Why is "Sonny's Blues" a good and effective story?

James Baldwin's story "Sonny's Blues" is a good story in part because it has multiple themes involving fraternal relationships, forgiveness, second chances, life choices, what it means to be an artist, and the positive and negative aspects of growing up in an urban area.
It is also an effective story because it spoke to the African American experience in America in the late 1950s, a time when our country's literature was far less represented by African American voices.
Baldwin is particularly effective in describing both the experience of watching jazz musicians playing together and the transcendent experience of the listener who immerses himself in the artistry of jazz improvisation. The narrator hears suggestions of struggle, memories, lamentation, and, ultimately, triumph in Sonny's playing and captures the zeitgeist of late 1950s jazz scene in New York.