In Steven Spielberg’s 2004 film The Terminal, Tom Hanks plays a man stranded in an airport seeking one final autograph from the 1958 photograph A Great Day in Harlem. The musician he is chasing is real and appears as himself: Benny Golson. This episode traces Golson’s 95-year life from a Depression-era Philadelphia childhood raised by a seamstress mother, through classical piano dreams shattered by hearing Arnett Cobb’s tenor saxophone at 14, to a high school scene that included John Coltrane, the Heath brothers, Philly Joe Jones, and Red Garland.

We look at how arranger Tadd Dameron taught him to voice chords and build sonic landscapes, the death of Clifford Brown that produced I Remember Clifford, the string of standards from Stablemates to Killer Joe that made him the architect of hard bop, and the Jazztet he co-led with Art Farmer. Then we follow his 12-year disappearance into Hollywood, writing for M*A*S*H, Mission: Impossible, Mannix, and The Partridge Family, and his return in the 1970s with a more avant-garde sound before honors including the NEA Jazz Masters Award and Grammy Trustees Award.

• What voicing a chord means, explained through building a house
• Bebop versus hard bop and how Golson wrapped classical harmony in blues and gospel groove
• Why the 1960s rock explosion and a growing family pushed him toward studio work
• How a Jehovah’s Witness faith and a nine-to-five routine offered stability
• Reinventing his saxophone sound in his late 40s and the album Terminal One