Discover the life and music of jazz luminary Ron Carter, the most recorded bassist in history. Filmed over six years, Ron Carter: Finding the Right Notes invites viewers to meet the gentleman behind the bass. Best known as the rhythmic anchor in Miles Davis's Second Great Quintet, Carter has since amassed more than 2,500 musical credits over a prolific six-decade career. His unmistakable melody and timbre accompany the likes of Chet Baker, Aretha...

A biography of jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald, who recorded more than 200 albums and performed at Carnegie Hall 26 times.

Relates how the famous jazz trumpeter began his musical career, as a poor boy in New Orleans, by singing songs on street corners and playing a battered cornet in a marching band.

"A biography of African American musician Melba Doretta Liston, a virtuoso musician who played the trombone and composed and arranged music for many of the great jazz musicians of the twentieth century. Includes afterword, discography, and sources"--

"Most of us know Duke Ellington as the king of swinging jazz. But throughout his 50-year career, he also shattered racial barriers and stereotypes, bridged cultural divides, helped audiences feel their shared humanity, and dared people to imagine, if even for just one evening, a world without categories. Along the way he believed it possible and imperative to elevate jazz and American composers on par with their European counterparts. Like a true...

This tribute to Glenn Miller charts his rise from obscurity and poverty to fame and wealth in the early 1940s.

She was ahead of her time, a genius. During an era when Jazz was the nation's popular music, Mary Lou Williams was one of its greatest innovators. As both a pianist and composer, she was a font of daring and creativity who helped shape the sound of 20th century America. And like the dynamic, turbulent nation in which she lived, Williams seemed to redefine herself with every passing decade. From child prodigy to "Boogie-Woogie Queen" to groundbreaking...

Louis Armstrong was the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century and a giant of modern American culture. Offstage he was witty, introspective and unexpectedly complex, a beloved colleague with an explosive temper whose larger-than-life personality was tougher and more sharp-edged than his worshipping fans ever knew. Wall Street Journal arts columnist Terry Teachout has drawn on new sources unavailable to previous biographers, including hundreds...

"A pivotal fixture of the Harlem Renaissance, Duke Ellington was the bandleader of the historic Cotton Club and a master composer -- writing close to 3,000 songs in his lifetime and capturing the spirit of the Black experience in the Unites States. Over a 50-year career, Ellington became one of the biggest names in jazz as we know it"--