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
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