Skip to main content

Subscribe to Smithsonian magazine and get a FREE tote.

Jazz

April 25, 2017, marks the centennial birthday of Ella Fitzgerald (above, in a triple-exposure undated photograph).

Women Who Shaped History

Never Mind Her Stellar Jazz Career, Young Ella Fitzgerald Just Wanted to Dance

The preeminent vocalist didn’t actually start out as a singer

The Original Dixieland Jass Band included cornetist Nick LaRocca, trombonist Eddie Edwards, clarinetist Larry Shields, pianist Henry Ragas, and drummer Tony Sbarbaro.

The First Jazz Recording Was Made by a Group of White Guys?

A century ago, a recording of the startlingly novel “Livery Stable Blues” helped launch a new genre

Interior of Historic RCA Studio B today.

Play Paul Simon’s Piano or Croon Into Elvis’ Mic at These Seven Historic Recording Studios

Take a tour through Americana music history

Mount McKinley

Visit These Ten Sites Celebrating Major Anniversaries in 2017

From Jane Austen’s 200th anniversary to the founding of Denali National Park, there are plenty of events to fill your calendar

The word “jazz” was first used in print in California sportswriting around 1912.

This Is the “Jass” Record That Introduced Millions of Americans to a New Kind of Music

The record that introduced millions of Americans to a new kind of music

Carl Kress, performer of "Heat Wave" on Volume I, focuses absolutely on his guitar-playing.

How Countless Hours of Live Jazz Were Saved from Obscurity

The Savory Collection breathes fresh life into jazz

Sarah Vaughan by Herman Leonard, 1949

Jazz Has Never Looked Cooler Than It Does in This New Exhibition

These evocative images by photographer Herman Leonard call to mind a bygone era

This conception of jazz as a means of bringing people together is manifested nowhere better than in Benny Carter (above, 1986).

It’s Springtime and Jazz Is In Bloom

This year’s Jazz Appreciation Month celebrates the singularly talented alto saxophonist Benny Carter

Wayne Shorter and McCoy Tyner at Shorter's April 29, 1964 session for "Night Dreamer" at the Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey

These Rarely Seen Images Show Jazz Greats Pouring Out Their Hearts

Frank Wolff’s gritty portraits, the hallmark of Blue Note Records, became a visual catalog of jazz in action

Don Cheadle stars as Miles Davis in the new film Miles Ahead.

Smithsonian Jazz Expert Gives Liner Notes to the New Miles Davis Biopic

The American History Museum’s James Zimmerman dives into Miles Davis’ sound and style

These 15th-century female musicians are clearly in grave medical danger.

Cool Finds

Some 19th-Century Physicians Thought Music Could Infect the Brain

When it comes to music in the brain, medicine has come a long way

Revelers two-step at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

How Do You Dance to Jazz?

The attendees at this year’s New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival taught our music writer a step or two

The legendary home base of blues pioneers.

Where the Blues Was Born

At Dockery Farms, the original bluesmen created a sound that would become legendary

Louis Armstrong playing in Rome in 1959. You can visit his house in Queens, New York, and see how he lived for the last 30 years of his life.

Urban Explorations

Where to Celebrate the History of American Jazz

These six spots are just a short riff on what makes the musical genre particular to the United States

Jazz singer Billie Holiday wears a large white flower in her hair for a performance in New York City.

What Makes Billie Holiday’s Music So Powerful Today

Musicians including Cassandra Wilson pay homage to the jazz legend with new albums for Lady Day’s 100th birthday

Billy Strayhorn playing piano in a home, May 26th,1952.

This New Collection of 12,000 Photographs Chronicles the American Jazz Scene

A donation from the family of photographer and historian Duncan Schiedt captures the music’s “essence”

Depicted in Big Band are: Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Jerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Lester Young, Glen Miller, Charles Mingus, JJ Johnson, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Wynton Marsalis and Gene Krupa.

LeRoy Nieman Pulled Together a Dream Band for His Epic Portrait of Jazz Greats

The iconic artist’s large-scale painting of this century’s music greats debuts at the American History Museum, kicking off Jazz Appreciation Month

Duke Ellington with his orchestra.

What to Listen to and Watch for When Enjoying Jazz

For Jazz Appreciation Month, a guide to understanding the nuances, subtleties and surprises of America’s unique music

One of three instruments Coltrane would use as he blazed through the next two years, reinventing himself—and jazz music— at a pace many found exhausting.

Fifty Years Ago This Month, John Coltrane Recorded One of the Greatest Jazz Tracks of All Time

This Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone was one of three instruments that John Coltrane played to reinvent himself—and Jazz music

2014 Ingenuity Awards

Rosanne Cash on Discovering New Artistic Terrain

The singer-songwriter looked to her Southern ancestors to come up with a different kind of concept album

Page 3 of 4