National Endowment for the Arts

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20506-0001

202.682.5400
The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 

1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the 

NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, 

creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. 

The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, 

local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector.

All NEA Jazz Masters concert photos on inside covers by Tom Pich, 

except top left of back inside by Vance Jacobs.
National Endowmentfor the Arts

1982–2012
Credits

This publication is published by:

National Endowment for the Arts

Office of Public Affairs

Jamie Bennett, Director

Don Ball, Editor

Thanks to Paulette Beete, Rebecca Gross, and Katja von 

Schuttenbach for editorial assistance.

Designed by:

Fletcher Design, Inc./Washington, DC

In addition to information provided by the artists, the 

following reference texts were used in researching 

biographical information of the NEA Jazz Masters:

All Music Guide to Jazz by Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris 

Woodstra, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Backbeat 

Books (allmusic.com)

American Musicians II by Whitney Balliett, Oxford 

University Press

Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz by Leonard Feather 

and Ira Gitler, Oxford University Press

Four Jazz Lives by A.B. Spellman, University of 

Michigan Press 

Jazz: The Rough Guide by Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, 

and Brian Priestley, Rough Guides

Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 4th Edition by Richard Cook 

and Brian Morton, Penguin

Talking Jazz: An Oral History by Ben Sidran, Da Capo Press

January 2012

Voice/TYY: (202) 682-5496

For individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Individuals who do not use conventional print may contact 

the Arts Endowment’s Office for AccessAbility to obtain 

this publication in an alternate format. Telephone: (202) 

682-5532

National Endowment for the Arts

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20506-0001

(202) 682-5400

Additional copies of this publication can be obtained for free 

by contacting the NEA website: arts.gov. 

This publication was printed on recycled paper.

Cover Photos:

1. George Wein at the 2008 announcement of that year’s NEA 

Jazz Masters at Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York City. 

Photo by Tom Pich

2. Percy Heath on bass and Clark Terry on trumpet and 

flugelhorn at the 2004 NEA Jazz Masters concert. 

Photo by Tom Pich

3. Nancy Wilson performing at the 2007 NEA Jazz Masters 

concert. Photo by Tom Pich

4. Toots Thielemans performing at his awards ceremony in 

2009. Photo by Tom Pich

5. Danny Barker playing at his awards ceremony in 1991. 

Photo by Michael Wilderman

6. Tom McIntosh on trombone with the JALC Orchestra at the 

2009 NEA Jazz Masters concert. Photo by Tom Pich

7. Jimmy Heath (right) enjoys Slide Hampton’s playing at 

the 2007 NEA Jazz Masters concert. Photo by Tom Pich

8. Billy Taylor performing at the 2005 concert in California. 

Photo by Vance Jacobs

9. Chico Hamilton also performed at the 2005 concert. 

Photo by Vance Jacobs

10. Yusef Lateef (right) peforming at his induction into the 

NEA Jazz Masters in 2010, with Adam Rudolph. 

Photo by Tom Pich

11. Dave Brubeck at the 2004 awards concert in New York City. 

Photo by Tom Pich

12. For the 2006 concert finale, NEA Jazz Masters (from left) 

Jimmy Heath, Chick Corea, Paquito D’Rivera, and James 

Moody took to the stage. Photo by Tom Pich

13. Hubert Laws performs during his awards concert in 2011. 

Photo by Frank Stewart

14. Gerald Wilson (left) leads his orchestra during the 2005 

NEA Jazz Masters concert. Photo by Vance Jacobs

15. The Marsalis family performs during their awards 

ceremony in 2011. Photo by Frank Stewart

16. Joe Wilder blows his trumpet during the 2008 NEA Jazz 

Masters concert. Photo by Tom Pich

17. David Liebman shows his prowess on the soprano 

saxophone during the 2011 concert. Photo by Frank Stewart

18. John Levy accepts his NEA Jazz Masters award for 

advocacy in 2006. Photo by Tom Pich

19. Lee Konitz performs at his awards ceremony in 2009. 

Photo by Tom Pich

20. Shirley Horn plays during the 1991 NEA Jazz Masters 

awards ceremony and concert. Photo by Michael Wilderman
iii

A Message from 

the Chairman

J

azz is an unpredictable art form. It is in 

the spontaneity, in the improvisation, that 

the listener and musician meet. It is that 

moment where the audience and performer 

communicate—talk, shout, laugh, gossip. 

It is that moment of beauty, that moment of 

clarity, which we wish to honor with the NEA Jazz 

Masters awards.

These awards, the highest honor the federal 

government provides in jazz, are given to those 

musicians and advocates who have had a significant 

impact on the field. Certainly this year’s class—Jack 

DeJohnette, Von Freeman, Charlie Haden, Sheila Jordan, 

and Jimmy Owens—live up to that high standard. 

Because jazz is best experienced live, the agency 

supports the NEA Jazz Masters Live initiative—

administered in partnership with Arts Midwest—which 

provides grants to presenting organizations to support 

NEA Jazz Masters’ appearances throughout the country. 

In addition to making these legends better known 

to the general public, the initiative also includes 

an educational component that provides special 

programming to increase understanding of the music 

and its key practitioners.

NEA Jazz in the Schools, in partnership with 

Jazz at Lincoln Center and supported by the Verizon 

Foundation, is an online curriculum that provides 

resources to high school teachers to explore jazz as 

an art form and a means to understanding United 

States history. 

The Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program, 

established in 1992 by the National History of 

American History, partners with the NEA to produce 

comprehensive interviews with NEA Jazz Masters. The 

interviews, which cover the musicians’ entire lives and 

careers, are fascinating source material for researchers 

and the general public alike to learn more about these 

important American artists. 

In the back of this publication, you will find a 

CD containing samples from the NEA-produced Jazz 

Moments series, radio shorts featuring NEA Jazz Masters. 

These segments have been broadcast on stations 

throughout the country to further the general public’s 

knowledge about and interest in jazz. All the Jazz 

Moments radio segments are available for free download 

at arts.gov and through iTunes U.

I would like to thank our partner in bringing the 

NEA Jazz Masters awards ceremony and concert to you: 

Jazz at Lincoln Center, which will also be streaming the 

event live. 

Please join me in honoring the 2012 NEA Jazz 

Masters for their work in the jazz field and their 

contributions to the nation’s cultural heritage.

Rocco Landesman

Chairman

National Endowment for the Arts

Chairman Rocco Landesman greets 2010 NEA Jazz 

Master Annie Ross at the luncheon in New York City. 

Photo by Tom Pich

v

Table of 

Contents

Muhal Richard Abrams (2010)........ 14

Toshiko Akiyoshi (2007)................ 15

George Avakian (2010).................. 16

David Baker (2000)....................... 17

Danny Barker (1991)..................... 18

Ray Barretto (2006)...................... 19

Kenny Barron (2010)..................... 20

Count Basie (1983) ....................... 21

Louie Bellson (1994)..................... 22

Tony Bennett (2006)..................... 23

George Benson (2009)................... 24

Art Blakey (1988)......................... 25

Bob Brookmeyer (2006)................. 26

Cleo Brown (1987)........................ 27

Ray Brown (1995)......................... 28

Dave Brubeck (1999) .................... 29

Kenny Burrell (2005)..................... 30

Donald Byrd (2000)....................... 31

Candido Camero (2008)................. 32

Benny Carter (1986) ..................... 33

Betty Carter (1992) ...................... 34

Ron Carter (1998) ........................ 35

Kenny Clarke (1983) ..................... 36

Buck Clayton (1991)..................... 37

Jimmy Cobb (2009)....................... 38

Ornette Coleman (1984) ............... 39

Chick Corea (2006)........................ 40

Miles Davis (1984) ........................ 41

Buddy DeFranco (2006)................. 42

Dorothy Donegan (1992)............... 43

Paquito D’Rivera (2005)................. 44

Sweets Edison (1992).................... 45

Roy Eldridge (1982) ......................46

Gil Evans (1985) ........................... 47

Art Farmer (1999) ........................ 48

Ella Fitzgerald (1985) ................... 49

Tommy Flanagan (1996) ............... 50

Frank Foster (2002)....................... 51

Curtis Fuller (2007)....................... 52

Dizzy Gillespie (1982) ................... 53

Benny Golson (1996)..................... 54

Dexter Gordon (1986) ................... 55

Jim Hall (2004) ............................ 56

Chico Hamilton (2004) ................. 57

Lionel Hampton (1988)................. 58

Slide Hampton (2005) .................. 59

Herbie Hancock (2004) ................. 60

Barry Harris (1989)....................... 61

Roy Haynes (1995) .......................62

Jimmy Heath (2003)..................... 63

Percy Heath (2002)....................... 64

Joe Henderson (1999) .................. 65

Luther Henderson (2004) ............. 66

Jon Hendricks (1993) ................... 67

Nat Hentoff (2004) ....................... 68

Billy Higgins (1997) ..................... 69

Andrew Hill (2008)....................... 70

Milt Hinton (1993) ....................... 71

Bill Holman (2010) ....................... 72

Shirley Horn (2005) ..................... 73

Freddie Hubbard (2006)................. 74

Bobby Hutcherson (2010).............. 75

Milt Jackson (1997) ..................... 76

Ahmad Jamal (1994) .................... 77

J.J. Johnson (1996) ..................... 78

Elvin Jones (2003) ....................... 79

Hank Jones (1989) ....................... 80

Jo Jones (1985) ........................... 81

Quincy Jones (2008)..................... 82

Orrin Keepnews (2011).................. 83

Andy Kirk (1991).......................... 84

Lee Konitz (2009)......................... 85

The NEA Jazz Masters at 30 by Dan Morgenstern...............................................................................1

2012 NEA Jazz Masters.................................................................................................7

Jack DeJohnette n Von Freeman n Charlie Haden n Sheila Jordan n Jimmy Owens

NEA Jazz Masters 1982–2011 

(Year Fellowship Awarded)
vi

Yusef Lateef (2010)....................... 86

Hubert Laws (2011) ...................... 87

John Levy (2006).......................... 88

John Lewis (2001) ....................... 89

Ramsey Lewis (2007)..................... 90

David Liebman (2011)................... 91

Abbey Lincoln (2003) ................... 92

Melba Liston (1987)...................... 93

Johnny Mandel (2011).................. 94

The Marsalis Family (2011)............ 95

Tom McIntosh (2008).................... 96

Jackie McLean (2001) ................... 97

Marian McPartland (2000) ............ 98

Carmen McRae (1994) ................... 99

Jay McShann (1987)................... 100

James Moody (1998) .................. 101

Dan Morgenstern (2007).............. 102

Anita O’Day (1997) ..................... 103

Max Roach (1984)....................... 104

Sonny Rollins (1983) .................. 105

Annie Ross (2010) ...................... 106

George Russell (1990) ................. 107

Gunther Schuller (2008).............. 108

Jimmy Scott (2007).................... 109

Artie Shaw (2005) ...................... 110

Wayne Shorter (1998) ................ 111

Horace Silver (1995) ................... 112

Jimmy Smith (2005) .................. 113

Sun Ra (1982) ............................ 114

Billy Taylor (1988) ..................... 115

Cecil Taylor (1990) ..................... 116

Clark Terry (1991) ...................... 117

Toots Thielemans (2009) ............. 118

McCoy Tyner (2002).................... 119

Rudy Van Gelder (2009)............... 120

Sarah Vaughan (1989) ................ 121

Cedar Walton (2010) ................... 122

George Wein (2005) .................... 123

Frank Wess (2007) ...................... 124

Randy Weston (2001).................. 125

Joe Wilder (2008) ....................... 126

Joe Williams (1993) ................... 127

Gerald Wilson (1990)................... 128

Nancy Wilson (2004) .................. 129

Teddy Wilson (1986) .................. 130

Phil Woods (2007)....................... 131

Snooky Young (2009).................. 132

NEA Jazz Masters by Year............................................................................................................133

NEA Jazz Masters Award Ceremony...............................................................................................134

Jazz Moments with NEA Jazz Masters Audio CD ............................................................................136
1

When the National Endowment 

for the Arts was established in 

1965, it was cause for rejoicing 

among artists and their supporters 

throughout the land, including, of 

course, practitioners of that quintessentially American 

music called jazz. But when it came to partaking of 

the pie, jazz was not invited to the table. (When it was 

brought up at an early music panel meeting, a then 

noted classical composer’s response, it is said, was 

“Jazz? Why, that’s music played in nightclubs!”)

But in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson named 

Duke Ellington to the National Council on the Arts, and 

then—during the waning days of Roger Stevens’ tenure 

as NEA chairman—added Willis Conover. Conover’s Voice 

of America (VOA) radio program Music U.S.A.—which 

focused on jazz—had long been the most popular VOA 

product, and he had become a master of behind-thescenes lobbying for jazz in the nation’s capital. Conover 

arranged for a New York lunch with Stevens and a few 

representative jazz figures. The result was the first NEA 

funding for jazz, a mere $5,000. It was, however, put to 

good use by the lunchers plus a few others, who met ad 

hoc with Walter Anderson, the NEA’s second director of 

Music, and decided that instead of parceling the funds 

out in small doses, it would be more effective to award 

the entire sum to one person—the composer, pianist, 

and theoretician George Russell (who would be named 

an NEA Jazz Master 21 years later). The award was wellpublicized in the jazz world, where such recognition, 

even from less auspicious sources, was still quite 

uncommon.

In 1970, the Arts Endowment and jazz began a more 

formal relationship. A proper jazz panel was appointed, 

and the funding was quadrupled (still not a kingly 

NEA 

JaZZ MaSTERS

aT 30

By Dan Morgenstern

Dan Morgenstern receiving his NEA Jazz Masters award at 

the 2007 ceremony. 

Photo by Tom Pich
2

sum, but overall NEA funding was quite modest at the 

time). Things would improve considerably under the 

new chair, the redoubtable Nancy Hanks (for whom the 

Arts Endowment’s home is named), and the benign, 

even fatherly direction of Anderson, who revealed to 

the panelists—in the first decade, a mixture of notable 

musicians, music educators, members of the media, 

and advocates, among them several who would later 

be named NEA Jazz Masters—some of the intricacies 

of their responsibilities, such as learning to think in 

regional rather than local terms. Although from a 

classical background (a pianist and organist who came 

to the NEA after many years as head of Antioch College’s 

music department), Anderson was very open to jazz and 

by the end of his eight years with the panel had become 

quite a fan.

It was soon evident that older musicians were not 

likely to apply for the fellowships in jazz offered by the 

program, or for other kinds of grants involving further 

study or teaching. In 1972, a Jazz Oral History Project 

involving musicians aged 60 or older was established 

in collaboration with the Smithsonian Institution, 

which itself just the year before had introduced jazz to 

its performance program. During its decade-long run, 

the project yielded 120 in-depth interviews, widely 

consulted by scholars and media people. It was later 

revived and is currently charged with interviewing NEA 

Jazz Masters.

In a sense, the oral history project was the precursor 

of the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships, which had their 

origin in a 1980 position paper by Aida Chapman, 

then assistant director of Music at the NEA. The 

paper presented various ideas for honoring the jazz 

field, including a Hall of Fame. The result, in 1982, 

was what was first called the American Jazz Masters 

Fellowships, which, aside from the honor, also included 

an honorarium of $20,000. The latter was most welcome 

to the eldest of the first three NEA Jazz Masters, Roy 

Eldridge, the seminal trumpeter, singer, and bandleader, 

born in 1911, who had suffered a heart attack in 1980 

and was under doctor’s orders not to play his beloved 

horn any more. This illustrated the dual nature of what 

rightly has come to be known as “The Nation’s Highest 

Honor in Jazz.” It is both a recognition of outstanding 

achievement and—though this is fortunately no 

longer as relevant as during the program’s earlier 

days—a reminder that even great artists are not always 

adequately rewarded in the marketplace.

That first triumvirate of NEA Jazz Masters was an 

NEA Jazz Masters Sonny Rollins, Hank Jones, and Dizzy 

Gillespie at a 1987 rehearsal at Wolf Trap in Virginia.

Photo by Michael Wilderman

NEA 

JaZZ MaSTERS

aT 30
3

impressive beginning, for it made clear that the honor 

would be awarded on the basis of merit alone, and 

not influenced by popularity or limited artistic vision. 

The combination of Roy Eldridge and Dizzy Gillespie 

illuminated the generational connectivity of the 

music—Eldridge being the greatest formative influence 

on Gillespie, who asked an early leader to time the 

band’s sets to fit the intermissions in a manner enabling 

him to catch Eldridge on the radio. They later became 

good friends and loved to play together. If Eldridge was 

the essence of swing trumpet, Gillespie was a key creator 

of bebop. The third man, Sun Ra, represented the avantgarde, though this unique Arkestra leader was in effect 

unclassifiable, as a musician and guru.

It is fitting that this first crop of NEA Jazz 

Masters was selected by a panel representative of a 

gradually emerging majority of musicians: a quartet 

of saxophonists, Frank Foster, Chico Freeman, Jackie 

McLean, and Archie Shepp; trumpeter Donald Byrd; 

and record producer Orrin Keepnews—the latter 

famed for his championing of Thelonious Monk, who 

would have been among the first recipients, but 

unfortunately died before the announcement. (There 

are no posthumous awards.)

NEA Jazz Masters Paquito D’Rivera (standing) and Joe Wilder (seated) relaxing between events. 

Photo by Tom Pich
4

The program continued in that same spirit, 

recognizing both iconic figures such as Count Basie, 

Benny Carter, Teddy Wilson, Dave Brubeck, and Milt 

Hinton (who himself had been a very active early 

panelist; the great Benny Carter also served) and thenstill-controversial innovators like Ornette Coleman and 

Cecil Taylor. Great ladies of song (Ella Fitzgerald—the 

first female artist recognized, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen 

McRae, Anita O’Day, Shirley Horn, Annie Ross, and the 

younger Betty Carter, Abbey Lincoln, and Nancy Wilson) 

were inducted; but there was also a place for women 

instrumentalists Melba Liston, Marian McPartland, and 

Toshiko Akiyoshi. The latter is among the foreignborn NEA Jazz Masters (U.S. citizenship or permanent 

residency is required), which also include Toots 

Thielemans and two Cuban-born greats, Candido Camero 

and Paquito D’Rivera.

For the first 22 years of NEA Jazz Masters, 

induction was of course a great honor, but not a public 

one (though often recognized during International 

Association of Jazz Educators (IAJE) conferences since 

1991). But beginning in 2004, Chairman Dana Gioia 

introduced the public era of the program with earlier 

honorees and the media invited, and the first group 

photo produced. In that same year, the chairman 

expanded the number of inductees from three to five, 

and introduced a new category—that of Jazz Advocacy, 

with veteran writer and producer Nat Hentoff as the 

first recipient—for a total of six awards. The following 

year, there were seven recipients, the Jazz Advocacy 

Fellowship was named in honor of A.B. Spellman, poet, 

jazz writer, and former NEA deputy chairman, and the 

ceremony expanded to include a hosted luncheon, a 

panel of the year’s inductees, and a concert, at which 

the incoming NEA Jazz Masters were introduced by 

fellow awardees and performed (or had their music 

performed), with the introductions including specially 

produced biographical documentaries. All but the 

luncheon were open to the public, and produced in 

collaboration with the late, lamented International 

Association of Jazz Educators.

Following the last IAJE event in Toronto in 2008, the 

NEA Jazz Masters ceremony was held in New York City 

with a new partner for the public events, Jazz at Lincoln 

Center, while BMI hosted the luncheon. By then, the 

number of alumni in attendance had grown, and there 

was added a “social” evening for alumni, family, and 

friends at Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

But in addition to such happy social overtones, the 

NEA Jazz Masters program had been reaching out in 

other exponential ways (aside from raising the monetary 

award to $25,000 in 2004). There was now the NEA Jazz 

Masters on Tour program, and, in conjunction with Jazz 

at Lincoln Center, an NEA Jazz in the Schools curriculum 

NEA Jazz Master Cecil Taylor (left) with poet (and former 

NEA deputy chairman) A.B. Spellman at the NEA Jazz 

Masters luncheon. 

Photo by Tom Pich

NEA 

JaZZ MaSTERS

aT 30
5

was created, celebrating the jazz story in a format 

suitable not only for music classes, but also for civics, 

social studies, and history, all of which the story of this 

great music illuminates. In 2005, another innovation 

was a partnership with National Public Radio for a series 

of 14 hour-long documentaries profiling honorees. And 

2006 brought the Legends of Jazz telecasts of that year’s 

NEA Jazz Masters. In 2008, the number of NEA Jazz 

Masters reached 100.

Under current NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman, the 

class of 2010 expanded to eight, while the following 

year’s inductees included the entire Marsalis jazz family, 

father Ellis and sons Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and 

Jason, joining Hubert Laws, David Liebman, Johnny 

Mandel, and advocate Orrin Keepnews. (It should be 

noted that only Ellis Marsalis received the $25,000.) 

Again, the turnout of alumni and friends was grand, 

with only the posing for the official photograph a 

NEA Jazz Masters Tom McIntosh (left) and George Benson at an NEA Jazz Masters reception at Jazz at Lincoln Center 

in 2009. 

Photo by Tom Pich
6

long-established cause for grumbling, and occasion for 

mollifying jokes, at which David Baker is a past master.

At this writing, it appears that the turnout 

of alumni for the 30th anniversary party will be 

spectacular, though our oldest member, John Levy, 

class of ’06, who will turn 100 come April 12, may not 

venture from Los Angeles to chilly New York. Counting 

the incoming crop, the total number of NEA Jazz 

Masters has reached 128, of whom 73 are still among the 

living. Back in the Age of Aquarius the slogan was that 

you can’t trust anyone over 30. That definitely does not 

apply to the NEA Jazz Masters program. To this honoree, 

it has been one of the most rewarding life experiences. 

This will surely be a celebration to remember—thank 

you, L.B.J.!

Dan Morgenstern is a jazz historian, archivist, author, editor, and 

director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University...and 

NEA Jazz Master. His full biography is found on page 102. 

NEA 

JaZZ MaSTERS

aT 30

The first NEA Jazz Masters group photo in 2004 with Chairman Dana Gioia (far right). 

Photo by Tom Pich
Photo by Lee Tanner 7

2012 NEA jazz masters

 2012 NEA Jazz Master Charlie Haden (right) 

with trumpeter Nicholas Payton.

NOTES:

Names in bold in biographies denote NEA Jazz Masters awardees.

All recordings listed in Selected Discography are under the 

artist’s name unless otherwise noted.

Years listed under recordings in Selected Discography denote 

the years the recordings were made.

Jack DeJohnette

Von Freeman

Charlie Haden

Sheila Jordan

Jimmy Owens
8

Selected Discography

The

DeJohnette

Complex

Milestone/OJC, 1968

Special 

Edition

ECM, 1979

The Jack 

DeJohnette

Piano Album

Landmark, 1985

Keith Jarrett/Gary 

Peacock/Jack DeJohnette

My Foolish

Heart

ECM, 2001

Music We Are

Golden Beams, 2008

Drummer 

Keyboardist

Composer

Born August 9, 1942 in Chicago, IL

Widely regarded as one of the great 

drummers in modern jazz, Jack 

DeJohnette has a wide-ranging 

style that makes him a dynamic 

sideman and bandleader. He has 

played with virtually every major jazz figure from the 

1960s on, including NEA Jazz Masters Miles Davis, 

Herbie Hancock, Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, 

and Abbey Lincoln. His versatility on the drums is 

accented by DeJohnette’s additional accomplishments 

as a keyboardist: he studied classical piano for ten 

years before taking up drums. 

In his early years on the Chicago scene, DeJohnette 

was active with the premiere musician organization, the 

Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, 

whose members included Muhal Richard Abrams, 

Roscoe Mitchell, and Joseph Jarman. In 1966, he 

drummed alongside Rashied Ali in the John Coltrane 

Quintet. However, he became more widely known as a 

member of Charles Lloyd’s band, where he first began 

playing with pianist Keith Jarrett. In 1968, he recorded 

his first album as a leader, The DeJohnette Complex, on 

which DeJohnette doubled on melodica. 

The second major association of DeJohnette’s early 

career spanned the years 1969-72, when he performed 

with Miles Davis’ first fusion band. Davis gave a nod 

to DeJohnette in his 

autobiography, Miles: 

“Jack DeJohnette gave 

me a deep groove that I 

just loved to play over.” 

Besides allowing him 

to play alongside such 

stellar musicians as Dave 

Holland, Chick Corea, 

and John McLaughlin, 

the Davis years also 

increased DeJohnette’s 

session work. 

DeJohnette began 

leading several groups in 

the early 1970s, including 

Jack

Dejohnette

2012

Compost, Directions, New Directions, and Special Edition, 

featuring a diverse gathering of musicians such as David 

Murray, Eddie Gomez, Chico Freeman, John Abercrombie, 

and Lester Bowie. Since the 1980s, while continuing to 

lead his own projects and bands, DeJohnette has also 

been a member of the highly acclaimed Keith Jarrett/

Gary Peacock/Jack DeJohnette trio. DeJohnette has 

continued to record and perform on keyboards, releasing 

albums such as Zebra, a mesmerizing synthesizer/

trumpet duo with Lester Bowie featuring African music 

influences. He further explored his interest in African 

music in a 2005 duet with noted Gambian kora player 

Foday Musa Suso. 

In 2005, DeJohnette launched Golden Beams 

Productions, an independent record label “as an outlet 

for the broad range of creative projects.” The label 

garnered DeJohnette a Grammy Award for Peace Time, 

on which he is both featured artist and co-producer. He 

has composed soundtracks for both television and video, 

and has received numerous awards including the French 

Grand Prix du Disque in 1979. In 1991, he was awarded 

an honorary doctorate of music from the Berklee 

College of Music. DeJohnette is the winner of numerous 

DownBeat magazine “Drummer of the Year” critics’ and 

readers’ polls, and JazzTimes magazine’s reader polls for 

“Best Drummer.” 

Photo by michael wilderman
9

Selected Discography

Doin’ It 

Right Now

Koch, 1972

Live at the

Blue Note: 

75th Birthday 

Celebration

Half Note Records, 1998

Von Freeman/Frank Catalano

You Talkin’ 

To Me?!

Delmark, 1999

Vonski Speaks 

Nessa, 2002

The Great 

Divide

Premonition, 2003

Born October 3, 1923 in Chicago, IL

Saxophonist

Von

Freeman

2012

A

lthough not as wellknown outside the 

Windy City as he 

should be, Earle 

 Lavon “Von” 

Freeman, Sr. is considered a founder 

of the “Chicago School” of jazz 

tenorists, a distinction shared with 

Gene Ammons, Johnny Griffin, and 

Clifford Jordan. With his individual 

sound, at once husky and melodic, 

he makes every song his own. As 

the Chicago Tribune has written 

of him, “For technical brilliance, 

musical intellect, harmonic 

sophistication, and improvisatory 

freedom, Von Freeman has few 

bebop-era peers.”

Freeman was surrounded by 

music in his childhood: his mother 

sang in the church choir, his father 

played jazz albums on an early 

Victrola—on which Freeman first 

heard the tenor sax—and his maternal 

grandfather and uncle were guitarists. Initially selftaught, he played saxophone at DuSable High School, 

landing his first gig with Horace Henderson’s Orchestra 

at the age of 16. Drafted during World War II, he 

performed with a Navy band while in service. Once back 

in Chicago, he played with his brothers George (guitar) 

and Eldridge “Bruz” (drums) in the house band at the 

Pershing Hotel Ballroom, where jazz musicians such as 

Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie would stop and sit in 

when passing through. 

In the 1950s, Freeman associated himself with 

various artists, mostly in the Chicago region, including 

Sun Ra, Andrew Hill, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Al 

Smith. In the 1960s, he played with Milt Trenier. But 

it wasn’t until 1972 that Freeman recorded an album 

under his own name, Doin’ It Right Now, produced by 

jazz great Roland Kirk. 

Since then, Freeman has continued to record, 

occasionally alongside Chicago artists such as 

saxophonist Frank Catalano, as well as with his own 

son Chico, who has himself achieved acclaim as a jazz 

musician. In 1982, he and Chico teamed up to record 

the Columbia album, Fathers and Sons, with pianist 

Ellis Marsalis and his sons Wynton and Branford. 

Later recordings, such as The Great Divide and Good 

Forever, featured drummer Jimmy Cobb, pianist 

Richard Wyands, and bassist John Webber. Freeman has 

a regular Tuesday night set and jam session at the New 

Apartment Lounge on Chicago’s South Side, and can be 

heard on select weekends at Andy’s Jazz Club. During 

recent years, Freeman has received acclaim in Europe, 

particularly in the Netherlands. 

In June 2010, the University of Chicago awarded 

Freeman the Rosenberger Medal to “recognize 

achievement through research, in authorship, in 

invention, for discovery, for unusual public service or for 

anything deemed to be on great benefit to humanity.” 

Photo by michael wilderman
10

Selected Discography

Liberation

Music

Orchestra

Impulse!, 1969

Charlie Haden Quartet West

Haunted Heart

 Verve, 1991

Charlie Haden/Hank Jones

Steal Away

Verve, 1994

Charlie Haden/Pat Metheny

Beyond the

Missouri Sky

 Verve, 1996

Charlie Haden Quartet West

Sophisticated 

Ladies

Emarcy, 2010

Born August 6, 1937 in Shenandoah, IA 

bassist

composer

educator

Musician, composer, bandleader, 

educator, producer, activist, Charlie 

Haden has created a powerful 

collection of work during his long 

and productive career. Lyrical and 

expressive on the bass, he has embraced a variety of 

musical genres, ranging from jazz to country to world 

music. His work as an educator led to the creation of 

the Jazz Studies program at California Institute of the 

Arts in 1982 where he focuses on the spirituality of 

improvisation.

Haden began his musical life at the age of 22 

months, when he sang on his parents’ country-western 

radio show. He began playing bass in his early teens and 

in 1957 moved to Los Angeles, where he met and shared 

the stage with such legends as Art Pepper, Hampton 

Hawes, Paul Bley, and Dexter Gordon. It was there that 

Haden first met Ornette Coleman, eventually joining 

the saxophonist’s innovative quartet with trumpeter 

Don Cherry and drummer Billy Higgins. His work with 

the group and on their influential recordings (from 

1959’s The Shape of Jazz to Come to 1961’s This Is Our 

Music) helped move the bassist from an accompanying 

position to one of innovation and more direct 

improvisatory participation. 

In 1969, Haden made his first individual musical 

statement by forming a revolutionary large ensemble 

called the Liberation Music Orchestra, and released 

an album of the same name. Commissioning noted 

pianist/composer Carla Bley as arranger, Haden blended 

experimental big band jazz with the folk songs of the 

Spanish Civil War to create a powerfully original work. 

From 1967 to 1976, Haden worked with Keith 

Jarrett’s trio and quartet, which included Paul Motian 

and Dewey Redman. In 1986 he formed Quartet West, an 

ensemble he established to play more mainstream, boporiented material, with which he continues to perform 

and record. Over the years, his love of the duet format 

teamed him with musicians such as Hank Jones, 

Kenny Barron, Alice Coltrane, Pat Metheny, and, most 

recently, Keith Jarrett for their album Jasmine. Haden 

shared a 1997 Grammy Award with Metheny for their 

Beyond the Missouri Sky album, one of three Grammys 

that Haden has received. 

Charlie

Haden

2012

Haden’s love of world music has resulted in 

collaborations with international players such as 

Brazilian guitarist Egberto Gismonti, Argentinean 

bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi, Cuban pianist 

Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and Portuguese guitar giant Carlos 

Paredes. He has also returned to his roots, releasing 

an unexpected album of Americana music in 2008, 

Rambling Boy.

He has earned numerous national and international 

honors and awards, including the Los Angeles Jazz 

Society prize for “Jazz Educator of the Year;” France’s 

Grand Prix Du Disque Award; Japan’s Swing Journal 

magazine’s Gold, Silver, and Bronze awards; the Montreal 

Jazz Festival’s Miles Davis Award; a Guggenheim 

Fellowship; and four NEA grants for composition. 

Photo by michael wilderman
11

Selected Discography

2012

Born November 18, 1928 in Detroit, MI 

Portrait of

Sheila

Blue Note, 1962

Jazz Child

High Note, 1998

Little Song

High Note, 2002

Sheila Jordan/Cameron Brown

Celebration: 

Live at 

the Triad

High Note, 2004

Winter 

Sunshine: 

Live at 

Upstairs

Justin Time, 2008

Vocalist

Educator

Sheila

Jordan

S

heila Jordan is not only one of the premier 

singers in jazz, but she is known for her 

stimulating vocal workshops as well. A 

superb scat singer, she can just as easily 

reach the emotional depths of a ballad. 

Whether singing well-known standards or original 

material, she makes it all sound like no one else. 

Jordan, née Dawson, grew up in Pennsylvania’s 

coal mining country with her grandparents, singing 

in school and on amateur radio shows. In the early 

1940s, she returned to live with her mother in Detroit, 

where she became interested in jazz after hearing a 

Charlie Parker recording. She met some of Detroit’s 

young musicians during that time, such as Tommy 

Flanagan, Kenny Burrell, and Barry Harris. She then 

joined a vocal trio, Skeeter, Mitch, and Jean, which 

performed versions of Parker’s and others’ bebop solos 

in a manner akin to later vocal jazz trio Lambert,

Hendricks & Ross.

Upon moving to New York City in the 

early ‘50s, Jordan sang in clubs and at 

jam sessions with some of the city’s 

jazz giants, including Charles Mingus, 

Herbie Nichols, and Parker. She also 

studied with the renowned Lennie 

Tristano. In 1952, she married Parker’s 

pianist, Duke Jordan. Ten years later, 

she made her acclaimed first recording, 

showing her vocal finesse on a tenplus minute version of “You Are My 

Sunshine” on George Russell’s album 

The Outer View. Thanks to Russell, she 

released her first album, Portrait of 

Sheila, on Blue Note, the first female 

vocalist to record for the label.

In the mid-1960s, Jordan’s work 

encompassed jazz liturgies sung 

in churches and extensive club 

performances. After touring and 

recording with trombonist Roswell 

Rudd in the 1970s, Jordan became a 

member of the Steve Kuhn Quartet 

alongside bassist Harvie S and drummer Bob Moses. By 

the late ‘70s, jazz audiences began to understand her 

uncompromising style and her popularity increased. 

Her preference for bass and voice led to several 

collaborations with bassists, including Arild Andersen, 

Harvie S, and Cameron Brown. Jordan is the pioneer 

in bass/voice duo in jazz, starting in the early 1950s 

and continuing to the present. 

