145 Fun Facts About Jazz

Which guitarist, who lost two fingers' use in a 1928 fire, co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France?

Django Reinhardt rebuilt his left-hand technique around the fingers the caravan fire had spared, and is counted among the very few European jazz musicians of true originality.

Which pop star recorded two albums of jazz standards with Tony Bennett, 'Cheek to Cheek' and 'Love for Sale'?

Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett took 'Cheek to Cheek' to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2014; he was 95 and living with Alzheimer's disease when their Cole Porter tribute 'Love for Sale' followed in 2021.

Which iconic jazz singer was known by the nickname 'Lady Day'?

Billie Holiday borrowed her first name from film star Billie Dove; 'Lady Day' came from her closest musical partner, a saxophonist she in turn crowned 'the Prez'.

Which 1959 Miles Davis album, improvised on scales rather than chord changes, is often called the most celebrated in jazz?

Kind of Blue swapped bebop's dense chord changes for a few scales to improvise on, and saxophonist John Coltrane, who played on it, built much of his 1960s music on the same idea.

Which Harlem club's after-hours jam sessions in the early 1940s are regarded as the birthplace of bebop?

Minton's Playhouse, opened by saxophonist Henry Minton in Harlem's Hotel Cecil, built its house band around drummer Kenny Clarke; the players who dropped in to jam with it worked out the language of bebop.

Which pianist, visually impaired from childhood, is counted among the greatest technical virtuosos jazz has produced?

Art Tatum could slip whole new chord progressions into a bar or two, sometimes a fresh chord on every beat; his reharmonising of pop tunes became standard practice for the jazz players who followed.

Which big band leader went missing in December 1944 when his flight over the English Channel never reached France?

Glenn Miller stunned the music business in 1942 by disbanding America's best-selling band to enlist; two years later his small plane vanished on the way from England to Paris.

Which band did keyboardist Chick Corea launch in the early 1970s with bassist Stanley Clarke?

Return to Forever started out samba-flavoured, with Brazilians Flora Purim singing and Airto Moreira on drums; within about a year it had turned into a loud, high-energy electric band.

Lionel Hampton, hired for Benny Goodman's quartet in 1936, made which mallet instrument a jazz lead voice?

Lionel Hampton was working as a drummer when he recorded a vibraphone solo on 'Memories of You' in 1930, one of the first in jazz; six years later he joined one of the first racially mixed groups to play in public.

What early New Orleans jazz style features collective improvisation and upbeat tempos?

Dixieland, also called traditional or hot jazz, grew out of New Orleans in the 1910s and features collective polyphonic improvisation by a trumpet, clarinet and trombone front line.

Which saxophonist's album 'Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation' pioneered the movement?

Ornette Coleman recorded Free Jazz with two quartets improvising at the same time, one in each stereo channel, in a single continuous take that fills both sides of the LP.

'Summertime', later a jazz standard, was written as an aria for which 1935 opera?

Porgy and Bess opens with 'Summertime' sung as a lullaby to a baby; its composer spent the summer of 1934 on an island off South Carolina, soaking up the local music while he worked on the score.

Which Harlem bandleader became known as the 'Hi-de-ho' man for his 1931 hit 'Minnie the Moocher'?

Cab Calloway's call-and-response hit sold more than a million copies, and almost fifty years later he belted it out again, as energetically as ever, in the film The Blues Brothers.

Which 1959 Dave Brubeck Quartet album, an experiment in odd time signatures, sold more than a million copies?

Time Out grew from a 1958 State Department tour, where Brubeck heard Turkish street musicians playing nine beats to the bar and built the album's opening track on their rhythm.

What jazz-tinged Brazilian style was popularized by Antônio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto?

Bossa nova means 'new trend' in Portuguese: a hushed, slowed-down samba with jazz harmonies that travelled from Rio to the world when 'The Girl from Ipanema' became a hit in 1964.

Benny Goodman, crowned the 'King of Swing', was a virtuoso on which woodwind instrument?

Benny Goodman was handed a clarinet at ten in free music classes at a Chicago synagogue; two years with a classical teacher then gave him the tone and discipline to play concert works as well as swing.

The 'First Lady of Song', born in 1917, was a native of which state?

The 'First Lady of Song' was born in Newport News, Virginia, on 25 April 1917 and raised in Yonkers, New York; she was discovered after winning an Apollo Theater amateur night in November 1934.

Which New York jazz club did Max Gordon open in a basement in 1935?

Village Vanguard began as a triangular basement room for poets and folk singers and went over to jazz only in the late 1950s; no jazz club in New York has stayed open longer.

Which New Orleans cornetist, key to the birth of jazz, left no recordings and spent his last decades in an asylum?

