So I'm watching this show, and Wynton Marsalis, a well known contemporary jazz trumpet player, is the guest.On this short lived CNBC one on one interview show, the host, stuffy bush eyebrowed Mclaughlin, puts his guests in a chair, mounts them on a dais, shines bright lights on them and paces around them, shouting at them as if they were in a LAPD interrogation room.

The interrogation of Marsalis begins, and as owl jowl Mclaughlin paces, pointing his accusing finger, it becomes painfully obvious he doesn't know dooky about jazz. During the grilling, which consisted of a cascade of ignorantly silly questions, Marsalis is patient and unassuming, responding to Mclaughlin as straightforwardly, politely, and calmly as he can.

Then, on a dime, Mclaughlin wheels on his heel, his face erupts, and his sandpaper voice blurts out: "Mr. Marsalis! Give us the history of jazz! You have two minutes!"

Marsalis laughed in nervous disbelief.

It's a tough order to fit the entire history of a musical form in a couple of minutes. Or in this case, in a few pages.

What I can do in this primer is supply basic rudimentary facts and trends in the history of jazz, point you in some directions, and give you some suggestions of some avenues to explore. As I said before, for this Jazz Primer, I am going to assume that you are familiar with music in general, and may have heard of a few of the musicians I will mention, but really know next to nothing about jazz.

Before I go on, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, I am only covering the history of jazz up until 1975; I don't evaluate jazz of the last 20 years. You'll have to discover that scene for yourself.

Second, simply talking about jazz is pointless. The best thing to do in order to understand jazz is to expose your ears. I'll clue you where to start looking as far as recordings go.

Third, in the interest of space, I have oversimplified and over-categorized the history of jazz. The trends and recordings I mention are so not easily pigeonholed and labeled. It's always a risk to divide any art into periods of time or into a definitive set of characteristics. For example, take the Miles Davis 1959 record Kind of Blue. This one record could fit into several categories (cool, post-bop, fusion, funk), yet at the same time, it strictly fits into none of them. So keep in mind that the movements/categories I mention should be considered loosely, their purpose to give you some general bearings within several decades of musical development.

Fourth, in order to concentrate on music itself, I am glossing over the history of African Americans, which is inseparable from the history of jazz. The social experiences, conditions and culture of African Americans bear direct influence upon the sound, development and history of jazz. In this brief article I gloss over many historical situations, and I want you to be aware that to fully understand the context and the resonances of this music, you should also have knowledge of the experiences of African-Americans in the twentieth century. Jazz musicians are either African-American, or are building on the experience and style of African Americans.

Finally, I am only discussing American jazz. Many musicians, in South America, Europe, Japan, and Africa have taken up the torch after the trends introduced by America, and some mighty fine musicians have come out of those zones.

Now, after all those disclaimers, just what is jazz?

Well, your average layperson might hear a song with a swinging beat and some horns, and say, "Hey that's jazz."

But it might not be.

What they're hearing might be a dumb ass jingle to a coke commercial, or the background music in an advertisement for a car, or some trying-to-be-hip McDonalds commercial. Herb Alpert plays trumpet in a band full of brass instruments, but he doesn't play jazz. Jazz sounding music is being used to sell cars, hamburgers, perfume, and films. On my honor, I know one nameless unfortunate who thinks that the slap bass lines you hear during the incidental music in Seinfeld is jazz. But it isn't.

On one level, jazz most often involves brass instruments, pianos or a standing bass. In the case of a jazz orchestra, it might be whole horn sections, or in the case of a trio, might be a lone sax or trumpet. Or you might have a lone, fat fingered blind piano player. And you might associate walking bass lines with jazz. Or the tss tss tss of the high hat on the drum kit.

Rhythmically, most jazz includes removal of the beat from the ground beat, or some kind of use of polyrhythm or syncopated rhythm. Melodically there tends to be a use of blue notes, notes that are not quite on the European scale. The playing of the instrument and slurring and bending of notes rather that straight playing. Many jazz songs are based on marches, popular songs, and blues progressions. But it isn't the tempo, or the type of instrument, or technical characteristics or form of music that defines jazz.

Jazz may include all of these characteristics, but above all, the single most important element in the equation is A PERSONAL APPROACH TO IMPROVISATION. In the hands of a jazz musician, a rhythm, a melody, or a song is filtered through the style of the musician and becomes a personal expression.

THE JAZZ MUSICIAN tries to tell stories with sound. Because the jazz musician is interested in improvisation and individuality, he will never tell the story quite the same way twice. The notes they play are intended to be as expressive as the rising and falling of a voice or of action during the telling of a story.

Musicians from the European tradition were trying to communicate the ideas of the composer of a piece at the expense of their individual sound. Jazz musicians try to express their own experience through their interpretation of the composition. Even when jazz musicians compose their own songs, they may express them in different ways from performance to performance, just by the way they play the notes.

So, say, what makes Billie Holiday a jazz musician and not Doris Day? It's their approach to the music. Doris Day can sing a pretty song (I have some of her recordings), but basically, she sings the melody straight every time, maybe putting a different emphasis on a word or a phrase from time to time, but all in all she sings straight. But sweet Doris can't quite bring a song off the ground beat quite the way Billie Holiday can, she doesn't seem to have quite the propensity for bending notes, for using blue notes that lie in between European scales, for bringing a kind of subtle emotive quality to the music that doesn't seem flashy, but is musically solid and different every time.

To illustrate the difference more clearly, lets take a look at a blues based rock musician who had the same basic approach to his instrument as a jazz musician would have. Jimi Hendrix never played the song the same way twice. He was constantly inflecting notes with different resonances, getting different sounds out of his guitar, and he placed a high emphasis on improvisation. He had a reliance on blues influences and a blatant disregard for the ground beat. Listen for instance, to his version of the Star Spangled Banner. Okay, he was a little showy at times, but when he was on, he was on, and he never played a song the same way twice. Now imagine some one with a totally different approach to music like, for instance, Bryan Adams. Mr. Cuts Like a Knife can play guitar well enough to write songs, play whatever he hears, and solo to a limited extent. But try to imagine what it would sound like if you had to compare a Hendrix version of the Star Spangled Banner with a Bryan Adams version.

That would be the difference between a Billie Holiday version of a tune and Doris Day's, or for that matter Doc Severinson and Miles Davis.

(So why isn't Jimi Hendrix considered a great jazz musician? Well, most often, he played with musicians who did not approach the music with the same skill or intent as Hendrix did. If he had allied himself with a jazz bass player and jazz drummer, and played non-rock forms of music, he may never have made it to the Rock and Roll hall of fame. Hendrix was at home in a rock context because rock developed from the blues, and Hendrix was basically blues gone rock.)

Jazz musicians thus have a specific approach to playing music that involves complex rhythms, blue notes, and improvisation.

But how did that specific approach develop into the valid and widely accepted form of jazz?

Let's dig in.