Blood on the Fields is a two-and-a-half-hour jazz oratorio by Wynton Marsalis. It was commissioned by the Lincoln Center and concerns a couple moving from slavery to freedom.

Goodman was known as the "King of Swing".

There's absolutely no reason Ella's warm yet ultra-cool voice should blend so effortlessly with Louis Armstrong's gravelly growl. They're the opposite poles of jazz singing. But it's magic.

Duke Ellington's orchestra was the house band at the Cotton Club from December 4, 1927 until June 30, 1931. The club's wealthy clientele poured in nightly to see them, and a weekly radio broadcast gave Ellington national exposure.

Jelly Roll Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential spirit and characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues" was published in 1915.

Kind of Blue is regarded by many critics as the greatest jazz record of all time.

He was skilled at scat singing (improvised vocal jazz using nonsensical words) and was among the first to record it, on the Hot Five recording "Heebie Jeebies" in 1926. The recording was so popular that his group became the most famous jazz band in the United States.

Ella in Berlin, one of her best-selling albums, includes a Grammy-winning performance of "Mack the Knife" in which she forgets the lyrics after the first stanza but improvises new lyrics magnificently to compensate.

"Strange Fruit" protests the lynching of Black Americans, which had reached a peak in the Southern United States at the turn of the 20th century, comparing the victims to the fruit of trees. The song has been called "a declaration of war" and "the beginning of the civil rights movement."

A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote more than one thousand compositions. His extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become standards.