Buddy Bolden is credited with bringing the blues to the cornet in the 1890s and with starting the New Orleans habit of group improvisation; a mental collapse ended his career in 1907, when he was about 30.

Which bebop trumpeter was famous for his ballooning cheeks and a horn with its bell bent upward?

Dizzy Gillespie's beret, horn-rimmed glasses and goatee became the unofficial uniform of bebop, copied by his fans and later by the beatniks.

Which arranger's orchestral scores frame Miles Davis on Miles Ahead (1957) and Sketches of Spain (1960)?

Gil Evans, Canadian-born and self-taught, learned in a 1940s dance band to blend French horns and tuba into the ensemble; he wrapped the same soft colours around Davis's trumpet on these albums.

Which vocalist, called the 'First Lady of Song', was renowned for horn-like scat singing?

Ella Fitzgerald turned a slip into a triumph: on a live Berlin recording she forgot the words to 'Mack the Knife', made up new ones on the spot, and won a Grammy for the performance.

John Coltrane's album 'My Favorite Things' showcased him on which newly adopted instrument?

Soprano sax was an unusual choice, a horn linked with the early days of jazz; Coltrane used it to stretch a Rodgers and Hammerstein show tune into a long modal improvisation, and an edited version became a radio hit.

Which jazz musician was known by the nickname 'Satchmo'?

Louis Armstrong's nickname is a clipped 'Satchel Mouth'; how he came by it is uncertain, but he liked it enough to call his 1954 memoir 'Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans'.

'Take the "A" Train' was the signature tune of which big band leader?

Duke Ellington's famous theme was not his own tune: Billy Strayhorn, his composing and arranging partner for nearly three decades, wrote it, and the band first recorded it in 1941.

Which pianist-composer, known for his sparse, angular playing, wrote the standards "'Round Midnight" and "Straight, No Chaser"?

Thelonious Monk was the house pianist at the early-1940s Harlem jam sessions where bebop took shape, and he went on to become one of the most prolific composers in jazz.

Which alto saxophonist, nicknamed 'Bird', led the development of bebop?

Charlie Parker picked up 'Yardbird' on the road with Jay McShann's band, in most tellings because of his appetite for chicken; shortened to Bird, it later gave the New York club Birdland its name.

Which 1939 protest song about lynching began as a poem by Bronx schoolteacher Abel Meeropol?

Strange Fruit first appeared as the poem 'Bitter Fruit' in a teachers' union magazine in 1937; the singer who made it famous had to record it for a small independent label after her own refused.

The Newport Jazz Festival, launched in 1954, takes its name from a resort city in which U.S. state?

Rhode Island's Newport hosted the festival from 1954, lost it to New York City for most of the 1970s and won it back in 1981; it is now staged at Fort Adams, a harbour fort.

Scott Joplin, composer of 'The Entertainer', was the king of which jazz-precursor genre?

Ragtime made Scott Joplin's name with 'Maple Leaf Rag' in 1899, but 'The Entertainer' became a pop hit only in the 1970s, when the film The Sting revived his music.

Which pianist, known for a spare, economical style, launched his famous big band in Kansas City in 1935?

Count Basie had been the pianist in Bennie Moten's Kansas City band; when Moten died in 1935 he gathered its best players into a nine-piece group that grew into one of the great swing orchestras.

Which Dave Brubeck Quartet hit, written by saxophonist Paul Desmond, is the best-selling jazz single of all time?

Take Five was written to show off drummer Joe Morello's knack for playing five beats to the bar; a slow starter on its release in 1959, it became a jukebox and radio hit two years later.

Which vocalist was nicknamed 'Sassy', 'The Divine One' and the 'Queen of Bebop'?

Sarah Vaughan grew up playing organ and piano at her Newark church, and after winning an Apollo Theater amateur contest in 1942 she was hired by Earl Hines's band as both singer and second pianist.

Which volatile bassist and composer wrote 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' and the memoir 'Beneath the Underdog'?

Charles Mingus set up his own record label and a composers' workshop in the 1950s to escape the music industry's grip, and his temper earned him the nickname 'the Angry Man of Jazz'.

Which entirely self-taught pianist, a best-seller with 'Concert by the Sea', composed the ballad 'Misty'?

Erroll Garner wrote 'Misty' as a wordless piano piece; once lyrics were added it became a pop hit for Johnny Mathis, and ASCAP later ranked it among the top songs of the twentieth century.

Which pianist, a Miles Davis Quintet alumnus, formed the funk-driven band the Headhunters in 1973?

Herbie Hancock said he was tired of playing heavy, spacey music and wanted something lighter; the band's funk album Head Hunters, with the hit 'Chameleon', became the best-seller of his career.

