In Steven Spielberg's 2004 film The Terminal, Tom Hanks plays a man stranded in an airport seeking one final autograph from the 1958 photograph A Great Day in Harlem. The musician he is chasing is real and appears as himself: Benny Golson. This episode traces Golson's 95-year life from a Depression-era Philadelphia childhood raised by a seamstress mother, through classical piano dreams shattered by hearing Arnett Cobb's tenor saxophone at 14, to a high school scene that included John Coltrane, the Heath brothers, Philly Joe Jones, and Red Garland.

We look at how arranger Tadd Dameron taught him to voice chords and build sonic landscapes, the death of Clifford Brown that produced I Remember Clifford, the string of standards from Stablemates to Killer Joe that made him the architect of hard bop, and the Jazztet he co-led with Art Farmer. Then ...