Jazz’s five-decade dominance of American music featured Black innovation at every turn

Evidence

Since it had radiated out from New Orleans around the turn of the century, jazz had been feverishly clamored for, casting a spell that lasted for at least five decades: James “Bubber” Miley making his trumpet swoon in Ellington’s absurdly sensual “The Mooche” in 1928; Ethel Waters, once among the highest-paid women in entertainment, smiling through the melancholy of “Am I Blue” in 1929; Fats Waller’s ooze-and-attack stride piano, eight years later, on “The Joint Is Jumpin’ ”; Ella Fitzgerald finding herself alongside the drummer and bandleader Chick Webb, perfecting a luscious emotional language whose street name was “scat”; Webb’s band battling Count Basie’s in a live contest at the Savoy Ballroom in 1938, transforming the music’s orchestral sound into an Olympics of kinetic innovation. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1080

Categorization

• SHARE: The condensed jazz timeline with specific dates and venues — worth sending to a music-nerd friend who loves swing-era esoterica.