Which band, active from 1970 to 1986, was co-led by keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter?

Weather Report's two leaders had both played on Miles Davis's first electric records; their 1977 tune 'Birdland' crossed over to become a pop hit and later a standard.

Which jazz style did Miles Davis and his sidemen launch from 1969 by adopting rock's electric instruments and rhythms?

Fusion won one of the biggest audiences jazz had enjoyed since the swing era, and most of its leading 1970s bands were founded by musicians who had passed through Davis's groups.

Which jazz label did Alfred Lion found in New York in 1939?

Blue Note began with a single session in January 1939, when Alfred Lion, a recent immigrant from Germany, recorded two boogie-woogie pianists; it grew into one of the elite labels in jazz.

What jazz term names the brief moment when the band stops and a soloist plays alone?

A break usually lasts two or four bars: the rhythm section falls silent, the soloist fills the gap alone, and the band crashes back in; hip-hop DJs later used the same word for the drum passages they looped.

Which John Coltrane album is a four-part suite whose title he chants over the opening bass riff?

A Love Supreme was Coltrane's offering of thanks for his religious faith, recorded in a single session in December 1964; it became one of his best-selling albums and was voted record of the year by Down Beat readers.

Which John Coltrane composition gave its cyclic chord pattern the name 'Coltrane changes'?

Giant Steps races through three keys at a furious pace; even the pianist on the original recording could barely get through his solo, and it has been called the most feared tune in jazz.

Which New Orleans-born trumpeter first won jazz and classical Grammys in the same year?

Wynton Marsalis was given his first trumpet by bandleader Al Hirt and trained in both classical music and jazz; he was 22 when he won in both fields, and he repeated the double a year later.

What term describes the rhythmic device common in jazz where accents fall on normally unaccented beats?

Syncopation works by wrong-footing the listener: the stress lands where the ear does not expect it, and that small jolt is what gives heavily syncopated music its sense of forward drive.

Which mid-1950s jazz style, pioneered by Horace Silver and his bandmates, drew on gospel and rhythm and blues?

Hard bop, also nicknamed 'funky' jazz, took shape in a band Silver co-led in the mid-1950s; his blues- and gospel-soaked tunes such as 'The Preacher' became part of the standard repertoire.

Which bandleader claimed to be from Saturn, led the Arkestra, and pioneered Afrofuturism?

Sun Ra dressed the Arkestra in Egyptian-style robes and space-age helmets and released its music on his own Saturn label, making him one of the first jazz artists to press and sell his own records.

Which jazz pianist was known for his elegant trio work, including the album 'Waltz for Debby'?

Bill Evans taped the album at a New York club in June 1961 with his bassist Scott LaFaro; ten days later LaFaro was killed in a car crash, and Evans stayed away from the stage for months.

In jazz, a bassist's 'walking' line typically consists of a steady stream of which note value?

Quarter notes, four to the bar, became the norm in the swing era of the 1930s: bassists in earlier jazz mostly played two beats to the bar, and walking on all four gave the music a more flowing momentum.

Which drummer led the Jazz Messengers from the mid-1950s until his death in 1990?

Art Blakey ran the Jazz Messengers as a finishing school, hiring gifted young players and replacing them as they matured; Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan and Freddie Hubbard were among its graduates.

Which jazz guitarist was famed for plucking with his thumb and doubling melodies an octave apart?

Wes Montgomery used the soft part of his thumb instead of a pick, which gave his lines their gentle attack; he liked to build a solo from single notes to octaves to full chords.

Which jazz style grew out of Miles Davis's late-1940s nonet and flourished among California players in the 1950s?

Cool jazz got its label from journalists who heard an understated, subdued feeling in the music; the nonet's recordings were later issued under the title Birth of the Cool.

Benny Goodman's 1938 concert, often called jazz's 'coming out' party, was held in which New York home of classical music?

Carnegie Hall sold out weeks in advance; the concert recording sat unissued for twelve years, then became one of the first jazz albums to sell more than a million copies.

Which saxophonist was nicknamed 'Prez' or 'Pres', short for 'President'?

Lester Young was dubbed president of the tenor saxophonists by a singer he often recorded with, and he repaid her with the nickname 'Lady Day'; his light, relaxed tone became the model for a generation of modern players.

Scott Joplin, composer of 'Maple Leaf Rag', was primarily a performer on which instrument?

Piano was his instrument; Joplin moved to Sedalia, Missouri, in 1894 and worked as a piano teacher, and 'Maple Leaf Rag' brought fame and a steady income after 1899.

Which early New Orleans pianist and composer famously claimed to have invented jazz in 1902?

