Louis Armstrong has been called the greatest musician of the century. While some may disagree, one thing is certain: after Louis, no one played or sang popular music the same way. Miles Davis once said that you can't play anything on the trumpet that Louis hadn't played-- even modern music. And while Armstrong may not have been gifted with a classically beautiful singing voice, the way he made a melody his own has inspired popular singers ever since; Frank Sinatra said that Louis Armstrong turned popular song into art.

For much of his life, Louis Armstrong was the embodiment of jazz for millions of people, both a great creative artist and a beloved popular entertainer. Whether playing trumpet or singing, adding his own definitive touch to a ballad or spearheading a hot New Orleans-style band, Armstrong was a uniquely compelling figure.

 Pianist and bandleader William "Count" Basie inherited leadership of the Bennie Moten band in Kansas City when Moten died in 1935 and turned it into the great streamlined zephyr of the swing era. It was a big band that played with the flexibility and drive of a small group. It also included a core of some of the most distinctive soloists in jazz history. But above all, the first Basie band brought a new modernity and mobility to jazz rhythm that led straight to bebop. In the 1950s he re-formed along new lines shaped by a group of arrangers that gave a permanence to what was once ephemeral.

 Many consider the clarinetist/soprano saxophonist the first great jazz improviser, and he was definitely a major influence on the development of swing. Bechet, though, never created a strong following stateside due to the restless musician's refusal to build a fan base through a lengthy association with a dance band.
Bechet was a defining figure in creating the vocabulary for his instruments, giving lessons to figures as diverse as Jimmie Noone and Johnny Hodges. Not until John Coltrane took up the soprano did Bechet have any equals on the instrument. His ability to construct highly melodic solos on very little chordal backing made him a hero among outside players.

 Art Blakey is recalled as one of the finest musicians and bandleaders in the history of jazz. Along with Max Roach, he established the drums as a front-line instrument, wielding his sticks with astonishing skill to propel the hard-bop of his acclaimed Jazz Messengers combo for 36 years. Blakey on drums was no less than a polyrhythmic force of nature, always alert to interactions with piano and the horns, and always filling his music with jubilation. His acclaimed press rolls were seemingly preternatural and his touch on cymbals impeccable. Blakey also excelled as a bandleader/instructor who nurtured three generations of young talent, allowing them to find their own creative wings before embarking on solo careers.

 Pianist, composer and bandleader, Dave Brubeck is more than a jazz artist. He has written and recorded several large-scale works, including at least two ballets, a musical, an oratorio, four cantatas, a mass and works for jazz group and orchestra. Still, Brubeck possesses one of the most distinctive piano styles in jazz, combining an acute and delicate lyrical sense with the power of block chords and a dramatic musical force that comes from years of playing in any number of time signatures. Add to this his clear connection to the history of jazz piano, including stride and honky tonk, and you find an iconoclast both popular and controversial.

 Perpetual jazz revolutionary Ornette Coleman burst onto the jazz scene in the late '50s, throwing a monkey wrench into the chord-change jazz improvisers with his "harmolodic" free improv theories and collective ensemble practices.

 A jazz titan, saxophonist John Coltrane is a seminal figure of modern jazz. Along with Miles Davis, he dominated the musical landscape of the early to mid-'60s, blowing his tenor and soprano saxophones with grace, spiritual beauty and intensity.

 Trumpeter Miles Davis made a career out of shifting gears and rousing his fans to not get too comfortable in their listening habits. Heeding the artist's call to stay fresh creatively, Davis reinvented himself several times over the course of his career. First, he broke out of Charlie Parker's sphere in 1949 to usher in the "cool jazz" movement with Gil Evans, and during his twilight years he noddled in the rap-jazz zone. In between those extremes, Davis helmed two legendary quintets, plugged in with the first splashes of fusion and even pioneered in the early '70s a sampled/collage sound that set the course for '90s-styled hip-hop grooves.

 Composer and bandleader Duke Ellington led one of the most remarkable and self-defined orchestras in jazz for 50 years. It not only held to a consistent musical vision that sprang directly from his own work as a composer, but it sustained for decades with a loyal core of soloists who made their own marks on jazz history.
Within the context of running a band, Ellington also became the only figure from the jazz world ever to make an imprint on the American popular song book comparable in breadth and depth to that achieved by Gershwin, Rodgers, Berlin, Arlen and others. Songs such as "Mood Indigo," "Solitude," "In A Sentimental Mood," "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" and many others were widely performed and became American pop standards widely known today.

 Few artists stand as the very definition of the art they practice, but Ella Fitzgerald is one of them. No jazz singer can avoid being influenced by her, or at least taking into account the monument of her work.
Fitzgerald didn't have the darkness of Billie Holiday, the bravura of Sarah Vaughan or the acidity of Carmen McRae, but what she did have was a suniness, a childlike joy and a classic command of her craft that audiences picked up on right away. Originally influenced by Connie Boswell, she also swung like mad, and was one of the few singers revered by jazz instrumentalists. Her scat singing, which soared through a three-and-a-half octave range, was flexible, creative and a sure crowd-pleaser.

 Trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie emerged in the middle 1940s as essentially the last in a series of symbolic progressions of virtuosity in jazz that culminated in the consolidation of bebop.
If Charlie Parker was the soul of bebop, Gillespie was its heart and public face. If Armstrong had expanded the reach of instrumental technique for his generation making more things possible -- and if Roy Eldridge and Charlie Shavers extended the reach of virtuosity still farther, embracing still more possibilities -- then Gillespie seemed to reach the final theoretical point of command that made all things possible, effectively ending the arms race of capacity that had driven jazz for two decades. His speed, articulation and sense of surprise took many forms in many bebop trumpet players in the years after 1946, but few doubted that Gillespie was the master and matrix of it all.

