> Yeah, that's what blows my mind: it's like listening to a baroque sinfonia concertante, only it's jazz. The Armstrong/Holiday link is pretty clear.
>From our contemporary vantage point, we forget how pervasive "classical" music was in popular culture.
>From Scott Joplin on, there was a whole strain of african-american musical figures that aspired to write classical forms, Duke Ellington being the best-known example. But also shared by George Gershwin and _Porgy and Bess_ which he conceived as an opera, not a musical.
Then, of course, you have Carl Stalling murderin' the classics in the Merrie Melodies cartoons of the time. Wouldn't have been so funny if the culture wasn't filled with it, no?