In 1978, she began teaching at the City College 

of New York and has continued teaching jazz vocal 

workshops there until 2005. She is also a faculty 

member for Jazz in July at the University of 

Massachusetts at Amherst and the Vermont Jazz Center 

in Brattleboro, Vermont, and conducts workshops 

internationally as well. The singer has received several 

honors, including the 2008 Mary Lou Williams Award 

for a Lifetime of Service to Jazz. Jordan still travels 

extensively––nationally and abroad—performing with 

her quartet and as a duo with Brown.

Photo by Lee Tanner
12

Selected Discography

Jimmy Owens-Kenny 

Barron Quintet

You Had 

Better Listen

Collectibles, 1968

Archie Shepp

The Way Ahead

Impulse!, 1968

Billy Taylor

Jazzmobile

Allstars

Taylor Made 

Entertainment, 1989

Peaceful 

Walking

Jay-Oh Jazz Recordings, 

2007

the monk 

project

IPO Recordings, 2011

Owens was one of the original 

members of the Thad Jones/

Mel Lewis Orchestra, and in 

1974 was musical director of 

the New York Jazz Repertory 

Company. 

Owens also is a wellregarded composer. His 

works have been performed 

nationally by the Brooklyn 

Philharmonic Orchestra and 

the Rochester Philharmonic 

Orchestra, and internationally 

by the Metropole Orchestra 

(Netherlands) and the Hanover 

Radio Philharmonic (Germany). 

Performances with his band 

Jimmy Owens Plus have taken 

him to Asia, South and Central 

America, the Middle East, and 

across Europe.

As an educator, Owens has conducted workshops, 

seminars, lectures, and concerts at major colleges and 

universities throughout the world. He helped found 

Collective Black Artists, a not-for-profit jazz education 

and performing organization, in 1969. He was closely 

involved with the Jazzmobile program as well. He serves 

on the board of the Jazz Foundation of America and 

is a past board member of New York City’s American 

Federation of Musicians, Local 802 from 1998 to 2009. 

He has been on music panels for the New York Council 

on the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Owens is active as an advocate for jazz artists rights 

and a proponent of jazz music’s recognition in America’s 

culture. His expertise and knowledge is often called 

upon for issues relating to health and pension benefits 

for jazz artists. One of his major accomplishments in this 

area is his stewardship in founding the Jazz Musician’s 

Emergency Fund, a program to help individual musicians 

with medical, financial, and housing assistance. 

In 2008, Owens received the Benny Golson Jazz 

Master Award at Howard University in Washington, DC. 

Born December 9, 1943 in New York, NY

Educator 

Trumpeter 

FlugelhorNist

 Composer 

Arranger

Jimmy

Owens

2012

Photo by michael wilderman

J

immy Owens wears many hats. He is a jazz 

trumpeter, composer, arranger, educator, and 

music education consultant. His involvement 

as an advocate regarding the rights of 

jazz artists led to the founding of the Jazz 

Musician’s Emergency Fund, a program of the Jazz 

Foundation of America. 

Owens attended the High School of Music and Art 

in New York City, and studied composition with Henry 

Bryant and trumpet with Donald Byrd. Since sitting in 

with Miles Davis at age 15, Owens has performed with 

many jazz legends, including Kenny Barron, Count 

Basie, Kenny Burrell, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, 

Benny Golson, Lionel Hampton, Charles Mingus, Max 

Roach, Archie Shepp, Billy Taylor, and Gerald Wilson. 

Between 1969 and 1972, he worked on the David Frost 

television program, whose musical director was Billy 

Taylor. At the 1970 Newport Jazz Festival, he was the 

youngest of a group of trumpet players to participate 

in a tribute to Louis Armstrong. In 1972, he played 

at the inaugural Ellington Fellowship Concert at Yale. 

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
13

Selected Discography

1982–2010

1982–2011

Photo by michael wilderman

NEA Jazz Masters (right to left) Danny Barker, Buck Clayton, and 

Clark Terry at the 1991 ceremony.

NEA Jazz masters

NOTES:

Names in bold in biographies denote NEA Jazz Masters awardees.

All recordings listed in Selected Discography are under the 

artist’s name unless otherwise noted.

Years listed under recordings in Selected Discography denote 

the years the recordings were made.
14

Selected Discography

Levels and 

Degrees of

Light

 Delmark, 1967

Spiral Live at 

Montreux 1978

Novus, 1978

Rejoicing with

the Light

Black Saint, 1983

UMO Jazz Orchestra

Plays the

Music of

Muhal Richard 

Abrams

Slam, 1988

Streaming

Pi, 2005

Born September 19, 1930 in Chicago, IL 

Pianist

Composer 

Educator

2010

Muhal Richard

Abrams

Photo by Michael Wilderman

Abrams’ compositional prowess is evident even 

beyond jazz. His Tranversion Op. 6 was performed by the 

Detroit Symphony Orchestra and his String Quartet No. 

2 was performed by renowned chamber ensemble Kronos 

Quartet.

During the last 30 years, Abrams has taught jazz 

composition and improvisational classes at Columbia 

University, Syracuse University, Stanford University, 

Mills College, University of California in San Diego, the 

New England Conservatory in Boston, and the BMI 

Composers Workshop in New York City. He also taught 

internationally in Finland, Canada, and Italy.

Abrams’ current activities include composing for 

various types of instrumental combinations, performing 

solo piano concerts, and touring throughout the world 

with various ensembles. 

Muhal Richard Abrams—pianist, 

composer, administrator, and 

educator—is predominately a 

self-taught musician. He is highly 

respected by critics and musical 

peers as both a pianist and composer in a variety 

of musical styles, including jazz, extended forms of 

improvisation, and classical music. 

In the 1950s, Abrams wrote arrangements for 

pianist King Fleming’s Jazz Orchestra. From 1957-59, 

he played hard bop in Walter Perkins’ group MJT + 3 

(Modern Jazz Two Plus Three) and accompanied leading 

jazz performers during their visits to Chicago, including 

Kenny Durham, Art Farmer, Hank Mobley, Ray Nance, 

Max Roach, and Sonny Stitt. In 1961, Abrams began 

his foray into extended forms of composition and 

improvisation in his Experimental Band, which included 

musicians such as saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and 

Joseph Jarman. 

Abrams is a co-founder of the Association for the 

Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965, 

founder of the AACM School of Music, and currently 

president of the AACM New York Chapter. AACM, 

which has played a crucial role in the development of 

original approaches to extended forms of composition 

and improvisation, has produced such distinguished 

members as Anthony Braxton, Kalaparush Ahra Difda, 

Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall, Amina Claudine Myers, 

Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, and members of 

the Art Ensemble of Chicago. 

Abrams first traveled to Europe in 1973 while still 

residing in Chicago. After relocating to New York in 

1977, he traveled extensively to Europe and Japan, 

gradually acquiring a greater international reputation. 

In 1990 he became the first recipient of the prestigious 

Danish JAZZPAR Award, and almost a decade later 

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a proclamation 

declaring April 11, 1999, to be Muhal Richard Abrams 

Day. In 2008, he was chosen by United States Artists to 

be a Prudential Fellow in the field of music. In 2010, he 

was selected for the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.
15

Selected Discography

Long Yellow

Road

RCA, 1974-75

Carnegie Hall 

Conce rt

Columbia, 1991

Four Seasons of

Morita Village

BMG, 1996

Hiroshima: 

Rising from

the Abyss

True Life, 2001

Toshiko Akiyoshi and 

the SWR Band 

Let Freedom

Swing

Hanssler 2007

Bandleader 

Pianist

Composer 

Arranger

Born December 12, 1929 in Dairen, Manchuria

Toshiko

Akiyoshi

2007

Photo by Lee Tanner

O

ver the course of a six-decade career, 

pianist, band-leader, and composerarranger Toshiko Akiyoshi has made a 

unique and vital contribution to the art of 

big band jazz. Born in Manchuria, where 

she began playing the piano at age six, Akiyoshi 

moved back to Japan with her parents at the end of 

World War II. Her family, enduring the hardships of the 

period, could not provide her with an instrument, and 

so, just to touch a piano, she took her first job as a 

musician playing in a dance-hall band. 

She was not exposed to real jazz until a Japanese 

record collector introduced her to the work of Teddy 

Wilson, whose music immediately impressed her. In 

1952, pianist Oscar Peterson discovered Akiyoshi while 

he was on a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of Japan and 

recommended that producer Norman Granz record her. 

Thanks to this opportunity, she came to the United 

States in 1956 to study at the Berklee School of Music 

in Boston. She moved to New York in 1959, playing 

at Birdland, the Village Gate, the Five Spot, and the 

Half Note; but despite a brief attempt in the 1960s to 

showcase her talents as a composer and arranger for 

large ensembles, she did not 

have the opportunity to form 

a big band until she moved 

to Los Angeles in 1972 with 

her husband, saxophonist/

flutist Lew Tabackin. The 

following year, the couple 

formed the Toshiko Akiyoshi 

Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew 

Tabackin. In 1976, the band 

placed first in the DownBeat 

critics’ poll, and Akiyoshi’s 

album Long Yellow Road was 

named best jazz album of 

the year by Stereo Review.

In the 1970s, Akiyoshi began 

exploring Japanese themes 

in her compositions and 

arrangements, mixing them with the strong jazz base in 

her music. 

In 1982, the couple returned to New York, where 

Akiyoshi re-formed her band with New York musicians. 

The band enjoyed a critically successful debut at 

Carnegie Hall as part of the 1983 Kool Jazz Festival. 

Akiyoshi has recorded 22 albums to date with the 

orchestra. Her recording Four Seasons of Morita Village

was awarded the 1996 Swing Journal Silver Award, and 

her big band albums have received 14 Grammy Award 

nominations. Akiyoshi is the first woman ever to place 

first in the Best Arranger and Composer category in the 

DownBeat readers’ poll. 

In 1995, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra 

was invited to play in China, and in 1996 Akiyoshi 

completed her autobiography Life With Jazz, which is 

now in its fifth printing in Japanese. Among the many 

honors she has received are the Shijahosho (1999, from 

the Emperor of Japan); the Japan Foundation Award, 

Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosetta (2004, 

from the Emperor of Japan); and the Asahi Award (2005, 

from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper).
16

Selected Discography

George

Avakian

2010

Producer 

Manager 

Critic

Jazz Historian

Educator

Born March 15, 1919 in Armavir, Russia

Louis Armstrong

Plays W. C. 

Handy

Columbia, 1954

Duke Ellington

Ellington at 

Newport

Columbia, 1956

Miles Davis and Gil Evans

Miles Ahead 

Columbia, 1957

Benny Goodman

In Moscow

RCA Victor, 1962

Sonny Rollins

Our Man in Jazz

RCA Victor, 1962-63

takes in the series. In effect, he had created the first 

history of jazz on records.

After service in the U.S. Army during World War 

II, Avakian began his 12-year tenure as a Columbia 

Records executive, eventually presiding over its 

Popular Music and International Divisions. At the 

same time, he was acquiring a reputation as a 

jazz researcher and critic of some renown, having 

pieces printed in Tempo, DownBeat, Metronome, 

Mademoiselle, Pic, and the New York Times. Concerned 

about the lack of jazz education, in 1946 Avakian 

started a course in jazz history at the university level 

at New York University. 

In 1948, Avakian introduced the 

LP record format created by Columbia 

engineers and produced the industry’s 

first 100 long-playing discs of popular 

music and jazz. Two years later, he 

released the original 1938 recording 

of Benny Goodman’s Carnegie Hall 

concert—one of the first jazz albums 

to sell more than a million copies. 

This inspired him to use the long-play 

format for something new—the live 

recording. 

From 1959 onward, Avakian 

served as producer at Warner Brothers, 

World Pacific, RCA Victor, and Atlantic, 

among others. During the early 1960s, 

Avakian branched out, becoming the 

manager of Charles Lloyd and later of 

Keith Jarrett. 

He has received a knighthood from the Knights 

of Malta (1984); the former Soviet Union’s highest 

decoration (the Order of Lenin (1990)); a Lifetime 

Achievement Award from DownBeat magazine (2000); 

and Europe’s prestigious jazz award, the Django d’ Or

(2006). In 2008, France bestowed on him the rank of 

Commandeur des Arts et Lettres, and in 2009 he received 

the Trustees Award from the National Association of 

Recording Arts and Sciences for contributions to the 

music industry worldwide.

G

eorge Avakian is a record producer and 

industry executive known particularly for 

his production of jazz and popular albums 

at Columbia Records, including the first 

regular series of reissues of jazz albums. 

In 1948, he helped establish the 33 1/3-rpm LP as the 

primary format for popular music.

Avakian was born in Russia to Armenian parents, 

who moved the family to New York City in the early 

1920s. In his teens he became enamored of jazz 

through radio programs such as Let’s Dance with Benny 

Goodman. While a student at Yale University, Avakian 

convinced Decca Records to let him produce a 78-rpm 

Photo by Ian P. Clifford

2010

record of the 1920s jazz scene in Chicago. Entitled 

Chicago Jazz, the recordings marked the first time jazz 

songs were produced in an album format rather than 

as singles. 

In 1940, he was asked by Columbia to produce the 

industry’s first annotated reissue album series, called 

Hot Jazz Classics, which included seminal out-of-print 

selections from Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Bix 

Beiderbecke, Fletcher Henderson, and Duke Ellington. 

He included the first-ever unreleased and alternate 

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
17

Selected Discography

George Russell

Stratusphunk

Original Jazz Classics,1960

The Harlem

Pipes

Liscio, 1985–86, 2003

Smithsonian Jazz 

Masterworks Orchestra Tribute to a

Generation

Smithsonian Folkways, 

1992–1998

Steppin’ Out

Liscio, 1998

Buselli/Wallarab 

Jazz Orchestra

Basically Baker

GM recordings, 2004

Born December 21, 1931 in Indianapolis, IN 

trombonist

cellist

composer 

ARRANGER

educator

music. He has also worked on purely chamber and 

orchestral works. By the early 1970s, he had returned 

to the trombone––playing on Bill Evans’ 1972 album 

Living Time, with George Russell arranging––while 

continuing to play the cello as well. Although a strong 

player on both instruments, he is most renowned for his 

compositions. 

Baker became a distinguished professor of 

music at Indiana University and chairman of the 

Jazz Department in 1966. He has published in 

numerous scholarly journals and has written several 

musical treatises as well as having more than 2,000 

compositions, 500 commissions, 65 recordings, and 70 

books on jazz and African-American music to his credit. 

Since 1991, Baker has been the artistic and musical 

director of the acclaimed Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks 

Orchestra.

He has received numerous awards and citations, 

including being nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 

for his composition Levels, a concerto for bass, jazz 

band, woodwinds, and strings; and receiving an Emmy 

Award for his musical score of the PBS documentary For 

Gold and Glory. He has served as a member of the NEA’s 

National Council on the Arts, was founding president of 

the National Jazz Service Organization, and is former 

president of the International Association for Jazz 

Education.

A

true jazz renaissance man, David Baker 

has been active in the jazz community as 

musician, composer, educator, conductor, 

and author. Of all the NEA Jazz Masters, 

 he is one of the most active as a college 

and university educator.

Baker’s music career began on the trombone in the 

early 1950s as he worked with local groups, as well as 

Lionel Hampton, while working on his doctorate at 

Indiana University. He lived in California in 1956-57, 

playing in the bands of Stan Kenton and Maynard 

Ferguson, and returned to Indiana in 1958, leading 

his own big band for two years. He then attended 

the School of Jazz in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1959-

60, joining a stellar class of musicians that included 

members of the Ornette Coleman Quartet. Shortly 

thereafter he worked with the George Russell band, 

playing on some of his influential early albums. In 

Russell’s band, Baker’s trombone playing displayed 

exceptional technique, utilizing avant-garde effects to 

accent the songs. 

An accident to his jaw eventually forced Baker 

to abandon his promising career as a trombonist. 

He switched to the cello in 1962, concentrating on 

composition. As a composer he has contributed a broad 

range of works, from small ensemble to orchestral, 

often straddling the fence between jazz and chamber 

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES

2000

David

Baker
18

Selected Discography

Blue Lu Barker

1938-39 

Classics, 1938-39

Blue Lu Barker

1946-49 

Classics, 1946-49

Save the Bones

Orleans, 1988

Blue Lu Barker

Live at 

New Orleans 

Jazz Festival

Orleans, 1989

Dirty Dozen Brass Band

Jelly

Columbia, 1993

guitarist

banjoist

vocalist

composer 

educator

Born January 13, 1909 in New Orleans, LA

Died March 13, 1994 

Danny 

Barker

1991

Photo by Lee Tanner

In the late 1940s he traveled as a freelance 

musician, making recordings in Los Angeles and New 

Orleans. In 1947, Barker appeared on the This Is Jazz

radio series, and began playing banjo again. He returned 

to New York in 1949, working with trombonists Wilbur 

De Paris and Conrad Janis, and accompanied his wife on 

gigs. In the early 1960s, he led his own band at Jimmy 

Ryan’s on 52nd Street, then returned to the Crescent 

City in 1965. Barker continued playing up to the end of 

his life, even appearing on the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s 

1993 recording, Jelly. A number of his compositions 

have been widely interpreted, such as “Save the Bones 

for Henry Jones.”

Just as important as his performing career were his 

educational activities. When he returned home to New 

Orleans in 1965, he worked for 10 years as an assistant 

curator for the New Orleans Jazz Museum, helping to 

continue interest in the culture and tradition of the 

music. He also mentored young musicians through his 

leadership of the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band. 

Barker was a writer as well, co-authoring with Jack 

Buerkle a study on New Orleans music, Bourbon Street 

Black, and writing his memoirs, A Life in Jazz. 

Upholder of the New Orleans tradition 

of jazz and blues, this master guitar 

and banjo player was as well known 

for his humor and storytelling as for 

his playing. Many of the younger New 

Orleans musicians also credit him with providing 

invaluable information, instruction, and mentoring. 

He started his musical training on the clarinet, 

instructed by the great Barney Bigard, and moved 

on to the drums, taught by his uncle, Paul Barbarin. 

These instances of musical guidance and instruction 

available in New Orleans would inspire him to carry on 

the tradition of mentoring younger musicians. He later 

took up the ukulele and the banjo, and began finding 

work with jazz and blues artists such as the Boozan 

Kings and Little Brother Montgomery. In 1930 he moved 

to New York, where he met his wife, vocalist Blue Lu 

Barker, with whom he frequently recorded. He also 

wrote many of the songs she performed, such as “Don’t 

You Feel My Leg.” By then he had switched from banjo 

to guitar and found work with Sidney Bechet, James 

P. Johnson, Albert Nicholas, Fess Williams, and Henry 

“Red” Allen. He spent the rest of the 1930s working 

with the big bands of Lucky Millinder, Benny Carter,

and Cab Calloway, with whom he stayed for seven years. 
19

Selected Discography

Charanga

Moderna

Tico, 1962

Hard Hands

Fania, 1968

Rican/

Struction

Fania, 1979 

Ancestral 

Messages

Concord Picante, 1992

Homage to Art

Blakey and 

the Jazz

Messengers

Sunnyside, 2002

pERCUSSIONist

bANDLEADER

2006

Ray

Barretto

Born April 29, 1929 in Brooklyn, NY

Died February 17, 2006 

attending jam sessions 

with artists including 

Max Roach and Art 

Blakey and recording 

with Sonny Stitt, 

Lou Donaldson, Red 

Garland, Gene Ammons, 

Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, 

Cannonball Adderley, 

Freddie Hubbard,

Cal Tjader, and Dizzy 

Gillespie. Barretto was 

so much in demand 

that in 1960 he was a 

house musician for the 

Prestige, Blue Note, and 

Riverside record labels.

Barretto’s first job 

as a bandleader came in 

1961, when Riverside 

producer Orrin 

Keepnews asked him 

to form a charanga for 

a recording, Pachanga 

With Barretto. His next album, Charanga Moderna, 

featured “El Watusi,” which became the first Latin 

number to penetrate Billboard’s Top-20 chart. In 1963, 

“El Watusi” went gold. In 1975 and 1976, Barretto 

earned back-to-back Grammy nominations for his 

albums Barretto (with the prize-winning hit “Guarere”) 

and Barretto Live...Tomorrow. His 1979 album for 

Fania, Rican/Struction, considered a classic of salsa, 

was named Best Album (1980) by Latin N.Y. magazine, 

and Barretto was named Conga Player of the Year. He 

won a Grammy Award in 1990 for the song “Ritmo en el 

Corazon” with Celia Cruz. 

Barretto was inducted into the International 

Latin Music Hall of Fame in 1999. He was voted 

Jazz Percussionist of 2004 by the Jazz Journalists 

Association and won the DownBeat critics’ poll for 

percussion in 2005. His recording Time Was, Time Is was 

nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award.

T

he most widely recorded conguero in 

jazz, Ray Barretto grew up listening to 

the music of Puerto Rico and the swing 

bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and 

Benny Goodman. Barretto credited Dizzy 

Gillespie’s recording of “Manteca,” featuring conguero 

Chano Pozo, with his decision to become a professional 

musician.

He first sat in on jam sessions at the Orlando, 

a G.I. jazz club in Munich. In 1949, after military 

service, he returned to Harlem and taught himself to 

play the drums, getting his first regular job with Eddie 

Bonnemere’s Latin Jazz Combo. Barretto then played 

for four years with Cuban bandleader/pianist José 

Curbelo. In 1957, he replaced Mongo Santamaria in Tito 

Puente’s band, with which he recorded his first album, 

Dance Mania. After four years with Puente, he was one 

of the most sought-after percussionists in New York, 

Photo by Lee Tanner
20

Selected Discography

Born June 9, 1943 in Philadelphia, PA

2010

Pianist

Composer 

Educator

Peruvian Blue

32 Jazz, 1974

Sphere

Four in One

Elektra, 1982

Wanton Spirit

Verve, 1994

Canta Brasil

Sunnyside, 2002

The Traveler

Sunnyside, 2007

Kenny

Barron

DownBeat, JazzTimes, and Jazziz magazines; and 

is a seven-time recipient of the Jazz Journalists 

Association’s “Best Pianist” honors. 

As a composer, Barron’s works have been featured 

in film and documentaries, and he most recently 

scored the film Another Harvest Moon. In 2009 he 

was named a Living Legacy by the Mid Atlantic Arts 

Foundation and was inducted into the American Jazz 

Hall of Fame in 2005. 

As a long-standing professor of music at Rutgers 

University (1974-2000), Barron mentored many of 

today’s established jazz talents, including David 

Sanchez, Terence Blanchard, and Regina Bell. He 

continues to tour internationally solo and with his trio.

With more than 40 albums to his 

name, and scores more that 

he has appeared on, Kenny 

Barron’s imprint on jazz is 

large. The pianist has been 

recognized the world over as a master of 

performance and composition.

Barron started playing professionally 

in Philadelphia as a teenager with Mel 

Melvin’s orchestra, which also featured 

Barron’s brother Bill on tenor saxophone. 

At age 19, Barron moved to New York 

City and was hired by James Moody

after the tenor saxophonist heard him 

play at the Five Spot. In 1962, he joined 

Dizzy Gillespie’s band, an association 

that developed his appreciation for Latin 

and Caribbean rhythms. After five years 

with Gillespie, Barron began to perform 

with Freddie Hubbard, Milt Jackson, Buddy 

Rich, and Stanley Turrentine. In 1971, he joined 

Yusef Lateef’s band, an experience that Barron 

acknowledges as having been a key influence on his 

improvisational skills. Three years later, Barron recorded 

Sunset to Dawn, his first album as a leader.

Throughout the 1980s, Barron collaborated with 

the great tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, touring with 

his quartet and recording several albums, one of which 

was nominated for a Grammy Award (People Time). In 

1982, he co-founded the quartet Sphere, which was 

dedicated to Thelonious Monk’s music and inspiration. 

Sphere comprised Barron, Buster Williams, and Monk 

band alumni Ben Riley and Charlie Rouse. After Rouse’s 

passing in 1988, the band took a hiatus before reuniting 

in 1998 (with alto saxophonist Gary Bartz replacing 

Rouse) and releasing a recording for Verve Records. 

Barron’s own recordings have earned him 

numerous Grammy nominations, among them Spirit 

Song, Sambao, Night and the City (a duet recording 

with Charlie Haden), and Wanton Spirit (a trio 

recording with Roy Haynes and Haden). He has 

won numerous jazz critics and readers’ polls from 

Photo by Lee Tanner
21

Selected Discography

Born August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, NJ 

Died April 26, 1984 

The Original 

American

Decca

Recordings

MCA, 1937-39

April in Paris

Verve, 1956

The Complete

Atomic Basie

Roulette, 1957

Count Basie and 

the

Kansas City 7 

Impulse!, 1962

The Basie

Big Band

Pablo, 1975

bandleader 

pianist

organist

composer 

arranger

count

Basie

1983

year, the band was a fixture on 52nd Street, in residence 

at the Famous Door. 

During this time the key to Basie’s band was what 

became known as the “All-American Rhythm Section”––

Freddie Green on guitar, Walter Page on bass, and Jo 

Jones on drums. The horns were also quite potent, 

including Lester Young, Earl Warren, and Herschel 

Evans on saxophones; Buck Clayton and Sweets Edison 

on trumpets; and Benny Morton and Dicky Wells on 

trombones. With a swinging rhythm section and topnotch soloists in the horn section, Basie’s band became 

one of the most popular between 1937-49, scoring such 

swing hits as “One O’Clock Jump” and “Jumpin’ at the 

Woodside.” Lester Young’s tenor saxophone playing 

during this period, in particular on such recordings as 

“Lester Leaps In” and “Taxi War Dance,” influenced jazz 

musicians for years to come. In addition, Basie’s use of 

great singers such as Helen Humes and Jimmy Rushing 

enhanced his band’s sound and popularity. 

Economics forced Basie to pare down to a septet in 

1950. By 1952 he had returned to his big band sound, 

organizing what became euphemistically known as 

his “New Testament” band, which 

began a residency at Birdland 

in New York. The new band 

retained the same high standards 

of musicianship as the earlier 

version, with such standouts as 

Frank Foster, Frank Wess, Eddie 

“Lockjaw” Smith, Thad Jones, and 

Joe Williams. Foster’s composition 

“Shiny Stockings” and Williams’ 

rendition of “Every Day” brought 

Basie a couple of much-needed 

hits in the mid-1950s. In addition 

to achieving success with his own 

singers, he also enjoyed acclaim for 

records backing such stars as Frank 

Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and 

Tony Bennett. Basie continued to 

perform and record until his death 

in 1984.

T

hough a pianist and occasional organist, 

William “Count” Basie’s fame stems mainly 

from his history as one of the great 

bandleaders. Basie’s arrangements made 

good use of soloists, allowing musicians 

such as Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison, 

and Frank Foster to create some of their best work. 

Although his strength was as a bandleader, Basie’s 

sparse piano style often delighted audiences with its 

swinging simplicity.

Basie’s first teacher was his mother, who taught 

him piano. Later, the informal organ lessons from his 

mentor Fats Waller helped him find work in a theater 

accompanying silent films. In 1927, Basie found himself 

in Kansas City, playing with two of the most famous 

bands in the city: Walter Page’s Blue Devils and the 

Bennie Moten band. In 1935, Basie started his own 

Kansas City band, engaging the core of the Moten band. 

They performed nightly radio broadcasts, which caught 

the attention of music producer John Hammond. In 

1936, Hammond brought the Basie band to New York, 

where it opened at the Roseland Ballroom. By the next 

Photo by Lee Tanner
22

Selected Discography

LIve in Stereo

at the

Flamingo

Hotel, Vol. 1

Jazz Hour, 1959

Dynamite!

Concord, 1979

East Side Suite

Musicmasters, 1987

Live from

New York

Telarc, 1993

The Sacred 

Musicof

LouieBellson

Percussion Power, 2005

drummer 

composer 

 arranger 

bandleader 

educator

Born July 6, 1924 in Rock Falls, IL

Died February 14, 2009 

Louie

Bellson

1994

Achievement Award from the Zildjian Company. 

Bellson also was a highly sought-after educator, 

giving music and drum workshops and clinics, teaching 

not only his dynamic drumming technique but also jazz 

heritage. He was awarded four honorary doctoral degrees 

from Northern Illinois University, Denison University, 

Augustana College, and DePaul University.

In 2003, a historical landmark was dedicated at his 

birthplace in Rock Falls, Illinois, inaugurating an annual 

three-day celebration there in his honor. His 2005 

recording, The Sacred Music of Louie Bellson, showcased 

his prowess for blending orchestral music, choir, and 

big band. In 2007, Bellson was one of 36 musicians 

receiving the Living Jazz Legend Award from the 

Kennedy Center and one of three honored as ASCAP 

Jazz Living Legends by the American Society of 

Composers, Authors and Publishers.

R

eferred to by Duke Ellington as “not only 

the world’s greatest drummer...[but also] 

the world’s greatest musician,” Louie 

Bellson had expressed himself on drums 

since age three. At 15, he pioneered 

the double bass drum set-up, and two years later he 

triumphed over 40,000 drummers to win the Gene 

Krupa drumming contest.

Bellson performed on more than 200 albums as one of 

the most sought-after big band drummers, working with 

such greats as Duke Ellington 

(who recorded many of 

Bellson’s compositions), Count 

Basie, Benny Goodman, 

Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, 

Woody Herman, Oscar 

Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, 

Louie Armstrong, and Lionel 

Hampton. He toured with 

Norman Granz’s all-star Jazz at 

the Philharmonic, and worked 

with many vocalists, including 

Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah 

Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Joe 

Williams, and his wife, Pearl 

Bailey, for whom he served 

as musical director. He also 

appeared in several films in 

the 1940s, including The Power 

Girl, The Gang’s All Here, and 

A Song is Born. 

A prolific composer, 

Bellson had more than 

1,000 compositions and 

arrangements to his name, 

embracing jazz, swing, orchestral suites, symphonic 

works, and ballets. As an author, he published more 

than a dozen books on drums and percussion, and 

was a six-time Grammy Award nominee. In 1998, he 

was hailed—along with Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, 

and Max Roach—as one of four “Living Legends of 

Music” when he received the American Drummers 

Photo by Lee Tanner
23

Selected Discography

The Beat of

My Heart

Columbia, 1957

In Person with

Count Basie

and His 

Orchestra

Columbia, 1958

The Tony 

Bennett Bill 

Evans Album

Columbia, 1975

On Holiday: 

A Tribute to

Billie Holiday

Columbia, 1996

Duets II

Sony Music, 2011

Born August 3, 1926 in Queens, NY

2006

Tony

vocalist

Bennett

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES

the next years, while putting out singles and albums 

that were consistently among the most popular in the 

country, he continued to infuse his singing with the 

spontaneity of jazz and to record and tour with bands 

composed almost exclusively of jazz musicians.

In the 1970s, Bennett formed his own record 

company and made albums including two duet recording 

with pianist Bill Evans. His 1992 release, Perfectly Frank,

a tribute to Frank Sinatra, and 1993 Steppin’ Out, a 

tribute to Fred Astaire, went gold and won him backto-back Grammy Awards. Bennett received Grammy’s 

highest award, Album of the Year, in 1994 for his live 

recording, MTV Unplugged, and was honored with the 

academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. Also 

in 2001, he founded the Frank Sinatra School of the 

Arts (named for his friend) in Queens, a public school 

dedicated to teaching the performing arts.

C

alled “the best 

singer in the 

business” by 

Frank Sinatra, 

Tony Bennett was 

born as Anthony Dominick 

Benedetto in 1926 in the 

Astoria section of Queens, 

New York. By age 10, he had 

attracted such notice that 

he was tapped to sing at 

the opening ceremony for 

the Triborough Bridge. He 

attended the High School 

of Industrial Arts, worked as 

a singing waiter, and then 

performed with military 

bands during his Army 

service in World War II. After 

the war, he continued his 

vocal studies formally at 

the American Theatre Wing 

school and informally in the 

52nd Street jazz clubs. His 

break came in 1949, when Bob 

Hope saw him working in a Greenwich Village club 

with Pearl Bailey, invited him to join his show at 

the Paramount, and changed his stage name to 

Tony Bennett.

Bennett’s recording career began in 1950, when 

he signed with the Columbia label, with the number 

one hit “Because of You,” followed by his cover of 

Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart.” With a string of 

hits to his credit, Bennett was able to exert greater 

artistic influence over his recordings, allowing him 

to express his interest in jazz, notably The Beat of My 

Heart, on which he was accompanied primarily with 

jazz percussionists, and his work with Count Basie, In 

Person with Count Basie and His Orchestra.

In 1962, Bennett recorded “I Left My Heart in San 

Francisco,” the song that would become his signature, 

and for which he won Grammy Awards for Record of 

the Year and Best Solo Male Vocal Performance. Over 
24

Selected Discography

The New

Boss Guitar 

of George

Benson

Prestige/OJC, 1964

The Other 

Side of

Abbey Road

A&M, 1969

Weekend 

in L.A.

Warner Brothers, 1977

Tenderly

Warner Brothers, 1989

Guitar Man

Concord Jazz, 2011

Born March 22, 1943 in Pittsburgh, PA 

Guitarist

 Vocalist

George

Benson

2009

Photo by Lee Tanner

the attention of the general public with such hits as his 

soulful rendition of Leon Russell’s “This Masquerade,” 

which featured the guitarist scatting along with his solo 

break. He followed up with many pop hits, including 

a sultry version of “On Broadway” and the irresistible 

“Give Me the Night” (produced by Quincy Jones).

In the mid-1990s Benson followed LiPuma to the 

GRP label where they released three well-received 

albums highlighting Benson’s vocal and guitar prowess. 

In 2006, Benson and vocalist/songwriter Al Jarreau 

released Givin’ It Up with Benson’s current label, Concord 

Music Group.

Benson has won ten Grammy Awards, thrilling 

many crowds around the world with his performances, 

including appearances at Malaysia’s 50th Merdeka 

celebration and the Mawazine Festival in Morocco. 

A

ppreciated as both a musician and 

performer, George Benson plays the dual 

role of expert improviser and vibrant 

entertainer. Rounding out his singular 

 approach with a strong sense of swing, 

he is considered one of the greatest guitarists in jazz.

Benson began his career as a guitarist working the 

corner pubs of his native Pittsburgh. Legendary jazz 

guitarist Wes Montgomery came across Benson early 

on, complimenting him and urging him to continue his 

already impressive work. In the early 1960s, Benson 

apprenticed with organist Brother Jack McDuff; he 

found the organist’s gritty swing a fertile ground for the 

sly, confident, and adventurous guitar lines that earned 

him an early reputation as a master.

