Born Lovella May Borg in Oakland in 1936, Carla Bley went from church choir girl to roller-skating teenage dropout to a 17-year-old cigarette girl at Birdland, where she absorbed the bebop revolution night after night. Encouraged by pianist Paul Bley, she began composing angular, unpredictable frameworks that George Russell, Jimmy Giuffre and Paul Bley himself recorded, and she famously described herself as 99 percent composer and one percent pianist. This episode traces how that outsider stance reshaped both the mechanics of modern jazz composition and the physical business of making and selling independent music.

With partner Michael Mantler, Bley helped organize the Jazz Composers Guild, formed the Jazz Composers Orchestra, launched the JCOA and Watt labels and built the New Music Distribution Service, an artist-owned pipeline that carri ...