The Greatest Jazz Musicians of All Time

A comprehensive guide to the greatest jazz musicians of all time, with photos and bios of the top 50 performers.

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong is considered one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. He was a master trumpeter, singer, and bandleader who helped to shape the sound of jazz. He was born in 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana, and began his musical career playing in the city’s vibrant jazz scene. He rose to prominence in the 1920s with his band, the Hot Five, and went on to have a successful solo career. Armstrong’s playing style was marked by a distinctive soaring tone and innovative improvisational abilities. He influenced generations of musicians with his playing and his approach to music. He died in 1971.

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington was an American composer, bandleader, and pianist of jazz and big band fame. He is considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions and his work includes some of the most well-known and beloved songs in the history of American music, such as “Satin Doll” and “Take the ‘A’ Train”. He led his own orchestra for over 50 years, and his work influenced countless other musicians, both within jazz and in other genres.

Charlie Parker

To say that Charlie “Bird” Parker was one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time would be an understatement. Arguably the most influential figure in jazz history, Parker’s innovations on his instrument, the alto saxophone, helped to shape the course of jazz and popular music in the 20th century.

Parker was born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1920. His first experience with the saxophone came when he was 11 years old, when he received one as a birthday present from his mother. He quickly took to the instrument, and by his early teens he was already playing professionally in local nightclubs. In 1933, Parker moved to New York City, where he quickly became immersed in the city’s vibrant jazz scene.

In the early 1940s, Parker began to develop his own unique style of playing, which blended elements of swing and bebop. This new style soon caught on with other musicians, and by the mid-1940s Parker had become one of the most influential figures in jazz. He recorded prolifically throughout the 1940s and 1950s, both as a leader and as a sideman, and his records are widely considered essential listening for any fan of jazz.

Parker died in 1955 at the age of 34, but his legacy has lived on through the generations of musicians who have been influenced by his music.

Miles Davis

Miles Davis was an American trumpeter, bandleader and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical styles throughout his career and is remembered as a pivotal figure in the development of cool jazz, hard bop, modal jazz, Miles Davis Quintet and jazz-fusion.

Born and raised in Illinois, Davis left his studies at the Juilliard School in New York City after only one year to record with bebop saxophonist Charlie Parker. His greatest works from this period are “Now’s the Time” (1945), “Walkin'” (1946) and “Birth of the Cool Sessions” (1949–1950), which feature his compositions “God Bless the Child”, “Salt Peanuts” and “Epistrophy”. In 1955, he recorded “Round About Midnight”, which became one of his best-known compositions and gave birth to hard bop.

John Coltrane

John Coltrane was an American jazz musician and composer who was one of the most influential and innovative saxophonists of all time. His style of playing had a profound impact on the development of jazz, and he is considered one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. Coltrane’s work ranged from bebop to free jazz, and he is best known for his albums A Love Supreme and My Favorite Things.