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The Mills Brothers were so proficient at imitating instruments with their voices, that many of their CDs contained a clarifying note: "No musical instruments used on this recording other than one guitar." This two-disc set has all of the brother's biggest hits, including "Paper Doll" and "Glow Worm."

Jelly Roll Morton claimed that he invented jazz. While this statement provoked much criticism, Morton is widely considered the first great composer of jazz. Morton's most popular tunes, including the frequently copied "King Porter Stomp," can be found on this album.

With his heady, bop-rooted explorations of improvised music, pianist and composer Hill stretched the boundaries of jazz. He demonstrated his mastery of melody, rhythm and technique in a 2005 session.

Marjorie Garber says books are labeled as dangerous "precisely because [they] can enrich the mind, challenge, disturb, and change one's thinking." In her new book, she traces the historical tendency to label new literary phenomena as 'trash', only to later see it become a revered classic.

The soprano saxophone has never been a dominant instrument in mainstream jazz, but it's been in the mix since the beginning. Take a quick tour of the soprano sax throughout jazz history with the help of these five songs.

John Wesley Harding laments the Starbucks-ization of America, great music from Josh Ritter, Edie Brickell, and Punch Brothers. Then questionable life advice from Sarah Vowell and Eugene Mirman, topped with Haley Tanner's homage to a favorite writer.

In 1994, Ellis Cose surveyed successful, middle-class African-Americans and uncovered an often unspoken rage. Now, 17 years later, he's discovered a major change in that community: They've become one of the most optimistic groups in America. He reveals his findings in The End Of Anger.

Action-Refraction, the bassist and composer's new album, is mostly covers. He says that putting a personal spin on the songs he loves often requires breaking them apart.

Soft and insistent, breathy and sometimes wordless, she doesn't have the voice of Ella, or Sarah, or Betty. But she doesn't need it; on her third album, she's got plenty of that slippery, you-know-it-when-you-hear-it quality often abbreviated "musicality."

Her name is synonymous with Chicago blues, and her voice was growling, thunderous and full of soul. Grammy Award-winning blues singer Koko Taylor died in a Chicago hospital Wednesday.