I think it reached its peak shortly after it became completely removed from pop and more "highbrow". At the same time, it wasn't regarded as highbrow by the classical establishment so there was a struggle for legitimacy from the highbrow-perspective by people whose roots lie in the time when jazz was "pop" whereas the doors to the mainstream were closed unless there was blatant compromise; there's a tension there that disappeared when the music became almost strictly "music school"-student.

Note though that the first decades for jazz were *strictly* singles and regular albums didn't become common until the mid-50's; in the early years of vinyl, jazz primarily came out as 10" records so it wasn't really album oriented in modern terms but rather EP oriented.

Still, the switch from 78"s to vinyl had a *massive* change on the nature of the music due to the length of the songs; one could argue that the music carried more urgency when they had to pack all the solos, heads and shit into a 3-minute form but the downside are those fucking "standards"-progressions...