By the time legendary talent scout John Hammond 

signed Benson to Columbia, the guitarist’s name was 

becoming known throughout the 

industry. In the late 1960s he sat 

in on Miles Davis’ Miles in the Sky

sessions, and also put a personal spin 

on the tunes from the Beatles’ Abbey 

Road. Joining the CTI label in 1970, 

Benson was united with many of jazz’s 

finest instrumentalists—including 

Stanley Turrentine, Ron Carter, and 

Freddie Hubbard—and released 

classic albums, such as Beyond the 

Blue Horizon. 

Despite his success, Benson’s 

desire to combine his singing and 

guitar playing was blocked until he 

worked with music producer Tommy 

LiPuma. The result was Breezin’, the 

first jazz record to attain platinum 

sales. The 1976 blockbuster, his first 

in a long association with Warner 

Brothers Records, brought Benson to 
25

Selected Discography

Born, Died

A Night at 

Birdland,

Vols. 1-2

 Blue Note, 1954

Art Blakey’s 

Jazz Messengers 

with

Thelonious 

Monk

Atlantic, 1957

Moanin’ Blue Note, 1958

Buhaina’s 

Delight 

Blue Note, 1961

Keystone 3

Concord, 1982

Drummer

Bandleader

1988

Art

Blakey

Photo by Lee Tanner

that was more hard-driving and blues-oriented. The 

Messengers made a concerted effort at rekindling the 

black audience for jazz that had begun to erode when 

the ballroom era of jazz declined.

Blakey powered his bands with a distinctive, take-noprisoners style of drumming that recalled the thunderous 

and communicative drum traditions of Africa. Though 

his drumming became among the most easily recognized 

sounds in jazz, Blakey always played for the band, 

prodding on his immensely talented colleagues’ solos.

From the first Jazz Messengers band he formed, 

Blakey has welcomed generations of exceptional young 

musicians who have evolved into prominent bandleaders 

and contributors themselves. That list, reading like a 

Who’s Who of jazz, includes Donald Byrd, Curtis Fuller,

Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Wayne 

Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett, Woody Shaw, 

Joanne Brackeen, Bobby Watson, James Williams, and 

three of the Marsalis brothers (Wynton, Branford, and 

Delfeayo). His mentoring of these musicians, helping 

them to hone their skills and preparing them to lead 

their own bands, has helped keep the jazz tradition alive 

and thriving. For the remainder of his career, Blakey 

continued to take the Jazz Messengers message across 

the globe. 

A

rt Blakey’s Jazz Messengers not only 

supplied consistently exciting and 

innovative music for nearly 40 years, 

but also provided the experience and 

 mentoring for young musicians to learn 

their trade. Though self-taught, Blakey was already 

leading his own dance band by age 14. Blakey’s first 

noted sideman job came in 1942 with Mary Lou 

Williams, whom he joined for a club engagement at 

Kelly’s Stables in New York. The following year he 

joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, where he 

stayed until joining Billy Eckstine’s modern jazz big 

band in 1944. A subsequent trip to Africa, ostensibly 

to immerse himself in Islam, revealed to him that 

jazz was truly an American music, which he preached 

from the bandstand thereafter. He adopted the Muslim 

name of Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, but continued to 

record under Art Blakey. 

In the early 1950s, he worked with such greats as 

Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, and Clifford 

Brown. The latter two became members of the Jazz 

Messengers, which was originally a cooperative unit. 

Brown, then Silver, left to form their own bands and 

Blakey became the leader of the Jazz Messengers. The 

Messengers went on to play in a style that critics called 

hard bop, a logical progression on the bebop style 

Born October 11, 1919 in Pittsburgh, PA

Died October 16, 1990
26

Selected Discography

Gerry Mulligan Quartet 

At Storyville

Pacific Jazz, 1956

The Blues Hot 

and Cold

Verve, 1960

Back Again

Sonet, 1978

Paris Suite

Challenge, 1993

standards

ArtistShare, 2011

Born December 19, 1929 in Kansas City, MO

Died December 15, 2011

TROMBONist

PIANist

COMPOSER

arranger 

EDUCATOR

Bob

Brookmeyer

2006

composer and performer in Europe, working in both 

classical and jazz idioms. He began teaching at the 

Manhattan School of Music in 1985 and directed the 

BMI Composers Workshop from 1989 to 1991. He 

served as musical director of the Schlewsig-Holstein 

Musik Festival Big Band/New Art Orchestra, the Stanley 

Knowles Distinguished Visiting Professor at Brandon 

University in Manitoba, and director of the New England 

Conservatory’s Jazz Composers’ Workshop Orchestra. 

A composer whose work has been widely published, 

studied, and performed, Brookmeyer received grants 

in composition from the National Endowment for the 

Arts and nominations from the National Association 

of Recording Arts and Sciences for composing and 

performing, and he was commissioned by the 12 Cellists 

of the Berlin Philharmonic to write a piece for an EMI 

disc featuring trumpet player Till Broenner. A concertlength piece for the New Art Orchestra, Spirit Music, was 

released in 2007.

B

ob Brookmeyer was an innovative 

composer and gifted arranger for both 

small and large ensembles, as well as 

an outstanding performer on valve 

trombone and piano. A professional 

performer with dance bands since the age of 14, he 

studied composition for three years at the Kansas City 

Conservatory of Music, where he won the Carl Busch 

Prize for Choral Composition. In the early 1950s, he 

traveled to New York as a pianist with Tex Benecke 

and Mel Lewis and stayed on to freelance with artists 

including Pee Wee Russell, Ben Webster, and Coleman 

Hawkins.

After a period with Claude Thornhill, Brookmeyer 

joined Stan Getz in late 1952, an association that took 

him to California, where Gerry Mulligan asked him 

to join his quartet. Brookmeyer gained renown as a 

member of that group (1954-57) and as a member of 

the experimental Jimmy Giuffre 3 (1957-58), comprising 

Giuffre’s reeds, Jim Hall’s guitar, and Brookmeyer’s valve 

trombone. His long association with Mulligan included 

work with the Concert Jazz Band, 

which Brookmeyer helped to form 

and maintain, and for which he 

wrote arrangements.

In 1961, Brookmeyer and Clark 

Terry formed their legendary 

quintet, which lasted until 1968. 

Brookmeyer was also busy during 

this time as lead trombonist and 

arranger-composer for the Thad 

Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, formed 

in 1965. After a decade spent in 

California as a studio musician, 

Brookmeyer returned to New York 

in 1978 to play with Stan Getz 

and Jim Hall, and then in 1979 

rejoined the Mel Lewis Orchestra, 

becoming its musical director after 

the departure of Thad Jones.

From 1981 to 1991, 

Brookmeyer was busy as a 

0000

Photo by Lee Tanner
27

Selected Discography

Various Artists 

Boogie Woogie

Stomp

ASV/Living Era, 1930s-40s

The Legendary

Cleo Brown

President, 1930s

Here Comes 

Cleo

Hep, 1935-36

1935-1951

Classics, 1935-51

Living in the

Afterglow

Audiophile, 1987

Pianist

vocalist

1987

Cleo

Brown

his New York radio series on WABC, and soon 

began recording. Her version of “Pine 

Top’s Boogie Woogie” was influential 

on pianists that came after 

her, and she is credited with 

being an early influence 

on Dave Brubeck, who 

played during the 

intermissions of her 

shows, and Marian 

McPartland, among 

others. Through 

the 1950s she 

worked frequently 

at that city’s 

Three Deuces 

club, establishing 

a reputation 

as a two-fisted, 

driving pianist. 

Brown began to 

gain international 

renown for her work, 

and she continued to 

perform regularly in New 

York, Hollywood, Las Vegas, 

Los Angeles, and San Francisco 

until 1953, making records for 

Capitol Records and performing with 

the Decca All-Stars, among others. 

Brown then dropped out of the music business 

completely and took up full-time nursing. After retiring 

from nursing in 1973, she returned to music, spending 

her latter years as a church musician in her Seventh 

Day Adventist Church in Denver, Colorado. In 1987, 

Marian McPartland sought out Brown as a guest on her 

long-running radio series, Piano Jazz. A recording of 

the program was released as Living in the Afterglow, 

Brown’s last recording. Although all the numbers are 

gospel songs (many are originals by Brown), they 

are played in the same rollicking style as her 1930s 

recordings.

C

leo Brown bears the distinction 

of being the first woman instrumentalist 

honored with the NEA Jazz Masters 

Fellowship. Her family moved to Chicago 

in 1919 and four years later, at age 14, she 

started working professionally with a vaudeville show. 

Her brother Everett, who worked with “Pine Top” 

Smith, taught her the boogie woogie piano style that 

became her trademark. 

Brown performed in the Chicago area during 

the late 1920s. In 1935, she replaced Fats Waller on 

Born December 8, 1909 in Meridian, MS 

Died April 15, 1995

Photo courtesy of Ray Avery Photo

Archives/CTSIMAGES
28

Selected Discography

Oscar Peterson

TheUltimate

Oscar Peterson

Verve, 1956-64

Much in

Common

 Verve, 1962-65

Summer Wind: 

Live at the Loa

Concord, 1988

Some of My 

Best Friends 

Are....The

Sax Players

Telarc, 1995

Ray Brown with John Clayton 

and Christian McBride 

Super Bass 2

Telarc, 2001

Born October 13, 1926 in Pittsburgh, PA 

Died July 2, 2002 

BaSSIST

EDUCATOR

Ray

Brown

1995

Some of My Best Friends are.... These have included 

pianists, saxophonists, trumpeters, and vocalists. Some 

of the great younger bassists, such as John Clayton 

and Christian McBride, count him as a major influence 

on their sound. In 2003, Brown was inducted into the 

DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

R

ay Brown’s dexterity and rich sound 

on the bass made him one of the most 

popular and prolific musicians in jazz for 

more than 50 years. The Penguin Guide to 

Jazz on CD notes that Brown is the most 

cited musician in the first edition of the guide, both 

for his own small ensemble work and as a sideman, 

testifying to his productivity. 

Brown started on piano at age eight and began 

playing the bass at 17, performing his first professional 

job at a Pittsburgh club in 1943. His first significant 

tour was with bandleader Snookum Russell in 1944; 

he moved to New York the following year. By 1946 he 

was working in Dizzy Gillespie’s band, and in 1948 he 

formed a trio with Hank Jones and Charlie Smith. In 

1948, he married Ella Fitzgerald and became musical 

director on her solo and Jazz at the Philharmonic tours 

until their breakup in 1952. In 1951, he began a stint 

with the Oscar Peterson Trio that lasted until 1966. It 

was in Peterson’s group that Brown’s prowess on the bass 

began getting attention, anchoring the trio’s sound in 

both the piano-guitar and piano-drums configurations.

In the mid-1960s, Brown co-led a quintet with 

vibraphonist Milt Jackson, with whom he had worked 

in the 1940s as part of Dizzy Gillespie’s rhythm section 

and later as a member of the Milt Jackson Quartet, the 

precursor to the Modern Jazz Quartet. In the late 1970s, 

Brown formed his first full-time trio, which was to 

become his favored touring and performance unit over 

the next couple of decades. He utilized a variety of upand-coming musicians in his bands, including pianists 

Gene Harris, Monty Alexander, Benny Green, and Geoff 

Keezer and drummers Jeff Hamilton, Lewis Nash, 

Gregory Hutchinson, and Kariem Riggins.

Brown was also involved in jazz education, including 

authoring the Ray Brown Bass Book 1, an instructional 

volume. He served as mentor to numerous young 

musicians, including those who have passed through 

his groups and special guests he invited to play on 

a series of 1990s recordings for the Telarc label titled 

Photo by Lee Tanner
29

Selected Discography

Jazz at Oberlin

Original Jazz Classics, 1953

Time Out

Columbia, 1959

The Real 

Ambassadors

Columbia/Legacy, 1961

Classical 

Brubeck

Telarc, 2002

London Flat, 

London Sharp

Telarc, 2004

PIANIST

COMPOSER

DAVE

BRUBECK

1999

Born December 6, 1920 in Concord, CA

Photo by Tom Pich

and Ron Crotty, and in 1951 expanded the band to 

include Desmond. Brubeck became the first jazz artist 

to make the cover of Time magazine, in 1954, and in 

1958 performed in Europe and the Middle East for the 

U.S. State Department, leading to the introduction of 

music from other cultures into his repertoire. In 1959, 

the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded an experiment in 

time signatures, Time Out. The album sold more than a 

million copies, and Brubeck’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” 

based on a Turkish folk rhythm, and Desmond’s “Take 

Five” appeared on jukeboxes throughout the world. 

Throughout his career, Brubeck has continued 

to experiment with integrating jazz and classical 

music. In 1959, he premiered and recorded his brother 

Howard’s Dialogues for Jazz Combo and Orchestra with 

the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. 

In 1960, he composed Points on Jazz for the American 

Ballet Theatre, and in later decades composed for and 

performed with the Murray Louis Dance Co. His musical 

theater piece, The Real Ambassadors starring Louis 

Armstrong and Carmen McRae, was also written and 

recorded in 1960 and performed to 

great acclaim at the 1962 Monterey 

Jazz Festival. The classic Dave Brubeck 

Quartet with Paul Desmond, Eugene 

Wright, and Joe Morello was dissolved 

in December 1967 and Brubeck’s first 

of many oratorios, The Light in the 

Wilderness, premiered in 1968. 

He has received many honors 

in the U.S. and abroad for his 

contribution to jazz, including the 

National Medal of Arts, a Grammy 

Lifetime Achievement Award, the 

Kennedy Center Honors, and the 

Austrian Medal of the Arts. In 2008, 

Brubeck received the Benjamin 

Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy 

from the U.S. State Department 

for “introducing the language, the 

sounds, and the spirit of jazz to new 

generations around the world.”

D

ave Brubeck, declared a “Living Legend” 

by the Library of Congress, continues to 

be one of the most active and popular 

jazz musicians in the world today. His 

experiments with odd time signatures, 

improvised counterpoint, and a distinctive harmonic 

approach are the hallmarks of his unique musical style.

Born into a musically inclined family—his 

two older brothers were professional musicians—he 

began taking piano lessons from his mother, a classical 

pianist, at age four. After graduating from College of 

the Pacific in 1942, he enlisted in the Army, and while 

serving in Europe led an integrated G.I. jazz band. 

At the end of World War II, he studied composition 

at Mills College with French classical composer 

Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to introduce 

jazz elements into his classical compositions. This 

experimentation with mixed genres led to the 

formation of the Dave Brubeck Octet that included 

Paul Desmond, Bill Smith, and Cal Tjader. In 1949, 

Brubeck formed an award-winning trio with Cal Tjader 
30

Selected Discography

2005

Kenny Burrell 

& John

Coltrane

Prestige/OJC, 1958

Midnight Blue

Blue Note, 1963

Guitar Forms

Verve, 1964

Kenny Burrell & the 

Boys Choir of Harlem

Love is the

Answer

Concord Jazz, 1997

75th Birthday 

Bash Live!

Blue Note, 2006 

Born July 31, 1931 in Detroit, MI

Guitarist

Composer 

Educator

KENNY

BURRELL

In addition to performing and recording, he is 

a professor of music and ethnomusicology at the 

University of California at Los Angeles. A recognized 

authority on the music of Duke Ellington, he developed 

the first regular college course ever taught in the United 

States on Ellington in 1978. In 1997, he was appointed 

director of the jazz studies program at UCLA, where he 

has enlisted such faculty members as George Bohanon, 

Billy Childs, Billy Higgins, Harold Land, Bobby 

Rodriguez, and Gerald Wilson. 

Kenny Burrell is the author of two books, Jazz 

Guitar and Jazz Guitar Solos. In 2004, he received a 

Jazz Educator of the Year Award from DownBeat. He is a 

founder of the Jazz Heritage Foundation and the Friends 

of Jazz at UCLA and is recognized as an international 

ambassador for jazz and its promotion as an art form.

K

enny Burrell pioneered the guitar-led trio 

with bass and drums in the late 1950s. 

Known for his harmonic creativity, lush 

tones, and lyricism on the guitar, he 

is also a prolific and highly regarded 

composer. Born in Detroit in 1931, he found musical 

colleagues at an early age among Paul Chambers, 

Tommy Flanagan, Frank Foster, Yusef Lateef, and 

the brothers Thad, Hank, and Elvin Jones. While still 

a student at Wayne State University, he made his first 

major recording in 1951 with Dizzy Gillespie, John 

Coltrane, Percy Heath, and Milt Jackson.

After graduation, he toured for six months with the 

Oscar Peterson Trio and then moved to New York, where 

he performed in Broadway pit bands, on pop and R&B 

studio sessions (with Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, and 

James Brown), in jazz venues, and on jazz recordings. 

He went on to work and/or record with such artists as 

Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Gene Ammons, 

Kenny Dorham, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, and

Jimmy Smith. As a leader, he has recorded more than 

90 albums and is a featured guitarist on more than 200 

jazz recordings, including ones with Art Blakey, Herbie 

Hancock, and Quincy Jones.

Burrell’s compositions have been recorded by artists 

including Ray Brown, June Christy, Grover Washington, 

Jr., Frank Wess, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His 

extended composition for the Boys Choir of Harlem 

was premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center, and his 

“Dear Ella,” performed by Dee Dee Bridgewater, won 

a 1998 Grammy Award.

Photo by Lee Tanner
31

Selected Discography

First Flight

Denmark, 1955

At the Half

Note Cafe, 

Vol. 1 + 2

Blue Note, 1960

Electric Byrd

Blue Note, 1970

Black Byrd

Blue Note, 1974

A City Called 

Heaven

Landmark, 1991

trumpetER

flugelhornIST 

educator

Born December 9, 1932 in Detroit, MI 

Donald

Byrd

2000

Photo by Lee Tanner

In the early 1960s, he became a bandleader of his 

own touring quintet. During 1965-66 he was a house 

arranger for the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. It was 

also at this time that he became more active as an 

educator, teaching at New York’s Music & Art High 

School. He held clinics for the National Stage Band 

Camps, giving private lessons and instruction. Among 

the college and university teaching appointments that 

followed were Rutgers University, Hampton University, 

Howard University, North Carolina Central University, 

North Texas State, and Delaware State University. 

He also earned a law degree between teaching 

appointments.

At Howard University, where he was chairman of the 

Black Music Department, he brought together a group of 

talented students to form Donald Byrd & the Blackbyrds, 

a pop-jazz band that had a hit record for Blue Note, 

and continued to record—sans Byrd—for the Fantasy 

label. His recorded innovations included the use of a 

vocal chorus, which resulted in his popular recording of 

“Cristo Redemptor,” as well as his engagements of gospel 

texts.

A pioneer jazz educator on AfricanAmerican college and university 

campuses, as well as general colleges and 

universities, Donald Byrd has also been 

 a leading improviser on trumpet. Raised 

in the home of a Methodist minister and musician, 

he learned music in the then highly regarded music 

education system in the Detroit high schools. Byrd 

went on to earn degrees from Wayne State University 

and the Manhattan School of Music, eventually 

earning a doctorate from the University of Colorado 

School of Education. He studied music with the famed 

teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1963. 

Byrd played in the Air Force band during 1951-52, 

then relocated to New York. Some of his earliest gigs 

in New York were with the George Wallington group at 

Cafe Bohemia. He joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers 

in December 1955. Following his Messengers experience, 

he worked in a variety of bands with Max Roach, 

John Coltrane, Red Garland, and Gigi Gryce, refining 

his playing skills. In 1958 he co-led a band with fellow 

Detroiter Pepper Adams, which continued for the next 

three years.
32

Selected Discography

Born April 22, 1921 in Havana, Cuba

Billy Taylor

The Billy 

Taylor Trio

with Candido

Prestige/OJC, 1954

Candido

 Verve, 1956

Brujerias 

de Candido: 

Candido’s 

Latin McGuffa’s 

Dust

Tico, 1971

Candido Camero/Carlos 

Valdes/Giovanni Hidalgo

Conga Kings

Chesky, 1999

Hands of Fire

Latin Jazz USA, 2006

percussionist

Candido

Camero

2008

congueros were playing only one) in addition to a 

cowbell and guiro (a fluted gourd played with strokes 

from a stick). He created another unique playing style 

by tuning his congas to specific pitches so that he could 

play melodies like a pianist. He became one of the best 

known congueros in the country, appearing on such 

television shows as The Ed Sullivan Show and The Jackie 

Gleason Show. 

He has recorded and performed with seemingly 

everybody in the jazz field, including such luminaries 

as Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, 

Lionel Hampton, Slide Hampton, Charles Mingus, 

Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker, Sonny 

Rollins, and Clark Terry. Among his many awards are 

the Latin Jazz USA Lifetime Achievement Award (2001) 

and a special achievement award from the American 

Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers as a 

“Legend of Jazz” (2005).

The subject of the 2006 documentary, Candido: 

Hands of Fire, Camero (entering his 90s) continues to 

perform throughout the world. 

S

o well known and respected, his first name 

alone—Candido—is all that is necessary for 

jazz aficionados to know who he is. Credited 

with being the first percussionist to bring 

conga drumming to jazz, Candido Camero is 

also known for his contributions to the development of 

mambo and Afro-Cuban jazz.

Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1921, Camero first began 

making music as a young child, beating rhythms on 

empty condensed milk cans in place of bongos. He 

worked for six years with the CMQ Radio Orchestra and 

at the famed Cabaret Tropicana. 

He came to the United States in 1946 with the 

dance team Carmen and Rolando, and very soon after 

was playing with Billy Taylor, who wrote in 1954, 

“I have not heard anyone who even approaches the 

wonderful balance between jazz and Cuban elements 

that Candido demonstrates.”

By the early 1950s, Camero was a featured soloist 

with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, with whom he toured 

the U.S. playing three congas (at a time when other 

Photo by Tom Pich
33

Selected Discography

All of Me

Bluebird, 1934-59

Jazz Giant

Original Jazz 

Classics, 1957-58

Further 

Definitions

Impulse!, 1961-66

Harlem

Renaissance

MusicMasters, 1992

Benny Carter and Phil Woods 

Another Time, 

Another Place

Evening Star 1996

Photo by Lee Tanner

and assembled a new big band, which became the house 

band at the Savoy Ballroom through 1940. In 1942, with 

another new band in tow, he settled in Los Angeles, his 

longtime home base. With lucrative film studios calling, 

Carter began scoring films and television. He became 

one of the first African Americans to be employed in the 

field, easing the way for other black composers. His first 

film work was in 1943 on Stormy Weather.

Starting in 1946, with his composing and arranging 

skills in constant demand, Carter disbanded his orchestra 

and became largely a freelance player. He participated 

in tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic and wrote 

arrangements for major singers such as Ray Charles, 

Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, and Louis 

Armstrong. Many of his subsequent recordings, such as 

the widely hailed Further Definitions, were evidence of 

the depth of his composing and arranging mastery. 

Carter has received numerous awards during his 

long lifetime, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement 

Award in 1987, a DownBeat international critics’ poll in 

the Arranger’s category in 1988, Jazz Artist of the Year 

in both DownBeat and JazzTimes international critics’ 

polls in 1990, and the National Medal of Arts in 2000. 

In 1996, a documentary on Carter, Symphony in Riffs, 

was released. 

B

enny Carter made memorable impressions 

as a great bandleader and improviser with 

a highly influential style. Largely selftaught, Carter’s first instrument was the 

trumpet, although the alto saxophone 

eventually became his principal instrument. Some of 

his earliest professional jobs were with bands led by 

cornetist June Clark and pianist Earl Hines, where his 

unusual ability to play both trumpet and saxophone 

was highly regarded. In 1930-31 he spent a year with 

the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, then for a short 

time he succeeded Don Redman as musical director 

of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers. During the early 1930s, 

he also made his first recordings with the Chocolate 

Dandies, which included Coleman Hawkins. In 1932, 

Carter formed his own big band. At various times the 

band included such significant players as Ben Webster, 

Chu Berry, Teddy Wilson, Dicky Wells, Bill Coleman, 

and Sid Catlett.

In 1934, Carter dissolved his band, migrating 

to Europe the next year, where he served as a staff 

arranger for the BBC Orchestra in London until 1938. 

His work in Europe took on an ambassadorial tint: 

he freelanced with musicians in England and France 

and led a multiethnic band in Scandinavia in 1937. 

Growing restless, Carter returned to the U.S. in 1938 

Born August 8, 1907 in New York, NY 

Died July 12, 2003 

saxophonIST 

trumpetER

arranger 

composer 

bandleader

Benny

Carter

1986
34

Selected Discography

1992

vocalIST 

BANDLEADER

Educator

Born May 16, 1930 in Flint, MI

Died September 26, 1998 

I Can’t Help It 

Impulse!, 1958-60

At the Village

Vanguard

Verve, 1970

The Audience

with

Betty Carter 

Verve, 1979

Look What I Got 

Verve, 1988

Feed the Fire

Verve, 1993

Betty

Carter

The program was a one- to two-week teaching seminar 

where nationally selected promising young jazz 

musicians learned from Carter and other seasoned 

musicians, culminating in a final concert of instructors 

and students together. Jazz Ahead was one of Carter’s 

proudest achievements, and she worked with the 

program up until her death. She received the National 

Medal of Arts in 1997.

B

etty Carter developed a legendary 

reputation, along with Art Blakey, as 

one of the great mentors for young jazz 

musicians. Equally legendary was her 

singing prowess, creating a distinctive style 

of improvisation that could transcend any song. 

Carter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory, a 

skill that served her well later in her career in writing 

original songs. Growing up in Detroit, she was exposed 

to numerous jazz greats who passed through town, 

even getting a golden opportunity as a teenager to sit 

in with Charlie Parker. Carter’s big break came in 1948, 

when she was asked to join the Lionel Hampton

band. Developing her vocal improvisations during the 

three years with the band led to her singular singing 

style. Hampton, impressed with her saxophone-like 

improvisatory vocals, dubbed her “Betty Bebop.” After 

leaving Hampton’s band, she worked variously with such 

greats as Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and Sonny Rollins

before creating her own band.

Although she recorded for major record labels early 

in her career, Carter became increasingly frustrated with 

record company dealings and disparities and formed her 

own label Bet-Car in 1971, one of the first jazz artists 

to do so. Selling her own recordings through various 

distributors, she was able to sustain her performing 

career. Carter was uncomfortable with studio recordings, 

but live recordings, like The Audience with Betty Carter, 

demonstrate her remarkably inventive singing and her 

ability to drive the band.

Carter’s bands served a dual purpose: to create her 

own great music and to help young musicians develop 

their craft. Many of the musicians who passed through 

her groups went on to lead their own groups, such as 

Geri Allen, Stephen Scott, Don Braden, and Christian 

McBride. She also developed a mentoring program 

called Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead through links with 

organizations such as the International Association 

for Jazz Education, 651 Arts, and the Kennedy Center. 

Photo by Lee Tanner
35

Selected Discography

Born May 4, 1937 in Ferndale, MI

Ron

Carter bassIST 

cellIST 

composer 

educator

1998

Miles Davis

E.S.P.

Columbia, 1965

Live at 

Village West 

Concord, 1982

Eight Plus 

Dreyfus, 1990

Brandenburg 

Conce rto

Blue Note, 1995

Dear Miles

EMI 2006

Photo by Lee Tanner

though he never stopped gigging with a variety of 

artists and bands, including several touring all-star 

units such as the CTI All-Stars, V.S.O.P. (ostensibly a 

reunion of the Davis band minus the leader), and the 

Milestone Jazzstars, which included Sonny Rollins on 

tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, and Al Foster 

on drums.

His freelance work has continued throughout his 

career, including chamber and orchestral work, film 

and television soundtracks, and even some hip hop 

recordings. Carter continues to record with young 

musicians such as Stephen Scott and Lewis Nash, and 

his college and university teaching career has also been 

quite active. He is distinguished professor of music, 

emeritus of the City College of New York, and has 

received honorary doctorate degrees from the Berklee 

School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and 

the New England Conservatory in Boston. He has also 

written several books on playing the bass, including 

Building A Jazz Bass Line. 

R

on Carter’s dexterity and 

harmonic sophistication on 

the bass have few rivals in 

the history of jazz. In 

 addition to the bass, he 

has also employed both the cello and 

the piccolo bass (a downsized bass 

pitched somewhere between cello and 

contrabass), one of the first musicians to 

use those instruments in jazz settings.

His pursuit of music began with the 

cello, at age 10. One of the many students 

aspiring to be musicians in the Detroit 

public schools, he switched to the bass at 

Cass Tech High School. He studied at the 

Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New 

York, and eventually made his way to New 

York City, where he earned his master’s 

degree in Music from the Manhattan 

School of Music in 1961. He began 

freelancing, playing with a host of jazz 

greats, such as Chico Hamilton, Randy 

Weston, Bobby Timmons, Thelonious 

Monk, and Art Farmer. Carter cut three 

substantial albums with the great saxophonist Eric 

Dolphy, two under Dolphy’s name and one under his 

own. Carter’s Where? and Dolphy’s Out There were 

groundbreaking in that Carter played cello against 

George Duvivier’s bass, creating a rich lower texture 

against which Dolphy could contrast his playing.

In 1963, he joined Miles Davis in what would 

become the trumpeter’s second great quintet that 

included Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, and Herbie 

Hancock. Davis even recorded some of Carter’s 

compositions—notably “R.J.,” “Mood,” and “EightyOne”—and the rhythm section of Carter, Williams, and 

Hancock powered the horn section to greater heights. 

He remained with Davis from 1963-68, whereupon 

he grew tired of the rigors of the road, preferring to 

freelance, lead his own groups, and teach. Among 

the cooperative bands he performed with during the 

remainder of the 1960s were the New York Jazz Sextet 

and the New York Bass Choir. Throughout the 1970s, 

he was a recording studio bassist in high demand, 
36

Selected Discography

Born January 2, 1914 in Pittsburgh, PA 

Died January 26, 1985 

Modern Jazz Quartet

The Artistry 

of the Modern

Jazz Quartet

Prestige, 1952-55

Bohemia

After Dark

Savoy, 1955

Discoveries

Savoy, 1955

Kenny Clarke

Meets the

Detroit 

Jazzmen

Savoy, 1956

Clarke-Boland 

Big Band 

RTE, 1968

1983

drummer

bandleader

Kenny

Clarke

Jazz Quartet in 1952. Though he and Lewis remained 

friends, Clarke chafed at what he felt was the too-staid 

atmosphere of the MJQ. In 1956, he migrated to Paris, 

which became his home for nearly 30 years, working 

with Jacques Helian’s band and backing up visiting U.S. 

jazz artists. 

During the years 1960-73, he co-led the major 

Europe-based jazz big band with Belgian pianist Francy 

Boland, the Clarke-Boland Big Band. The band featured 

the best of Europe’s jazz soloists, including a number of 

exceptional U.S. expatriate musicians living in Europe. 

Among these were saxophonists Johnny Griffin and 

Sahib Shihab, and trumpeter Idrees Sulieman. After 

the disbanding of his big band, Clarke found numerous 

opportunities both on the bandstand and teaching in 

the classroom. He remained quite active as a freelancer, 

often working with visiting U.S. jazz musicians, until 

his death in 1985. In 1988, Clarke was inducted into the 

DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

Kenny Clarke, known 

among musicians as 

“Klook” for one of his 

characteristic drum licks, 

is truly a jazz pioneer. 

He was a leader in the rhythmic 

advances that signaled the beginning 

of the modern jazz era, his drum style 

becoming the sound of bebop and 

influencing drummers such as Art 

Blakey and Max Roach. 

Clarke studied music broadly 

while in high school, including piano, 

trombone, drums, vibraphone, and 

theory. Such versatility of knowledge 

would later serve him well as a 

bandleader. Clarke moved to New York 

in late 1935, where he first began 

developing his unique approach to 

the drums, one with a wider rhythmic 

palette than that of the swing band 

drummers. Instead of marking the 

count with the top cymbal, Clarke 

used counter-rhythms to accent the 

beat, what became known as “dropping of bombs.” 

He found a kindred spirit in Dizzy Gillespie when 

they hooked up in Teddy Hill’s band in 1939. A key 

opportunity to further expand his drum language came 

in late 1940 when he landed a gig in the house band 

(with Thelonious Monk on piano, and Nick Fenton 

on bass) at Minton’s Playhouse. It was this trio that 

welcomed such fellow travelers as guitarist Charlie 

Christian, Gillespie, and a host of others to its nightly 

jam sessions. These sessions became the primary 

laboratory for their brand of jazz, which came 

to be called bebop.

A stint in the Army from 1943-46 introduced him 

to pianist John Lewis. After their discharge he and 

Lewis joined Gillespie’s bebop big band, which gave 

Clarke his first taste of Paris during a European tour. 

After returning to New York, he joined the Milt Jackson

Quartet, which metamorphosed into the Modern 

Photo by Herman Leonard Photography LLC/CTSIMAGES
37

Selected Discography

The Classic

Swing of

Buck Clayton

Original Jazz Classics, 1946

Buck Special

Vogue, 1949-53

Jam Sessions 

from the

Vaults 

Columbia, 1953-56

Buck and Buddy

Original Jazz Classics, 1960

A Swingin’ 

Dream

Stash, 1988

Born November 12, 1911 in Parsons, KS 

Died December 8, 1991 

trumpetER

composer 

arranger 

bandleader 

educator

1991

Photo by Lee Tanner

A valued member of a variety of classic 

big bands, Wilbur “Buck” Clayton was 

versatile enough to thrive as a 

bandleader, session man, and trumpet 

 soloist. Clayton first studied piano with 

his father beginning at age six, taking up the trumpet 

at age 17. He played in his church’s orchestra until 

1932 when he moved to California, taking various band 

jobs. In 1934, Clayton assembled his own band and 

took it to China for two years.

He joined Count Basie’s band in Kansas City in 

1936 at the height of its popularity, playing his first 

prominent solo on “Fiesta in Blue.” He wrote several 

arrangements for Basie, including “Taps Miller” and 

“Red Bank Boogie,” before joining the Army in 1943. 

Following his discharge, he performed around New York 

through the end of the decade. Jazz at the Philharmonic 

tours took him overseas, and he made record sessions 

with artists like Jimmy Rushing and wrote charts for 

Duke Ellington and Harry James. In the early 1950s, he 

partnered with pianist Joe Bushkin in the first of the 

influential Embers quartets. Other artists he worked 

with include Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Eddie 

Condon, Sidney Bechet, and Humphrey Littleton. His 

ability to improvise in a variety of styles made him 

much in demand for sessions, especially with vocalists 

such as Billie Holiday.

Physical issues with his embouchure—how 

the mouth forms against the mouthpiece of the 

instrument—caused him to relinquish the trumpet 

from 1972 until late in the decade, when he was able to 

resume playing for a U.S. State Department-sponsored 

tour of Africa. By 1979, however, he stopped playing 

permanently. While he was unable to perform, Clayton 

wrote arrangements for various bands. That skill was 

fully exercised when he put together his own big band 

in the mid-1980s, playing almost exclusively his own 

compositions and arrangements. He also became an 

educator, teaching at Hunter College in the 1980s. 

