Introduction
This site details one man’s bootstrap business from his basement in New Albany, Indiana that grew into a world-renowned jazz education and improvisation staple musicians and educators rely on today.
Since Jamey Aebersold introduced the first Aebersold Play-A-Long book and LP in 1967, generations of jazz musicians and students can improvise at home or in the practice studio “backed” by an all-star roster of session musicians, including pianists Cedar Walton, Kenny Barron, and Mulgrew Miller; bassists Rufus Reid and Ron Carter; and drummers Adam Nussbaum, Steve Davis, and Akira Tana.
Based on his belief that “anyone can improvise,” Aebersold launched the business with a $500 loan from his parents, and a tiny classified ad in DownBeat.
A half-century later, 133 Aebersold Play-A-Long volumes (now available as CDs and streaming online) have sold over five million copies worldwide.
A recipient of countless awards and honors, Aebersold received the Jazz Master award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 2014 for his contributions to jazz pedagogy.
Aebersold’s recollections about his jazz education philosophy and approach are in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution’s Jazz Oral History Program.
“There’s not a second that goes by every day that somebody around the world isn’t playing with an Aebersold Play-A-Long.”
- Jamey Aebersold, jazz musician, entrepreneur and educator
About
Like any good composition, this collaborative creative endeavor consists of a jazz musician and educator—the music—and a writer—the words—who also are partners in life.
We approached Jamey Aebersold with the idea of highlighting the remarkable story of his business dedicated to providing generations of jazz students, educators, and musicians with practical theory and principles of jazz improvisation in American jazz and popular music.
This website is the culmination of months of interviews with Aebersold and other musicians and jazz educators who have been involved in the recordings and have used Aebersold Play-A-Longs in their own practice and teaching.
“If you have to ask what jazz is, you’ll never know.”
- Louis Armstrong
Tom Ervin
Tom Ervin was Professor of Trombone at the University of Arizona for 36 years and founded its Jazz Studies Program. Equally at home in jazz and classical realms, he was Principal Trombonist in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra for 28 years.
He is a past president of the International Trombone Association and was an active jazz player and clinician.
Tom is the author of the widely used books Rangebuilding on the Trombone and Twenty Counterparts, which are duet accompaniments to the Bordogni-Rochut Melodious Etudes. He also has published Sixty Counterparts to accompany the Voxman Selected Studies for Trombone.
Jodi Goalstone
Jodi Goalstone is a Tucson-based business writer/editor who specializes in researching/writing profiles of business executives in a variety of fields.
Earlier In her career in New York City, she was involved in communications for and about the radio industry on the station, market, and network levels. She was Director of Publicity for the ABC Radio Networks and was communications counsel to the New York Market Radio Broadcasters Association, WNEW-AM (the home of the “Make Believe Ballroom”), and WKTU-FM at the time of its transition to an all-disco format in 1978.
