Before there was bebop, or even big-band swing, Dixieland started up a hot-jazz hurricane in New Orleans, with bits of ragtime, blues, and brass bands soaring through its slipstream. When Sidney Bechet …

The haunted howl of Charley Patton, the angelic croon of Blind Willie McTell, the weary growl of Son House - Delta blues blossomed all along the Mississippi River in the '20s and '30s. Echoes of Africa …

"The Sound of Young America" was what Motown main man Berry Gordy dubbed the fruits of his Detroit music empire - and that's precisely what he created over the course of the '60s. The Motor City …

Kansas City was a freewheeling frontier town where the fastest guns in jazz came from afar (like New York City slicker Count Basie) to try their hands against homegrown quick-draw kings, such as Charli …

Southern country bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Buddy Guy went straight from Delta pickers to Windy City wonders, harnessing electricity to ignite their lightning licks. And just like that, Chicago blu …

In the late '60s and '70s, Philly soul draped a crushed velvet - yet stone cold - groove over the very foundation of R&B, courtesy of swoon-inducing strings, hypnotic rhythms, and a stable of ar …

In the late '70s, the boogie-down Bronx was the birthplace of hip-hop, as turntable technicians like Kool Herc, Lovebug Starski, and Grandmasters Flash and Caz jacked electricity from housing project p …

They didn't call it the Jazz Age for nothing: before the Great Depression brought our world tumbling down, Harlem lit up the night sky - a glamour capital where the likes of Duke Ellington and Fletcher …