He continued to freelance for the remainder of his 

career, spending much of his last two decades teaching, 

lecturing, and arranging. His autobiography, Buck 

Clayton’s Jazz World, co-authored with Nancy M. Elliot, 

was published in 1987.

Buck

Clayton
38

Selected Discography

Miles Davis

Kind of Blue

Columbia, 1959

Wes Montgomery

Smokin’ at 

the Half Note

Verve, 1965

Joe Henderson

Four!

Verve, 1968

Marsalis Music

Honor Series

Marsalis Music/

Rounder, 2005

Cobb’s Corner

Chesky, 2006

Born January 20, 1929 in Washington, DC

drummer

educator

JimMy

Cobb

2009

A

n accomplished accompanist and soloist, 

Jimmy Cobb is best known for being a 

key part of Miles Davis’ first great quintet 

in the late 1950s. 

Largely self-taught, Cobb spent 

his younger days in his hometown of Washington, 

DC, playing engagements with Charlie Rouse, Frank 

Wess, and Billie Holiday, among others. He left DC in 

1950, joining Earl Bostic, with whom he cut his first 

recordings, before finding work with Dinah Washington, 

Pearl Bailey, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, and 

Cannonball Adderley.

In 1957, Cobb began playing with Miles Davis, 

eventually becoming part of a formidable rhythm 

section that included Paul Chambers on bass and 

Wynton Kelly on piano. Between 1957 and 1963, Cobb 

played (along with saxophonists John 

Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley) on 

some of Davis’ most noted records: Kind 

of Blue, Sketches of Spain, Someday My 

Prince Will Come, Live at Carnegie Hall, 

Live at the Blackhawk, and Porgy and 

Bess, among others. In 1963, Cobb left 

the Davis band to continue working as 

a trio with Chambers and Kelly. The trio 

disbanded in the late 1960s, and Cobb 

worked with singer Sarah Vaughan

for nine years. He then freelanced for 

the next 20 years with artists such as 

Sonny Stitt, Nat Adderley, Ricky Ford,

Hank Jones, Ron Carter, George 

Coleman, David “Fathead” Newman, 

and Nancy Wilson.

Cobb released his first CD (and 

music video) for the A&E network in 

1986; it featured Freddie Hubbard, 

Gregory Hines, and Bill Cosby. In 

2006, Cobb was produced by Branford 

Marsalis for the Marsalis Music Honor 

Series, recorded around Cobb’s 75th 

birthday. In the last few years, he has 

released several albums as a leader—

New York Time, Cobb’s Corner, and West of 5th—playing 

with stalwart musicians such as pianists Cedar Walton

and Hank Jones and relative newcomers such as bassist 

Christian McBride and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. 

Jimmy Cobb continues to play music in New York 

City, where he lives with his wife and two children. He 

now leads the Jimmy Cobb “So What” Band, celebrating 

50 years of Kind of Blue and the music of Miles Davis, 

and travels the international circuit. Cobb currently 

teaches master classes at Stanford University’s Jazz 

Workshop and has taught at The New School for Jazz 

and Contemporary Music, the University of Greensboro 

in North Carolina, the International Center for the Arts 

at San Francisco State University in California, and 

international educational institutions.

Photo by Lee Tanner
39

Selected Discography

1984

Ornette 

sax

trump

co

o

v

ph

i

mp

oli

onI

ose

et

nI

E

ST 

ST 

R

r

Coleman

The Shape of

Jazz to Come

Atlantic, 1959-60

Free Jazz

Atlantic, 1960

At the Golden

Circle, 

Stockholm, 

Vol. 1-2

Blue Note, 1965

In All 

Languages

Verve/Harmolodic, 1987

Sound Grammar

Sound Grammar, 2005

Born March 9, 1930 in Ft. Worth, TX

Photo by Lee Tanner

O

rnette Coleman is one of the true jazz 

innovators, whose sound is instantly 

recognizable and unquestionably unique. 

Coleman’s work has ranged from dissonance 

and atonality to liberal use of electronic 

accompaniment in his ensembles, as well as the 

engagement of various ethnic influences and elements 

from around the globe. While experimenting with time 

and tone, his strong blues roots are always evident.

For the most part, Coleman has been self-taught, 

beginning on the alto saxophone at age 14. Coleman’s 

earliest performing experiences were mostly with 

local rhythm-and-blues bands. Coleman settled in 

Los Angeles in 1952. His search for a different sound 

and approach, a means of escaping traditional chord 

patterns and progressions, led some critics to suggest 

1984

that he did not know how to play his instrument. In 

reality, he was studying harmony and theory zealously 

from books while supporting himself as an elevator 

operator. His performances in clubs and jam sessions 

were often met with derision if not outright rejection 

and anger from his fellow musicians and critics. 

Coleman soldiered on, honing his sound with likeminded musicians, including trumpeter Don Cherry, 

drummer Billy Higgins, and bassist Charlie Haden.

The year 1959 was an important one for Coleman 

and his band: he signed a recording contract with 

Atlantic Records, recording the first album to really 

present his new sound, Tomorrow Is The Question!; 

his quartet was invited to participate in what became 

a historic session at the Lenox School of Jazz in 

Massachusetts, being championed by John Lewis

and Gunther Schuller; and the band began an 

extended engagement at the Five Spot Cafe in New 

York. Meanwhile, Ornette Coleman was developing an 

approach to his music that he was to dub “harmolodics.”

Coleman’s albums for Atlantic were quite 

controversial at the time. Perhaps the most controversial 

of this series of albums was Free Jazz, recorded with a 

double quartet as essentially one continuous collective 

improvisation, which influenced avant-garde recordings 

in the 1960s and 1970s. After that recording, Coleman 

took time off from playing and recording to study 

trumpet and violin. 

Since that time Coleman has expanded his 

compositional outlook. His writing includes works 

for wind ensembles, strings, and symphony orchestra 

(notably his symphony Skies of America, recorded 

with the London Philharmonic). Coleman’s ongoing 

experiments have taken him to Northern Africa to 

work with the Master Musicians of Joujouka, and he 

has performed with an electric ensemble he calls Prime 

Time. He is a recipient of Guggenheim Fellowships for 

composition, a MacArthur grant, and the prestigious 

Gish Prize in 2004. In 2007, he received the Pulitzer 

Prize in Music for his recording Sound Grammar and a 

Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
40

Selected Discography

Now He Sings, 

Now He Sobs

Blue Note, 1968

Return to

Forever

ECM, 1972

Live in

Montreux

Stretch, 1981

Rendezvous in

New York 

Stretch, 2001

Chick Corea and Gary Burton

The New

Crystal Silence

Concord, 2007

Born June 12, 1941 in Chelsea, MA

Keyboardist

COMPOSER

ARRANGER

Chick

Corea

2006

such as Where Have I Known You Before, Romantic 

Warrior, and the Grammy Award-winning No Mystery.

In 1985, Corea formed a new fusion group, The Elektric 

Band, and a few years later he formed The Akoustic 

Band. In 1992, he established his own record label, 

Stretch Records.

On the occasion of his 60th birthday in 2001, Corea 

put together an unprecedented musical gathering at 

the Blue Note Jazz Club in New York City. The threeweek event resulted in a double CD, Rendezvous in New 

York, and a two-hour film of the same name. In 2008, 

he reunited the classic Return to Forever band and 

embarked on a world tour. In 2010, he was selected 

for the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame. He continues to 

create projects in multifaceted settings for listeners 

around the world.

A groundbreaking artist both 

as a keyboardist (piano, 

electric piano, synthesizer) 

and as a composer-arranger, 

 Chick Corea has moved 

fluidly among jazz, fusion, and classical 

music throughout a four-decade career, 

winning national and international 

honors including 16 Grammy Awards. 

He ranks with Herbie Hancock and 

Keith Jarrett as one of the leading piano 

stylists to emerge after Bill Evans and 

McCoy Tyner, and he has composed such 

notable jazz standards as “Spain,” “La 

Fiesta,” and “Windows.”

Corea began playing piano and drums 

at an early age and enjoyed a childhood 

home filled with the music of Bud 

Powell, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie,

and Lester Young, as well as Mozart 

and Beethoven. From 1962 to 1966 he 

gained experience playing with the 

bands of Mongo Santamaria and Willie 

Bobo, Blue Mitchell, Herbie Mann, and 

Stan Getz. He made his recording debut 

as a leader with Tones For Joan’s Bones

(1966) and in 1968 recorded the classic 

trio album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs with Miroslav 

Vitous and Roy Haynes. Following a short period with 

Sarah Vaughan, Corea then joined Miles Davis’ group, 

gradually replacing Herbie Hancock. Davis persuaded 

Corea to play electric piano on the influential albums 

Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and 

Miles Davis at the Fillmore.

In 1971, Corea formed the ensemble Return to 

Forever with Stanley Clarke on bass, Flora Purim on 

vocals, her husband Airto Moreira on drums, and Joe 

Farrell on reeds. Within a year, the samba-flavored 

group had become an innovative, high-energy electric 

fusion band, incorporating the firepower of drummer 

Lenny White and guitarist Al DiMeola. Spearheaded by 

Corea’s distinctive style on Moog synthesizer, Return to 

Forever led the mid-1970s fusion movement with albums 

Photo by Lee Tanner
41

Selected Discography

Born May 25, 1926 in Alton, IL 

Died September 28, 1991

Birth of

the Cool 

Capitol, 1949-50

Kind of Blue

Columbia, 1959

The Complete

Live at the

Plugged Nickel

Columbia, 1965

Bitches Brew

Columbia, 1969

Amandla

Warner Brothers, 1989

trumpeter

flugelhornist

composer

bandleaDer

Miles

Davis

1984

Photo by Lee Tanner

Miles Davis Quintet was recording mostly originals, with 

all the band members contributing memorable tunes. 

Davis’ horn playing also changed, increasing the spacing 

of notes to create more suspense in the music.

 In 1968, Davis again changed direction, leading 

the way for electric jazz with the release of In a 

Silent Way. By the 1969 release of Bitches Brew, as he 

deepened the electronic elements and rock rhythms 

of his music, the transformation was complete. By the 

mid-1970s, following the debilitating effects of a 1972 

auto accident, Davis went into semi-retirement. He 

returned to the scene in 1980 and resumed touring in 

1981, attracting newer fans. From then to 1991, Davis 

remained vital and popular, receiving the Grammy 

Lifetime Acheivement Award in 1990.

Miles Davis was arguably the most 

influential jazz musician in the 

post-World War II period, being at the 

forefront of changes in the genre for 

more than 40 years. 

Born into a middle-class family, Davis started on the 

trumpet at age 13. His first professional music job came 

when he joined the Eddie Randall band in St. Louis in 

1941. In the fall of 1944 Davis took a scholarship to 

attend the Juilliard School, a convenient passport to 

New York. It didn’t take him long to immerse himself in 

the New York scene and he began working 52nd Street 

gigs alongside Charlie Parker in 1945. Soon, Davis found 

work with Coleman Hawkins and the big bands of Billy 

Eckstine and Benny Carter. 

During the late 1940s, a number of musical 

contemporaries began to meet and jam regularly at 

the small apartment of arranger-pianist Gil Evans. 

Among them were saxophonists Gerry Mulligan and 

Lee Konitz, and pianist John Lewis. Out of this 

group of musicians, Davis formed the nonet to record 

his first major musical statement, Birth of the Cool. 

In addition to the standard piano, bass, and drums 

rhythm section, Davis’ nonet horn section used 

French horn and tuba along with trombone and alto 

and baritone saxophones, lending the band a unique 

harmonic sound.

In 1955, Davis assembled his first important band 

with John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, 

and Philly Joe Jones, adding Cannonball Adderley 

in 1958. By this time Davis, influenced by George 

Russell’s theories, had begun playing in modes rather 

than standard chord changes, which led to his most 

famous album (and the all-time biggest-selling jazz 

album), Kind of Blue, in 1959. Davis also continued an 

important musical partnership with Gil Evans, recording 

four releases in five years: Miles Ahead, Porgy and 

Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Quiet Nights. 

In 1964, Davis assembled a new band of younger 

musicians, which became known as his second great 

quintet. This included Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, 

Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter. By this time, the 
42

Selected Discography

clarinetist

educator

Born February 17, 1923 in Camden, NJ

Cooking 

the Blues

Verve, 1955

Blues Bag

Affinity, 1964

 Hark

Pablo/OJC, 1985

Cookin’ 

the Books

Arbors Jazz, 2003

Charlie

Cat 2

Arbors Jazz, 2006

Buddy

DeFranco

2006

the first jazz clarinetist to make his 

mark in the new idiom of bebop.

In 1950, DeFranco joined the famous 

Count Basie Septet. He toured Europe 

with Billie Holiday in 1954, led a 

quartet for three years with Art Blakey,

Kenny Drew, and Eugene Wright, and 

then joined with Tommy Gumina in a 

quartet that explored polytonal music, 

further solidifying his reputation as a 

“musician’s musician.” His other notable 

concert and recording appearances 

have included dates with Art Tatum, 

Nat “King” Cole, Charlie Parker, Dizzy 

Gillespie, Stan Getz, Lenny Tristano, 

Billy Eckstine, Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis, 

Ray Brown, Mel Torme, Louie Bellson,

Oscar Peterson, and the John Pizzarelli 

Trio, as well as several Metronome AllStar sessions. He was a featured artist 

in numerous Jazz at the Philharmonic 

tours of Europe, Australia, and East 

Asia. In 1966, he became the leader of 

the Glenn Miller Orchestra, a post he 

maintained until 1974.

Since the mid-1970s, DeFranco has combined a busy 

teaching career with extensive touring and recording. 

His numerous television performances have included 

appearances on The Tonight Show with both Steve Allen 

and Johnny Carson. He was a featured soloist on Stars of 

Jazz; had his own program on public television, 

The Buddy DeFranco Jazz Forum; and with his long-time 

musical colleague, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs, shared 

the spotlight on a segment of the PBS series Club 

Date. DeFranco has played at concerts and festivals 

throughout the United States, Europe, Australia, New 

Zealand, South Africa, Brazil, and Argentina. To date, 

he has recorded more than 160 albums, has won the 

DownBeat All Stars award 20 times, and the Metronome 

poll 12 times. The University of Montana, Missoula, now 

hosts the Buddy DeFranco Jazz Festival each April.

A brilliant improviser and prodigious 

technician who has bridged the swing 

and bebop eras, Buddy DeFranco was born 

in Camden, New Jersey, and raised in 

 South Philadelphia. He began playing 

the clarinet at age nine; at 14, he won a national 

Tommy Dorsey Swing Contest and appeared on 

the Saturday Night Swing Club with Gene Krupa. 

Johnny “Scat” Davis soon tapped him for his big 

band, inaugurating DeFranco’s road career in 1939. 

DeFranco subsequently played in the bands of Gene 

Krupa (1941) and Charlie Barnet (1942-43) and in 

1944 became a featured soloist with Tommy Dorsey. 

Meanwhile, the modern jazz revolution was in progress, 

led by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. Excited by the 

improvisatory freedom of their music, DeFranco became 

Photo by Lee Tanner
43

Selected Discography

Dorothy 

Romps: A Piano

Retrospective

Rosetta, 1953-79

Makin’ Whoopee

Black & Blue, 1979

The Explosive

Dorothy 

Donegan

Progressive, 1980

Live at the 1990 

Floating Jazz

Festival

Chiaroscuro, 1990

Live at the

Floating 

Jazz Festival 

1992

Chiaroscuro, 1992

Born April 6, 1924 in Chicago, IL 

Died May 19, 1998 

pianist

vocalist

educator

Dorothy

Donegan

1992

Photo by Michael Wilderman

playing career was largely centered around nightclub 

engagements, as Donegan was more comfortable in a 

live setting than a studio. 

In the 1950s, she developed her flamboyant 

performance style, which at times tended to obscure 

her extraordinary piano playing, deep sense of swing, 

and wide-ranging repertoire. She would often spice 

her performances with uncanny impressions of other 

pianists and singers.

She spent the bulk of her career performing in trios 

with bass and drums. Her appearance at the Sheraton 

Centre Hotel in 1980 broke all previous attendance 

records. In 1983, she appeared on Marian McPartland’s 

NPR radio program, Piano Jazz. Despite her many years 

of performing, she didn’t appear at the legendary jazz 

club Village Vanguard in New York City until 1987. The 

New York Times jazz critic John S. Wilson wrote at the 

time: “Miss Donegan has never let her show-business 

surface interfere with her virtuosity or her sensitivity as 

a pianist. No one since Art Tatum has brought together 

a flow of running lines, breaks, changes of tempo and 

key, oblique references and rhythmic 

intensity as skillfully as Miss 

Donegan does.”

In the early 1990s, her showstopping appearances on Hank 

O’Neal’s Floating Jazz cruises brought 

her talents to the attention of 

another generation of jazz fans. 

She also lectured at several colleges 

and universities, including Harvard, 

Northeastern, and the Manhattan 

School of Music, and received an 

honorary doctoral degree from 

Roosevelt University in 1994. 

Donegan performed at the White 

House in 1993 and gave her last 

major performance at the Fujitsu 

Concord Jazz Festival in 1997.

B

lessed with an enormous orchestral 

capacity at the keyboard, Dorothy Donegan 

was fluent in several styles of jazz as 

well as with European classical music. 

Underrated by some due to her proclivity 

towards showy flamboyance and her penchant for 

entertaining an audience, she was nonetheless an 

exceptional pianist with a rich harmonic sense.

Given her virtuosity, it’s no wonder her earliest 

influence and one of her champions was the peerless 

master of the piano, Art Tatum. Encouraged by her 

mother to be a professional musician, Donegan was 

playing piano for a dollar a night at Chicago’s South 

Side bars when she was only 14. She subsequently 

attended the Chicago Conservatory, Chicago Music 

College, and the University of Southern California, 

where she studied classical piano.

In 1943, Donegan gave a concert at the Orchestra 

Hall in Chicago, the first African-American performer to 

do so. This created publicity that led to some work in 

film (Sensations of 1945) and theater (Star Time). Her 
44

Selected Discography

Blowin’ Columbia, 1981

Dizzy Gillespie and the United 

Nation Orchestra

Live at the

Royal Festival 

Hall

Enja, 1989

Portraits 

of Cuba

Chesky, 1996

Brazilian

Dreams

MCG Jazz, 2001

Funk Tango

Sunnyside, 2006

SAXOPHONIST 

CLARINETIST 

FLUTIST 

COMPOSER

Arranger

Born June 4, 1948 in Havana, Cuba

Paquito

D’Rivera

2005

Chamber Music Society and is artistic director of the 

Festival Internacional de Jazz en el Tambo (Punta 

del Este, Uruguay) and the Duke Ellington Festival in 

Washington, DC. His memoir, My Sax Life, was released 

in 2005. 

He has become the consummate multinational 

ambassador, creating and promoting a cross-culture of 

music that moves effortlessly among jazz, Latin, and 

classical. D’Rivera received the National Medal of Arts in 

2005. 

T

he winner of several Grammy Awards, 

Paquito D’Rivera is celebrated both for his 

artistry in Latin jazz and his achievements 

as a classical composer. Born in Havana, 

Cuba, he performed at age 10 with the 

National Theater Orchestra, studied at the Havana 

Conservatory of Music and, at 17, became a featured 

soloist with the Cuban National Symphony. 

D’Rivera co-founded the Orquesta Cubana de Música 

Moderna and served as the band’s conductor for two 

years. In 1973, he was co-director of Irakere, a highly 

popular ensemble whose explosive mixture of jazz, rock, 

classical, and traditional Cuban music had never before 

been heard. The band toured extensively and in 1979 

was awarded the Grammy Award for Best Latin Jazz 

Ensemble.

In 1981, while on tour in Spain, D’Rivera sought 

asylum in the United States embassy. Since then he 

has toured the world with his ensembles—the Paquito 

D’Rivera Big Band, the Paquito D’Rivera Quintet, and the 

Chamber Jazz Ensemble.

His numerous recordings include more than 30 solo 

albums. In 1988, he was a founding member of the 

United Nation Orchestra, a 15-piece ensemble organized 

by Dizzy Gillespie to showcase the fusion of Latin and 

Caribbean influences with jazz. In 1991, he received 

a Lifetime Achievement Award from Carnegie Hall for 

his contributions to Latin music. That same year, as 

part of the band Dizzy Gillespie and the United Nation 

Orchestra, he was featured with James Moody, Slide 

Hampton, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Arturo Sandoval, 

Steve Turre, and others on the Grammy Award-winning 

recording, Live at the Royal Festival Hall.

He has appeared at, or written commissions for, Jazz 

at Lincoln Center, the Library of Congress, the National 

Symphony Orchestra, Brooklyn Philharmonic, London 

Philharmonic, Costa Rican National Symphony Orchestra, 

Simón Bolivar Symphonic Orchestra, and Montreal’s 

Gerald Danovich Saxophone Quartet. He serves as 

artistic director of jazz programming at the New Jersey 

Photo by Michael Wilderman
45

Selected Discography

Frank Sinatra 

Songs for 

Swingin’ Lovers

Capitol, 1955-56

Jawbreakers

Original Jazz Classics, 1962

Edison’s Lights

Original Jazz Classics, 1976

Swing Summit

Candid, 1990

Live at the

Iridium

Telarc, 1997

Sweets

Edison

1992

Born October 10, 1915 in Columbus, OH

Died July 27, 1999

trumpeter

Photo by Lee Tanner

accenting the vocals and setting up the mood of the 

songs––is some of his finest. His echoing trumpet on 

Sinatra’s Songs for Swingin’ Lovers, for example, helped 

set the pace of the songs, playing off Sinatra’s phrasing 

of the lyrics. Edison provided some of the bright 

moments in Holiday’s output in the 1950s on albums 

such as Songs for Distingué Lovers. His tasteful playing 

created a great demand from singers for his services, and 

besides Sinatra and Holiday, Edison played behind Ella 

Fitzgerald, Josephine Baker, Sarah Vaughan, and Nat 

“King” Cole. Edison was also a welcome addition to the 

big bands he worked with, including Buddy Rich, Louie 

Bellson, and Quincy Jones.

Although he left the Basie band as a full-time 

member in 1950, he rejoined the band on many 

subsequent occasions for the rest of his career. He 

worked as musical director for such artists as Redd Foxx 

and Joe Williams, and collaborated with other soloists, 

such as Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Oscar Peterson. 

Valued for his superb sense of dynamics, he carved out 

a beautiful trumpet style noted for its simplicity and 

good taste. He also found a home in film and television 

soundtrack work.

Known in the jazz world as “Sweets,” for 

both his disposition and his playing 

ability, Harry Edison was a consummate 

big band section trumpeter and skilled 

soloist whose ability to enhance a piece 

without overpowering it was renowned.

A self-taught musician, his earliest gig came in 

high school with the Earl Hood band. From 1933-1935, 

he played in the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, a prominent 

territory band of the time. He moved to New York in 

1937, spending six months with Lucky Millinder’s band 

before joining Count Basie. It was with Basie that he 

truly began to distinguish himself, not only as a strong 

member of the trumpet section, but also as a distinctive 

soloist. His warm sound, using repeated notes that he 

would bend and ripple, was a welcome contrast to the 

usual high-note, piercing solos of most trumpet players. 

Edison stayed with the Basie band until it disbanded in 

1950.

Rarely a bandleader under his own name, he spent 

the bulk of his career working with singers and with 

big bands on the road and in the recording studio. 

Edison’s work with Billie Holiday and the Nelson Riddle 

Orchestra backing Frank Sinatra during the 1950s–– 
46

Selected Discography

trumpetER

PIANIST 

vocalIST

After 

You’ve Gone

GRP/Decca, 1936-46

Little Jazz: 

The Best 

of the

Verve Years

Verve, 1951-60

Roy and Diz

Verve, 1954

Just You 

Just Me

Stash, 1959

Montreux ’77

Original Jazz Classics, 1977

Born January 30, 1911 in Pittsburgh, PA 

Died February 26, 1989 

Roy

Eldridge

1982

were highlighted. It didn’t take long for Eldridge to exert 

himself as a bandleader, forming his own octet in 1936 

in Chicago, a band that included his brother Joe. 

By the end of the 1930s, after freelancing with a 

wide array of bands, Eldridge gained notice as one of the 

swing bands’ most potent soloists. In 1941, he joined 

drummer Gene Krupa’s band. Not only did he provide 

trumpet fireworks for Krupa’s outfit, he also sang, 

recording a memorable duet with the band’s female 

singer, Anita O’Day, on the tune “Let Me Off Uptown” 

in 1941. Later, after Krupa’s band disbanded in 1943 and 

a period of freelancing, 

he toured with the Artie 

Shaw band in 1944. 

Then Eldridge led his own 

bands, usually small swing 

groups.

In 1948, Norman Granz 

recruited Eldridge for his 

Jazz at the Philharmonic, 

an ideal situation since 

Eldridge was one of the 

ultimate jam session 

trumpeters. He toured 

briefly with Benny 

Goodman and took up 

residence in Paris in 1950, 

where he made some of his 

most successful recordings. 

He returned to New York 

in 1951 and continued 

freelancing with small 

bands, including work 

with Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, 

and Johnny Hodges. He made notable albums for Verve 

Records alongside Hawkins and continued freelancing 

and leading a house band at Jimmy Ryan’s club in New 

York. In 1971, he was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz 

Hall of Fame. A stroke in 1980 stopped him from playing 

the trumpet, but Eldridge continued to make music as a 

singer and pianist until his death in 1989.

Also known as “Little Jazz,” Roy Eldridge 

was a fiery, energetic trumpeter, the 

bridge between the towering trumpet 

stylists Louis Armstrong and Dizzy 

Gillespie. Some of the great rhythmic 

drive of Eldridge’s later trumpet exploits could be 

traced to his beginnings on the drums, which he began 

playing at age six. Eldridge’s older brother Joe, who 

played alto saxophone, was his first teacher.

In 1930, Eldridge moved to New York, heading 

straight to Harlem where he gained work with a number 

of dance bands before joining the Teddy Hill band. 

By 1935, Eldridge and saxophonist Chu Berry (who 

would later join the Count Basie Orchestra) were Hill’s 

principal soloists, and after gigs they would go around 

town on cutting contests, challenging musicians to see 

who could play the best; with his lightning speed and 

awesome range, Eldridge rarely lost. After Hill’s band, 

Eldridge became the lead trumpeter in the Fletcher 

Henderson Orchestra, where his upper register abilities 

Photo by Lee Tanner
47

Selected Discography

Out of the Cool

 Impulse!, 1960

The

Individualism

of Gil Evans

Verve, 1963-64

Svengali

Atlantic, 1973

Gil Evans 

Orchestra

Plays the Music

of Jimi Hendrix

Bluebird, 1974-75

Bud and Bird

Evidence, 1986

Born May 13, 1912 in Toronto, Canada 

Died March 20, 1988 

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES

musicians seeking fresh approaches. These musical and 

conversational exchanges led to the recording of Miles 

Davis’ Birth of the Cool session for Capitol Records. That 

album was marked by cooler, less bustling tempos than 

were characteristic of bebop, the modern jazz of the 

day. Several Evans arrangements stood out, especially 

“Moondreams” and “Boplicity.”

Evans spent much of the 1950s as a freelance 

arranger, until 1957 when he began working with Davis 

on the first of their four collaborations, Miles Ahead, 

featuring Davis on flugelhorn as the only soloist, an 

unusual arrangement in jazz at the time. Over the next 

few years, Evans and Davis worked together on Porgy 

and Bess, Sketches of Spain, and Quiet Nights. 

In the 1960s, Evans began making his own 

recordings, displaying his unusual voicings and 

distinctive settings for some of the best soloists of 

the time, such as Steve Lacy, Wayne Shorter, and 

Eric Dolphy. In the 1970s, Evans began exploring the 

music of Jimi Hendrix and taking on some of the 

accoutrements usually associated with rock music, 

including guitars, synthesizers, and electric bass. In the 

1980s, Evans would have occasional weekly shows at 

New York clubs such as the Village Vanguard and Sweet 

Basil, and wrote music for the movie soundtracks of 

Absolute Beginners and The Color of Money.

A

s an arranger, Gil Evans has few peers 

in jazz history. His style is instantly 

recognizable, often using unusual brass 

colorations for jazz, such as combinations 

 of tuba and French horn. Arranging 

started early for Evans, leading his own band when 

he was 16 and taking piano gigs at local hotels. In 

junior college, he and Ned Briggs joined forces to lead 

a 10-piece band modeled after the popular Casa Loma 

Orchestra. The band was in residence as the house 

band at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach, 

California, for two years. 

In 1937, singer Skinny Ennis took over leadership 

of the band, retaining Evans as pianist and arranger as 

they moved to Hollywood, where they were regularly 

featured on the Bob Hope radio show. In 1941, Claude 

Thornhill, who had been associated with the Hope 

show, hired Evans as an arranger for his first orchestra, 

which lasted for seven years. Evans was influenced by 

Thornhill’s unusual voicings, particularly for brass and 

woodwinds.

Evans settled permanently in New York in 1947 and 

his unusual arrangements for Thornhill began to attract 

the attention of some of the nascent beboppers of the 

time, including Miles Davis, John Lewis, and Gerry 

Mulligan. It was around this time that Evans’ apartment 

became a meeting ground for these and other 

pianIST 

composer 

arranger 

bandleader

1985

Gil

Evans
48

Selected Discography

Born August 21, 1928 in Council Bluffs, IA 

 Died October 4, 1999 

trumpetER

flugelhornIST 

flumpetER

Art

Farmer

1999

When Farmer 

Met Gryce

Original Jazz 

Classics, 1954-55

The Jazztet

Meet the

Jazztet

MCA/Chess, 1960

Live at the

Half Note

Atlantic, 1963

Blame It 

on My Youth

Contemporary, 1988

Silk Road

Arabesque, 1996

with such European outfits as the Clarke-Boland Big 

Band, and Peter Herbolzheimer. 

In the 1980s, Farmer formed a new quintet featuring 

Clifford Jordan, which performed regularly in New York 

and toured Japan. At the same time, Farmer continued 

to perform in Europe with his European band that 

included pianist Fritz Pauer. In 1991, he began using the 

flumpet especially designed for him by David Monette. 

In 1994, he was the recipient of the prestigious Austrian 

Gold Medal of Merit and, also, a Life Time Achievement 

Concert was held at Jazz at Lincoln Center in his 

honor. In 1998 and 1999, he toured with his quintet in 

celebration of the Academy Award-nominated film A 

Great Day in Harlem. 

O

ne of the more lyrical of the post-bop 

musicians, Art Farmer helped to popularize 

the flugelhorn in jazz. Later in his career, 

he switched to a hybrid instrument 

known as the flumpet, an instrument 

that combined the power of the trumpet with 

the warmth of the flugelhorn. 

He and his twin brother, bassist Addison 

Farmer, were raised in Phoenix, Arizona. 

Farmer took up the piano, violin, and tuba 

before settling on the trumpet at 14. He 

later moved to Los Angeles and worked 

with Horace Henderson and Floyd Ray, 

eventually traveling east to New York 

with the Johnny Otis Revue in 1947. In 

New York, he studied with Maurice Grupp 

and freelanced in the clubs. In 1948 he 

returned to the West Coast and found 

work with Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson, 

Roy Porter, Jay McShann, and Wardell Gray. 

He toured with Lionel Hampton in 1952-53, 

moving once again to New York after the tour.

Between 1954-56, he intermittently co-led a 

band with Gigi Gryce, then joined Horace Silver from 

1956-58. He played with Gerry Mulligan from 1958-59, 

with whom he appeared in two films: I Want to Live

and The Subterraneans. Farmer’s performances with the 

various groups earned him a reputation for being able to 

play in any style. 

Greater fame came in the flourishing of the Jazztet, 

the legendary sextet that he co-led with saxophonist 

Benny Golson from 1959 to 1962 and then again for 

several years starting in 1982. The Jazztet’s tightly 

arranged music defined mainstream jazz for several 

years. In the early 1960s, Farmer switched to the 

flugelhorn, finding a rounder, mellower sound with the 

instrument. He also co-led a band with guitarist Jim 

Hall until 1964. He worked in Europe from 1965-66, 

and when he returned stateside he again co-led a band, 

this time with Jimmy Heath. In 1968 Farmer moved to 

Vienna, joined the Austrian Radio Orchestra, and worked 

0000

Photo by Lee Tanner
49

Selected Discography

Born April 25, 1917 in Newport News, VA 

Died June 15, 1996 

75th Birthday 

Celebration

GRP, 1938-55

The Complete

Ella Fitzgerald 

& Louis 

Armstrong 

on Verve

Verve, 1956-57

Sings the Duke

Ellington

Songbook

Verve, 1956-57

The Complete

Ella in Berlin

Verve, 1960-61

Montreux ’77 

Original Jazz Classics, 1977

vocalist

Ella

Fitzgerald

1985

Photo by Lee Tanner

first song, “Love and Kisses,” with Webb in June 1935. 

Three years of steady work later, she had her first 

major hit with her rendition of “A-Tisket, A-Tasket.” 

That lightweight ditty remained a popular request 

throughout Fitzgerald’s ensuing decades.

When Webb died in 1939, Fitzgerald assumed 

leadership of the band for the next two years, beginning 

her solo career. In 1946 she began an enduring 

relationship with producer Norman Granz, becoming 

part of his Jazz at the Philharmonic concert tours. At 

the time her regular trio leader was bassist Ray Brown, 

to whom she was married from 1947 to 1953. By 

1955, Granz had become her manager and had begun 

recording Fitzgerald for his Verve label. This affiliation 

led to her recording with numerous greats, including 

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and 

Oscar Peterson. Among the landmark recordings she 

made with Granz were her historic songbook treatments 

of the music of Ellington, Cole Porter, 

Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers 

& Lorenz Hart, Harold Arlen, Johnny 

Mercer, and Ira and George Gershwin.

Fitzgerald’s superb intonation and 

crystal clear voice was also blessed with a 

rhythmic flexibility to effortlessly swing. 

Though she came up in the swing era, 

Fitzgerald also could hang with the best of 

the beboppers. Her ability to scat with the 

most skilled instrumentalists served her 

well on such notable voice-as-instrument 

hits as “Lady Be Good,” “Flying Home,” 

and “How High The Moon.” Each became 

enduring parts of her repertoire. She 

forged memorable partnerships with her 

piano accompanists, most notably Tommy 

Flanagan and Paul Smith.

In 1987, she received the National 

Medal of Arts. In her lifetime, she won 13 

Grammy Awards and sold more than 40 

million albums.

