Echoes of Spring

I'm reading James Lincoln Collier's fantastic The Making of Jazz. Collier is both a musician and a journalist so he  really understands the technicalities and  how to communicate them to those with only a smattering of musical knowledge. If you were to read just one book about jazz history this would be the one I recommend. And the great thing is that courtesy of YouTube you can these days instantly find and listen to the music he is talking about. Like Echoes of Spring, a marvelous synthesis of Harlem stride and European art music  written by Willie "the Lion" Smith and first recorded in 1939. We can watch him performing it at almost 70 years of age in Berlin in 1964 (you can ignore the first 25 seconds where he messes around with Ain't Misbehavin').