A teenager in a tailored tuxedo playing Dixieland in a Boston club does not look like the future inventor of jazz fusion, but that is where Armando Anthony Chick Corea started. This episode follows his path from Chelsea, Massachusetts, where his trumpet-playing father sat him at the piano at age four, through classical lessons with Salvatore Sullo, a drum kit at eleven, and a brief stop at Juilliard before he walked away to learn on New York bandstands. Sideman work with Mongo Santamaria and Stan Getz fed his Latin and bossa nova vocabulary, and 1968 brought both the acoustic masterpiece Now He Sings, Now He Sobs and his entry into Miles Davis's electric band for In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew.

The hosts trace his restless run through the avant-garde group Circle with Dave Holland, solo improvisations for ECM, the founding of Return to Fo ...