Jelly Roll Morton's boast drew scorn, but he was a genuine innovator: he worked out arrangements for his Red Hot Peppers records of the 1920s, showing that jazz could be planned on paper and still sound free.

Whose 1924 'Rhapsody in Blue' married a jazz band to classical concert form?

George Gershwin, legend has it, had forgotten the commission until his brother read about the coming concert in a newspaper; with about five weeks left, he dashed the piece off in time.

Which pianist and arranger completed the twelve-part 'Zodiac Suite' in 1945, dedicating pieces to fellow musicians by star sign?

Mary Lou Williams introduced the suite on her own New York radio show before it was finished: with only the first few signs written down, she improvised the rest live on air.

In jazz, what does 'comping' refer to?

Backing a soloist with chords and rhythms is called comping, probably short for accompanying; instead of strumming steadily, the pianist or guitarist drops in irregularly spaced chords that answer and prod the soloist.

Which saxophonist, nicknamed 'The Sound' for his warm tone, had a 1964 hit with 'The Girl from Ipanema'?

Stan Getz first drew notice as one of the 'Four Brothers' saxophonists in Woody Herman's band; the vocal on his 1964 hit was the recording debut of Astrud Gilberto, who had come along as her husband's interpreter.

Which drummer's Savoy Ballroom band scored a hit with 'A-Tisket, A-Tasket', sung by the vocalist he had hired as a teenager?

Chick Webb, left with a curved spine by a childhood illness, drove one of the swing era's finest bands from behind the drums; it regularly beat rival orchestras in the Savoy's battles of the bands.

Gerry Mulligan made which big, low-pitched saxophone a nimble lead voice in his 1950s quartet with Chet Baker?

Baritone sax sounded light and airy in Mulligan's hands; in 1952 he and trumpeter Chet Baker formed a quartet with no pianist at all, the two horns weaving their lines over just bass and drums.

Which jazz singer and civil rights figure famously performed 'Mississippi Goddam'?

Nina Simone wrote the song in under an hour in 1963, in fury at the murder of Medgar Evers and the church bombing in Birmingham that killed four girls; several Southern states banned it.

In a small jazz group, which players usually make up the rhythm section?

A rhythm section is drums, bass and a chordal instrument such as piano or guitar; many 1920s bands used a tuba and a banjo instead, and swapping them for string bass and guitar gave swing its lighter beat.

Which jazz bassist and singer won the 2011 Grammy Award for Best New Artist?

Esperanza Spalding's win was a shock: the nominees included teen idol Justin Bieber, and she became the first jazz artist ever to take the award.

Which Los Angeles saxophonist released the sprawling triple album 'The Epic' in 2015?

Kamasi Washington cut the music in a month-long 2011 session with friends who had pooled their money to rent a studio; a 32-piece orchestra and a 20-voice choir were added before it came out on the Brainfeeder label.

Which stride pianist and comic entertainer wrote 'Ain't Misbehavin'' and 'Honeysuckle Rose'?

Fats Waller was a preacher's son whose father disapproved of a life in music, yet at 15 he was already a professional, hired as the organist at a Harlem theatre.

Which Harlem nightclub, run by gangster Owney Madden, featured Black entertainers but admitted only whites?

The Cotton Club began in 1920 as the Club Deluxe, opened by heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson; Madden took it over within three years and gave it its new name.

Which saxophonist took a famous sabbatical from performing in 1959 to practise alone on New York's Williamsburg Bridge?

Sonny Rollins stopped performing at the height of his fame and often practised deep into the night above the East River; he returned in 1961 and called his comeback album The Bridge.

Trumpeter Chet Baker died in 1988 after a fall from a hotel window in which city?

Amsterdam ended a remarkable comeback: heroin had wrecked his career in the 1960s, but he fought his way back in the 1970s, and his last decade was the busiest of his recording life.

Which 1975 Keith Jarrett solo album was improvised on a substandard baby grand supplied by mistake?

The Köln Concert nearly didn't happen: exhausted and in pain, Jarrett threatened to cancel until the teenage promoter talked him round. It became the best-selling solo piano album in history.

Which show tune, sung by a 62-year-old trumpeter, ended the Beatles' 14-week Hot 100 reign in 1964?

Hello, Dolly! became the biggest hit of the singer's long career, and five years later he was brought in to perform it with Barbra Streisand in the film version, his last screen role.

The Montreux Jazz Festival, first held in 1967 at a casino on Lake Geneva, takes place in which country?

Switzerland's Montreux lost that casino in December 1971, when fire broke out during a Frank Zappa concert; Deep Purple, in town to record, turned the scene into 'Smoke on the Water'.

