Vocalese is the art of writing lyrics to every note of a pre-existing instrumental jazz recording, then singing all the horn parts with human voices. This deep dive tells the 96-year story of the man who turned that impossible task into a genre: Jon Hendricks, born in Toledo, Ohio in 1921 into a family of 14 children, whose pastor father and hospitable mother made their home a stopover for touring jazz musicians, and whose neighbor was the piano prodigy Art Tatum.

The episode follows Hendricks from teenage radio gigs that fed a household of 17 during the Depression, through a harrowing World War II chapter in which he and fellow Black soldiers were fired upon by white American military police in France, deserted, survived on the black market, and were court-martialed. It then traces the near-miss law career derailed by expired GI Bill benef ...