The Jazz Scene

In the mid-1940s, producer/impresario Norman Granz, then working for Mercury Records and riding high on the success of his Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series, set out to assemble a definitive snapshot of American jazz. Not just music, but photos, biographies, and explicatory liner notes designed to frame the music in its context, all in a handsome package, limited to 5,000 copies, each numbered and signed by Granz—a major undertaking, to say the least. What emerged was The Jazz Scene, as comprehensive a document of its kind as had existed before or since. Juxtaposing already famous names like Duke Ellington, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young with then-emerging voices like Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, The Jazz Scene not only advanced Granz’s mission of framing jazz as serious art—a sound worth approaching with almost anthropological thoroughness—but captured the transformation of swing and big band into the brisk, trim sound of bop: Listen to Ralph Burns’ elaborately orchestrated “Introspection” next to Parker’s “The Bird,” for example, and you can almost hear the era turning over. In between, we get early strains of Afro-Cuban jazz (Machito’s “Tanga”), some beautiful piano by Ellington right-hand Billy Strayhorn (“Halfway to Dawn”), and Coleman Hawkins’ “Picasso,” a languid, enigmatic solo that set new standards for the saxophone reverie. Most importantly, Granz allowed each artist to work at their own pace, with whatever tools and repertoire and approach they wanted—an atmosphere that helped legitimize jazz at a moment when it was still finding its way into mainstream American culture.