I

t is quite apropos that Ella Fitzgerald was the 

first vocalist recipient of the NEA Jazz Masters 

Fellowship, as she is considered by most people 

to be the quintessential jazz singer. The purity 

of her range and intonation, along with her 

peerless sense of pitch, made her a signature singer. 

In addition, her scat singing, using the technique of 

a master instrumental improviser, was her hallmark. 

These characteristics make her an enduring purveyor 

not only of jazz and the art of improvising, but also of 

the classic American songbook.

Fitzgerald was raised in Yonkers, New York, and her 

first artistic proclivities were as a dancer, even though 

she sang with her school glee club. At 17, she entered 

the famous amateur show competition at the Apollo 

Theater, which led to her being hired as a singer for 

Chick Webb’s orchestra. She soon became a popular 

attraction at the Savoy, and Fitzgerald recorded her 

1985
50

Selected Discography

1996

Thelonica

Enja, 1982

Beyond the

Bluebird

Timeless, 1990

Giant Steps 

Enja, 1992

Lady Be Good ... 

For Ella

Verve, 1994

Sunset and the

Mockingbird: 

The Birthday 

Conce rt

Blue Note, 1997

Born March 16, 1930 in Detroit, MI •

Died November 16, 2001 

Tommy

PIANIST

Flanagan

T

ommy Flanagan was noted as both a 

stimulating accompanist and a superb 

small ensemble leader, playing with some 

of the biggest names in jazz. A product of 

a noteworthy arts education system in the 

Detroit public schools, he began his musical pursuits 

on clarinet at six years old, switching to the piano 

at age 11. At 15, he made his professional debut. 

Thereafter he performed with fellow Detroiters Milt 

Jackson, Rudy Rutherford, Billy Mitchell, Kenny 

Burrell, and Thad and Elvin Jones as part of the 

fertile Detroit jazz scene in the 1950s. 

Flanagan moved to New York in 1956, securing his 

first job as a replacement for Bud Powell at Birdland. 

Powell, along with Art Tatum and Nat “King” Cole, was 

a major influence on Flanagan’s playing. Throughout 

the 1950s, he worked with many of the biggest names 

in jazz, including J.J. Johnson, Miles Davis, Harry 

“Sweets” Edison, Sonny Rollins, Coleman Hawkins, 

Jim Hall, and Tony Bennett, playing on some of the 

landmark recordings of that decade. One of his most 

significant recordings was with John Coltrane on the 

wildly influential recording, Giant Steps. His playing on 

the complex title track, using space between the notes 

to contrast Coltrane’s rapid-fire attack, was especially 

inspired. 

He also met and began performing with Ella 

Fitzgerald, an association that lasted until the end 

of the 1970s. His trio toured exclusively with her from 

1968-78. After leaving Fitzgerald in 1978, some of his 

best, most compelling work was in the trio format, with 

George Mraz on bass and Elvin Jones or Lewis Nash on 

drums. Influenced by the playing and arrangements of 

Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk, Flanagan’s lyrical 

playing and harmonic sophistication placed him in 

the top echelon of jazz pianists. He was an especially 

tasteful interpreter of Billy Strayhorn, Thad Jones, and 

Tadd Dameron’s music. Flanagan was a multiple jazz poll 

winner, and in 1992 was recipient of the prestigious 

Danish Jazzpar Prize. During his career, he also was 

nominated for four Grammy Awards.

Photo by Lee Tanner
51

Selected Discography

Born September 23, 1928 in Cincinnati, OH 

Died July 26, 2011

Count Basie

Verve Jazz

Masters

Verve, 1954-65

Fearless

Original Jazz Classics, 1965

Shiny Stockings

Denon, 1977-78

Leo Rising

Arabesque, 1996

Loud Minority Big Band

We Do It 

Diff’rent

Mapleshade 2002

saxophonIST 

composer 

arranger 

bandleader 

educator

Frank

Foster

2002

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES

band. Foster studied at Wilberforce University in Ohio 

before heading to Detroit in 1949 with trumpeter 

Snooky Young for six weeks, becoming captivated 

by its burgeoning music scene. Drafted into the Army, 

Foster left Detroit and headed off to basic training near 

San Francisco, where he would jam in the evenings at 

Jimbo’s Bop City. 

After being discharged in 1953, two life-changing 

events happened to Foster: he sat in with Charlie 

Parker at Birdland and he was asked to join Count 

Basie’s band, where he stayed until 1964. Foster’s 

fiery solos contrasted nicely with Frank Wess’ ballad 

work, providing Basie with an interesting saxophone 

combination. Foster, already an accomplished composer 

by this time, learned from Basie how to simplify 

arrangements to make the music swing. He soon was 

providing compositions and arrangements for the band 

(“Blues Backstage,” “Down for the Count,” the entire 

Easin’ It album, just to name a few), with his most 

popular number being “Shiny Stockings.” 

In the 1970s, Foster played with contemporary 

musicians such as Elvin Jones, George Coleman, and Joe 

Farrell and began expanding his compositions. He also 

was an extremely successful freelance writer, creating a 

large body of work for jazz, including works contributed 

to albums by singers Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra, 

and a commissioned work for the 1980 Winter Olympics, 

Lake Placid Suite, written for jazz orchestra. In 1983, 

Dizzy Gillespie commissioned Foster to orchestrate 

Gillespie’s song “Con Alma” for a performance and 

recording by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. 

Foster led his own band, the Loud Minority, until 

1986 when he assumed leadership of the Count Basie 

Orchestra from Thad Jones. While playing the favorites, 

he also began introducing original material into the 

playlist. Foster resigned as the musical director of the 

orchestra in 1995 and began recording albums again. 

In addition to performing, he also served as a musical 

consultant in the New York City public schools and 

taught at Queens College and the State University 

of New York at Buffalo. Foster received four Grammy 

Awards.

A

lthough best known for his work in 

the Count Basie Orchestra (and as the 

composer of the Count Basie hit, “Shiny 

Stockings”), Frank Foster’s saxophone 

 playing owed more to the bebop of 

Charlie Parker and Sonny Stitt than the swing of Basie. 

Foster began playing clarinet at 11 years old before 

taking up the alto saxophone and eventually the tenor. 

By the time he was a senior in high school, he was 

leading and writing the arrangements for a 12-piece 
52

Selected Discography

trombonist

EDUCATOR

Blues-ette

Savoy, 1956

Art Blakey and the 

Jazz Messengers

Ugetsu 

Riverside/OJC, 1963

Crankin’ MRL, 1973

The Jazztet

Real Time

Contemporary, 1986

Keep It Simple

Savant, 2003

Born December 15, 1934 in Detroit, MI

Curtis

Fuller

2007

a group with guitarist Bill Washer and bassist Stanley 

Clarke. He concluded that phase with the 1973 album 

Crankin’. 

Fuller toured with the Count Basie band from 

1975 to 1977; co-led the quintet Giant Bones with Kai 

Winding in 1979 and 1980; and played with Art Blakey, 

Cedar Walton, and Benny Golson in the late 1970s 

and early ’80s. During the 1980s, Fuller toured Europe 

regularly with the Timeless All-Stars and performed and 

recorded with a reconvened Jazztet. 

In more recent years, Fuller has become known 

nationally and internationally as a master clinician in 

jazz studies programs, having worked with students and 

young professionals at institutions including Skidmore 

College, Harvard University, Stanford University, the 

University of Pittsburgh, Duke University, the New 

England Conservatory of Music, and the John F. Kennedy 

Center for the Performing Arts. He holds an honorary 

doctorate from Berklee College of Music.

A remarkably fluent 

trombonist, whose 

impeccable sense of 

time and ambitious 

 solos made him a 

mainstay of the hard-bop scene, 

Curtis Fuller was born in Detroit, 

where he spent 10 years of his 

childhood in an orphanage. His 

interest in jazz was piqued when 

a nun at the orphanage took him 

to see Illinois Jacquet’s band, 

which featured J.J. Johnson on 

trombone. He soon took up the 

instrument. A stint in an Army 

band (where he played with 

Cannonball Adderley) helped 

him mature into a professional 

with virtuoso skills. After working 

in Detroit with Kenny Burrell and 

Yusef Lateef, he moved to New York, where he made 

his recording debut as a leader on Transition in 1955. 

He also became a strong presence on the Blue Note 

label, working with Clifford Jordan, John Coltrane (on 

the classic Blue Train), and his own The Opener (with 

Hank Mobley). Always in demand—he also played on 

late-1950s sessions for Prestige, United Artists, and 

Savoy—Fuller is the only trombonist to have recorded 

with Coltrane, Bud Powell, and Jimmy Smith. 

In 1959, he became a founding member of the 

Jazztet with Benny Golson and Art Farmer, then 

joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1961. For the 

next four years, working in a front line with Wayne 

Shorter and Freddie Hubbard, Fuller helped make 

this edition of the Messengers one of the defining bands 

of the hard-bop era. In 1968, Fuller toured Europe 

with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. During the 1970s, he 

experimented for a time playing hard bop arrangements 

in a band featuring electronic instruments, heading 

Photo by Lee Tanner
53

Selected Discography

Born October 21, 1917 in Cheraw, SC •

Died January 6, 1993 

trumpetER

composer 

ARRANGER

bandleader

The Complete

RCA Victor 

Recordings 

1937-1949

Bluebird, 1937-49

Dizzy’s 

Diamon ds

Verve, 1954-64

Birk’s Works: 

Verve Big Band 

Sessions

Verve, 1956-57

Gillespiana/

Carnegie Hall 

Conce rt

Verve, 1960-61

Max + Dizzy,

Paris 1989 

A&M, 1989

Dizzy

Gillespie

1982

Photo by Michael Wilderman

The year 1945 was crucial for both bebop and 

Gillespie. He recorded with Parker many of his small 

ensemble hits, such as “Salt Peanuts,” and formed his 

own bebop big band. Despite economic woes, he was 

able to keep this band together for four years. His 

trumpet playing was at a peak, with rapid-fire attacks 

of notes and an amazing harmonic range. A number 

of future greats performed with Gillespie’s big band, 

including saxophonists Gene Ammons, Yusef Lateef, 

Paul Gonsalves, Jimmy Heath, James Moody, and 

John Coltrane. The rhythm section of John Lewis, 

Milt Jackson, Kenny Clarke, and Ray Brown became 

the original Modern Jazz Quartet.

He took various bands on State Department tours 

around the world starting in 1956, the first time 

the U.S. government provided economic aid and 

recognition to jazz. Those excursions not only kept 

Gillespie working, they also stimulated his musical 

interests as he began incorporating different ethnic 

elements into his music, such as the Afro-Cuban 

rhythms he weaved into his big band arrangements. 

Never losing his thirst for collaboration, Gillespie 

worked with a variety of jazz stars as well as leading 

his own small groups on into the 1980s. He received 

the National Medal of Arts in 1989.

J

ohn Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie’s effect on jazz 

cannot be overstated: his trumpet playing 

influenced every player who came after him, 

his compositions have become part of the 

jazz canon, and his bands have included 

some of the most significant names in the business. 

He was also, along with Charlie Parker, one of the 

major leaders of the bebop movement. 

Gillespie’s father was an amateur bandleader who, 

although dead by the time Gillespie was ten, had 

given his son some of his earliest grounding in music. 

Gillespie began playing trumpet at 14 after briefly 

trying the trombone, and his first formal musical 

training came at the Laurinburg Institute in North 

Carolina.

Gillespie’s earliest professional jobs were with the 

Frankie Fairfax band, where he reportedly picked 

up the nickname Dizzy because of his outlandish 

antics. His earliest influence was Roy Eldridge, 

whom he later replaced in Teddy Hill’s band. From 

1939-41, Gillespie was one of the principal soloists 

in Cab Calloway’s band, until he was dismissed for a 

notorious bandstand prank. While with Calloway he 

met the Cuban trumpeter Mario Bauza, from whom he 

gained a great interest in Afro-Cuban rhythms. At this 

time he also befriended Charlie Parker, with whom he 

would begin to develop some of the 

ideas behind bebop while sitting in 

at Minton’s Playhouse in Harlem.

From 1941-43, Gillespie 

freelanced with a number of 

big bands, including that of 

Earl “Fatha” Hines. Hines’ band 

contained several musicians 

Gillespie would interact with in 

the development of bebop, such as 

singer Billy Eckstine, who formed 

his own band featuring Gillespie on 

trumpet in 1944.
Selected Discography

Born January 25, 1929 in Philadelphia, PA

Benny 

Golson’s 

New York 

Scene

Original Jazz Classics, 1957

Tenor Legacy

Arkadia Jazz, 1996

One Day, 

Forever

Arkadia, 1996-2000

Terminal 1

Concord Jazz, 2004

New Time, 

New ‘Tet

Concord Jazz, 2008

saxophonIST 

composer 

ARRANGER

EDUCATOR

entered the jazz canon, including “Along Came Betty,” 

“Blues March,” “I Remember Clifford” (written upon 

the death of his friend Clifford Brown), “Killer Joe” 

(which later became a hit for Quincy Jones), and “Are 

You Real?”

After leaving the Messengers, he and Art Farmer

formed the hard bop quintet known as the Jazztet. 

The original incarnation of the Jazztet lasted from 

1959-62. In 1963, he moved to California and began 

to concentrate on composing and arranging. He scored 

music for European and American television and films, 

and essentially discontinued touring until 1982, when 

he and Farmer revived the Jazztet briefly. Thereafter he 

played more frequently, working in all-star aggregations, 

and completing commissioned assignments, such as an 

original orchestral work for the 100th anniversary of 

the Juilliard School of Music in 2005. His soundtrack 

credits include M*A*S*H, Mission Impossible, Mod 

Squad, and Ironside.

In 1987, Golson participated in a U.S. State 

Department tour of Southeast Asia, New Zealand, 

Indonesia, Malaysia, Burma, and Singapore. As a tribute 

to Art Blakey, Golson organized the Art Blakey Legacy 

Band tour of the U.S., Europe, and Japan from 1998 

to 2000. 

As an educator he has lectured, given clinics, and 

performed extended residencies at New York University, 

Stanford University, University of Pittsburgh, Cuyahoga 

Community College, Rutgers University, William 

Paterson College, and Berklee College of Music. Among 

his awards are a 1994 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 

2007 Mellon Living Legend Legacy Award. Currently, 

he is working on two books: a major college textbook 

and his autobiography.

B

enny Golson is as renowned for his 

distinctive compositions and arrangements 

as for his innovative tenor saxophone 

playing. Major cornerstones of his career 

have included not only notable additions to 

the jazz canon, but also his work in film and television 

studios, and his contributions to jazz education.

Golson began on the piano at age nine, moving 

to the saxophone at age 14. He earned a degree from 

Howard University, then joined Bull Moose Jackson’s 

band in 1951. Arranging and composing became a 

serious pursuit for him at the early encouragement of 

composer-arranger Tadd Dameron, whom he met in 

Jackson’s band. Other early band affiliations included 

Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, and Earl Bostic. 

He toured with the Dizzy Gillespie big band from 

1956-58, then joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. 

His robust playing added extra kick to the band, and 

his solo on Bobby Timmons’ song “Moanin’” is a classic. 

With the Messengers, Golson’s writing skills blossomed 

as he contributed pieces for the band that have forever 

Photo by Lee Tanner

1996

Benny

Golson

54
55

Selected Discography

Dexter Gordon

on Dial: 

The Complete

Sessions

Spotlite, 1947

Doin’ Alright

Blue Note, 1961

Go!

Blue Note, 1962

Something 

Different

Steeplechase, 1975

Great 

Encounters

Columbia, 1978

Born February 27, 1923 in Los Angeles, CA

Died April 25, 1990

Dexter

Gordon

1985

saxophonIST

Photo by Lee Tanner

generation, including trumpeter Woody Shaw. The 

response prompted him to return permanently to the 

U.S., where he made a series of well-received records for 

the Columbia label. Included was a notable return to his 

two-tenor battle days, this time with fellow expatriate 

Johnny Griffin. In 1980, he was inducted into the 

DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame.

The culmination of the decade-long renewal of 

interest in Gordon was his starring role in the film 

Round Midnight, which garnered an Oscar nomination. 

Thereafter, until felled by ill health, he continued to tour 

with his own potent quartets and returned to his former 

record label, Blue Note, for a brief time following his 

film success. His last major concert appearance was with 

the New York Philharmonic, along with Ron Carter and 

Tommy Flanagan, performing Ellingtones, a concerto 

written for Gordon by David Baker.

D

exter Gordon was one of the leading 

bebop tenor saxophonists, with his nearvibratoless sound and prodigious ability 

to improvise. He was a strong influence 

on the tenor saxophonists who came after 

bebop, especially Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane.

Gordon took up the clarinet at age 13, switching 

to the saxophone at 15. His first formal 

teacher was Lloyd Reese, who had other 

notable students, including Charles Mingus 

and Buddy Collette. Gordon left school in 

1940 and joined a local band before taking 

a position with the Lionel Hampton band 

from 1940-43, cutting his first recordings 

with the band in 1942. Back home in Los 

Angeles, Gordon played with Lee Young 

(brother of Lester) and Jesse Price, and 

made a subsequent record with Nat “King” 

Cole at the piano.

Gordon began to garner attention when 

he moved to New York in 1944 to join the 

Billy Eckstine Orchestra. He recorded with 

Eckstine and made his own recordings for 

the Savoy label. Through the remainder 

of the 1940s, he played and recorded 

with the major figures in bebop, such as 

Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Tadd 

Dameron. Between 1947 and 1952, he 

locked horns with fellow tenor saxophonist 

Wardell Gray for a series of classic twotenor duels, including their classic recording 

of “The Chase.” Continuing to freelance 

throughout the 1950s, he began touring Europe as a 

soloist in the early 1960s to acclaim, eventually settling 

in Copenhagen in 1962.

Gordon continued to play in Europe as a soloist, 

making a series of recordings for the Danish label 

Steeplechase. He added the soprano sax to his arsenal 

in the early 1970s. During a trip back to the States in 

1976, he took a gig at the Village Vanguard and the 

response to his playing was overwhelming. He found 

willing partners in several musicians of a younger 
56

Selected Discography

Born December 4, 1930 in Buffalo, NY

guitarist

composer

2004

Jim

Hall

Jimmy Giuffre 3

Trav’lin’ Light

Atlantic, 1958

Sonny Rollins

The Bridge

RCA, 1962

Ron Carter and Jim Hall 

Live at 

Village West

Concord, 1982 

Something 

Special

Music Masters, 1993

Jim Hall and Bill Frisell

Hemispheres

ArtistShare, 2007-08

Desmond, and performed as a session musician on 

numerous recordings. His extensive ensemble experience 

has produced a control of rhythm and harmony so that 

Hall’s playing, while grounded in scholarly technique 

and science, sounds both rich and free. 

He eventually formed his own trio in 1965, which 

still performs and records today. Well-studied in classical 

composition, Hall has produced many original pieces 

for various jazz orchestral ensembles. His composition 

for jazz quartet, “Quartet Plus Four,” earned him the 

Jazzpar Prize in Denmark. In 2004, Towson University 

in Maryland commissioned a work by Hall for the First 

World Guitar Congress, Peace Movement, a concerto 

for guitar and orchestra performed by Hall and the 

Baltimore Symphony.

His influence on jazz guitarists, including such 

disparate ones as Bill Frisell and Pat Metheny, is 

immense. Hall continues to explore new avenues of 

music, even appearing on saxophonist Greg Osby’s 

2000 recording, Invisible Hand, with legendary pianist 

Andrew Hill. He also has worked in smaller settings 

as well, often in duets with jazz greats such as pianists 

Bill Evans and Red Mitchell, and bassists Ron Carter 

and Charlie Haden. In addition to numerous Grammy 

nominations, Hall has been awarded the New York Jazz 

Critics Circle Award for Best Jazz Composer/Arranger. 

J

azz guitarist Jim Hall’s technique has been 

called subtle, his sound mellow, and his 

compositions understated; yet his recording 

and playing history is anything but modest. 

He has recorded with artists ranging from Bill 

Evans to Itzhak Perlman and performed alongside most 

of the jazz greats of the 20th century. The first of the 

modern jazz guitarists to receive an NEA Jazz Masters 

award, his prowess on the instrument puts him in the 

company of Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, and 

Django Reinhardt. 

After graduating from the Cleveland Institute of 

Music, Hall became an original member of the Chico 

Hamilton Quintet in 1955 and of the Jimmy Giuffre 

3 the following year—both small but musically vital 

ensembles of the era. Hall continued to hone his craft 

on Ella Fitzgerald’s South American tour in 1960, a 

fruitful time in which he was exposed to the bossa 

nova style that greatly influenced his subsequent work. 

He joined Sonny Rollins’ quartet from 1961-62, and 

appears on The Bridge, Rollins’ first recording in three 

years after a self-imposed retirement. The interplay 

between Rollins’ fiery solos and Hall’s classic guitar runs 

make this one of jazz’s most essential recordings. 

Hall then co-led a quartet with Art Farmer, 

recorded a series of duets with noted saxophonist Paul 

Photo by Lee Tanner
57

Selected Discography

Born September 21, 1921 in Los Angeles, CA

PercussionIST 

bandleader 

composer 

educator

Complete

Pacific Jazz

Recordings 

of the Chico

Hamilton

Quintet

Mosaic, 1955-59

Man From

Two Worlds

Impulse!, 1962

Dancing to

a Different 

Drummer

Soul Note, 1993

Foreststorn

 Koch, 2000-01

Twelve Tones 

of Love

Joyous Shout!, 2008

Chico

Hamilton

2004

Photo by Lee Tanner

years, including a tour of Europe. During this time, he 

also became an original member of the legendary Gerry 

Mulligan Quartet, which included Mulligan, Chet Baker, 

and Bob Whitlock. Successfully recording with them for 

three years (1952-55) on the Pacific Jazz label, Hamilton 

got his first shot as bandleader. 

In 1955, he formed the Chico Hamilton Quintet, 

utilizing an unusual combination of instruments: cello, 

flute, guitar, bass, and drums. One of the important 

West Coast bands, the Hamilton group made their film 

debut in the movie The Sweet Smell of Success, as well 

as highlighting Jazz on a Summer’s Day, the film about 

the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. His second great band 

started in 1962 with Albert Stinson on bass, Gabor Szabo 

on guitar, Charles Lloyd on tenor sax and flute, and 

George Bohanon on trombone, bringing a fresh, new 

sound to jazz once again. Over the years, Hamilton’s 

bands have had various personnel, but the quality of the 

musicianship has remained high. Some of the players 

Hamilton nurtured in his bands include Jim Hall, Eric 

Dolphy, Ron Carter, Arthur Blythe, Larry Coryell, and 

John Abercrombie. 

During the 1960s, Hamilton formed a company to 

score feature films and commercials for television and 

radio. In 1987, Hamilton was on the originating faculty 

at Parsons New School of Jazz in New York. During the 

same year, he formed a new quartet called Euphoria, and 

began touring in Europe. The quartet met with great 

popularity, and in 1992, their album Arroyo placed in 

the Jazz Album of the Year category in the DownBeat

readers’ poll. In 1995, a documentary of Hamilton’s 

extraordinary life and career, Dancing to a Different 

Drummer, directed by Julian Benedikt, was presented 

twice on the French-German Arts Network, ARTE. In 

June 1999, Hamilton received a Beacons of Jazz award 

from the Mannes College of Music at the New School 

University in New York City, where he is currently 

teaching. Never one to rest on his laurels, Hamilton 

released four new albums in 2006 in celebration of his 

85th birthday. In 2007, he was a member of the NEA’s 

National Council on the Arts.

F

oreststorn “Chico” Hamilton is not only a 

subtle, creative drummer, but also a skillful 

bandleader who continually discovers 

talented newcomers. As a teenager growing 

up in Los Angeles, Hamilton started playing 

regularly for the first time with a band that included 

classmates Charles Mingus, Dexter Gordon, and 

Illinois Jacquet. He made his recording debut with 

Slim Gaillard, and studied drumming with jazz great

Jo Jones during his military service from 1942-46. 

After working briefly with Jimmy Mundy, Count 

Basie, and Lester Young, Hamilton joined Lena Horne’s 

band in 1948, staying with her on and off for six 
58

Selected Discography

Born April 20, 1908 in Louisville, KY 

Died September 30, 2002

The Complete

Lionel 

Hampton

Bluebird, 1937-39

Hamp: The

Legendary

Decca

Recordings

Decca, 1942-63

Hamp and Getz

Verve, 1956

Reunion at 

Newport

Bluebird, 1967

Made in Japan

Timeless, 1982

vibraphonist

drumMER

 pianIST 

vocalIST 

bandleader

Lionel

Hampton

1988

started his own big band. He achieved his biggest 

recorded hit with “Flying Home” in May 1942, driven by 

Illinois Jacquet’s unforgettable tenor saxophone solo.

Hampton’s popular big band boasted such potent 

musicians as Dexter Gordon, Clifford Brown, Fats 

Navarro, Johnny Griffin, Charles Mingus, Art Farmer, 

Clark Terry, Cat Anderson, Wes Montgomery, and 

singers Dinah Washington, Joe Williams, Betty 

Carter, and Aretha Franklin. He toured the globe 

and continued to nurture young talent, often providing 

some of the earliest band experiences to musicians who 

went on to become leaders in their own right. His band 

became the longest established orchestra in jazz history.

Lionel Hampton received numerous awards of 

merit, including several honorary doctoral degrees, the 

National Medal of Arts, and the Kennedy Center Honors. 

His diligent work with the jazz festival at the University 

of Idaho in Moscow led to it being renamed the Lionel 

Hampton International Jazz Festival in 1985. The 

university’s music department shortly followed suit and 

became the Lionel Hampton School of Music. Winner of 

numerous polls, Hampton was an honored soloist into 

the 1990s, performing in numerous festivals as part of 

all-star assemblages. In 2001, he donated his vibraphone 

to the Smithsonian Institution.

F

eaturing outstanding sidemen and soloists, 

as well as his own swinging vibe playing, 

Lionel Hampton’s bands during the 1940s 

and 1950s were among the most popular 

and most exciting in jazz. Hampton was 

raised in the Midwest, primarily in Kenosha, Wisconsin, 

where he received his first musical training. His career 

began behind the drums; his first music job was in a 

newsboys’ band sponsored by the Chicago Defender. 

In 1928, Hampton moved west to California, landing 

first in the Paul Howard Orchestra, later working with 

bandleaders Eddie Barefield and Les Hite. In 1929 he 

took up the vibraphone with the Hite band, which 

at the time was led by Louis Armstrong, becoming a 

pioneering figure in the use of vibes in a jazz band.

Hampton made his recorded debut on an 

Armstrong version of “Memories of You” in 1930. By 

1934, Hampton had become leader of his own band, 

performing at Sebastian’s Cotton Club in Los Angeles. 

Benny Goodman saw Hampton perform at one of his 

gigs and recruited him to augment his trio, with Teddy 

Wilson and Gene Krupa, for a 1936 recording date. 

Hampton remained in Goodman’s band through 1940, 

occasionally replacing Krupa on the drums. Hampton 

became well known with the Goodman band, and 

Photo by Jan Persson/CTSIMAGES
59

Selected Discography

Slide Hampton

and His 

Horn of Plenty

Strand, 1959

World of

Trombones

1201 Music, 1979

Roots

Criss Cross, 1985

Dedicated 

to Diz

Telarc, 1993

Spirit of

the Horn

MCG Jazz, 2003

Trombonist

COMPOSER

ARRANGER

Educator

Born April 21, 1932 in Jeannette, PA

2005

Slide

Hampton

Photo by Lee Tanner

From 1964 to 1967, he served as music director for 

various orchestras and artists. Then, following a 1968 

tour with Woody Herman, he elected to stay in Europe, 

performing with other expatriates such as Benny 

Bailey, Kenny Clarke, Kenny Drew, Art Farmer, and 

Dexter Gordon. Upon returning to the U.S. in 1977, he 

began a series of master classes at Harvard University, 

the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, De Paul 

University in Chicago, and Indiana University. During 

this period he formed the illustrious World of Trombones: 

an ensemble of nine trombones and a rhythm section.

In 1989, with Paquito D’Rivera, he was musical 

director of Dizzy’s Diamond Jubilee, a year-long series 

of celebrations honoring Dizzy Gillespie’s 75th birthday. 

Hampton’s countless collaborations with the most 

prominent musicians of jazz were acknowledged by the 

1998 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Arrangement with 

a Vocalist for Dee Dee Bridgewater’s recording “Cotton 

Tail.” Most recently, he has served as musical advisor to 

the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. A charismatic figure, master 

arranger, and formidable trombonist, Hampton holds a 

place of distinction in the jazz tradition.

S

lide Hampton’s distinguished career spans 

decades in the evolution of jazz. At the age 

of 12 he was already touring the Midwest 

with the Indianapolis-based Hampton 

Band, led by his father and comprising 

other members of his musical family. During these 

tours, Hampton encountered jazz musicians such 

as J.J. Johnson and Wes Montgomery, who became 

early influences. By 1952, at the age of 20, he was 

performing at Carnegie Hall with the Lionel Hampton 

band. He then joined Maynard Ferguson’s band, 

playing trombone and providing exciting charts on 

such popular tunes as “The Fugue,” “Three Little 

Foxes,” and “Slide’s Derangement.”

As his reputation grew, he soon began working 

with bands led by Art Blakey, Dizzy Gillespie, Barry 

Harris, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis, and Max Roach, 

again contributing both original compositions and 

arrangements. In 1962, he formed the Slide Hampton 

Octet, which included stellar horn players Booker Little, 

Freddie Hubbard, and George Coleman. The band toured 

the U.S. and Europe and recorded on several labels.
60

Selected Discography

keyboardist

composer

Born April 12, 1940 in Chicago, IL

The Complete

Blue Note

Sixties Sessions

Blue Note, 1962-69

Head Hunters

 Columbia, 1973

V.S.O.P.

Columbia, 1977

Village Life

 Columbia, 1985

River: The

Joni Letters

Universal, 2007

Herbie

Hancock

2004

V.S.O.P. and they toured extensively. 

Throughout his career, he has demonstrated 

stunning artistic versatility. In 1983, “Rockit,” a single 

that resulted from a collaborative effort with the rock 

band Material, became a hit on MTV. Hancock then 

switched gears completely, partnering with Gambian 

kora virtuoso Foday Musa Suso on two albums, Village 

Life and Jazz Africa. He also has written scores for 

several films, including Blow-Up in 1966, Death Wish

in 1974, and Round Midnight, for which he won an 

Academy Award in 1987. 

Hancock has won 14 Grammy Awards in the past 

two decades, and continues to work as a producer and in 

both the electric and acoustic spheres of jazz. In 2008, 

he won the Grammy Album of the Year for River: The 

Joni Letters, the first jazz album to win that award in 43 

years.

Herbie Hancock’s talent as a pianist 

was evident when, at age 11, he 

performed Mozart’s D Major Piano 

Concerto with the Chicago 

Symphony Orchestra. He 

began playing jazz in high school, 

initially influenced by Oscar Peterson 

and Bill Evans. Also at this time, a 

passion for electronic science began 

to develop, so Hancock studied both 

electrical engineering and music 

composition at Grinnell College in 

Iowa. His love of electronics led 

Hancock to be a pioneer in the 

use of electric piano, clavinet, and 

synthesizer in jazz. 

In 1961, trumpeter Donald Byrd

asked the young pianist to join his group 

in New York, leading to Blue Note offering 

him a recording contract. His first album 

as leader, Takin’ Off, which included the hit 

single “Watermelon Man,” demonstrated a gift for 

composition and improvisation. His talent impressed 

Miles Davis enough to ask Hancock to join his band 

in 1963. In the five years he worked with Davis, who 

became a mentor as well as an employer, Hancock 

established his standing as one of the greatest pianists 

of all time. Along with Ron Carter (bass) and Tony 

Williams (drums), Hancock altered the role of the 

rhythm section in jazz to include expanded solos and 

spontaneous changes in mood and tempo. He also 

composed a number of pieces for the band as well as 

for his outstanding solo recordings with Blue Note. It 

was toward the end of his tenure with Davis that he 

began to use electric piano. 

After leaving the band in 1968, Hancock continued 

to explore the use of electronic instruments in his 

music. In 1973, he formed a quartet whose first 

recording, Head Hunters, launched him into jazz 

stardom and became a best-selling jazz album. In the 

late 1970s, Hancock revived the old Miles Davis band 

(Freddie Hubbard stood in for Davis) under the name 

Photo by Lee Tanner
61

Selected Discography

Born December 15, 1929 in Detroit, MI

pianIST 

COMPOSER

ARRANGER

educator

Barry

Harris

1989

Chasin’ 

The Bird

Original Jazz Classics, 1962

Barry Harris 

Plays Tadd

Dameron

Classics, 1975

For The

Moment

Uptown, 1984

Live at Maybeck 

Recital Hall,

Vol. 1 & 2

Concord, 1990

Live from New

York, Vol 1

Lineage, 2004

Photo by Tom Pich

Detroit in 1960 and moved to New York. In addition to 

Adderley, Harris found work in the 1960s and 1970s 

with Yusef Lateef, Charles McPherson, and Coleman 

Hawkins. In addition to sideman work, Harris led various 

trios and duos at piano bars and restaurants around 

New York. He also began to get work as an arranger 

and composer, showing a particular adeptness for his 

treatment of strings. A consummate freelancer, he found 

work in a variety of diverse settings, inaugurating the 

Lincoln Center’s Penthouse piano series in 1997.

By the early 1980s, Harris’ acumen as a teacher and 

mentor to developing pianists had become legendary. 

He was able to expand these interests when he opened 

the Jazz Cultural Center in 1982 on Eighth Avenue in 

Manhattan. The center served as workshop, educational 

facility, and performance space for Harris and his 

affiliated artists, but unfortunately only lasted until 

1987. Harris soldiered on, though, continuing to teach 

and mentor young musicians, holding weekly workshop 

sessions in New York City for aspiring performers. He also 

continues to present and produce annual multimedia 

concert spectaculars at places like Symphony Space and 

the Manhattan Center in New York.

B

arry Harris is part of an exceptional crew 

of Detroit-bred jazz musicians, including 

Tommy Flanagan and Donald Byrd, 

who rose through the extraordinary arts 

education program in the public school 

system during the 1930s and 1940s. Harris’ earliest 

musical mentor was a church piano-playing mother 

who exposed him to piano lessons at age four. He 

became seriously immersed in jazz in the mid-1940s 

and fell under the spell of Thelonious Monk, Charlie 

Parker, and Bud Powell. As a professional, he would 

become a key translator of Monk’s music.

Detroit was blessed with a high-energy jazz scene 

during the 1940s, and Harris was house pianist at 

one of the hottest spots, the Blue Bird Lounge. At 

the Blue Bird and later at the Rouge, he backed such 

traveling soloists as Miles Davis, Wardell Gray, Max 

Roach, Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, and Lester Young. 

