Jazz for aficionados

This is interesting so I'd appreciate seeing perspectives from others who listen to jazz from this era.

Within an online discussion today I was surprised to read, "Before and during World War II, jazz was the dominant cultural musical idiom in the U.S., much like hip-hop still is today, albeit in vastly mutated form."

Now "before the war" was even before my time, but in my interest for jazz history I have listened to a bit from that period, along with recordings I heard my dad play.  In my perspective (meaning all I've read and learned) jazz has never been the dominant cultural musical idiom in the US.  In fact it seems to be considered second-rate music by the general public at any point in time.  The period it possibly held the highest regard with the average public was during the 1920s.

My association of the most popular music from the late '30s and during the war was crooners and big bands, like Glen Miller and the Dorsey brothers.  I don't really consider that to be jazz.  Ellington, Basie, and certainly Cab Calloway experienced growing popularity, but not at the level as those others.  But then there was a time when Paul Whiteman was called "The King of Jazz" by some, so definitions can be quite different.

This is an album that hit it out of the park for me. I played this album and reflected on all of the songs in it; especially the songs I had experienced;


          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0wta3xkqJo&list=PLGGHQ-AX44-SShGhZ_zK9E23Q0-DukSaI

Pryso, the closest I came to what you're asking about is when one of my uncles who used to call me at 3:00 AM after he had gotten into the brandy bottle, and wanted to talk until daylight.

One night he called at his usual time and began talking about ancient family history, and just out of the blue asked if I liked Miles Davis. "Sure", I answered. Then he asked me if I wanted to meet Miles. "Of course", that's when he told me that he would call Miles to check his schedule to see when we could come to New York to visit.

I figured that this was just Uncle's brandy talking and didn't follow through. It wasn't till many years later, after I read Miles Autobiography, (both men were dead) that I discovered he was one of Miles good friends, and our visiting Miles would have been just that easy.

When Miles got homesick and wanted to see his friends, he invited them to his home for a week or longer at a time. None of his musician friends were allowed at these gatherings. From what I discovered, that's because he was no longer Miles the celebrity musician at these gatherings (they treated him the same as they treated him and each other when they were all growing up) That was something he didn't want anyone else to see. This Miles was never revealed to the public, he was not that sometime abrasive person that we know as "Miles Davis", but the kind of person you would want to have for your best friend; he was the nice person that we never got to know because nice people got used and abused when they were famous musicians, and he had to maintain a "veneer", that wasn't really him.

Pryso, if its not much trouble for you, I would be very curious to hear more from you about your perspective of state of jazz in general when you were growing up and later.
For non americans such stories from first hand experiences are quite interesting

Thanks o10, I appreciate the insight.  While I've read a couple of bios and watched a few videos on him, I never came away feeling I learned much about the real person.  It seemed he was always maintaining that veneer as you said.