Which group cut what is regarded as the first jazz record, 'Livery Stable Blues', in 1917?

Original Dixieland Jass Band, white musicians from New Orleans, recorded it in New York for Victor; sold as a novelty, the disc became a hit and set off a nationwide demand for jazz bands.

Which Iowa-born cornetist, a 1920s jazz star dead at 28, inspired the novel 'Young Man with a Horn'?

Bix Beiderbecke's career was wrecked by alcoholism, and his death in 1931 made him one of jazz's original romantic legends; the novel became a 1950 film starring Kirk Douglas.

Coleman Hawkins's landmark October 1939 tenor recording was of which standard?

Body and Soul barely states the tune: after a few bars Hawkins improvises for two choruses. The record still became a hit, and one of the most imitated solos in jazz.

Max Roach's 1960 protest album 'We Insist!' featured vocals by which singer, later his wife?

Abbey Lincoln had sung in the Hollywood comedy The Girl Can't Help It a few years earlier; this album began her turn to politically engaged music, and she and Roach were married from 1962 to 1970.

Which bassist's 2,221 recording sessions earned a 2015 Guinness World Record as jazz's most-recorded?

Ron Carter started on the cello at ten and switched to bass in high school; by the 1970s he was the studio bassist everyone wanted, heard on film soundtracks and even hip-hop records.

Which fretless electric bass virtuoso of the 1970s liked to introduce himself as the greatest bass player in the world?

Jaco Pastorius made the boast sound reasonable: he coated his fretless fingerboard in epoxy for a bright, singing tone and pushed the bass out front on Joni Mitchell's 'Hejira'. He died in 1987, aged 35.

Which United Nations agency declared April 30 International Jazz Day, at the urging of a jazz pianist among its goodwill ambassadors?

UNESCO proclaimed the day in November 2011; April 30 was chosen so that it would crown Jazz Appreciation Month, the Smithsonian's April-long celebration of the music.

Which pianist scored 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' and the early Peanuts TV specials?

Vince Guaraldi got the job after producer Lee Mendelson heard his hit 'Cast Your Fate to the Wind' on the radio; soon afterwards he phoned Mendelson to play him a new tune, the future 'Linus and Lucy'.

Which Lee Morgan tune, said to have been dashed off as album filler, became a surprise crossover hit in 1964?

The Sidewinder turned into the biggest hit of Morgan's career; Chrysler ran it in a television ad during the World Series until he threatened to sue, and his label pressed its other artists for tunes like it.

Which jazz musician earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for playing a troubled saxophonist in the 1986 film 'Round Midnight'?

Dexter Gordon knew the part from the inside: like his character, an American jazzman adrift in Paris, he had spent fourteen years living and playing in Europe before coming home in 1976.

Which pianist's trio had a 1965 soul-jazz crossover hit with 'The In Crowd'?

Ramsey Lewis's trio taped the tune live at a Washington club known for hard-nosed bebop, half expecting a frosty reception; the crowd joined in instead, and the single reached the pop top five.

Which musician nicknamed 'Bags' co-founded the Modern Jazz Quartet with pianist John Lewis?

Milt Jackson and his partners first played together as the rhythm section of a 1940s bebop big band and made their first records in 1951 as the Milt Jackson Quartet; he quit in 1974, and they re-formed in 1981.

The word 'jazz' is first recorded around 1912 as West Coast slang in newspaper writing about which sport?

Baseball gave the word its earliest known print uses: in 1912 a pitcher told a reporter his new curve was a 'jazz ball' because it wobbled. It meant pep or energy, and attached itself to music a few years later.

Which Cuban percussionist co-wrote the 1947 Afro-Cuban jazz landmark 'Manteca'?

Chano Pozo brought the idea to his bandleader on a 1947 tour and supplied its layered Cuban rhythm patterns; the trumpeter added a jazz bridge, and the tune quickly became a standard.

Preservation Hall, a traditional jazz venue opened in 1961, sits in which part of New Orleans?

French Quarter art dealer Larry Borenstein invited veteran jazzmen to play for tips in his gallery; the music outdrew the art, and honeymooners Allan and Sandra Jaffe stayed on to run the hall.

Which Miles Davis double album, recorded in 1969, embraced rock's electric sound and divided jazz fans?

Bitches Brew was pieced together in the editing room from three days of loose studio jams; it won Davis a Grammy and a crowd of new listeners.

Which pioneering electric guitarist joined Benny Goodman's sextet in 1939 and died in 1942, aged just 25?

Charlie Christian, in the best-known telling, was slipped onstage by talent scout John Hammond after Goodman had brushed off his audition; the bandleader called 'Rose Room' to trip him up, and the solo won him the job.

