Duke Ellington
An elegant pianist who built the greatest orchestra jazz has ever known and, over fifty years, became the most important composer America has produced.
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Billie Holiday
A singer with a small, unschooled voice who became the most influential jazz vocalist who ever lived, turning every song into a piece of her own life.
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Thelonious Monk
The singular pianist-composer who turned wrong notes and long silences into instantly recognizable music, and jazz's most-played composer after Ellington.
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Charles Mingus
A virtuoso bassist with a volcanic temper who became one of jazz's greatest composers, fusing gospel, blues, and pure fury into overwhelming music.
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Nina Simone
A classically trained pianist denied the concert hall who became one of the century's great voices, singing jazz, soul, and civil-rights fire like no one else.
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John Coltrane
The most influential and searching saxophonist in jazz, from the hard-bop perfection of Blue Train to the spiritual peak of A Love Supreme. Start with A Love Supreme.
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Miles Davis
The restless trumpeter who tore his own music down and rebuilt it new, reinventing jazz itself four or five times in a single career.
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Django Reinhardt
The Belgian-Romani guitarist who rebuilt his technique around two fingers after a fire and invented gypsy jazz. With violinist Stephane Grappelli and the Quintette du Hot Club de France, he gave Europe its first original jazz voice.
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