In postwar America, an epidemic of heroin addiction swept the world of jazz. Greats who developed a habit included John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. Nowadays, jazz has an ambivalent reputation as “America’s classical music.” Americans under 40 are likely to consider it PBS stuff that not even their parents listened to—their grandparents, maybe. In the early postwar years, jazz had a different reputation. The music defined the counterculture, an identity powerfully reinforced by its association with heroin.
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