One of the most influential swing bands outside the East Coast, the Count Basie Orchestra started in Kansas City, Missouri.

Fats Waller, star of *Stormy Weather* (1943), wrote “The Spider and the Fly” and dozens of other songs with lyricist Andy Razaf.

*Top,* a young Stanley Kubrick, who traveled to New Orleans to photograph George Lewis’s band in action as “keepers of the flame” for revivalist jazz, entrusts the camera to a local and sits in on drums; *above,* Ella Fitzgerald performs with drummer Chick Webb’s orchestra at the Asbury Park Casino, New Jersey.

“The quickest way to Harlem”: the Ellington band’s sheet-music cover shows a typical New York–subway scene.

A book of sheet music features a 1930s portrait of Teddy Wilson taken while he was a star of Benny Goodman’s integrated quartet and leader of dozens of recording sessions with Billie Holiday.

*Top,* Louis Armstrong with his recording group the Hot Five (from left, Johnny St. Cyr, Kid Ory, Armstrong, Johnny Dodds, and Lil Hardin Armstrong) upon returning to Chicago after he played with Fletcher Henderson in New York; *above,* Miles Davis, photographed by Don Hunstein, at work on his 1958 Gil Evans collaboration, *Porgy and Bess.*

*Top,* Giorgio de Chirico’s *The Seer* provides the artwork for the Thelonious Monk Quartet’s *Misterioso* cover; *above left,* David Stone Martin’s tragic image mirrors Billie Holiday’s “tremendous emotion” on this album; *above right,* Paul Bacon, the pioneering designer of 10-inch-LP albums, produced numerous examples, including this famous Milt Jackson cover.

All That Jazz

A visual history traces the genre from its 19th-century roots in blues-and-ragtime New Orleans to the present day

It’s known for its blue notes, its spontaneity, and its stars, from Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald to Count Basie, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington. Moreover, “if jazz means anything,” wrote Ellington, “it is freedom of expression.” A new book from the writer, broadcaster, and bassist Alyn Shipton collects more than 300 images—“Visualizations of the musicians, their milieu, and their music as metaphor,” writes John Edward Hasse in the foreword—in a vibrant visual history. By the time the word “jazz” made it into The Oxford English Dictionary—and as a supplement, no less, the original 1928 edition having appeared without it—the Jazz Age was in full swing. It left the dictionary in the dust, “creating unforgettable and vivid sonic paintings,” writes Hasse, and encouraging in its musicians “that leeway to experiment, to find and put forward one’s personal voice and style” that made their music so enduring. —Julia Vitale

Photos: Dennis Loren/Jazz Age Edition (Basie); Chris James Collection (Waller, Ellington, Wilson); Stanley Kubrick/Library of Congress/Look Magazine Collection/Jazz Story 1950 (Kubrick); AKG-images (Fitzgerald, Davis); Hogan Jazz Archive/Tulane University (Armstrong); London Jazz Collector/Andrew Wilk (Monk); 33RPM Collection (Holiday); Private Collection (Jackson)