Four musicians walk onto a 1950s nightclub stage in matching tuxedos and play so softly that the audience realizes its own chatter is louder than the music. If the room does not quiet down, they pack up and leave. This episode tells the story of the Modern Jazz Quartet, a group that forced the world to respect jazz by repackaging it as high art and operated as a legally incorporated business for decades.

We trace the roots back to 1944 in France, where pianist John Lewis and drummer Kenny Clarke met in the US Army, and to the rhythm section of Dizzy Gillespie's big band, where Lewis, Clarke, Milt Jackson, and Ray Brown played extended interludes while the horn players rested. The conversation covers the 1952 incorporation with Percy Heath replacing Brown, why the name was chosen simply because it cleared legal review fastest, Lewis's use of ...