Just an idea I had that I couldn't let go of b/c of its intriguing appeal:
Prince killed jazz.
Think about it. The case is completely closed on the theory that he killed funk. According to sources I can't recall (and so unfortunately can't cite), record companies discovered that what once took dozen-man supergroups of instrumental virtuosos (like Parliament and the JBs) to produce could all be done by this one man, thanks to improvements in recording technology, and so the funk band went away.
When young "Prince" Rogers Nelson came on the scene in 1978, jazz was gasping polluted air. Younger stars like Herbie Hancock had forsaken the once dominant acoustic sound and went electric. Miles got strung out on dope again, but even before he had gone deeply into the voodoo nightmare midlife crisis that was fusion. Coltrane, Ellington, Basie, and Monk had either died and/or withered away during that period and new blood was sorely needed. Enter a five foot two multi-instrument-playing songwriting genius who melded genders even more convincingly (and much more enticingly) than David Bowie before him. Imagine if Prince had turned his powers loose on a battleplan for making jazz a dance music (rather than a navel gazing exercise) again, focusing on grooves and improvisation moreso than a marketable persona but using that persona (which Miles himself found irresistible and to which he gave an unconditional and ringing endorsement in his autobiography as the future of music), that manic sexual energy he exudes on stage not just on promoting himself but on making jazz (which was even then your grandad's music) young again. This would have been at the exact moment that disco, which had swallowed the falsettos and string arrangements of Philly soul without even so much as chewing and burped itself white (ala the Bee Gees) fell down dead from over exploitation and lack of musical substance. What was R and B in the eighties? Luther Vandross singing over jingle bell-sounding keyboards, at least 'til hip hop came along. And the Minneapolis sound which, as interesting as it was initially, was frigid and overproduced. Forget Purple Rain and gerry curls and New Romantic-inspired ruffled shirts. Forget latter day Prince's perpetual impending "renaissance." Have you ever listened to Under the Cherry Moon? Have you ever seen the Sign o' the Times live performances? The One Night Alone sets? Just as the injection of such a talent could have catalyzed jazz into a new Golden (or at the very least a degraded Bronze-modern) age by inspiring his contemporaries in the (jazz) genre to greater heights, this abdication which spiraled him into a lesser orbit (the Prince/Madonna/Michael Jackson 80s MTV kitschy triptych) spelled disaster, and not just for this one musician's ability to live up to his own righteous destiny.
Whether or not jazz survived the loss (yes, it did, but just barely) is beside the point. History is certainly what was which led to what is, but just as important is what wasn't but could have been. These sorts of gaps, this sort of "idle speculation" has intrinsic value that is every ounce a part of the narrative and the drama of any art form.
So for a moment, imagine with me an alternate universe where the spokesman for jazz is not the relatively bloodless Wynton Marsalis, but instead a pint-sized light skinned sonic Moses who led his brethren from captivity in a introverted barren classicist desert into a living, pelvically-gyrating promised land, where Cab Calloway and James Brown prepared a house for us all. It's easy if you try.
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