Many people don’t realize that novelist Ralph Ellison was first an accomplished trumpeter and a student of musical composition, especially jazz.  He developed his love of music during his childhood in Oklahoma City, a bastion of Southwestern jazz in the 1920s and 1930s and the home of Jimmy Rushing, Charlie Christian, and the famous Blue Devils. As a young man, he lived with music, listening to it, analyzing it, and mingling with performers in the hopes of becoming one himself. Jazz influenced both Ellison’s thinking and writing.  Below is a sampling of some of the music that inspired him and now inspires the sound design for the stage production of Invisible Man.