Displaying an early interest in passing the torch 

through education, Harris began teaching his bebop 

theories as early as 1956, tutoring young talent such 

as Joe Henderson. It is a tradition he has carried on 

throughout his life.

At the urging of Cannonball Adderley, Harris left 
62

Selected Discography

We Three

Original Jazz Classics, 1958

Out of the

Afternoon

Impulse!, 1962

Te Vou!

Dreyfus, 1995

The Roy 

Haynes Trio

Verve, 2000

Roy-alty

Dreyfus Jazz, 2011

Born March 13, 1925 in Roxbury, MA

drummer

Roy

Haynes

1995

a member of Getz’s band. After Burton’s band, which 

was one of the precursors of the jazz-rock movement, 

Haynes formed the Hip Ensemble, featuring such 

musicians as George Adams and Hannibal Marvin 

Peterson. The band had a decidedly contemporary flavor, 

often employing various guitarists. He also has enjoyed 

an occasional playing relationship with Chick Corea, 

dating back to their Stan Getz days. He joined Corea’s 

Trio Music band in 1981. 

While periodically leading his own bands, he has also 

worked with artists such as Billy Taylor, Hank Jones,

and Ted Curson, and as an innovative drummer in a 

variety of settings. His bands have included some of the 

more exceptional young musicians on the scene, ranging 

from his Hip Ensemble to his various quartets. Haynes 

received the prestigious Danish award, the JAZZPAR 

Prize, in 1994, and he continues to influence the next 

generation of drummers with his distinctive sound.

S

eemingly ageless, Roy Haynes 

has played the drums from 

the bebop days of the 1940s 

to the present day with the 

same restless energy. Haynes 

has remained fresh in his outlook and 

in his thirst for collaborating with 

younger artists and those who play 

in challenging styles, as is shown in 

his work with such disparate artists 

as Roland Kirk, Danilo Pérez, and Pat 

Metheny. He also has been a favorite 

sideman for any number of artists 

because of his crisply distinctive 

drumming style. Thelonious Monk once 

described Haynes’ drumming as “an 

eight ball right in the side pocket.”

Haynes became interested in music 

through his father, a church organist. 

In his earliest professional playing 

years in the mid-1940s, he worked 

in Boston with Sabby Lewis, Frankie 

Newton, and Pete Brown. In 1945, he 

joined the Luis Russell band, remaining 

until 1947, whereupon he joined Lester Young’s band. 

In the late 1940s to mid-1950s, he worked with such 

greats as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and 

Kai Winding. He later played in Monk’s band at the Five 

Spot Cafe before forming his own band in 1958.

Some of his most noted work in the early 1960s 

came when he subbed for Elvin Jones in the John 

Coltrane Quartet, both on gigs and on records. His 

drumming style was a marked change for Coltrane from 

Elvin Jones’ approach—lighter, less aggressive—and it 

gave the quartet a different sound. Among his other 

affiliations during the late 1950s to early 1960s were 

George Shearing, Kenny Burrell, Lennie Tristano, and 

Stan Getz. In addition, his style of drumming was an 

ideal accompaniment to singers, accenting the vocals 

without overpowering them, and he worked with 

Sarah Vaughan, and Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

 He later joined vibist Gary Burton, who had been 

Photo by Vance Jacobs
63

Selected Discography

Really Big!

Riverside/OJC, 1960

On the Trail

Riverside/OJC, 1964

Little Man, 

Big Band

Verve, 1992

Heath Brothers

Jazz Family

Concord, 1998

TurnUp the

Heath

Planet Arts, 2006

Born October 25, 1926 in 

Philadelphia, PA

SaxophonIST 

FlutIST 

Composer 

Arranger 

Educator

Photo by Tom Pich

and arranging abilities, he has set a high standard of 

accomplishment in the jazz field. He has made more 

than 100 recordings and composed more than 100 

original works. 

As an educator, Heath has taught at Jazzmobile, 

Housatonic Community College, City College of New 

York, and Queens College, where he retired from fulltime teaching in 1998. He holds honorary degrees from 

Sojourner-Douglass College and the Juilliard School, and 

has a chair endowed in his name at Queens College. He 

continues to conduct workshops and clinics throughout 

the United States, Canada, and Europe.

Since the mid-1970s, Jimmy had been teaming 

up with brothers Percy and Albert “Tootie” as the 

Heath Brothers, a band which also at times included 

contributions from Jimmy’s son, the noted percussionist, 

composer, and rhythm-and-blues producer, Mtume. In 

addition, he has performed with other jazz greats, such 

as Slide Hampton and Wynton Marsalis, and indulged 

in his continuing interest in the dynamics of arranging 

for big band. In 2010, his memoir, I Walked with Giants, 

was published. He remains active as an educator, 

saxophonist,and composer. 

T

he second of the illustrious Heath Brothers 

to receive an NEA Jazz Master Fellowship 

(bassist Percy received the award in 2002), 

Jimmy was the first Heath to choose music 

as a career path. Starting on alto saxophone 

(and acquiring the nickname “Little Bird” due to the 

influence Charlie “Yardbird” Parker had on his style), 

one of his first professional jobs came in 1945-46 in 

the Midwest territory band led by Nat Towles, out 

of Omaha, Nebraska. Returning to Philadelphia, he 

briefly led his own big band with a saxophone section 

that included John Coltrane and Benny Golson—also 

products of the city’s jazz scene. Gigs followed with 

Howard McGhee in 1948 and with Dizzy Gillespie’s big 

band from 1949-50. 

In the early 1950s, Heath switched to tenor sax, 

playing with Miles Davis in 1953 and then again 

briefly in 1959, among other gigs. In the 1960s, he 

began his own recordings as a leader, and frequently 

teamed up with Milt Jackson and Art Farmer. By 

that time he had honed his talent as a composer and 

arranger, creating such widely performed compositions 

as “Gingerbread Boy” and “C.T.A.” By combining his 

versatile style of performing and his outstanding writing 

Jimmy

Heath

2003
64

Selected Discography

Modern Jazz Quartet

The Artistry 

of the Modern

Jazz Quartet

Prestige, 1952-55

Jimmy Heath

Really Big!

Original Jazz Classics, 1960

Heath Brothers

Marchin’ On!

Strata East, 1976

Heath Brothers

Brotherly Love

Antilles, 1991

Modern Jazz Quartet

Celebration

Atlantic, 1992

Born April 30, 1923 in Wilmington, NC 

Died April 28, 2005

Bassist

Cellist

Percy

Heath

2002

prominence, prompting Heath to greater heights with 

his performances. During his time with MJQ, Heath 

performed on film soundtracks and with symphony 

orchestras and string quartets, always exhibiting style 

and poise in every setting. 

During the break from the MJQ in 1975-82, Heath 

worked with Sarah Vaughan and began performing––

sometimes playing cello instead of bass––with the Heath 

Brothers band, which included Jimmy and Tootie. The 

Heath Brothers were featured in Danny Scher’s 2006 

documentary, Brotherly Love. 

His talents on bass were much in demand as the 

house bass player for both Prestige and Blue Note record 

labels, providing a confident, straight-ahead style of 

playing reminiscent of the great Ray Brown. 

Heath received many honors in his career, such as 

the Maria Fischer Award, France’s Cross of Officer of 

Arts and Letters, and an honorary doctoral degree from 

Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. In 

addition, Heath performed at the White House for 

Presidents Nixon and Clinton. 

P

ercy Heath was the backbone of the popular 

jazz group Modern Jazz Quartet, and a 

superb bassist so sought after that he 

appeared on more than 200 jazz albums. 

Heath was a member of one of the great 

families of jazz (along with the Joneses and Marsalises), 

with brothers Jimmy (on saxophone) and Albert 

“Tootie” (on drums) also being stellar jazz musicians. 

Heath started on the violin in his school orchestra 

but began to seriously study music at the Granoff 

School of Music in Philadelphia after his service in 

the Air Force. In 1947, he joined his brother Jimmy in 

Howard McGhee’s band, ending up in New York where 

he performed regularly with jazz greats such as Miles 

Davis, J.J. Johnson, Sonny Rollins, Fats Navarro, and 

Charlie Parker. Heath joined Dizzy Gillespie’s sextet 

from 1950-52, where he met the other members of the 

soon-to-be Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ): John Lewis, Milt 

Jackson, and Kenny Clarke. Heath stayed with MJQ, 

off and on, from its beginning in 1952 for more than 40 

years. Lewis’ arrangements brought the bass into greater 

Photo by Lee Tanner
Selected Discography

Born April 24, 1937 in Lima, OH • Died June 30, 2001 

SAXOPHONIST

Page One

Blue Note, 1963

Four!

Verve, 1968

The State

of the Tenor, 

Vol. 1 & 2

Blue Note, 1985

Lush Life: 

The Music

of Billy

Strayhorn

Verve, 1991

Big Band

 Verve, 1992-96

Photo by Lee Tanner

1999

Joe

Henderson

Born April 24, 1937 in Lima, OH 

Died June 30, 2001 

Sonny Stitt. In 1960, he then led his own band in 

Detroit until entering the Army that year, playing in 

the Army band until 1962.

After leaving the Army, Henderson eventually 

moved to New York, where he worked with organist Jack 

McDuff, then co-led a band with Kenny Dorham during 

1962-63. His first recording as a leader in 1963, Page 

One, was one of the most popular releases for the Blue 

Note label, and led to one of his richest recording periods 

both as a leader and sideman. He played with Horace 

Silver in 1964-66, and Andrew Hill in 1965, both 

Blue Note artists. Lee Morgan’s album The Sidewinder, 

contains some of his best solos of the period, especially 

on the hit title track. During the late 1960s, he was part 

of the cooperative band, the Jazz Communicators, with 

Freddie Hubbard and Louis Hayes.

At the end of the decade he spent more than a year 

with the Herbie Hancock Sextet (1969-70), and joined 

the pop band Blood, Sweat & Tears for a short time 

in 1971. Thereafter he worked mainly as a leader and 

freelance saxophonist. His bands employed a number 

of outstanding musicians and, following his Blue Note 

years, he made a series of rewarding discs for the 

Milestone label. 

In the 1990s, Henderson experienced a resurgence 

in popularity with a series of well-received albums on 

the Verve label. His recordings of the music of Billy 

Strayhorn, Miles Davis, and Antonio Carlos Jobim in 

inventive arrangements were inspired, and he showed 

a skill for big band arrangement with his 1996 release,

Big Band. Henderson stopped performing in 1998 after 

suffering a stroke.

O

ne of the more distinctive tenor saxophone 

voices to have emerged during the 1960s, 

Joe Henderson’s rich tone and strong 

sense of rhythm influenced scores of 

tenor saxophonists who followed him. In 

concert, his aggressive playing was often tempered by 

a melodic touch on ballads. 

Growing up in Lima, Ohio, he first played the 

drums, switching to tenor saxophone at age 13. After 

high school he studied at Kentucky State College, 

then Wayne State in Detroit from 1956-60, as well as 

under the private tutelage of pianist Barry Harris. 

One of his first jazz jobs was alongside saxophonist 

65
66

Selected Discography

Born March 14, 1919 in Kansas City, MO 

Died July 29, 2003 

COMPOSER

Arranger 

musical Directo r 

pianIST

Sarah Vaughan

No Count Sarah

Mercury, 1958

Eileen Farrell

IGot aRight to

Sing theBlues

Columbia, 1960

Original Cast Recording

Ain’t 

Misbehavin’ RCA, 1978

American Composers 

Orchestra

Four 

Symphonic

Works by Duke

Ellington

Music Masters, 1989

Canadian Brass Quintet

Red Hot Jazz: 

The Dixieland 

Album

Philips, 1993

Luther

Henderson

2004

orchestrator, arranger, and pianist for the Columbia 

Pictures television special Ain’t Misbehavin’ for 

which he received an Emmy nomination. Albums to 

his credit included several with the Canadian Brass 

Quintet and Eileen Farrell’s I Got a Right to Sing the 

Blues, which was re-released in 1992. For Columbia 

Records, the Luther Henderson Orchestra recorded six 

albums. In addition, Henderson contributed to various 

albums recorded by the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the 

Andre Kostelanetz Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic, 

Mandy Patinkin, Polly Bergen, Anita Ellis, and others. 

Henderson’s composition “Ten Good Years,” with lyricist 

Martin Charnin, was recorded by Nancy Wilson on her 

Coconut Grove album. 

Henderson died of cancer in 2003. His widow, 

Billie Allen-Henderson, created the Luther Henderson 

Scholarship Fund at the Juilliard School in New York in 

2006 for students of color to pursue musical study. 

When he was four, Luther Henderson 

moved to Harlem with his family 

and became neighbors with Duke 

Ellington. Ellington would become 

a major influence on Henderson’s 

life, beginning in the late 1940s and early 1950s 

when he adapted and orchestrated some of Ellington’s 

larger works, such as “Harlem—A Tone Parallel” and 

“Three Black Kings,” for performance in a concerto 

grosso format by Henderson’s orchestra and another 

symphony orchestra. Henderson’s classical training 

at the Juilliard School and music study at New York 

University led Ellington to dub Henderson “his classical 

arm.” His talents included composing, arranging, 

conducting, and performing, and he was hired by 

Ellington in 1946 to orchestrate his Broadway musical, 

Beggar’s Holiday. 

Henderson worked on more than 50 Broadway 

productions in various capacities. For Ain’t Misbehavin’, 

he was the original pianist as well as orchestrator, 

arranger, and musical supervisor. For Lena Horne: The 

Lady and Her Music, he was the musical consultant 

and arranged several selections. He orchestrated such 

musicals as the Tony Award-winning Raisin, Play 

On!, and Jelly’s Last Jam. As a dance arranger, 

Henderson’s credits included Flower Drum Song,

Do Re Mi, Funny Girl, and No, No Nanette. His 

skill in bringing a jazz sensibility to musical 

theater was much in demand. For Jelly’s 

Last Jam, he rearranged Jelly Roll Morton’s 

jazz compositions and musical fragments 

into a hit musical; Ain’t Misbehavin’ 

used the music of jazz great Fats Waller 

as a base. 

Henderson’s talents extended 

to the arena of television, where he 

held positions as musical director, 

Photo by Sara Krulwich/

The New York Times/Redux

2004
67

Selected Discography

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross 

Sing a Song 

of Basie

Verve, 1957

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

Everybody’s

Boppin’ Columbia, 1959-61

Love

Muse, 1981-82

Freddie

Freeloader

Denon, 1989-90

Wynton Marsalis

Blood 

on the Fields

Columbia, 1994

Born September 16, 1921 Newark, OH 

vocalIST 

lyricIST 

educator

Jon

Hendricks

1993

Photo by Tom Pich

version of the Woody Herman band feature 

“Four Brothers.”

His collaboration with vocalist Dave 

Lambert began in 1957 when he rerecorded “Four Brothers,” which led to 

their association with singer Annie Ross

on a collection of Count Basie songs. 

Sing a Song of Basie, using innovative 

multitracked arrangement of vocals, 

became a hit when released in 1958 and 

gave birth to Lambert, Hendricks & Ross as 

a full-time act. They subsequently toured 

with the Basie band and were a top-selling 

act for nearly four years, until Ross left the 

band. Lambert and Hendricks continued 

for a while with new singer Yolande Bavan, 

eventually breaking up in 1964. Hendricks 

found work as a soloist, then moved to 

England in 1968. In the early 1970s he 

put together another trio, this time with 

wife Judith and daughter Michelle, an 

arrangement he has occasionally revisited 

over the years.

Evolution of the Blues, an extended stage work 

Hendricks had first performed with Lambert and Ross 

at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1960, went on a fiveyear run at the Broadway Theatre in San Francisco in 

the 1970s. Thereafter he took a variety of university 

teaching positions in California, and continued to work 

with Judith, Michelle, and youngest daughter Aria, 

with occasional male singers such as Bobby McFerrin, 

Kevin Burke, and Miles Griffith. He has written for and 

played with the Manhattan Transfer, a jazz vocal group 

heavily influenced by Hendricks. Also, he was one of 

three singers in Wynton Marsalis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning 

oratorio, Blood on the Fields. He has written lyrics to 

a number of jazz standards, including “Four,” “Hi Fly,” 

“Along Came Betty,” “Desifinado,” and “No More Blues.” 

In 2000, he was appointed distinguished professor 

of jazz studies at the University of Toledo in Ohio. A 

documentary about Hendricks’ time in the military, 

Blues March: Soldier Jon Hendricks, was released in 2009.

J

on Hendricks helped create the singing style 

known as “vocalese,” or crafting songs and 

lyrics out of the note sequences of famous 

jazz instrumental solos, as a member of the 

great jazz vocal ensemble Lambert, Hendricks 

& Ross. A gifted lyricist, he has added words to classics 

by Count Basie, Horace Silver, Miles Davis, and Art 

Blakey, brilliantly mirroring the instrumental effects.

He largely grew up in Toledo, Ohio, one of 17 

children. His singing career began at age eight at 

parties and dinners. Later he sang on a radio show on 

which he was occasionally accompanied by another 

Toledoan, the great pianist Art Tatum. Returning home 

from service in the Army, he studied at the University 

of Toledo and taught himself to play drums. In 1952, he 

relocated to New York and found his initial work as a 

songwriter, working for such artists as Louis Jordan and 

King Pleasure. One of his earliest recordings came on a 
68

Born June 10, 1925 in Boston, MA 

Jazz Country

Harper Collins, 1965

The Jazz Life

Harper Collins 1975

Jazz Is

Random House, 1976

Boston Boy: 

Growing Up

With Jazz

and Other 

Rebellious 

Passions

Random House, 1986

The Nat 

Hentoff

Reader 

DaCapo Press, 2001

Selected bibliography

critic

journalist

 producer

Nat

Hentoff

2004

Scholars (with Albert J. McCarthy, 1974), Boston Boy: 

Growing Up with Jazz and Other Rebellious Passions

(1986), Listen to the Stories: Nat Hentoff on Jazz and 

Country Music (1995), and American Music Is (2004). 

His work has appeared in such venerable publications 

as the New York Times, New Republic, JazzTimes, and 

New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for more than 

25 years. In addition to 

his status as a renowned 

jazz historian and critic, 

Hentoff also is an expert 

on First Amendment 

rights, criminal justice, 

and education and has 

written a number of books 

on these topics. 

In 1980, he was 

awarded a Guggenheim 

Fellowship in education 

as well as a Silver Gavel 

Award from the American 

Bar Association for his 

coverage of the law and 

criminal justice. Five years 

later, he was awarded an 

honorary degree from 

Northeastern University. 

The multidisciplinary 

body of work that Hentoff 

has produced represents an 

articulation of the interconnectedness of the ideals of 

constitutional rights and jazz music and is without a 

doubt a major contribution to the dialogue surrounding 

the uniquely American jazz tradition. Currently, Hentoff 

writes about music for the Wall Street Journal and has 

a column in the United Media syndicate, which 

distributes the column to 250 papers nationwide.

O

ne of the major voices in jazz literature, 

Nat Hentoff has written about and 

championed jazz for more than half a 

century, produced recording sessions 

for some of the biggest names in jazz, 

and written liner notes for many more. Through his 

work, he has helped to advance the appreciation and 

knowledge of jazz. It is 

fitting that he is the first 

to receive the NEA Jazz 

Masters Fellowship for 

Jazz Advocacy.

Hentoff began his 

education at Northeastern 

University in Boston, his 

hometown, and went on 

to pursue graduate studies 

at Harvard University. As 

a graduate student, he 

hosted a local radio show 

and became immersed in 

the Boston jazz scene. In 

1953, after completing 

a Fulbright Fellowship 

at the Sorbonne in 

Paris, he spent four 

years as an associate 

editor at DownBeat

magazine, where he laid 

the foundation for a truly 

remarkable career as a jazz journalist. Hentoff was coeditor of Jazz Review from 1958 to 1961, and worked 

for the Candid label as A&R director from 1960 to 1961, 

producing recording sessions by jazz icons such as 

Charles Mingus, Cecil Taylor, and Abbey Lincoln.

His books on music include Jazz Country (1965), 

Jazz: New Perspectives on the History of Jazz by 

Twelve of the World’s Foremost Jazz Critics and 

Photo by Tom Pich

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
69

Selected Discography

Ornette Coleman 

Change of

the Century

Atlantic, 1959

Soweto

Red, 1979

Mr. Billy 

Higgins

Evidence, 1984

3/4 For Peace

Red, 1993

Charles Lloyd and Billy Higgins

Which Way 

Is East

ECM, 2001

DRUMMER

Born October 11, 1936 in Los Angeles, CA

Died May 3, 2001 

Billy

Higgins

1997

Photo by Lee Tanner

most in-demand freelance drummers on the scene, 

particularly on many Blue Note sessions.

His drumming was an important addition to many 

recordings, such as Andrew Hill’s Point of Departure, 

Herbie Hancock’s Takin’ Off, and Lee Morgan’s The 

Sidewinder, the last two being especially popular jazz 

albums. He would intermittently work with Coleman 

again in the 1960s and 1970s as well. Another frequent 

musical collaborator was Cedar Walton, an association 

that began in 1966 and continued into the 1990s, often 

in Walton’s Eastern Rebellion band. 

In 1989, Higgins co-founded a cultural community 

center, the World Stage, in Los Angeles to advance the 

position of African-American music, literature, and art. 

In the 1990s his career was halted by kidney disease, 

leading to a subsequent kidney transplant. After 

resuming playing, he remained much in demand for 

record dates. During 1999-2001, he worked frequently 

with Charles Lloyd when not leading his own bands, 

recording some of his most inventive drumming while 

playing against Lloyd’s saxophone.

K

nown among musicians and fans as 

“Smiling Billy,” Billy Higgins was first 

introduced to the broader jazz public 

when he came to the East Coast with 

the Ornette Coleman Quartet in 1959 

for their extended engagement at the Five Spot Cafe. 

Although he does not have many records under his 

own name, Higgins was often in great demand as a 

sideman, providing sensitive accompaniment in a 

variety of settings.

Higgins started on the drums at age 12. By the 

time he was 19, he was working in rhythm-and-blues 

bands, with musicians such as Amos Milburn and Bo 

Diddley. Other early affiliations included singers Brook 

Benton, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. 

He also began working with jazz artists such as Dexter 

Gordon, Don Cherry, James Clay, and Walter Benton. 

He joined the Red Mitchell band in 1957, but soon left 

to join Ornette Coleman’s new band, with which he 

worked steadily in 1958 and 1959. In the early 1960s, 

he worked with Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, and 

Sonny Rollins. By then he had become one of the 
70

Selected Discography

Andrew

hill

Born June 30, 1931 in Chicago, IL 

Died April 20, 2007

Point of

Departure

Blue Note, 1964

Passing Ships

Blue Note, 1969

Live at 

Montreux

Freedom, 1975

Dusk

Palmetto, 1999

Time Lines

Blue Note, 2005

2008

Pianist

Composer 

Arranger 

Bandleader 

 Educator

some previously unreleased recordings from that time 

period. One of the most interesting was Passing Ships, 

a previously unknown nonet recording that prefaced 

his big band recording in 2002, A Beautiful Day, by 

more than 30 years. In 2003, he received the prestigious 

Danish award, the JazzPar Prize.

After fighting lung cancer for many years, Hill 

succumbed to the disease in April 2007. He was notified 

of the NEA Jazz Masters award before his passing, and 

his wife accepted the award on his behalf. 

R

ecognized by Blue Note Records’ founder 

Alfred Lion as his “last, great protégé,” 

pianist Andrew Hill spent 40 years 

composing, performing, recording, and 

mentoring young musicians.

Born in Chicago in 1931, Andrew Hill began 

teaching himself to play piano at age 10, and was later 

introduced to German composer and music theorist-inexile Paul Hindemith. He started performing in 1952 

with touring jazz musicians, including Charlie Parker, 

Dinah Washington, Coleman Hawkins, and Miles Davis. 

He moved to New York in 1961 and shortly 

thereafter was contracted by Alfred Lion at Blue Note 

Records as a leader and a sideman, producing his early 

classics for the label, such as Point of Departure and 

Black Fire. Hill’s Blue Note sessions with acclaimed 

musicians such as Eric Dolphy, Kenny Dorham, John 

Gilmore, Roy Haynes, Joe Henderson, and Elvin 

Jones cemented his reputation as a musician and 

composer of some renown. 

Hill served as composer-in-residence at Colgate 

University of Hamilton from 1970-72. In California, 

he performed in concert and taught classes at public 

schools and social service institutions before becoming 

an associate professor of music at Portland State 

University, where he established the successful Summer 

Jazz Intensive. He also performed and taught at Harvard 

and Wesleyan universities among others.

He returned to New York City in the 1990s, 

reestablishing himself as a pianist, ensemble leader, 

and composer. In 2000, Hill released Dusk, a song cycle 

loosely based on Jean Toomer’s 1923 book Cane, with 

yet another phenomenal band. The album brought him 

to the attention of and garnered him acclaim from a 

larger jazz audience, claiming a place on best-albumof-the-year lists in Fortune Magazine, San Diego 

Union Tribune, Philadelphia Inquirer, JazzTimes, and 

DownBeat.

The new attention led to reissues of his classic 

Blue Note recordings of the 1960s and new issues of 

Photo by Lee Tanner
71

Selected Discography

Cab Calloway 

Are You Hep

to the Jive?

Columbia/Legacy, 1937-47

The Judge

at his Best

Chiaroscuro, 1973-95

Back to

Bass-ics

Progressive, 1984

Branford Marsalis

Trio Jeepy

Columbia, 1988

Laughing 

at Life

Columbia, 1995

Born June 23, 1910 in Vicksburg, MS 

Died December 19, 2000 

bassIST 

educator 

 photo grapher

Milt

Hinton

1993

Photo by Lee Tanner

the first African-American musicians welcomed into the 

TV studios. From 1956 on, Hinton was a much in-demand 

studio musician, adept at different styles of playing, 

from the pop of Paul Anka to the jazz of Teddy Wilson. 

He also was in demand in live settings, performing 

with Jimmy McPartland, Benny Goodman, Ben Webster, 

Sammy Davis, Jr., Judy Garland, and Harry Belafonte, 

among others. In the 1960s, he became a staff musician 

at ABC, working on The Dick Cavett Show. In the last 

decades of his life, Hinton continued to play and record, 

inspiring new generations of jazz musicians and fans.

He received numerous honorary doctoral degrees and 

taught jazz at several colleges and universities, including 

Hunter College, Baruch College, Skidmore College, and 

Interlochen Music Camp. A 2003 documentary, Keeping 

Time: The Life, Music + Photographs of Milt Hinton, 

chronicled his career. 

Milt Hinton’s career spanned the 

gamut of jazz generations, from the 

early swing days of the 1930s with 

Cab Calloway through the end of 

the millennium with the new guard 

of jazz, such as Branford Marsalis and Christian 

McBride. His ability to make a contribution in any 

setting allowed for his vast array of work. As a soloist, 

Hinton, nicknamed “The Judge,” was adept at the 

early bass tradition of slapping the strings. In addition 

to his love of music, Hinton was a perceptive and 

widely exhibited photographer. Much of the history 

of jazz can be found in his photographs, which 

were published in several magazines and in two 

extraordinary coffee-table books. 

Like many African-American families in the early 

part of the 20th century, Hinton’s family migrated north 

from Mississippi to Chicago, where he was raised. His 

mother was a church musician, playing 

organ and piano, and directing the choir. 

She bought him a violin for his 13th 

birthday, which he studied for four 

years from 1923-27. Later he picked up 

the bass horn and tuba while studying 

music at Wendell Phillips High School 

in Chicago. In 1928, he found his voice 

when he switched to string bass. One of 

his earliest professional affiliations was 

with violinist Eddie South, with whom 

he played intermittently between 

1931-36. He also worked on sessions 

with Zutty Singleton, Erskine Tate, Art 

Tatum, and Jabbo Smith.

Hinton’s early career experience 

was centered around the Cab Calloway 

Orchestra, with which he worked 

from 1936-51. After leaving Calloway, 

he worked with the big bands of Joe 

Bushkin, Jackie Gleason, Phil Moore, 

and Count Basie. He played with Louis 

Armstrong between 1952-55, then 

became a staff musician for CBS, one of 
72

Selected Discography

Born May 21, 1927 in Olive, CA 

The Fabulous 

Bill Holman

Coral, 1954-57

Bill Holman’s 

Great Big Band

Capitol, 1960

The Bill 

Holman Band

JVC, 1987

Brilliant 

Corners: 

The Music of

Thelonious 

Monk

JVC, 1997

Hommage

Jazzed Media, 2005-06

Composer 

Arranger 

Saxophonist

Bill

Holman

2010

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES

To date, Holman has won three Grammy Awards: 

Best Instrumental Arrangement of “Take the ‘A’ Train” 

for Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Orchestra 

(1987); Best Instrumental Composition for “A View from 

the Side” for the Bill Holman Band (1995); and Best 

Instrumental Arrangement of “Straight, No Chaser” 

for the Bill Holman Band (1997). He was voted “Best 

Arranger” in the JazzTimes readers’ poll four times; and 

received the “Arranger of the Year” award three times in 

DownBeat magazine’s readers’ poll and critics’ poll. 

In 2000, the Bill Holman Collection of scores 

and memorabilia became part of the Smithsonian 

Institution’s permanent collection in Washington, DC. 

In 2006, he was inducted into the Rutgers Jazz Hall of 

Fame, and in 2008, he was doubly honored: a Golden 

Score Award from the American Society of Music 

Arrangers and Composers and a place in the American 

Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Jazz Wall 

of Fame. 

B

ill Holman’s unique and 

complex arrangements have 

long been appreciated by 

musicians and critics alike, 

although he is best known on 

the West Coast. 

He took up clarinet in junior high 

school and tenor saxophone in high school, 

by which time he was leading his own band. 

After serving in the U.S. Navy and studying 

engineering, Holman decided in the late 

1940s that he wanted to write big band 

music and enrolled at the Westlake College 

of Music in Los Angeles. He also studied 

composition privately with Russ Garcia and 

saxophone with Lloyd Reese. 

By 1949, Holman’s career was well 

underway. After writing for Charlie Barnet, 

in 1952 he began his association with 

Stan Kenton, for whom he would compose 

(and perform) for many years to come. 

During the 1950s, he also was active in 

the West Coast jazz movement, playing in 

small bands led by Shorty Rogers and Shelly 

Manne and co-leading a quintet with Mel Lewis. During 

the following decade, Holman expanded his writing 

efforts, working for bands led by jazz greats such as 

Louie Bellson, Count Basie, Bob Brookmeyer, Woody 

Herman, Buddy Rich, Gerry Mulligan, Doc Severinsen, 

and others. In addition, he wrote for high-profile 

vocalists such as Natalie Cole (including her Grammy 

Award-winning album Unforgettable), Tony Bennett, 

Carmen MacRae, Anita O’Day, Ella Fitzgerald, and 

Sarah Vaughan.

In 1975, Holman launched the Bill Holman Band 

but recording was elusive; the recording of The Bill 

Holman Band in 1987 was his first release as a leader in 

27 years. Since 1980, Holman increasingly has become 

more active in Europe, including writing, conducting, 

and performing extended works for the WDR Symphony 

Orchestra in Cologne, Germany, and the Metropole 

Orchestra in the Netherlands.
73

Selected Discography

vocalIST 

pianIST

Embers 

and Ashes

Stereo-Craft, 1960

Violets for 

Your Furs

Steeple Chase, 1981

You Won’t 

Forget Me

Verve, 1990

I Remember 

Miles

Verve, 1998

May the Music

Never End

Verve, 2003

Born May 1, 1934 in Washington, DC 

Died October 20, 2005

Shirley

Horn

2005

her 1981 appearance at Holland’s North Sea Jazz Festival 

reintroduced her to old fans, won her new followers, and 

revitalized her career, allowing her to take to the road 

with her trio and record more albums.

Her association with the Verve label, which began 

in 1987, gave a new showcase to her inimitable style 

and cemented her reputation as a world-class jazz artist. 

Six of her more than 20 albums have been nominated 

for Grammy Awards, and she has collaborated with jazz 

artists including Hank Jones, Kenny Burrell, Wynton 

Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Buck Hill, Branford Marsalis, 

and Toots Thielemans.

In 1990, she collaborated with Miles Davis on her 

critically acclaimed album You Won’t Forget Me. Her 

1992 recording Here’s to Life was that year’s topselling jazz album and earned a Grammy Award for 

arranger Johnny Mandel. In 1998, Horn paid tribute 

to her mentor with the brilliant recording I Remember 

Miles, winning the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal 

Performance. Health problems in the early 2000s forced 

her to cut back on her appearances.

S

hirley Horn began leading her own group 

in the mid-1950s, and in 1960 recorded 

her first album, Embers and Ashes, which 

established her reputation as an exceptional 

and sensitive jazz vocalist. Born in 1934 

in Washington, DC, she studied classical piano as a 

teenager at Howard University’s Junior School of Music.

Under the influence of artists such as Oscar Peterson 

and Ahmad Jamal, she then began a career as a jazz 

pianist and soon after discovered the great expressive 

power of her voice. When Miles Davis heard Embers 

and Ashes, he brought her to New York, where she 

began opening for him at the Village Vanguard. Soon 

she was performing in major venues throughout the 

United States and recording with Quincy Jones for the 

Mercury label.

For some years she spent much of her time in 

Europe, then took a ten-year hiatus to raise her family 

in Washington. She continued to appear in and around 

the DC area, and in the 1980s she returned to the 

recording studio. The overwhelming critical success of 

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES
74

Selected Discography

Ready for 

Freddie

Blue Note, 1961

Hub-Tones

Blue Note, 1962

Straight Life

Columbia, 1970

Live

CLP, 1983

New Colors

Hip Bop Essence, 2000

Born April 7, 1938 in Indianapolis, IN 

Died December 29, 2008 

Freddie

trumpeter

Hubbard

2006

Photo by Lee Tanner

Lee Morgan. By now, he had indisputably developed 

his own sound and had won the DownBeat “New Star” 

award on trumpet.

Hubbard remained with the Jazz Messengers until 

1964, when he left to form his own small group, which 

over the next years featured Kenny Barron and Louis 

Hayes. Throughout the 1960s, Hubbard also played 

in bands led by other legends, including Max Roach,

and was a significant presence on the Blue Note 

recordings of Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Hank 

Mobley. Hubbard was also featured on four classic, 

groundbreaking 1960s sessions: Ornette Coleman’s Free 

Jazz, Oliver Nelson’s Blues and the Abstract Truth, Eric 

Dolphy’s Out to Lunch, and John Coltrane’s Ascension.

