"The Swing Era" might be uneven as a history of the music, but it shines as a highly opinionated and erudite survey from a brilliant mind with a golden ear and a precise pen.

WSJ: Five Best

Twenty years after his pioneering "Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development, " Schuller turned to the swing era, a glorious period in American music, when Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington developed an idiom that was accessible yet also innovative and artistically satisfying.

WSJ: Five Best

This far in, it's obvious what to expect: pickin'-party songs, bar-band basics enlivened by loose, easygoing solos that traverse Western swing and Stardust-era Willie Nelson.

NPR: Weary but Playful, The Little Willies 'Roll On'