Filmmaker Ken Burns tells the story of jazz — the quintessential American artwork form. Joe Cocker’s interpretation of the Beatles song With a Little Help from My Mates” is the very best example of this, with the only topping the charts in the UK. Numerous artists have shared their covers or versions of older titles with the viewers at the Montreux Jazz Pageant, in a wide variety of genres ranging from reggae to Brazilian music, and of course jazz.

The goths all seance collectively to the accompaniment of Manson and Ministry; Preppy youngsters rock the Dave Matthews while driving around in their mother and father’ Hummers; skaters thrash to punk rock; and the weirdos collect around outdated jazz information, analyzing the theoretical arcana of the type and deciphering the liner notes as if they are gnomic texts.

Miles Davis, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul and a huge solid of early Seventies musicians integrated these new sounds into their music, and the purists, predictably enough, wailed that “jazz is lifeless.” These guys were grabbing new sounds that they heard round them in an attempt to inject just a little body and soul right into a music that had gone a bit limp …