In the 1970s, Hubbard achieved his greatest popular 

success with a series of crossover albums on Atlantic 

and CTI Records, including the Grammy Award-winning 

First Light. He returned to acoustic hard bop in 1977 

when he toured with the V.S.O.P. quintet, which teamed 

him with the members of Miles Davis’ 1960s ensemble: 

Shorter, Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. In 

the 1980s, Hubbard again led his own groups, often in 

the company of Joe Henderson, and he collaborated 

with fellow trumpet legend Woody Shaw on a series of 

albums for the Blue Note and Timeless labels.

O

ne of the greatest trumpet virtuosos ever 

to play in the jazz idiom, and arguably 

one of the most influential, Freddie 

Hubbard played mellophone and then 

trumpet in his school band and studied 

at the Jordan Conservatory with the principal 

trumpeter of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. 

As a teenager, he worked with Wes and Monk 

Montgomery and eventually founded his own band, 

the Jazz Contemporaries, with bassist Larry Ridley 

and saxophonist James Spaulding. After moving to 

New York in 1958, he quickly astonished fans and 

critics alike with his depth and maturity, playing with 

veteran artists Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Slide 

Hampton, J.J. Johnson, Eric Dolphy, and Quincy 

Jones, with whom he toured Europe. 

In June 1960, on the recommendation of Miles 

Davis, he recorded his first solo album, Open Sesame, 

for Blue Note Records, just weeks after his 22nd 

birthday. Within the next 10 months, he recorded two 

more albums, Goin’ Up and Hub Cap, and then in August 

1961 made what many consider to be his masterpiece, 

Ready for Freddie, which was also his first Blue Note 

collaboration with Wayne Shorter. That same year, 

Hubbard joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, replacing 
75

Selected Discography

Eric Dolphy

Out to Lunch

Blue Note, 1964

Dialogue

Blue Note, 1965

Solo/Quartet

Contemporary/OJC, 1981-82

Skyline

Verve, 1998

WISE ONE

Kind of Blue, 2009

Vibraphonist

Marimba 

Player 

Composer

Born January 27, 1941 in Los Angeles, CA

Bobby

Hutcherson

2010

Al Grey and Billy Mitchell. A year later, the 

group performed at New York’s legendary 

Birdland club and the vibraphonist made 

his first live appearance opposite bassist 

Charles Mingus. Hutcherson soon relocated 

to New York City and signed with the Blue 

Note label. According to Hutcherson’s own 

account, he made 45 records as a bandleader 

and appeared on more than 250 records 

as a sideman during his years with Blue 

Note—working with jazz luminaries such as 

Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Jackie 

McLean, and McCoy Tyner, among others. 

His work on Eric Dolphy’s recording Out to 

Lunch is considered one of his most masterful 

sideman performances, providing a vibrant 

texture to the piano-less quintet. In 1965, 

Blue Note released his astounding debut 

record as a bandleader, Dialogue. Hutcherson 

was accompanied on the album by some of 

the biggest names emerging in jazz at the 

time: drummer Joe Chambers, bassist Richard 

Davis, pianist Andrew Hill, trumpeter 

Freddie Hubbard, and saxophonist Sam 

Rivers. 

In 1967, he returned to California and coled a quintet with saxophonist Harold Land for several 

years. Hutcherson eventually settled in Montara, a small 

coastal town south of San Francisco, where he continues 

to live. Hutcherson is a founding member of the SFJAZZ 

Collective, an all-star octet that debuted in 2004. 

In 2008, Hutcherson was the recipient of a lifetime 

achievement award from the Sedona Jazz on the Rocks 

festival in Arizona. 

In addition to his own recordings and tours, 

Hutcherson also appears on other artists’ records, 

including Tyner’s Manhattan Moods (1993) and 

Hammond B-3 organist Joey DeFrancesco’s Organic 

Vibes (2006). Hutcherson continues to perform at a 

masterful level on his instrument, playing with both 

his contemporaries and the new generation of jazz 

musicians. 

B

obby Hutcherson’s sound and innovative 

style on the vibraphone helped revitalize 

the instrument in the 1960s, adding an 

adventurous new voice to the free jazz and 

post-bop eras. 

As a child, Hutcherson studied piano with his aunt, 

but his interest in becoming a professional musician was 

sparked after hearing vibraphonist Milt Jackson playing 

on a recording of the Thelonious Monk song “Bemsha 

Swing.” Jackson’s playing impressed him so much 

that he began working with his father (a brick mason) 

to save up money for a vibraphone. Studies under 

renowned vibraphonist Dave Pike followed, and soon 

Hutcherson played at local Los Angeles school dances in 

his friend Herbie Lewis’ group.

In 1960, Hutcherson joined an ensemble co-led by 

0000

Photo by Francis Wolff © Mosaic Images
76

Selected Discography

Modern Jazz Quartet

MJQ Original Jazz 

Classics, 1954-56

Plenty, 

Plenty Soul

Atlantic, 1957

Bags 

Meets Trane

Atlantic, 1959

Milt Jackson + 

Count Basie + 

The Big Band,

Vol. 1 & 2

Original Jazz Classics, 1978

Sa Va Bella

Warner Brothers, 1996

Born January 1, 1923 in Detroit, MI

Died October 9, 1999 

vibraphonist

pianist

bandleader

Milt

Jackson

1997

or playing with all-star aggregations until 1981, when 

the MJQ reunited for a concert in Japan. Following 

that concert, the quartet made annual tours from 1982 

through the early 1990s. For most of the remainder of 

his career he worked with his own groups, which often 

included such musicians as Mickey Roker, Bob Cranshaw, 

and Mike LeDonne.

The winner of numerous jazz polls, Jackson’s vibeplaying dominated the field for much of his career, 

leading to his induction into the Percussion Hall of Fame 

and DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame, among other honors.

C

haracterized by a slower vibrato than his 

predecessors, Milt Jackson’s ability to swing 

and to create vocal-like inflections made 

his an instantly recognizable sound on the 

vibes. Another jazz musician whose earliest 

experience was in the church, he sang gospel duets 

with his brother and played the 

guitar. At age 11, he began playing 

the piano, moving to the xylophone 

and the vibes in his early teens. After 

studying music at Michigan State 

University, his musical career actually 

began with a touring gospel ensemble 

in the early 1940s. Upon hearing him 

in Detroit, Dizzy Gillespie arranged 

for Jackson, known by the nickname 

“Bags,” to come to New York in 

1945 to join his band. After leaving 

Gillespie’s pioneering bebop big band 

in 1948, he went on to play with 

Howard McGhee, Thelonious Monk, 

Tadd Dameron, and Charlie Parker, 

applying the bebop sound to the 

vibes.

He replaced Terry Gibbs in the 

Woody Herman band during 1949-50, 

returning to the Gillespie band from 

1950-52. Thereafter he formed his 

own quartet, featuring John Lewis, 

Ray Brown, and Kenny Clarke. The 

Milt Jackson Quartet then became 

the Modern Jazz Quartet, with Percy 

Heath replacing Brown, and Connie 

Kay eventually replacing Clarke. The 

MJQ would become an enduring jazz 

institution for more than 40 years, with 

Jackson’s blues-drenched solos being a crucial ingredient 

in their sound. When the MJQ wasn’t touring, Jackson 

occasionally led bands featuring Jimmy Heath and Ray 

Brown and worked on recording sessions that included 

Cannonball Adderley and Ray Charles. 

He left the MJQ in 1974, leading his own groups 

Photo by Lee Tanner
77

Selected Discography

Born July 2, 1930 in Pittsburgh, PA

At the

Pershing/But 

Not for Me

Chess, 1958

Free Flight

Impulse!, 1971

Big Byrd: The

Essence, Part 2

Verve, 1994-95

After Fajr

Birdology/Dreyfus Jazz, 2004

It’s Magic

Dreyfus Jazz, 2007

pianist

composer

Ahmad

Jamal

1994

Photo by Michael Wilderman

1947. In 1949, he joined swing violinist Joe Kennedy’s 

group Four Strings as pianist. This led to formation of 

his trio Three Strings in 1950-52, which debuted at 

Chicago’s Blue Note club, and later became the Ahmad 

Jamal Trio. His 1958 album At the Pershing became a 

surprising smash hit, highlighted by his interpretation 

of “Poinciana.” With the popularity of the album and 

the advocacy of Davis, Jamal’s trio was one of the most 

popular jazz acts in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

For the most part, Jamal has worked in pianobass-drums trios, using the intricate relationship 

of the band to explore his sound, directing the trio 

through seemingly abrupt time and tempo shifts. 

His piano virtuosity has also been welcomed by a 

number of orchestras and his abilities as a composer are 

considerable. His approach has been described as being 

chamber-jazz-like, and he has experimented with strings 

and electric instruments in his compositions. 

Among his many awards are the Living Jazz Legend 

Award from the Kennedy Center and the Officier de 

L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France.

O

ne of the subtlest virtuosos of jazz piano, 

Ahmad Jamal’s uncanny use of space in 

his playing and leadership of his small 

ensembles have been hallmarks of his 

influential career. Among those he 

has influenced is most notably Miles Davis. Davis 

made numerous and prominent mentions of Jamal’s 

influence on his playing, particularly in his use of 

space, allowing the music to “breathe,” and his choice 

of compositions. Several tunes that were in Jamal’s 

playlist, such as the standard “Autumn Leaves” and 

Jamal’s own “New Rhumba,” began appearing in 

the playlist of Davis’ 1950s bands. Jamal’s textured 

rhythms on piano influenced Davis’ piano players 

as well, from Wynton Kelly in the 1950s to Herbie 

Hancock in the 1960s.

Jamal’s piano studies began at age three, and by age 

11, he was making his professional debut with a sound 

strongly influenced by Art Tatum and Erroll Garner. 

Following graduation from Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse 

High School, he joined the George Hudson band in 
78

Selected Discography

The Eminent 

Jay Jay 

Johnson, 

Vol. 1 & 2

Blue Note, 1953-55

Stan Getz & J.J. 

Johnson

at the Opera

House

Verve, 1957

The Great 

Kai and J.J. Impulse!, 1960

Live at the

Village

Vanguard

EmArcy, 1988

Tangence

Verve, 1994

J.J.

Johnson

1996

Born January 22, 1924 in Indianapolis, IN 

Died February 4, 2001 

trombonist

composer 

arranger

“Perceptions,” a large-scale work for orchestra that was 

recorded for Verve Records. In addition to his work as a 

composer, he performed with groups led by Miles Davis, 

Clark Terry, and Sonny Stitt, then moved to California 

in 1970. There he immersed himself in lucrative 

television and film scoring. His scores can be heard on 

such television programs as Mayberry RFD, That Girl, Mod 

Squad, Six Million Dollar Man, and Starsky and Hutch.

In 1987, he returned to his hometown Indianapolis 

and began playing, touring, and recording again. 

His awards include an honorary doctoral degree from 

Indiana University and the Indiana Governor’s Arts 

Award in 1989. 

O

ften referred to as 

the “Charlie Parker of 

the trombone” due to 

his uncanny musical 

dexterity and fluency, 

James Louis “J.J.” Johnson 

dominated his instrument for more 

than 40 years. A potent composer 

and arranger, he was a perennial 

jazz magazine poll winner for his 

peerless trombone playing.

Between ages nine and 11, 

he studied piano with his family’s 

church organist, picking up the 

trombone at age 14. His first 

professional experience came 

with the bands of Clarence Love 

and Snookum Russell. It was in 

the Russell band that he met jazz 

trumpeter Fats Navarro, an early 

influence on the young trombonist. 

After leaving Russell, he spent three 

years with Benny Carter’s band, 

then gigged with Count Basie

in 1945-46. He worked briefly 

with Dizzy Gillespie and Woody 

Herman, then toured the Far East 

with Oscar Pettiford. The difficulty 

of making a living in the jazz field 

affected Johnson; from 1952-54 he held a day job as a 

blueprint reader. Then came one of his most significant 

early bands, a two-trombone group he co-led with 

Kai Winding—the Jay and Kai Quintet—from 1954-

56; after a period of freelancing and bandleading, he 

re-joined Winding in 1958. The group was instrumental 

in demonstrating the power and possibilities of the 

trombone in modern jazz.

In the late 1950s, he began to gain recognition as 

a composer. Two of his extended works, “El Camino 

Real” and “Sketch for Trombone and Orchestra,” 

were commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival. 

A commission from Dizzy Gillespie resulted in 

Photo by Lee Tanner
79

Selected Discography

John Coltrane

The Complete

Africa/Brass 

Sessions

Impulse!, 1961

Poly-Currents

Blue Note, 1969

David Murray

Special Quartet

Columbia, 1990

It Don’t Mean

A Thing

Enja, 1993

Bill Frisell

With Dave

Holland and 

Elvin Jones

Nonesuch, 2001

Born September 9, 1927 in Pontiac, MI 

Died May 18, 2004 

Elvin

Jones

2003

drummer

composer

Photo by Lee Tanner

After serving in the 

Army from 1946-49, 

he returned to Detroit, 

immersing himself in the 

fertile jazz scene there in 

the early 1950s, before 

heading to New York in 

1955. After playing with 

Harry “Sweets” Edison, 

J.J. Johnson, and Sonny 

Rollins (at Rollins’ 

famous Village Vanguard 

session), he joined the 

John Coltrane Quartet 

in 1960. His dynamic 

drumming pushed 

Coltrane’s improvisations 

to new heights, and 

provided innovative 

accompaniment to 

the rest of the rhythm 

section: pianist McCoy 

Tyner and bassists Jimmy 

Garrison and Reggie 

Workman. 

In 1965, Jones left 

the Coltrane group and 

formed his own band, a 

trio with Garrison and reed 

player Joe Farrell, beginning a series of recordings for 

the Blue Note label. Since that time, Jones’ trios and his 

latter day bands, known as the Jazz Machine, welcomed 

numerous adventurous players. These ranged from Steve 

Grossman, Sonny Fortune, and Roland Prince to such 

younger players as Delfeayo Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, 

David Sanchez, and John Coltrane’s son Ravi. 

Jones frequently performed free for schools and 

other institutions, and at jazz clinics. Aside from music, 

he made his acting debut as Job Caine in the 1970 film 

Zachariah. He toured extensively with his group Jazz 

Machine and made later recordings with Cecil Taylor, 

Dewey Redman, Dave Holland, and Bill Frisell. 

T

he propulsive style of drummer Elvin 

Jones powered the John Coltrane Quartet 

during his six-year stint with the group 

and influenced countless percussionists 

that followed him over the past 40 years. 

As with fellow 2003 NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath, 

and a number of other jazz greats, Elvin Jones was 

the product of a musical family. His brothers include 

pianist Hank Jones and cornetist Thad Jones. The 

youngest of ten siblings, Jones began learning the 

drums during his middle school years, studying the 

styles of Chick Webb, Jo Jones, Buddy Rich, and 

the beboppers that followed them, including Kenny 

Clarke, Max Roach, and Art Blakey. 
80

Selected Discography

The Jazz

Trio of

Hank Jones

Savoy, 1955

Upon

Reflection

Verve, 1993

Charlie Haden/Hank Jones

Steal Away 

Verve, 1994

For My Father

Justin Time, 2004

West of 5th

Chesky, 2006

Born July 31, 1918 in Vicksburg, MS

Died May 16, 2010

pianist

Hank

Jones

1989

in Broadway stage bands, where he served as pianist and 

conductor for such shows as Ain’t Misbehavin’.

In 1966, Jones was the first regular pianist in 

brother Thad’s orchestra, co-led with Mel Lewis. 

Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Jones 

continued to be much in demand for record dates and 

tours. Among his affiliations was the Great Jazz Trio, a 

cooperative unit with Ron Carter and Tony Williams, 

who were later supplanted by Buster Williams and Ben 

Riley. Jones has also experienced his share of piano 

duos, with the likes of Tommy Flanagan—with whom 

he became acquainted when both were starting out in 

the Detroit area—George Shearing, and John Lewis. 

In 2008, Jones received the National Medal of 

Arts and the following year the Grammy Lifetime 

Achievement Award. As a leader and valued sideman, 

Jones can be found on thousands of recordings.

Hank Jones, a member of the famous jazz 

family that includes brothers cornetist 

Thad and drummer Elvin, served as a 

pianist in a vast array of settings, always 

lending a distinctive, swinging sensibility 

to the sessions. Although born in Mississippi, Jones 

grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, listening to such 

performers as Earl Hines, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum. 

A performer by the time he was 13, Jones played with 

territory bands that toured Michigan and Ohio. In 

one such band he met saxophonist Lucky Thompson, 

who got him a job in the Hot Lips Page band in 1944, 

prompting Jones’ move to New York.

Once in New York, Jones became exposed to bebop, 

embracing the style in his playing and even recording 

with Charlie Parker. Meanwhile, he took jobs with 

such bandleaders as John Kirby, Coleman Hawkins, 

Andy Kirk, Billy Eckstine, and Howard McGhee. He 

toured with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic 

from 1947-51. As a result, he 

became Ella Fitzgerald’s pianist, 

touring with her from 1948-53. 

These experiences served to 

broaden his musical palette and 

sophistication. 

A consummate freelancer, 

Jones found work with artists 

such as Benny Goodman, 

Artie Shaw, Milt Jackson, 

and Cannonball Adderley. The 

versatility Jones acquired through 

such affiliations served him 

well when he joined the staff of 

CBS as a studio musician,where 

he remained for 17 years. 

Although his studio work found 

him working on productions 

like The Ed Sullivan Show, 

Jones continued his touring 

and recording experiences. His 

broad range and ability to fit in 

different settings also landed him 

Photo by Michael Wilderman
81

Selected Discography

Count Basie

The Original 

American Decca

Recordings

MCA, 1937-39

The Essential 

Jo Jones

Vanguard, 1955

Jo Jones Trio

Fresh Sounds, 1959

Jo Jones Sextet

Fresh Sounds, 1960

The Main Man

Original Jazz Classics, 1976

Born July 10, 1911 in Chicago, IL 

Died September 3, 1985 

Jo

Jones

1985

drummer

Photo by Herman Leonard Photography LLC/CSTIMAGES

Jones grew up in Alabama, 

touring with various shows and 

carnivals as a tap dancer and 

instrumentalist while still in 

his teens. His first major jazz 

job came when he joined the 

territory band known as Walter 

Page’s Blue Devils in Oklahoma 

City in the late 1920s. Jones 

stayed in the Midwest for 

quite some time, working with 

trumpeter Lloyd Hunter and 

moving to Kansas City in 1933. 

In 1934 came the affiliation 

with which his artistry is forever 

identified: drumming with the 

Count Basie band, with which 

he worked on and off for more 

than 15 years. Jones’ drumming 

was the final ingredient to 

what became known as the 

“All-American Rhythm Section.” 

Besides Jones, this included 

guitarist Freddie Green, bassist 

Walter Page, and Basie on piano. 

They provided the irresistible 

pulse that drove the Count Basie 

band of the day to be called ”the swinging-est band 

in the land.“ Jones served two years in the Army from 

1944-46, then returned to the Basie band, where he 

remained a full-time member until 1948. 

Thereafter, though frequently reuniting with Basie 

on special occasions, Jones became a freelance drummer. 

He played on tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic, 

and recorded with many of the jazz greats, including 

Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, Teddy 

Wilson, Lester Young, Art Tatum, and Benny Goodman. 

Jones was constantly in demand for a variety of all-star 

swing sessions and made numerous recordings as a 

highly valued sideman. In 1979, Jones was inducted 

into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame for his contributions 

to Alabama’s musical heritage.

J

onathan “Jo” Jones was one of the 

most influential of the early swing band 

drummers. He had the ability to truly swing a 

band without ever overpowering it, and made 

an art form of the use of brushes on the 

drum kit. His uncanny way around the drums was only 

enhanced by his slick, smiling sense of showmanship.

Jo Jones is credited with the transfer of the 

essential pulse of jazz music from the bass drum to 

the hi-hat cymbal, influencing such modern drummers 

as Max Roach. His technique was to leave the hi-hat 

cymbals just slightly apart, which produced a sound 

different from the relative staccato approach of his 

predecessors. Never one to engage in extended solos, 

his delight was in driving a band with his incomparable 

swing.
82

Selected Discography

This Is How I

Feel About Jazz

Paramount, 1956

Bossa Nova

Mercury, 1962

Walking in

Space

A&M, 1969

Miles Davis/Quincy Jones

Live at 

Montreux

Warner Bros., 1991

Quincy Jones/

Sammy Nestico Orchestra

Basie & Beyond

Warner Bros., 2000

Born March 14, 1933 in Chicago, IL 

Bandleader 

Trumpeter 

Composer 

Arranger 

Producer

quincy

Jones

2008

1966. He later produced Sinatra’s L.A. Is My Lady album 

in 1984. 

Returning to the studio with his own work, he 

recorded a series of Grammy Award-winning albums 

between 1969 and 1981, including Walking in Space

and You’ve Got It Bad, Girl. Following recovery from 

a near-fatal cerebral aneurysm in 1974, he focused 

on producing albums, most successfully with Michael 

Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller, and the “We Are 

the World” sessions to raise money for the victims of 

Ethiopia’s famine in 1985. In 1991, he coaxed Miles 

Davis into revisiting his 1950s orchestral collaborations 

with Gil Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, conducting 

the orchestra for Davis’ last concert. Jones holds the 

record for the most Grammy Award nominations at 79, 

of which he won 27. 

In the 1980s and 1990s, Jones ventured into 

filmmaking, co-producing with Steven Spielberg The 

Color Purple, and managing his own record label Qwest 

Records. In 2010, he received the National Medal of Arts. 

Q

uincy Jones has distinguished himself in 

just about every aspect of music, including 

as a bandleader, record producer, musical 

composer and arranger, trumpeter, and 

record label executive. He has worked 

with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and 

Count Basie to Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, and 

Michael Jackson. 

Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones was brought up in 

Seattle. He began learning the trumpet as a teenager. 

He moved to New York City in the early 

1950s, finding work as an arranger and 

musician with Count Basie, Tommy 

Dorsey, and Lionel Hampton. In 

1956, Dizzy Gillespie chose Jones to 

play in his big band, later having 

him put together a band and act as 

musical director on Gillespie’s U.S. State 

Department tours of South America and 

the Middle East. The experience honed 

Jones’ skills at leading a jazz orchestra.

Jones moved to Paris, France, in 

1957 and put together a jazz orchestra 

that toured throughout Europe and 

North America. Though critically 

acclaimed, the tour did not make 

money, and Jones disbanded the 

orchestra. 

He became music director for 

Mercury Records in 1960, rising to 

vice president four years later. Also in 

1964, he composed his first film score 

for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker. After the success 

of that film, he left Mercury Records for Los Angeles to 

pursue what became a highly successful career as a film 

score composer. To date he has written scores for more 

than 35 films, including In Cold Blood, In the Heat of 

the Night, and The Italian Job.

In addition to his film scoring, he also continued to 

produce and arrange sessions in the 1960s, notably for 

Frank Sinatra on his albums with Count Basie, It Might 

As Well Be Swing in 1964 and Sinatra at the Sands in 

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES
83

Thelonious Monk

Brilliant 

Corners

Riverside Records, 1956

Bill Evans

Everybody Digs 

Bill Evans 

Riverside Records, 1958

Cannonball Adderley

The Cannonball 

Adderley 

Quintet in San

Francisco

Riverside Records, 1959

Wes Montgomery

The Incredible

Jazz Guitar 

of Wes 

Montgomery

Riverside Records, 1960

McCoy Tyner

Fly with

the Wind

Milestone Records, 1976

Selected discography

Born March 2, 1923 in New York, NY 

producer

writer

Orrin

Keepnews

2011

Photo courtesy of the Recording Academy

R

ecognized as one of the outstanding record producers in the 

jazz world, Orrin Keepnews co-founded 

Riverside Records in the early 1950s, 

launching or furthering the careers of 

several of the most notable names in jazz, beginning 

with such significant artists as Thelonious Monk, 

Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Rollins, and 

Cannonball Adderley. He has long been at the forefront 

of producing reissues of both traditional and modern 

jazz recordings, and is also known for his informative, 

incisive, and extensively detailed liner notes. 

Graduating from Columbia University in 1943 and 

then serving in the Air Force, Keepnews returned to 

Columbia for graduate studies in 1946. Two years later, 

he became editor of The Record Changer magazine, which 

was newly owned by his former college classmate and 

noted jazz record collector, Bill Grauer. In 1952, Grauer 

and Keepnews founded Riverside, which originally 

focused on reissues of traditional jazz and blues 

recordings. In 1954, they signed pianist Randy Weston, 

their first modern jazz artist. From that point on, the 

label began to focus on the burgeoning modern jazz 

scene, with Keepnews doing the producing. Promising 

new artists such as Clark Terry, Johnny Griffin, and 

Jimmy Heath were signed to the label, quickly making 

Riverside a major force among the New York-based 

independent labels. But at the end of 1963, the label 

folded after the death of Grauer. 

Keepnews launched Milestone Records in 1966 with 

a new partner, pianist Dick Katz, attracting such high 

quality artists as Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, and 

McCoy Tyner. In 1972, he relocated to San Francisco, 

heading jazz activities at Fantasy Records (which had 

acquired the Riverside catalog). Keepnews oversaw the 

reissue of many of the albums he had produced earlier 

in his career at Riverside, frequently including unissued 

alternate performances. 

He left Fantasy at the end of 1980 to concentrate 

on independent production and after a few years 

founded another label, Landmark Records. Among 

its first releases were two unique albums, one of 

compositions by Bill Evans and the other primarily 

involving Thelonious Monk material, both performed 

by the Kronos Quartet. He sold the company in 1993, 

but remains active in the recording industry, primarily 

by working on reissue and remastering compilations 

on compact disc. A substantial collection of his essays, 

album notes, reviews, and other commentaries was 

published in book form in 1988 as The View from Within: 

Jazz Writings, 1948-87. 

Keepnews has won four Grammy Awards: Best Album 

Notes for Bill Evans’ The Interplay Sessions (1983); Best 

Album Notes and Best Historical Album for Thelonious 

Monk’s The Complete Riverside Recordings (1987); and 

Best Historical Album for The Duke Ellington Centennial 

Edition – The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (1927-

1973) (1999). In 2004, he was awarded a NARAS 

Trustees Award for Lifetime Achievement.

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
Selected Discography

Born May 28, 1898 in Newport, KY • Died December 11, 1992 

bandleader 

saxophonist

1929-1931 

Classics, 1929-31

1936-1937

Classics, 1936-37

Kansas City 

Bounce

Black and Blue, 1939-40

1940-1942

Classics, 1940-42

Clouds from

the southwest

RCA, 1956

Photo courtesy of Ray Avery Photo Archives/CTSIMAGES

Andy

Kirk

1991

A

ndy Kirk, though virtually unknown 

nowadays outside of jazz circles, led one 

of the hottest swing bands in the country 

during the 1930s, rivaling Basie’s. His 

 band, the Clouds of Joy, also introduced 

some of the biggest names in jazz, most notably Mary 

Lou Williams. 

Kirk grew up in Denver, Colorado, where he came 

under the musical tutelage of Paul Whiteman’s father, 

Wilberforce Whiteman. His first job, as bass saxophonist 

and tuba player, came with the George Morrison 

Orchestra in 1918. In 1925 he relocated to Dallas and 

joined Terence Holder’s Dark Clouds of Joy. He took over 

the band in 1929, changing the name to the Clouds 

of Joy (sometimes known as the Twelve Clouds of Joy, 

depending on the number of musicians in the band). 

He moved the band to Kansas City, where they made 

their first recordings in 1929-30, including Mary Lou 

Williams’ “Froggy Bottom,” which has been covered 

countless times since. Kirk’s band was highly popular, 

becoming—along with the Count Basie band, the 

Benny Moten Orchestra, and Jay McShann’s band—

one of the purveyors of the Kansas City swing sound. 

Particularly popular was their recording of “Until the 

Real Thing Comes Along” in 1936. 

Although the leader of the band, Kirk usually was 

not a soloist, and instead chose to spotlight the talent 

in his band instead. His genius lay in realizing how best 

to make use of his band members’ skills. Realizing the 

awesome writing and arranging aptitude of Mary Lou 

Williams, for example, he made her the chief composer 

and arranger for the Clouds of Joy from 1929-42. Other 

notable band members who Kirk highlighted as soloists 

included Shorty Baker, Don Byas, Kenny Kersey, Howard 

McGhee, Fats Navarro, and Dick Wilson. The band 

continued to tour and record until disbanding in 1948. 

Kirk led another band in California in the early 

1950s, then went into other professions. In the 1970s 

he led pickup bands on occasion, and spent the 

remainder of his life working for his Jehovah’s Witness 

church.

84
85

Selected Discography

SubconsciousLee

Prestige/OJC, 1949-50

The Lee

Konitz Duets

Milestone/OJC, 1967

The New York 

Album

Soul Note, 1987

New Nonet

Omnitone, 2006

Lee Konitz-Ohad 

Talmor Big Band 

Portology

Omnitone, 2007

Born October 13, 1927 in Chicago, IL

Saxophonist

Composer 

Educator

Lee

Konitz

2009

In 1947, Konitz played with 

the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, 

where he met Gil Evans, who was 

then arranging for Thornhill. Evans 

brought Konitz along to participate 

in Miles Davis’ nonet performances 

and recordings (Birth of the Cool, 

1948-50), considered the beginning 

point for what came to be called 

“cool jazz.” Konitz went on to play 

with Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker’s 

influential band and worked from 

1952-53 in Stan Kenton’s big band. 

From then on, he mainly led his own 

small groups, occasionally touring 

abroad.

In the early 1960s, as 

opportunities for performances 

declined, Konitz withdrew from the 

music business and took on day work. 

He continued to develop his unique 

sound, however, occasionally working 

with such musicians as Paul Bley, 

Martial Solal, Charlie Haden, and 

Brad Mehldau. He also worked as a 

private teacher, conducting lessons by 

tape with students worldwide. Konitz 

joined with Warne Marsh, his fellow sideman from early 

Tristano sessions, to tour Europe and record in 1975-76; 

he also founded his own nonet and performed regularly 

during the 1980s. In 1992, Konitz won the prestigious 

Danish JAZZPAR Prize.

With his insatiable musical curiosity, Konitz records 

in a variety of different settings. His later albums 

include French impressionist music with a string 

quartet (Lee Konitz & The Axis String Quartet Play French 

Impressionist Music from the 20th Century), work with 

the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos (Portology), and 

an album with the big band Mark Masters Ensemble 

(One Day with Lee). Konitz divides his time between 

residences in the United States and Germany and 

continues to travel and perform around the globe. 

L

ee Konitz is one of the more distinctive 

alto saxophonists in jazz since Charlie 

Parker (and one of the few that did not 

outright copy Parker’s style), pairing his 

individual style and voice with a strong 

sense of innovation. 

Born to an Austrian father and a Russian mother in 

Chicago, Konitz as a youth studied clarinet, then alto 

saxophone with various teachers. In the early 1940s, 

Konitz met noted pianist Lennie Tristano, under whose 

influence and tutelage Konitz’s mature style in jazz 

began to emerge. His recordings with Tristano include 

the 1949 releases “Intuition” and “Digression”—

precursors to the “free jazz” movement of the 1960s.

Photo by Michael Wilderman
86

Selected Discography

2010

Yusef

Lateef

Born October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, TN

Saxophonist

Flutist

Oboist

Composer 

Educator

Eastern Sounds

Prestige/OJC, 1961

Live at Pep’s

Impulse!, 1964

The Doctor is 

In...and Out

Atlantic, 1976

The AfricanAmerican

Epic Suite

Act, 1993

Yusef Lateef 

and Adam Rudolph

In the Garden

Meta/YAL, 2003

Photo by Michael Wilderman

(1962-66) and Atlantic (1967-76) are considered some of 

his most exciting and diverse recordings. 

As a composer, Lateef has compiled a body of work 

for soloists, small ensembles, chamber and symphony 

orchestras, stage bands, and choirs. His extended works 

have been performed by orchestras in Germany and the 

United States—including the Atlanta, Augusta, and 

Detroit symphony orchestras—and the Symphony of 

the New World. In 1987, he won a Grammy Award for 

his recording Yusef Lateef’s Little Symphony, on which 

Lateef played all the instruments. 

Lateef holds a bachelor’s degree in music and a 

master’s degree in music education from the Manhattan 

School of Music. From 1987 to 2002, he was a professor 

at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, from 

which he was awarded a doctorate in education. 

Lateef has performed extensively throughout the 

United States, Europe, Japan, and Africa. His touring 

ensembles have included master musicians such as 

Kenny Barron, Albert “Tootie” Heath, and Cecil McBee.

A virtuoso on the traditional jazz 

instruments of saxophone and flute, 

Yusef Lateef also brings a broad spectrum 

of sounds to his music through his 

 mastery of such Middle Eastern and 

Asian reed instruments as the bamboo flute, shanai, 

shofar, argol, sarewa, and taiwan koto. A major force 

on the international musical scene for more than six 

decades, he was one of the first to bring a world music 

approach to traditional jazz.

Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston 

in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and moved with his 

family to Detroit in 1925. In Detroit’s fertile musical 

environment, Lateef established personal and musical 

relationships with such jazz legends as Kenny Burrell, 

Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Tommy Flanagan, Milt 

Jackson, Barry Harris, the Jones brothers (Hank, 

Thad and Elvin), and Lucky Thompson. By the time he 

was 18 years old, he was touring professionally with 

swing bands led by Lucky Millinder, Roy Eldridge, Hot 

Lips Page, and Ernie Fields, performing under the name 

Bill Evans. In 1949, he was 

invited to perform with the 

Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. 

At that time he converted 

to Islam and took the name 

by which he is now known: 

Yusef Lateef. 

From 1955–59 he led 

a quintet in Detroit that 

included Ernie Farrell, Curtis 

Fuller, Louis Hayes, and 

Hugh Lawson. During that 

time, he began recording 

under his own name for 

Savoy Records. In 1960, he 

moved to New York City and 

joined Charles Mingus’ band. 

He then performed and 

recorded with Cannonball 

Adderley from 1962-64. His 

albums as leader on Impulse! 
87

Selected Discography

Hubert

Laws

2011

Afro-Classic

Mosaic Contemporary, 1970

In the

Beginning

Columbia, 1974

Remembers the

Unforgettable

Nat ‘King’ Cole

RKO, 1998

Moondance

Savoy Jazz, 2003

Flute

Adaptations of

Rachmaninov & 

Barber

Spirit Productions, 2008

Born November 10, 1939 in 

Houston, TX

flutist

Photo by Michael Wilderman

Hubert Laws is one of the very few to 

specialize on the flute in jazz, using it 

as his primary axe, and in doing so he 

has become the premier musician on the 

instrument. In three decades of playing, 

he has also mastered pop, rhythm-and-blues, and 

classical genres.