Which organist is widely credited with popularising the Hammond B-3 in jazz from the mid-1950s?

Jimmy Smith was a pianist until he heard Wild Bill Davis play the organ; he bought a Hammond, shut himself away in a warehouse for about a year to master it, and emerged playing fast, horn-like lines.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk was famous for doing what in performance?

Playing three horns at once let Kirk harmonise with himself like a one-man reed section; blind from infancy, he also led whistle-blowing protests in TV studios that won jazz a 1971 slot on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Belgian musician Toots Thielemans was a jazz virtuoso on which unlikely instrument?

Harmonica was something he taught himself as a teenager in Brussels; he made it a jazz solo voice, and millions of children heard it for decades on the closing theme of Sesame Street.

Artie Shaw's 1938 recording of which Cole Porter song turned his band into a sensation?

Begin the Beguine made Shaw one of the biggest names in swing, but he came to resent the fame: he walked out on his band at its peak in 1939 and gave up playing for good in 1954.

Jon Batiste, whose 'We Are' won Album of the Year, led the house band for which TV host?

Stephen Colbert first booked Batiste and his band Stay Human for The Colbert Report in 2014 and hired them for The Late Show a year later; the group had cut its debut busker-style on New York subway trains.

Whose 27-chorus tenor sax solo at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival is credited with reviving his bandleader's career?

Paul Gonsalves kept blowing through 'Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue' until the normally sedate crowd was up and dancing; soon afterwards his bandleader was on the cover of Time.

On what discarded hospital material did Soviet bootleggers cut banned jazz records in the 1950s?

X-ray film fished from hospital bins was cut into discs, with the centre hole burned through by a cigarette; the skeletons visible on them earned the nickname 'bone music'.

Which 1941 big-band hit about a train journey earned the first gold record ever awarded?

Chattanooga Choo Choo was introduced in the movie Sun Valley Serenade and had sold about 1.2 million copies when RCA Victor handed over the gold disc in February 1942.

At which New Orleans site could enslaved Africans gather, drum and dance on Sundays from 1817?

Congo Square was the only spot an 1817 city ordinance allowed such gatherings, and one visitor counted 500 to 600 dancers; townsfolk came on Sunday afternoons to watch.

In which German city did the Swing Youth, jazz fans who mocked the Hitler Youth, form in 1939?

Hamburg's Swing Youth picked a name that parodied the Hitler Youth, and though largely apolitical they were targeted and in some cases repressed by the Nazi government.

Kid Ory made his name in New Orleans jazz with the 'tailgate' style of playing which instrument?

Trombone players sat at the back of the band wagon, where a slide had room to move, which is how the tailgate style got its name; Ory's parts ran underneath the trumpets.

Which arm of the U.S. government began sending jazz stars abroad in 1956 as Cold War 'ambassadors'?

The State Department wanted to repair America's image amid Soviet criticism of its racial inequality, and its first sponsored tour, in March 1956, lasted ten weeks.

In which city did King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band hold court at the Lincoln Gardens from 1922?

Chicago had drawn Oliver north from New Orleans in 1918, and in 1922 he summoned his protégé Louis Armstrong to join the band there on second cornet.

Which 1948 Columbia Records format freed jazz soloists from the few minutes a 78 rpm side held?

The vinyl LP was built to hold at least 20 minutes a side where a 12-inch 78 held under five; in December 1950 Duke Ellington used it to record uncut concert arrangements of up to 15 minutes.

Which swing dance was born in Harlem in 1928 and thrived to big-band jazz at the Savoy Ballroom?

Lindy Hop grew out of a 1928 Harlem dance marathon, where George Snowden and Mattie Purnell reinvented the breakaway step by accident.

Which honour, long reserved for classical composers, did a jazz work win for the first time in 1997?

A Pulitzer Prize for Music went to Blood on the Fields, a two-and-a-half-hour oratorio that follows two enslaved people, Jesse and Leona, on their journey to freedom.

What name do New Orleans brass-band parades give the dancing crowd that follows behind the musicians?

The second line dances behind the 'main line' of band and club members, twirling parasols and handkerchiefs, in a custom that blends West African ring dances with European military bands.

Which New Orleans red-light district, a workplace for early jazz players, was closed in 1917?

Storyville took its nickname from alderman Sidney Story, who drafted the law confining vice to the district, much to his chagrin; the mayor ordered it shut by midnight on November 12, 1917.

Which bandleader, billed in the 1920s as the 'King of Jazz', gave Rhapsody in Blue its premiere?

Paul Whiteman commissioned the piece for a concert he billed as An Experiment in Modern Music, leaving its composer only five weeks to write it before a packed Aeolian Hall.

