During the sixties, jazz is in trouble. Critics divide the music into "schools" - Dixieland, swing, bebop, hard bop, modal, free, avant-garde. But most young people are listening to rock 'n' roll. Though Louis Armstrong briefly outsells the Beatles with Hello Dolly, most jazz musicians are desperate for work and many head for Europe, including bebop saxophone master, Dexter Gordon. At home, jazz is searching for relevance. During the Civil Rights struggle, it becomes a voice of protest. Before his early death, the avant-garde explorer John Coltrane links jazz to the sixties quest for a higher consciousness with his devotional suite, A Love Supreme. Also, Miles Davis, after conquering the avant-garde with a landmark quintet, combines jazz with rock 'n' roll by using electric instruments to launch a wildly popular sound called Fusion. In the 1970s, jazz loses the exuberant genius of Louis Armstrong and the transcendent artistry of Duke Ellington, and for many their passing seems to mark the end of the music itself. But in 1976, when Dexter Gordon returns from Europe for a triumphant comeback, jazz has a homecoming, too. Over the next two decades, a new generation of musicians emerges, led by trumpeter Wynton Marsalis - schooled in the music's traditions, skilled in the arts of improvisation and aflame with ideas only jazz can express. The musical journey that began in the dance halls and street parades of New Orleans at the start of the 20th century continues. As it enters its second century, jazz is still brand new every night, still vibrant, still evolving and still swinging.

When America enters World War II, jazz is part of the arsenal. In Europe, where musicians like the Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt continue to play despite a Nazi ban, jazz is a beacon of hope. In America, it becomes the embodiment of democracy, as bandleaders such as Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw enlist, taking their swing to the troops overseas. Yet, jazz is changing. In a Harlem club called Minton's Playhouse, a small band of young musicians, led by the trumpet virtuoso Dizzy Gillespie and the brilliant saxophonist Charlie Parker, has discovered a new way of playing - fast, intricate, exhilarating and sometimes chaotic. A wartime recording ban keeps their music off the airwaves, but soon after the war, Parker and Gillespie create a tune called Ko Ko, soon to be called "bebop," and once Americans hear it, jazz will never be the same.

This video introduces the pioneers of jazz: the cornetist Buddy Bolden, who may have been the first man to play jazz; pianist Jelly Roll Morton, who claimed to have invented jazz, but really was the first to write the new music down; Sidney Bechet, a clarinet prodigy whose fiery sound matched his explosive personality; and Freddie Keppard, a trumpet virtuoso who turned down a chance to win national fame for fear that others would steal the secrets of his art. The early jazz players travel the country in the years before World War I, but few people have a chance to hear this new music until 1917, when a group of white musicians from New Orleans arrives in New York to make the first jazz recording. They call themselves the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and within weeks their record becomes an unexpected hit. Suddenly, the Jazz Age is about to begin.

This video introduces Bessie Smith, Empress of the Blues; Bix Beiderbecke, the first great white jazz star, who is inspired by Louis Armstrong to dedicate his life to the music and in turn inspires others with solos of unparalleled lyric grace; and two brilliant sons of Jewish immigrants, Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, for whom jazz offers an escape from the ghetto and a chance to achieve their dreams. The program also follows Duke Ellington to Harlem's most celebrated nightspot, the gangster-owned, whites-only Cotton Club, where he continues blending the individual voices of his band members to create harmonies no one has imagined before, then gets the break of a lifetime when radio carries his music into homes across the country, bringing him national fame. Further, viewers will see Louis Armstrong as he combines the soloist's and vocalist's arts to create scat singing, then watch as he charts the future of jazz in a series of small group recordings that culminates in his masterpiece, West End Blues.

The postwar years bring America to a level of prosperity unimaginable a decade before, but the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation makes these anxious years as well. In jazz, this underlying tension will be reflected in the broken rhythms and dissonant melodies of bebop, and in the troubled life of bebop's biggest star, Charlie Parker. Parker, however, is not the only bebop innovator. His long-time partner, Dizzy Gillespie, tries to popularize the new sound by adding showmanship and Latin rhythms, while pianist Thelonius Monk infuses it with his eccentric personality to create a music all his own. Except for jazz initiates, however, few people are listening. Teens now swoon for pop singers and dance to rhythm and blues. Searching for a new audience, California musicians create a mellow sound called cool jazz, and Dave Brubeck mixes jazz with classical music to produce a million-seller LP. But one man remains determined to give jazz popular appeal on his terms, the trumpet player Miles Davis. Davis moves beyond the cool sound he inspired and stands poised to lead jazz in a new direction.

