John Litweiler News Today

Once praised as one of the world’s greatest jazz musicians, sax giant E. Parker McDougal has been all but forgotten 30 years after his death.

Events at the Social and the History Center mark what would have been his 100th birthday.

The German saxophonist whose brash, tempestuous outpourings set an imposing standard for free improvisation, and helped define the terms for a postwar European avant-garde.

A group of white kids from Chicago's west side, who came to be known as the Austin High Gang, ran with the innovations of Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, and other Black New Orleans transplants.

If you asked jazz firebrand Ornette Coleman about his music and philosophy, he probably would have referred you to an obscure music book, "The Harmolodic Theory."

Bob Koester in the stacks at the Jazz Record Mart in 2009 Michael Jackson Bob Koester, who died May 12 at age 88, knew what he liked—and what you should like too. For nearly 70 years, he owned Chicagos Jazz Record Mart (and the Delmark label), and it was completely in character for him to snatch an album from the hands of an earnest young shopper. In 1968, tha...