Which part of Midtown Manhattan, lined with jazz clubs from the 1930s, was nicknamed after swing?

52nd Street took over the nickname 'Swing Street' from Harlem's 133rd Street once Prohibition was repealed in 1933, cramming its clubs into the blocks between Fifth and Seventh Avenues.

In which Canadian city did five bebop greats play Massey Hall in 1953, their only recording together?

Toronto mostly stayed away: the concert clashed with the Rocky Marciano–Jersey Joe Walcott title fight, and the audience was so small the organisers couldn't pay the musicians' fees.

Which magazine commissioned A Great Day in Harlem, Art Kane's 1958 photograph of 57 jazz musicians?

Esquire's art director Robert Benton had the idea, and Kane, a freelancer, won his first Art Directors Club gold medal after it ran as the centrefold of the January 1959 issue.

Which talent scout staged 1938's From Spirituals to Swing concert and later signed Bob Dylan?

John Hammond kept Dylan on the label even as executives mocked the signing as 'Hammond's folly', and he had repeated From Spirituals to Swing with a sequel concert in 1939.

Which concert series did Norman Granz launch in Los Angeles in 1944, refusing segregated audiences?

Jazz at the Philharmonic was named for the Philharmonic Auditorium, where the first concert was held on July 2, 1944, and Granz cancelled bookings rather than let promoters divide audiences by race.

Which bandleader, at New York's Roseland Ballroom from 1924, bridged early jazz and big-band swing?

Fletcher Henderson arrived in New York in 1920 with a chemistry degree and worked as a laboratory assistant before deciding that music would pay better.

Which bandleader took the 369th Infantry 'Harlem Hellfighters' band on a 1918 tour of wartime France?

James Reese Europe came home in 1919, only to die that May after one of his own drummers stabbed him with a penknife during a Boston concert.

Which trumpeter toured with Lionel Hampton's band at 20 and later produced Michael Jackson's Thriller?

Quincy Jones left Hampton in 1954 and settled in New York, writing arrangements 'for anyone who would pay'; three decades on, Thriller became the highest-selling album of all time.

Which jazz trio leader turned crooner hosted his own NBC television variety series from 1956 to 1957?

Nat King Cole fronted the NBC variety series from 1956 to 1957 with only a regional beer sponsor; no national advertiser was ever found to back it.

Which New Orleans bandleader wrote Sing, Sing, Sing in 1936 and voiced King Louie in Disney's The Jungle Book?

Louis Prima first recorded the tune with his New Orleans Gang, and three decades later his turn as the raucous orangutan led to two Jungle Book albums with Phil Harris.

Which jazz singer from Nanaimo, British Columbia, married Elvis Costello at Elton John's estate in 2003?

Diana Krall began composing her own songs after the wedding, working with Costello on the album The Girl in the Other Room.

Which Harlem-born 'King of the Timbales' wrote Oye Como Va, later a 1970 rock hit for Santana?

Tito Puente most likely borrowed the tune's repeating chord riff from Cachao's 1957 mambo Chanchullo, which he had recorded himself in 1959.

Which big-band drummer was headlining Broadway at the age of four, billed as 'Baby Traps the Drum Wonder'?

Buddy Rich joined his parents' vaudeville act at 18 months and by 15 was earning $1,000 a week, second among 1930s child entertainers only to actor Jackie Coogan.

Which alto saxophonist wrote Take Five and willed all its royalties to the Red Cross?

Paul Desmond wrote the biggest hit the Dave Brubeck Quartet ever had, then gave it away: his will specified that all proceeds from the tune should go to the Red Cross.

Which saxophonist, once a Florida school band director, had a 1966 crossover hit with Mercy, Mercy, Mercy?

Cannonball Adderley owed his nickname to classmates who turned 'cannibal' into a joke about his appetite; the hit itself was written by his keyboardist, Joe Zawinul.

Which French violinist co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France in 1934 and performed into his eighties?

Stéphane Grappelli became a British TV favourite in 1971, when chat-show host Michael Parkinson paired him with classical virtuoso Yehudi Menuhin; the duo went on to make three albums.

Which jazz composer's Song for My Father lent its opening riff to Steely Dan's Rikki Don't Lose That Number?

Horace Silver wrote the tune after a trip to Brazil, and said its melody recalled the Cape Verdean folk music he had learned from his father.

Which standard, first titled In Other Words in 1954, was played on a cassette aboard two Apollo missions?

Fly Me to the Moon went up on a Sony portable cassette player, first on Apollo 10 and then on Apollo 11 before the first landing; Frank Sinatra's 1964 version became tied to the programme.

