer) told me that for a long time he’s been wanting to get into Jazz, to expand his playing. Quite openly, he asked me, “So, who do I need to know?” It’s a great question, but a frustrating one for fans of what many critics contend is one of the only really “American” musical forms of what is the backbone of most forms of popular music in the US, of what one introductory text calls “the most democratic music ever devised,”[i] and yet which seems practically ignored by so many segments of American society. Most people randomly asked probably could not name more than two or three significant Jazz artists in history, let alone great living artists.