The man widely regarded as the founding father of jazz does not exist on tape. Not a single second of Charles Buddy Bolden's cornet survives, even though his trombonist Willie Cornish remembered recording at least one phonograph cylinder. This episode separates myth from documented fact, beginning with his birth on September 6, 1877, a grandfather who had been enslaved, a father who died when Buddy was six, and municipal records that spell the family name four different ways. From there the hosts explain how a young man who played entirely by ear absorbed uptown gospel, rural blues, ragtime and brass marching bands, and reorganized the New Orleans dance band by pushing brass to the front line.

The heart of the discussion is the Big Four, the syncopated bass-drum pattern with a habanera second half that loosened the rigid military march and  ...