Which standard from Kurt Weill's 1928 German stage work The Threepenny Opera became a number one for Bobby Darin?

Mack the Knife opens the drama as a street singer's tale of the deadly Macheath, a character borrowed from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera; Darin's 1959 single won him two Grammys.

Which Disney film introduced Someday My Prince Will Come, later the title track of a 1961 Miles Davis album?

Snow White gave jazz an unlikely standard: the tune's atypical chord structure appealed to improvisers, and one early performance was by the Ghetto Swingers in Theresienstadt in 1943.

Which Rodgers and Hart ballad from the 1937 musical Babes in Arms became trumpeter Chet Baker's signature song?

My Funny Valentine was introduced on stage by teenage star Mitzi Green, and the 1953 Gerry Mulligan quartet recording featuring Baker has since entered the National Recording Registry.

Which Antônio Carlos Jobim song, with a debut vocal by Astrud Gilberto, won the 1965 Grammy for Record of the Year?

The Girl from Ipanema was a real 17-year-old, Helô Pinheiro, who strolled past the Veloso bar-café in the Rio neighbourhood every day.

Which 1925 standard did the Harlem Globetrotters adopt as their theme, in a 1949 recording by Brother Bones?

Sweet Georgia Brown is said to honour a real child, the daughter of a Georgia legislator; the story goes that at her birth in 1911 the state assembly declared she should be named after the state.

Which jazz standard began as a French song by Joseph Kosma, with words by the poet Jacques Prévert?

Autumn Leaves grew out of ballet music Kosma wrote in Paris at the end of the Second World War, and Johnny Mercer added the English words in 1950.

Which 1936 standard, co-written by Juan Tizol, is the drum showpiece in the finale of the film Whiplash?

Caravan was first recorded in Hollywood in 1936 as an instrumental by Barney Bigard and His Jazzopators; Irving Mills later wrote lyrics, but they are rarely sung.

Which Hoagy Carmichael melody of 1927, given words by Mitchell Parish, has been recorded more than 1,500 times?

Stardust began as a tune Carmichael whistled on leaving a university hangout in 1927; the words came later, when his publisher assigned Parish to write them.

Which composer wrote most of the worldly standard Lush Life as a teenager in the 1930s?

Billy Strayhorn wrote it between 1933 and 1936 but kept it from the public until 1948; his biographer calls it a masterpiece of fatalistic sophistication that belies its author's youth.

What do soloists in modal jazz build their improvisations on, in place of bebop's fast-changing chord sequences?

A few scales, or modes, replace the rapid chord changes, so a soloist can dwell on one colour for many bars; chords are kept, but they are drawn from the prevailing mode.

The Lydian and Phrygian modes heard in modal jazz borrow their names from the music theory of which ancient land?

Greece's theorists named their modes after places they knew, including the Anatolian kingdoms of Lydia and Phrygia; the modern versions keep the labels, though the note patterns no longer match.

Which Southern rock guitarist said his soloing came from Miles Davis and John Coltrane, 'particularly Kind of Blue'?

Duane Allman named the album as the source of his long solos on Allman Brothers Band tunes such as In Memory of Elizabeth Reed.

Which mode, a keyboard's natural notes from D to D, underpins the opening track of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue?

Dorian supplies the whole tune: 16 bars on D, eight a half step up on E-flat, then eight more back on D.

Which pianist's chords stacked in fourths powered John Coltrane's quartet through its modal years, 1960 to 1965?

McCoy Tyner had an understanding with Coltrane, years before, that he would get the job if the saxophonist ever formed his own group; he was left-handed and kept a low rumble going in that hand.

Which track in a lilting 6/8 metre opens side two of the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue?

All Blues is a twelve-bar blues, taped on April 22, 1959, at the second of the album's two sessions; the three tracks of side one had been recorded seven weeks earlier.

Which 1965 modal jazz standard was used in a Yardley commercial and first labelled 'TV Jingle' on the master tape?

Maiden Voyage got its name from a friend of the composer's sister, who came up with a replacement for the working title before the album of the same name appeared.

Which bassist on Kind of Blue, honoured in a John Coltrane blues title, died of tuberculosis at only 33?

Paul Chambers had been in the Davis group since it formed in 1955, and the Coltrane blues Mr. P.C. takes its title from his initials.

Which 1958 Miles Davis tune, the title track of an album, is counted as his first modal composition?

Milestones was a trial run: its modal experiment led directly to the writing of the opening track of Kind of Blue the following year.

Which composer's 1953 book, the Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, set out the theory behind modal jazz?

George Russell argued that all music rests on the tonal gravity of the Lydian mode, and his experiments spurred other musicians to take up a modal approach in the late 1950s.