R.J. Smith on Central Avenue, the Pentecostal roots of R&B, and the wartime boomtown where a new Black popular music found its beat.

James Porter on the singing cowboy, Western swing, the Grand Ole Opry on NBC, and the Depression years when radio made country music national.

The late Ed Ward on the West Texas fiddler who put drums, horns and steel guitar in one band, and made enemies in Nashville doing it.

Tony Fletcher on Mario Bauza, Machito's Afro-Cubans, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo, and the Palladium nights when three mambo orchestras shared one bill.

Cary Ginell on the Fort Worth bandleader who brought hot jazz to the Texas string band - and why it was Milton, not Bob Wills, who got there first.

Peter Doggett on the Great American Songbook, Fred Astaire, Louis Armstrong's 1929 "St. Louis Blues," and the night in Oakland that set off the swing era.

r. Yuri Campbell and Nate look back at Elijah Wald's case against the Robert Johnson myth - and what it teaches about audiences, genre and race.

Elijah Wald on the real Robert Johnson - a hip young bluesman who sounded like the records, not a myth at the crossroads.

Kevin Belford makes the case for St. Louis as a blues capital the history books skipped - from Tom Turpin's ragtime to Lonnie Johnson, Peetie Wheatstraw and the original Sonny Boy Williamson.

Stephanie Stein Crease on Chick Webb - the Baltimore drummer who went from Harlem's jam sessions to the Savoy throne, and the beat that pointed to rock and roll.

Jeff Kaufman on the four-foot drummer who broke his back as a child, ruled the Savoy Ballroom, outplayed Benny Goodman and made Ella Fitzgerald a star.

Chuck Haddix on Boss Pendergast's wide-open town - Bennie Moten, the territory bands, Basie at the Reno Club, Big Joe Turner behind the bar and a teenage Charlie Parker.

Dave Thompson on the Child ballads leaving the family porch for the record shop - Lomax, MacColl, Jean Ritchie, Josh White and a teenage Judy Collins.

The late Ed Ward on the blues queens, the record collectors who rewrote the history, the first guitar heroes, and the greatest forgotten Black star in American music history.

Ted Gioia on the jazz standards - what makes one, where they came from, and why jazz stopped talking to the pop charts.

Gareth Murphy on a hundred years of the people who decided what got recorded - and why the record business keeps dying and coming back.

Gary Giddins on the jazz singer from Spokane who learned from Jolson and Armstrong, put the microphone on a stand, and became the voice of America.

Peter Doggett on the record that sounded like a riot, the microphone that made singers whisper, and the radio that made music private.

Garrett Cash on the blues piano player who put the brush arbor back into the Black church - and became the father of gospel music.

Barry Mazor on the record man who found the audience first and the music second - from "Crazy Blues" to Bristol to "Besame Mucho."

James Porter on what Ken Burns got right about Bristol, and the hillbilly stars he left on the cutting-room floor.

Ed Ward on the fortnight in Bristol that didn't invent country music - it invented the country music business.

Dave Thompson on what happened when 500-year-old British ballads met Ralph Peer's newspaper advert, a swing band, and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

Elijah Wald on why white America named Paul Whiteman “The King of Jazz” and considered him its most innovative artist, and on what happened to his reputation after.