The focus of this study is the melodic motive. It uses a tool called the Ordered Step Motive (OSM) to investigate the way linear motives give shape to jazz compositions that have frequently changing tonal centers, nonfunctional chord connections, no…

Just weeks before his death in the summer of 1931, Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke wrote to his parents that he was planning to marry a young lady named Alice O’Connell, mother’s maiden name Weiss. For years, aficionados and historians searched for…