Scott Bradlee’s life was changed by a piece of music. He had been a reluctant piano student who had no use for the minuets and sonatinas his teacher wanted him to learn. Practicing was a chore he found he could dispense with. After two fitful years, he quit taking lessons. But one day he heard a neighbor playing Rhapsody in Blue—this lit a fire under him. He returned to the piano, this time on his own, without a teacher. He forced himself to learn pieces that were beyond him, including, eventually, the Gershwin. Soon he was practicing three or four hours a day; then it would be eight. As he gained proficiency, the piano became for him “a portal to another universe.”

This sonic universe included early jazz-piano styles from ragtime to stride. Bradlee immersed himself in the rags of Scott Joplin and the recordings of Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, and James P. Johnson. Soon his repertoire expanded to include current music popular among his friends. Hoping to impress them, he once boasted that he could take any song they could name and transform it into a piece of jazz. They challenged him with the Notorious B.I.G. rap song “Big Poppa.” In his new book Outside the Jukebox, Bradlee recalls what happened next: