A happier story with a musical genius

I have reached the year 1968 in James Gavin's "Deep in a Dream: The Long Night of Chet Baker," and the tale of the former "golden boy" trumpeter seems hopelessly bleak.
Baker is back in Los Angeles after a prison term in Italy and is reduced to breaking into second-story windows to hunt for drug money.
I wanted something a bit cheerier to think about while walking on the treadmill just now, so I listened to some early DUKE ELLINGTON on the iPod.
People call Ellington a musical genius all the time, and he routinely broke the so-called musical rules to make great music. In "Mood Indigo," for example, Ellington famously assigned the trombone the high notes and the clarinet the low to create the sound he was seeking.
Ellington also had the genius quality of selecting and surrounding himself with the best-possible collaborators (rather like Orson Welles in film).
In "Black and Tan Fantasie," Ellington orchestra member Bubber Miley steals the show with possibly the greatest plunger-mute trumpet solo ever recorded. It sounds like singing.
It is an incredible sound in a remarkable song, and listening to it gave me respite from increasingly harrowing story of Chet Baker. Notice how I didn't mention how Miley met his own, self-destructive demise thanks to substance abuse?
Jazz seems like the music most drenched in tragedy.