Watching Ken Burns’s excellent PBS documentary of the history of jazz, I noticed a familiar story emerging from the tale it was telling. White musicians like Paul Whiteman, (known as the “King of Jazz”) Benny Goodman, and Bix Beiderbecke were absolutely obsessed with the new exhilarating musical style being produced in the black community and would spend hours at the feet of black musicians learning their craft. Despite the racist barrier put up between the black and white worlds back in the 20s and 30s, these individuals loved the music intensely and absorbed its influence to produce their very own vibrant compositions (indeed, Goodman sometimes used black arrangements for his music). Goodman himself would later go on to become the “King of Swing” and one of the more dominant faces of Depression Era Jazz, despite black entertainers who were at least as talented, if not more so.