Jazz is one of the most important artistic and aesthetic phenomena of the 20th century. Its influence, both on the world of classical music and on avant-garde movements and their diverse manifestations, makes it a subject worthy of study. The book you hold in your hands has become, in its own right, one of the most influential and ambitious classic texts ever published on jazz. Gunther Schuller covers everything from the genre's origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to its first major flowering in the 1930s. He explores the work of the great soloists of the 1920s—Jelly Roll Morton, Bix Beiderbecke, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong, among others—the most prominent big bands and the most notable arrangers—especially Duke Ellington—and places the music in the context of other musical traditions of the time, offering brilliant analyses of many of the great recordings. An essential study of the early decades of jazz and an illuminating guide that will dazzle specialists and aficionados alike.