 Clarinetist Benny Goodman was the only jazz musician in history to exert a direct and decisive influence so powerful that it would literally change the course of American music and stamp an era with his name. Though Goodman was the product of many influences, both as a soloist and band leader, it was he who would put jazz squarely at the center of American popular music for a decade and clear the path that would lead nearly all the great names of the swing era to fame.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Goodman was that even as a media pop idol at a level matched only by Sinatra, Elvis Presley, the Beatles and two or three others, he still managed to enrich the core of classic jazz with fundamental innovations in both small group and big band music. His bands introduced the likes of Lionel Hampton, Teddy Wilson, Harry James, Charlie Christian, Eddie Sauter, Mel Powell and many others.

 In the early 1960s, pianist Herbie Hancock dazzled the jazz community with his work in Donald Byrd's band and then on his debut, Takin' Off. He went on to become a driving force in Miles Davis's bands and became, in the ensuing years, a funk pioneer and a jazz mainstay. Here are some great ways to get to know Herbie Hancock.

 Until Lester Young arrived on the scene, there was but one great tenor sax name: Coleman Hawkins. The man nicknamed "Bean" had a large, gruff, burly sound that was far different from Young's lighter, cooler approach. Hawkins made the tune "Body And Soul" his own in a 1939 version that has become a jazz classic. Many maintain that Hawkins was an inspiration for the bop revolution, that his playing provided the improvisational foundation with his small combos on 52nd Street in the early '40s.

 Fletcher Henderson was the pianist - composer whose pre-swing era arrangements laid the foundation for the contemporary jazz big band.

 Billie Holiday stands as one of jazz's great vocalists. The inspiration for many aspiring singers today, Holiday had a singular voice steeped in aching emotion and fueled by an uncanny sense of swing. She not only stamped her distinctive signature on such standards as "Night And Day," but she also contributed remarkable originals to the jazz canon, including "Strange Fruit" and "God Bless The Child." Influenced by Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, Holiday not only sang with passion and conviction, but she also improvised with a trumpeter's sensibility.

 While bassist, composer and bandleader Charles Mingus was widely recognized in jazz circles during his lifetime as one of the music's most talented contributors, it was only after his death that his brilliance as an indomitable creative force began to be fully realized.

 Thelonious Sphere Monk was a genius. The jazz pianist rambled, marched and leaped across the keys with uncompromising vision and relentless creativity, stamping his melodic, harmonic and rhythmic signature on every tune he wrote or covered. During his early days as a bandleader, he was ordained the High Priest of Bebop-- a dubious moniker, as Monk's radical playing was more driven by stride, blues and swing influences than by bop. Instead of piquing the curiosity of jazzophiles, the esoteric title actually scared more people away from his admittedly difficult and odd-sounding music. In much the same vein, Monk encountered as many setbacks in his career as he enjoyed successes. While he garnered recognition from his musical peers and eventually the record-buying public, Monk was often misunderstood and unfairly castigated as a neurotic for his idiosyncratic behavior and newfangled tunes.

 Alto saxophonist Charlie Parker revolutionized the harmonic possibilities and rhythmic syntax of jazz improvisation to the extent that a whole new language, or at the very least a fresh jazz dialect, emerged. His style has engaged successive generations of players ever since.
Bebop was not so much a break with the past as it was a logical evolution from it. Parker continued to use chord-based changes of popular standards as the basis for improvisation. But equipped as he was with surpluses of conceptual and instrumental virtuosity, the challenges posed by traditional swing no longer absorbed his full capacities. So he went looking for fresh problems to solve within the same musical material by incorporating subtle and more extended harmonic content into his improvisations and adding to that faster, more complex rhythmic zigs and zags.
As improvisation became more challenging to the best young musicians, it also became more bewildering to audiences raised on big band jazz. The intricacies of Parker's music also had the effect of making jazz more of a closed musical culture as the large general audiences backed away from the new jazz to more simple forms. The cult of hipness became something of an article of faith among Parker's followers. But as the pressures of the popular market were lifted from jazz, the music thrived playing to smaller but far more permissive audiences who appreciated the new freedom as much as the players

 For all his unparalleled genius as a thematic or motivic improviser, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins has remained somewhat a voice in the wilderness since the cult following of John Coltrane swept the jazz scene in the early '60s. Still, Rollins, who has continued to walk his own course during his more than 50-year career, is arguably the greatest saxophone player since Charlie Parker's explosion on the scene in the '40s.

 Sarah Vaughan, The Divine One, was the singer of choice among boppers in the early 1940s. Her "legit" technique, sophisticated carriage -- her nickname was "Sassy" -- and sense of the infrastructure of popular songs reflected key values admired by the new breed of jazz musicians. She had operatic range and control, which she often emphasized in a grand way, and a crooning vibrato that echoed Billy Eckstine's. Her chops and style were imitated by nearly every singer who followed her.

 Tenor saxophonist Lester Young came to prominence with the first Count Basie band of the late 1930s and showed the jazz world something it had never before imagined: that all tenor saxophone players did not have to sound like Coleman Hawkins; and that there was, in fact, a new way to make music swing. Drawing on the same basic harmonic and rhythm principles as his contemporaries, he offered a new sound and sense of time and movement that established a cooler, more laid back alternative that ultimately spread to the other principal horns in jazz.