Many jazz musicians from different generations have written autobiographies. This study argues that these texts are not only interesting musicological documents, but are equally relevant from a literary as well as a cultural-political perspective. As musicians’ textual reconstructions of their lives are indicative of a politics of jazz, they provide insights into the meaning of jazz in American culture. As the author’s reading of the self-narratives of Louis Armstrong, Art Pepper, and Oscar Peterson reveals, the jazz lives represented therein range from affirmation of the values of American national culture to resistance against them.