All that jazz.

• Position: Entertainment - "Jazz Singers" exhibition

RARE VIDEO clips, photographic portraits, candid snapshots, musical scores, personal notes, correspondence, drawings, and watercolors will reveal the sometimes exuberant, sometimes painful--but always vibrant--art and life of jazz singers. The materials for the exhibition "Jazz Singers" are drawn mainly from the Library of Congress Music Division's collections, including the photographs of William P. Gottlieb and the papers of Max Roach, Chet Baker, and Shirley Horn. Additional items are from the Library's Prints and Photographs Division; Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division; and American Folk-life Center.

Jazz singers interpret a wide range of material, including torch songs, novelty and dance tunes, and standards borrowed from film, Broadway shows, Tm Pan Alley, the blues, and other genres. They might reinvent or transform these pieces by using idiomatic approaches to times and syncopation. In the last few decades, more and more jazz singers are writing original material.

Exhibition highlights include a letter from Jelly Roll Morton to Alan Lomax; a Chet Baker suicide note; a rarely seen Romare Bearden sketch; a handwritten letter from Mary Lou Williams to Carmen McRae suggesting songs she might like to record; a...