As the Great Depression continues, jazz comes as close as it has ever come to being America's popular music, providing entertainment and escape for a people down on their luck. It has a new name now - Swing - and for millions of young fans, it will be the defining music of their generation. Suddenly, jazz bandleaders are the new matinee idols, with Benny Goodman hailed as the "King of Swing," while teenagers jitterbug just as hard to the music of his rivals - Tommy Dorsey, Jimmie Lunceford, Glenn Miller and the mercurial Artie Shaw. The spirit of Swing is not limited to the dance floor. In New York, Billie Holiday emerges from a tragic childhood to begin her career as the greatest of all female jazz singers. In Chicago, Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson prove that, despite segregation, there is room in jazz for great black and white musicians to swing side-by-side on stage. At Harlem's Savoy Ballroom, however, there is room for only one King of Swing and on May 11, 1937, Benny Goodman travels uptown for a showdown with Chick Webb. It is billed as "The Music Battle of the Century" and more than 4,000 dancers crowd the floor to cheer on both champions.

As the 1930's come to a close, Swing-mania is still going strong, but some fans are saying success has made the music too predictable. Their ears are tuned to a new sound - pulsing, stomping, suffused with the blues. It is the Kansas City sound of Count Basie's band, and it quickly reignites the spirit of Swing. By 1938, Basie and his men are helping Benny Goodman bring jazz to Carnegie Hall. By the decade's end, Chick Webb has taken a chance on a teenage singer named Ella Fitzgerald and achieved the fame he dreamed of. Duke Ellington has been hailed as a hero in Europe, amid anxious preparations for war. Weeks after the war begins, Coleman Hawkins startles the world with a glimpse of what jazz will become, improvising a new music on the old standard, Body and Soul.

In the late 1950s, America's postwar prosperity continues, but beneath the surface run currents of change. Young talents arise to take the music in new directions. Jazz, however, still has its two guiding lights. In 1956, the first year Elvis tops the charts, Duke Ellington recaptures the nation's ear with a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival that becomes his best-selling record ever. The next year, Louis Armstrong makes headlines when he condemns the government's failure to stand up to racism in Little Rock, Arkansas, risking his career while musicians who dismissed him as an Uncle Tom remain silent. The leading light of the era is Miles Davis - a catalyst constantly forming new groups to showcase different facets of his stark, introspective sound; a popularizer whose lush recordings with arranger Gil Evans expand the jazz audience; and a cultural icon whose tough-guy charisma comes to define what is hip. As the turbulent Sixties arrive, however, two saxophonists take jazz into uncharted terrain. John Coltrane explodes the pop tune My Favourite Things into a kaleidoscope of freewheeling sound, while Ornette Coleman challenges all conventions with a sound he calls "free jazz." Once again, the music seems headed for new adventures, but now, for the first time, even musicians are starting to ask, "Is it still jazz?"

This video focuses on how the story of jazz becomes a tale of two great cities, Chicago and New York, and of two extraordinary artists whose lives and music will span almost three-quarters of a century: Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Armstrong, who grew up on the mean streets of New Orleans, develops his great "gift" - his unparalleled musical genius - with the help of King Oliver, the city's top cornetist and in 1922, follows him to Chicago, where Armstrong's transcendent sound and exhilarating rhythms inspire a new generation of musicians, white and black, to join the world of jazz. Meanwhile, Ellington, who was raised in middle-class comfort, outgrows the society music he learned to play in Washington, D.C. and heads for Harlem. There, he absorbs the stride piano rhythms of Willie "The Lion" Smith and forms a band to create a music all his own - hot, blues-drenched and infused with the sounds of his new trumpet player, Bubber Miley.

In the dark times from 1929-1934, jazz lifts the spirits of a frightened country, and finds itself poised for a decade of explosive growth. New York is now America's jazz capital. On Broadway, Louis Armstrong revolutionizes the art of American popular song and displays a flair for showmanship that makes him one of the nation's top entertainers. In Harlem, Chick Webb pioneers his own big-band sound at the Savoy Ballroom; in the city's clubs, pianists Fats Waller and Art Tatum dazzle audiences; and Duke Ellington takes jazz "beyond category," composing hit tunes with a new sophistication that has critics comparing him to Stravinsky. Meanwhile, Benny Goodman is broadcasting big-band jazz nationwide, based on Fletcher Henderson's arrangements.