By the time Coleman Hawkins recorded Body and Soul in October 1939, jazz had been around for at least a generation, evolving into the swing and stomp of the Big Bands from the ragtime and blues of its roots, with these themselves rooted in the call-and-response of spirituals and work songs of a previous era. But this one recording was in itself a quantum jump, as it was unprecedented in the way the song itself was so quickly and completely subsumed by the free-form innovation of the saxophonist to the point of total and unrecognizable abandonment. Soloists had riffed and improvised for decades . . . hell, for centuries even . . . yet none had dared to go so many steps beyond before. This one recording was the seed of what we know as jazz today, leading directly to Bird and Miles and onward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUFg6HvljDE
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