Laws grew up in a musical family, with his 

grandfather playing the harmonica and his mother the 

piano (which influenced his siblings as well as Laws—

his brother Ronnie is a well-regarded saxophonist and 

Eloise, Debra, and Johnnie are vocalists). Laws started 

on flute for his high school orchestra, initially to play 

the William Tell Overture. He also became enamored with 

jazz at this time, and began playing regularly with a 

Houston group that eventually became known as the 

Crusaders.

Laws won a classical scholarship to the prestigious 

Juilliard School in New York City, studying with master 

flutist Julius Baker. At the same time, he was gigging 

at night, playing with jazz and Latin musicians such as 

Mongo Santamaria, Lloyd Price, and John Lewis, as well 

as with classical orchestras such as Orchestra USA and 

the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. 

In 1964, he began recording as a bandleader, 

amassing more than 20 albums to his name. Laws is 

also an accomplished session musician, and has worked 

on recordings with Chick Corea, Miles Davis, Ella 

Fitzgerald, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Sarah 

Vaughan, and Stevie Wonder, among others. He also 

worked on film scores for The Wiz and The Color Purple

and collaborated on film soundtracks with Quincy 

Jones, Bob James, and Claude Bolling for California Suite

and with Earl Klugh and Pat Williams on the music for 

How to Beat the High Cost of Living.

In addition to his jazz work, Laws has appeared as 

a soloist with the New York Philharmonic under the 

direction of Zubin Mehta, and with the orchestras of 

Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, and Los Angeles, and 

the Stanford String Quartet. He performed in a soldout Hollywood Bowl concert with fellow flutist JeanPierre Rampal and in the same venue in 1982 with the 

Modern Jazz Quartet. While a member of the New York 

Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Orchestras, he also 

was featured at the Playboy Jazz Festival (Los Angeles), 

Kool Jazz Festival (Rhode Island), and Switzerland’s 

Montreux Jazz Festival. In addition he has recorded with 

opera singers Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle (on 

the 1991 release Spirituals in Concert). 

In 2006, a 30-year retrospective video on Laws was 

released with live performances. DownBeat readers’ polls 

have selected him “Number One Flutist” for 12 years 

and a Critic’s Choice for seven consecutive years. He has 

performed annually at Carnegie Hall.
88

Selected Discography

Born April 11, 1912 in New Orleans, LA

manager 

 bassist

John

Levy

2006

Stuff Smith

The 1943 Trio

Progressive, 1943

Billie Holiday

The Complete

Decca

Recordings

 GRP, 1944-50

Erroll Garner

Penthouse

Serenade

 Savoy, 1945

Billy Taylor

1945-49

Classics, 1945-49

George Shearing

Complete

Savoy Trio

and Quintet 

Sessions

Jazz Factory, 1945-50

Photo by Leroy Hamilton

George Shearing Quintet, he gradually took on the 

role of road manager. Finally, in 1951, Levy put aside 

performing to become the group’s full-time manager, 

making music-industry history and establishing the 

career he would follow for the next half-century.

Levy’s client roster over the years has included Nat 

and Cannonball Adderley, Betty Carter, Roberta Flack, 

Herbie Hancock, Shirley Horn, Freddie Hubbard, 

Ahmad Jamal, Ramsey Lewis, Abbey Lincoln, Herbie 

Mann, Wes Montgomery, Carol Sloane, Joe Williams, 

and Nancy 

Wilson, as well as 

Arsenio Hall (the 

only comedian 

he has managed 

among some 100 

entertainers). In 

recognition of his 

achievements, Levy 

has received awards 

such as a certificate 

of appreciation from 

Los Angeles Mayor 

Tom Bradley (1991), 

induction into the 

International Jazz 

Hall of Fame (1997), 

and the Lifetime 

Achievement 

Award of the Los 

Angeles Jazz Society 

(2002). His autobiography, Men, Women, and Girl 

Singers: My Life as a Musician Turned Talent Manager, 

written with his wife Devra Hall, was published in 

2001 and expanded into a photo book, Strollin’: A Jazz 

Life through John Levy’s Personal Lens, in 2008 on the 

occasion of his 96th birthday. 

R

enowned as a leading representative of 

jazz musicians, and as the first African 

American to work in the music industry 

as a personal manager, John Levy was 

born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1912. 

His mother was a midwife and nurse, and his father 

was an engine stoker on the railroad. When Levy 

was six, his family moved to Chicago, where a wellmeaning schoolteacher would encourage him to find 

a steady job at the post office. He did work there for 

a while, but 

he also began 

gigging around 

town as a jazz 

bassist.

In 1944, 

Levy left 

Chicago with 

the Stuff Smith 

Trio to play 

an extended 

engagement at 

the Onyx club 

on New York 

City’s 52nd 

Street. Over 

the next years, 

he was to play 

with many 

jazz notables, 

including Ben 

Webster, Buddy Rich, Errol Garner, Milt Jackson, 

and Billy Taylor, as well as with Billie Holiday at her 

comeback performance at Carnegie Hall in 1948.

In 1949, George Shearing heard Levy play at 

Birdland with Buddy Rich’s big band and hired him for 

his own group, which featured Buddy DeFranco. As 

Levy toured the country playing with the original 

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
89

Selected Discography

2001

pianist

composer 

ARRANGER

educator 

Born May 3, 1920 in La Grange, IL 

Died March 29, 2001 

Modern Jazz Quartet

Django

Original Jazz Classics, 

1953-55

Grand 

Encounter

Blue Note, 1956

The Wonderful 

World of Jazz

Atlantic, 1960

Kansas City 

Breaks

DRG, 1982

Private

Conce rt

EmArcy, 1990

John

Lewis

Carnegie Hall. Other early contributions to the Gillespie 

book included Lewis’ arrangements of the tunes “Two 

Bass Hit” and “Emanon.” 

Coinciding with his work with the Gillespie 

band, Lewis continued his music studies at the 

Manhattan School of Music, eventually earning his 

master’s degree in 1953. Lewis also worked with other 

jazz greats in between tours with Gillespie’s band, 

including serving as pianist and arranger for the Miles 

Davis recording Birth of the Cool in 1950. 

In 1951, the Gillespie band rhythm section of 

1946—Lewis, Clarke, Jackson, and Brown—reunited in 

the recording studio as the Milt Jackson Quartet, later 

becoming the Modern Jazz Quartet. By the time those 

recordings were issued, Percy Heath had replaced Brown. 

In 1954, the Modern Jazz Quartet began touring and 

Connie Kay replaced Clarke on drums the following year. 

During his more than 40 years with MJQ, Lewis honed his 

composing and arranging skills, experimenting with form 

and sound, while collaborating with guests ranging in 

diversity from Sonny Rollins to the Beaux Arts 

String Quartet to singer Diahann Carroll to full 

orchestras. Perhaps his most widely interpreted 

composition is “Django,” which he wrote in 

honor of the legendary Gypsy guitarist Django 

Reinhardt.

Throughout his career, Lewis wrote for 

a vast number of musical configurations in 

a dizzying array of styles, from solo piano 

to symphonies, from ballets to film and 

television scores. Lewis was part of the first 

wave of what composer Gunther Schuller 

dubbed the Third Stream—an effort at 

forging a third stream through the fusing of 

the two primary streams: jazz and European 

classical music. 

As an educator, he served as director of 

faculty at the Lenox School of Jazz, where 

he first championed Ornette Coleman; on 

the trustee board of the Manhattan School 

of Music; and in faculty positions at Harvard 

University and City College of New York. 

J

ohn Lewis’ artistry flowered during his 

historic tenure as musical director of the 

longest continuing small ensemble 

in the annals of jazz, the Modern Jazz Quartet. It was in this group that he was able to 

realize his unique vision of fusing blues, bebop, and 

classical music into an artful, elegant balance. 

Lewis’ mother was a primary musical influence 

during his younger years growing up in Albuquerque, 

New Mexico. After high school, Lewis joined the Army 

in 1942, where he met drummer Kenny Clarke and 

trumpeter/bandleader Dizzy Gillespie. 

In 1946, Lewis and Clarke joined the rhythm 

section of Gillespie’s pioneer big band, which included 

vibraphonist Milt Jackson and bassist Ray Brown. The 

Gillespie band provided a convenient canvas for Lewis 

to write compositions and craft arrangements, utilizing 

the talents of some of the finest young musicians in 

jazz. Lewis’ first extended composition for Gillespie was 

his 1947 “Toccata for Trumpet,” which premiered at 

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES
90

Selected Discography

The In Crowd

Chess, 1965

sun Goddess

Columbia, 1974

Ramsey Lewis/Billy Taylor

We Meet Again

Columbia, 1988-89

Appassionata

Narada, 1999

taking 

another look

Hidden Beach Records, 2011

Born May 27, 1935 in Chicago, IL

Pianist

Composer 

Educator 

Broadcaster

Ramsey

Lewis

2007

Photo by Michael Wilderman

Art Tatum, and Meade “Lux” Lewis. He was 

already 15, and an accomplished gospel 

pianist, when a fellow church musician, 

Wallace Burton, asked him to join his band 

and helped Lewis learn the fundamentals of 

jazz. With his very first trio album, Ramsey 

Lewis and the Gentlemen of Swing, Lewis 

captivated a large and diverse jazz audience. 

By 1965, he was one of the nation’s most 

successful jazz pianists, topping the charts 

with “The ‘In’ Crowd,” “Hang On Sloopy,” 

and “Wade in the Water.” Since then, he has 

won three Grammy Awards and the Recording 

Academy Governor’s Award (2000), and 

earned seven gold records and three honorary 

doctorates. 

Expanding his career through teaching, 

programming, and work in radio and 

television, he also has become an ambassador 

for jazz. Lewis has served as Art Tatum 

Professor in Jazz Studies at Roosevelt 

University; as artistic director of the Jazz 

at Ravinia series of the Ravinia Festival; 

and as host of a weekday morning drivetime radio show on Chicago’s WNUA-FM, 

for which he has been awarded R&R’s 1999 

and 2000 Personality of the Year Award. 

He hosts the syndicated Legends of Jazz 

with Ramsey Lewis, a two-hour radio program that airs 

throughout the United States, and was the co-producer 

(with PBS television station WTTW-Chicago) and host 

of a television series of the same name, which featured 

emerging and established jazz musicians. 

Active in community affairs, especially on behalf 

of youth, Lewis helped organize the Ravinia Festival’s 

Jazz Mentor Program. In recognition of his activities, 

he was featured as the “Person of the Week” on 

ABC Nightly News in February 1995 and received the 

prestigious Lincoln Academy of Illinois Laureate Award 

in Springfield, Illinois, in April 1997. He currently tours 

and performs with his own trio.

With a style that springs from his 

early gospel experi-ence, his classical 

training, and a deep love of jazz, 

pianist and composer Ramsey Lewis 

has built a decades-long career as one 

of America’s most popular performers. Born in Chicago, 

where he continues to make his home, he began taking 

piano lessons at the age of four and credits his teacher 

Dorothy Mendelsohn with awakening him to the 

communicative power of music. He recalls her telling 

him to “‘Listen with your inner ear,’ and ‘Make the 

piano sing.’ These concepts were revelations!” 

During these early years, though, Lewis had no 

experience with jazz, except for the records his father 

would play at home from artists such as Duke Ellington, 
91

Selected Discography

Born September 4, 1946 in Brooklyn, NY 

Lookout Farm

ECM Records, 1973

David Liebman & 

Richie Beirach

Mosaic Select

Mosaic, 1976-91

Loneliness of a

Long-Distance

Runner

CMP Records, 1985

Negative Space

Verve, 2005

Lieb Plays Weill

Daybreak, 2008

David

SAX

ED

OPH

F

U

LU

C

ON

A

T

TO

I

I

ST 

ST 

R

Liebman

2011

Photo by Jan Persson/CTSIMAGES

D

avid Liebman has shown an ability to play 

in any style of jazz, especially on what 

has become his instrument of choice, the 

soprano sax. In addition, he has been 

a strong advocate of the music, having 

founded the International Association of Schools of 

Jazz (IASJ), an organization dedicated to bringing 

together educators and students from jazz schools 

worldwide. 

He began classical piano lessons at age nine, soon 

switching to saxophone. His interest in jazz was sparked 

especially by hearing John Coltrane perform in various 

New York City clubs. Throughout high school and 

college, Liebman continued playing jazz, learning “from 

the street” as was the way before jazz education was 

more common, though he did spend periods studying 

with Joe Allard, Lennie Tristano, and Charles Lloyd. 

In the 1970s, Liebman came into his own, founding 

Free Life Communication, a cooperative of several dozen 

young musicians that became an integral part of the 

fertile New York “loft” jazz scene. He soon found a spot 

as saxophonist/flutist in drummer Elvin Jones’ group, 

and then was hired by Miles Davis. Liebman played on 

Davis’ last two recordings before the 

trumpeter’s temporary retirement 

in the late 1970s, Get Up with It 

and On the Corner. 

At the same time, Liebman 

was also exploring his own music, 

beginning a long relationship 

with pianist Richie Beirach in the 

group Lookout Farm. In 1977, 

he toured internationally with 

pianist Chick Corea followed 

by forming the David Liebman 

Quintet, featuring guitarist John 

Scofield. In 1981, he founded 

Quest, a group that remained 

active with varying lineups until 

1991 and has reunited in recent 

years. His work has continued to 

move in many unusual directions, 

with projects ranging from Puccini arias to overdubbed 

solo recordings, from adaptations of jazz standards to 

world music and fusion. 

Throughout his career, Liebman has been keen 

to work on the international jazz scene, playing with 

influential European musicians such as Joachim Kühn, 

Daniel Humair, Paolo Fresu, Jon Christensen, and Bobo 

Stenson. 

In addition to serving as IASJ’s artistic director, he 

is presently artist-in-residence at the Manhattan School 

of Music and lectures at universities and clinic settings 

all over the world. He also has received performance 

and teaching grants from the National Endowment for 

the Arts and the Canadian Arts Council. Additional 

educational activities include publishing instructional 

books and DVDs such as Self Portrait of A Jazz Artist, A 

Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody, and 

Developing A Personal Saxophone Sound. 

Since 1973, he has consistently placed among the 

“Top Three” in the DownBeat critics’ poll in the category 

of soprano saxophone; other awards include an honorary 

doctorate from the Sibelius Academy in Finland and the 

Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France. 
Selected Discography

Born August 6, 1930 in Chicago, IL 

Died August 14, 2010

Abbey

Lincoln

2003

Max Roach

We Insist! 

Freedom

Now Suite

Candid, 1960

Straight Ahead

Candid, 1961

Abbey Sings 

Billie, Vol. 1 & 2

Enja, 1987

The World Is 

Falling Down

Verve, 1990

Abbey Sings 

Abbey

Verve, 2006

Vocalist

composer

social and political activist approach to her music. Over 

the years, she has worked with some of the biggest 

names in jazz, including Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, 

Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, Jackie McLean, Clark 

Terry, and Stan Getz. 

In addition to her music, Lincoln also pursued 

acting, appearing in the films Nothing But A Man

and For Love of Ivy and on television series, such as 

Mission: Impossible and The Flip Wilson Show. She also 

taught drama at the California State University. She did 

not record any albums as a leader from 1962-72, but 

made a grand return to jazz with her 1973 recording, 

People In Me, her first album of all original material. 

Lincoln returned to her influences in 1987, 

recording two albums in tribute to Billie Holiday, and 

then a series of recordings for Verve throughout the 

1990s and 2000s that showcased her writing prowess. 

Her emotionally honest, mature style was present in 

every song she sang. 

S

trongly influenced by jazz icons Billie 

Holiday and Louis Armstrong, both of whom 

she met early in her career, Abbey Lincoln’s 

distinctive vocal style, thought-provoking 

writing, and spirited personality secured her 

a place among the jazz luminaries.

Born in Chicago and raised in rural Michigan, Lincoln 

began performing while still in high school. In 1951, 

she moved to the West Coast, working under various 

names (Gaby Lee, Anna Marie, Gaby Wooldridge) before 

settling on Abbey Lincoln. She recorded her first album 

with jazz great Benny Carter in 1956 and appeared 

in the 1957 film, The Girl Can’t Help It. Lincoln then 

recorded a series of albums for the Riverside label with 

drummer Max Roach, who had introduced her to the 

label’s owner. 

Lincoln’s collaborations with Roach (to whom she 

was married from 1962-70) lasted more than a decade, 

and included the seminal recording, We Insist! Freedom 

Now Suite in 1960. This was the beginning of a more 

Photo by Lee Tanner

92
93

Selected Discography

Melba

Liston

1987

Dizzy Gillespie

Dizzy In South

America, 

Vol. 1 & 2

CAP, 1956

And Her ’Bones

Fresh Sounds Records, 

1956-58

Quincy Jones

Q Live in Paris 

Warner Brothers, 1960

Randy Weston

Tanjah

 Verve, 1973

Randy Weston/Melba Liston 

Volcano Blues

Verve, 1993

trombonist

composer 

arranger 

educator

Born January 13, 1926 in Kansas City, MO

Died April 23, 1999 

Photo by Lee Tanner

for two of Gillespie’s State Department tours in 1956 

and 1957, which included performances of her 

arrangements of “Annie’s Dance” and 

“Stella by Starlight.” She started 

her own all-woman quintet in 

1958, working in New York 

and Bermuda, before joining 

Quincy Jones’ band in 

1959 to play the musical 

Free and Easy. She 

stayed in Jones’ touring 

band as one of two 

female members until 

1961. 

In the 1950s, Liston 

began a partnership that 

she would return to on 

and off for more than 40 

years. From the seminal 1959 

recording Little Niles through 

1998’s Khepera, Liston was the 

arranger on many of Randy Weston’s 

albums. Her arrangements, with a powerful 

base of brass and percussion and expressive solo 

performances, helped shape and embellish Weston’s 

compositions. 

During the 1960s, Liston also co-led a band with 

trumpeter Clark Terry, and wrote for the Duke 

Ellington orchestra, singers Tony Bennett and Eddie 

Fisher, and the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra. During 

the 1970s, she worked with youth orchestras in Los 

Angeles, continuing to write for Basie, Ellington, and 

singer Abbey Lincoln. Liston also became a staff 

arranger for the Motown label. Later that decade she 

took up residence in Jamaica, where she taught at the 

University of the West Indies and was director of Popular 

Music Studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music.

Slowed by a stroke in 1985, which effectively ended 

her playing career, she was able to resume work as a 

composer and arranger in the 1990s through the aid of 

computer technology. Liston’s career helped pave the 

way for women in jazz in roles other than as vocalists. 

A

lthough a formidable trombone player, 

Melba Liston was primarily known for 

her composition and arrangements, 

especially those she worked on with 

 Randy Weston. Growing up mostly 

in Los Angeles, some of her first work came during 

the 1940s with two West Coast masters: bandleader 

Gerald Wilson and tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. 

In Gordon’s small combos, she began to blossom as 

a trombone soloist, and Gordon wrote “Mischievous 

Lady” as a tribute to her. Despite her obvious talent 

as a soloist, Liston became an in-demand big band 

section player, which likely fueled her later work as an 

arranger. During the 1940s, Liston also worked with 

the Count Basie band and with Billie Holiday. 

Following a brief hiatus from music, she joined 

Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop big band in 1950, and again 
94

Selected Discography

2011

Original Soundtrack Recording

I Want To Live

Rykodisc, 1958

Frank Sinatra

Ring-aDing-Ding!

Reprise, 1960

Anita O’Day

Trav’lin’ Light

Verve, 1961

Original Soundtrack Recording

M*A*S*H

Columbia, 1970

Shirley Horn

Here’s to Life

Verve, 1992

Born November 23, 1925 in New York, NY 

Composer 

Arranger 

Trumpeter 

Trombonist

Johnny

Mandel

Photo by Carol Friedman

J

ohnny Mandel is considered one of the 

nation’s top composer/arrangers in jazz, pop, 

and film music. The breadth and quality of 

his work made it possible to be recorded by a 

wide variety of jazz musicians and singers. 

Mandel’s parents discovered that he—at the age 

of five—had perfect pitch, and started him on piano 

lessons. He eventually moved on to playing horns (“I 

wanted to play an instrument you could kiss,” he is 

quoted as saying), studying at the Manhattan School 

of Music and Juilliard School, both in New York City. In 

the 1940s, he played the trumpet with Joe Venuti and 

Billy Rogers, and trombone in the orchestras of Boyd 

Rayburn, Jimmy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, Georgie Auld, and 

Chubby Jackson. 

From 1951-53, he played and arranged music in 

the band of Elliott Lawrence and Count Basie. Later 

he relocated to Los Angeles, where he played the bass 

trumpet for Zoot Sims. He also showed a prowess for 

composing, writing the jazz compositions “Not Really 

the Blues” for Woody Herman, “Hershey Bar” and “Pot 

Luck” for Stan Getz, “Straight Life” and “Low Life” for 

Count Basie, and “Tommyhawk” for Chet Baker. 

Mandel moved to Hollywood in 1957 and began 

working on film scores, utilizing his outstanding 

compositional and arranging gifts. His score for the 

Susan Hayward movie I Want To Live is considered the 

first time that jazz had been integrated successfully 

into a musical score. He went on to earn a reputation 

as a film composer/arranger, including two of his more 

famous numbers: “Suicide Is Painless,” which was used 

as the theme for the movie M*A*S*H (whose soundtrack 

includes a version played by Ahmad Jamal), and “The 

Shadow of Your Smile” for the movie The Sandpiper, 

which won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Song. He 

has provided music for more than 30 films, including 

The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! and 

Being There. 

By the early 1960s, Mandel’s reputation was such 

that the biggest names in jazz and pop wanted to 

work with him. Frank Sinatra chose him as arranger 

for his 1961 release Ring-a-Ding-Ding! In 1966, he 

served as musical director on Tony Bennett’s The Movie 

Song Album and collaborated again more recently, on 

Bennett’s album The Art of Romance (2004). Other 

singers who have sought his talents out include Ray 

Charles, Natalie Cole, Shirley Horn, Diana Krall, Peggy 

Lee, Anita O’Day, Barbra Streisand, and Nancy Wilson. 

Mandel has received five Grammy Awards: Song of 

the Year for Tony Bennett’s performance of “The Shadow 

of Your Smile” and Best Original Score for The Sandpiper

(both 1965), Best Arrangment on an Instrumental 

Recording for Quincy Jones’ song “Velas” (1981), Best 

Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocal(s) for 

Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable (1991) and for Shirley Horn’s 

Here’s to Life (1992). 
95

Selected Discography

Ellis Marsalis

The Classic

Ellis Marsalis

Boplicity, 1963

Wynton Marsalis

Standard 

Time Vol. 3–

The Resolution

of Romance

Columbia, 1990

Ellis & Branford Marsalis

Loved Ones

Columbia, 1995

The Marsalis 

Family: 

A Jazz

Celebration

Marsalis Music, 2001

Music Redeems

Marsalis Music, 2009

Photo by Jos L. Knaepen

I

t is perhaps not surprising that the first group 

award of the NEA Jazz Masters has gone to the 

Marsalis family, which boasts five members who 

have impacted the field of jazz. 

The story starts in New Orleans, with the 

birth of Ellis, Jr. in 1934. Although the city was noted 

for Dixieland and rhythm-and-blues, Ellis was more 

interested in bebop. In addition to his skillful piano 

playing, he became the director of jazz studies at the 

New Orleans Center for Creative Arts high school in 

1974, mentoring such contemporary artists as Terence 

Blanchard, and Harry Connick, Jr. (Branford, Wynton, 

Delfeayo, and Jason attended the center as well). Later, 

he headed the jazz studies department of the University 

of New Orleans for 12 years. In 2008, Ellis was inducted 

into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. 

The story doesn’t end with Ellis though—four of 

his sons continued in the family business of music, 

including Branford and Wynton, both whom started out 

in Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and then began working 

together on albums that introduced some of the emerging 

stars in the music: Marcus Roberts, Kenny Kirkland, Jeff 

Watts, and Wessell Anderson, among others. 

For two years during the 1990s, Branford was the 

musical director of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 

making jazz more widely known to the general public. 

After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, 

Branford teamed with Harry Connick, Jr. and Habitat for 

Humanity to create Musicians’ Village in the city’s Upper 

Ninth Ward to assist New Orleans musicians.

In 1996, Wynton co-founded Jazz at Lincoln Center 

(JALC), becoming its artistic director and music director 

of the JALC Orchestra. In 1997, he became the first 

jazz artist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for 

his work Blood on the Fields. In addition to numerous 

awards and honorary doctorates he received, Wynton 

was also awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2005. 

Younger brother Delfeayo has proven himself a 

well-regarded jazz producer, working with various family 

members throughout the years. His insistence upon 

recording “without usage of the dreaded bass direct” for 

Branford in the 1980s was the key element to the change 

in jazz recording techniques over the past 20 years. As 

a noted trombonist, Delfeayo has also played on his 

brothers’ albums as well as fronting his own band. 

Jason, the youngest of the Marsalis sons, took up 

drumming at age six and began sitting in with his 

father’s band at age seven, then made his recording 

debut at age 13 on Delfeayo’s Pontius Pilate’s Decision. 

He joined the band Los Hombres Calientes with Irvin 

Mayfield and Bill Summers in 1998, playing on their 

first two albums, which blended Afro-Cuban and Latin 

American elements with jazz. 

The Marsalis family, together and individually, have 

made significant contributions to the preservation of 

jazz, the expansion of the art form, and the education 

of students of jazz. 

Ellis Pianist, Educator Born November 14, 1934 in New Orleans, LA 

Branford Saxophonist, Composer, Arranger, Bandleader, Educator Born August 26, 1960 in Breaux Bridge, LA

Wynton Trumpeter, Composer, Arranger, Bandleader, Educator Born October 18, 1961 in New Orleans, LA

Delfeayo Trombonist, Producer, Educator Born July 28, 1965 in New Orleans, LA

Jason DRUMMER, Vibraphonist Born March 4, 1977 in New Orleans, LA

family

2011

The

Marsalis 

Left to right: Ellis, Wynton, Delfeayo, Jason, and Brandford.
96

Selected Discography

Born February 6, 1927 in Baltimore, MD

James Moody

Hey! It’s 

James Moody

Argo/Lone Hill Jazz, 1956-59

The Jazztet

At Birdhouse

Argo, 1961

Thad Jones/

Mel Lewis Orchestra

The Complete

Solid State

Recordings

Mosaic, 1966-70

Milt Jackson

And the Hip

String Quartet

Verve, 1968

With Malice

Towa rd None: 

The Music of

Tom McIntosh

IPO Recordings, 2003

Composer 

Arranger 

Trombonist

Educator

Tom

McIntosh

2008

He also wrote and arranged for Milt Jackson, 

including his And the Hip String Quartet album, and 

was a favorite of Dizzy Gillespie, who featured three of 

McIntosh’s songs on his Something Old, Something New 

recording. McIntosh was an original member of the Thad 

Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, to which he contributed 

songs and arrangements. He was also much admired by 

Tommy Flanagan, who often noted that McIntosh was 

his favorite composer, recording several of his songs. 

When jazz’s popularity waned towards the end 

on the 1960s, McIntosh went to Hollywood as a film 

composer for two Gordon Parks’ films, The Learning Tree 

and Shaft. He remained in California for the next 20 

years as a music director for films and TV. Finally tiring 

of Hollywood, McIntosh returned to the East Coast in 

the 1990s, teaching at various conservatories, including 

as music director of the Thelonious Monk Institute 

at the New England Conservatory of Music. He also 

continued to write music. In 2004, he released his first 

recording under his own name (at the age of 77), with a 

second volume of his works forthcoming. 

T

hough not well known outside of jazz 

circles, the unique voice of composer and 

arranger Tom “Mac” McIntosh made him a 

favorite of Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, 

Milt Jackson, and Tommy Flanagan, 

among other jazz giants.

McIntosh was born and raised in Baltimore. After 

a stint with the Army, he attended Juilliard and later 

became an active participant in the New York jazz scene 

as a trombone player and composer. 

He was a member of the famous Jazztet, formed by

Benny Golson and Art Farmer, and was one of the 

founders of the New York Jazz Sextet. Many outstanding 

New York-based instrumentalists of the 1950s and ’60s 

migrated in and out of the band, including Thad Jones, 

Art Farmer, James Moody, Tommy Flanagan, Roland 

Hanna, and Richard Davis. McIntosh and Moody have 

a long history of friendship and collaboration that 

dates to the 1950s when McIntosh played and wrote for 

Moody’s bands and provided arrangements for some of 

Moody’s 1960s recordings. 

Photo by Tom Pich
97

Selected Discography

Born May 17, 1931 in New York, NY 

Died March 31, 2006 

saxophonist

composer 

educator

4, 5 and 6

Original Jazz Classics, 1956

New Soil

Blue Note, 1959

Let Freedom

Ring

Blue Note, 1962

The Jackie Mac

Attack Live

Verve, 1991

Nature Boy

Blue Note, 2000

Jackie

McLean

2001

Photo by Lee Tanner

which evolved into a 1961 film. In 1967 he took his 

music into prisons, working as a music instructor 

and counselor. Then in 1968, he moved to Hartford, 

Connecticut, to take a teaching position at Hartt 

College of Music of the University of Hartford. It was 

in Hartford that McLean and his wife Dollie founded 

the Artists Collective, a widely hailed combination 

community center/fine arts school, primarily aimed 

at troubled youth. The Artists Collective opened a 

beautiful new building in 1999 following years of 

residence in a former schoolhouse in one of Hartford’s 

most disadvantaged neighborhoods.

At the University of Hartford, McLean established 

the school’s African American Music Department 

and subsequent Jazz Studies degree program, which 

was renamed the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz on 

November 17, 2000. The program has instructed a 

number of exceptional young jazz musicians, including 

saxophonist Antoine Roney, drummer Eric MacPherson, 

trombonist Steve Davis, and pianist Alan Palmer.

K

nown in the jazz community as 

“Jackie Mac,” Jackie McLean was 

a stalwart, enduring force in 

jazz since the early 1950s, 

and a distinguished 

educator since 1968. Possessing one of 

the most recognizable alto saxophone 

sounds and styles, he explored the 

cutting edge of jazz creativity.

McLean grew up in a musical 

family: his father was a guitarist for 

bandleader Tiny Bradshaw and his 

stepfather owned a record store. By 

age 15, he chose the alto saxophone 

as his instrument. McLean’s earliest 

studies came through the tutelage of 

Foots Thomas, Cecil Scott, Joe Napoleon, 

and Andy Brown in his native New York. 

Another of his informal teachers was piano 

master Bud Powell. McLean’s most significant early 

band affiliation came during the years 1948-49, when 

he joined a Harlem neighborhood band led by tenor 

saxophonist Sonny Rollins and including pianist 

Kenny Drew. McLean’s stints with the Miles Davis

band, between 1949-53, yielded his first recording 

sessions as a sideman and marked the beginning 

of what became known as hard bop, an advanced 

progression on bebop.

During McLean’s busiest period as a sideman in 

the 1950s, he worked with pianist George Wallington, 

drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and bassist 

Charles Mingus. McLean’s first recording as a leader 

came in 1955, when he cut a quintet date for the Ad 

Lib label. His intense playing has fit in well with both 

hard bop and the avant-garde, two schools of jazz in 

which McLean has experimented.

Throughout the 1960s, McLean continued to 

work with his own bands and occasional all-star 

aggregations, but also became more interested 

in social issues. In 1959-60 he acted in the offBroadway play The Connection, a cautionary tale 

dealing with jazz and the perils of drug abuse, 
98

Selected Discography

Born March 20, 1918 in Slough, England

Pianist

Broadcaster

Marian

McPartland

Jazz at the

Hickory House

Jasmine, 1954

Marian

McPartland’s 

Piano Jazz

with Guest 

Dave Brubeck

Jazz Alliance, 1984

Plays the

Benny Carter 

Songbook

Concord, 1990

Just Friends

Concord, 1998

85 Candles—

Live in

New York

Concord, 2003 

2000

and Benny Carter. She has performed with symphony 

orchestras and at many of the major jazz festivals, and 

has received numerous awards, including a DownBeat

Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997.

McPartland has received several honorary doctorates 

as well as a Grammy Trustee’s Award for lifetime 

achievement. She also authored The Artistry of Marian 

McPartland, a collection of transcriptions, and Marian 

McPartland’s Jazz World: All in Good Time, a collection 

of her jazz profiles. 

B

est known as the host of the weekly 

national radio program Piano Jazz, Marian 

McPartland has helped to popularize jazz 

with her intricate knowledge and prowess 

on the piano. She has made the program

one of the most popular in the history of public radio.

Born to a musical mother who played classical piano, 

she studied at the famed Guildhall School of Music in 

London. Her first professional activity was as part of a 

touring vaudeville act featuring four pianists. During 

World War II, she entertained the troops and while 

playing in Belgium met her late husband, cornetist 

Jimmy McPartland, whom she married in 1945. They 

relocated to the U.S. in 1946, whereupon she performed 

in his band in Chicago. She formed her first active trio 

in 1950 for an engagement at the Embers in New York. 

Two years later, she began what would be an eight-year 

residency at the Hickory House in New York with her 

trio.

In 1963, she worked with the Benny Goodman 

Sextet, and in 1965 she began her radio career, at 

WBAI in New York. In 1970 she started her own record 

company, Halcyon Records, one of the first jazz women 

to do so. In 1979, she began her weekly radio show 

Piano Jazz, which—after 30 years of continuous 

programming—has become the longest-running 

syndicated National Public Radio program, and led to 

McPartland’s induction into the National Radio Hall 

of Fame in 2007. An intimate program involving just 

her and a guest—usually a pianist—the program has 

won numerous awards, including the Peabody Award. 

Many of the programs have been subsequently released 

on compact disc. As part of the segments, McPartland 

interviews the guest, drawing out colorful anecdotes 

and stories about their careers. The shows also include 

performances of McPartland and the guest together. 

Taken as a whole, the series presents a formidable 

history of jazz. 

Her playing career has also included piano tours with 

such greats as Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Ellis Larkins, 

Photo by Melisa Goh
1994

Born April 8, 1920 in New York, NY 

Died November 10, 1994

vocalist

pianist

Carmen McRae

Photo by Lee Tanner

T

ender and warm with a ballad, Carmen McRae 

was one of the great singers of jazz, finding 

the depth of feeling in the lyrics of the songs 

she interpreted. An accomplished pianist who 

in her early career accompanied herself, she 

occasionally returned to the piano later in her career.

McRae learned piano through private lessons and 

was discovered by Irene Wilson Kitchings, a musician 

and former wife of pianist Teddy Wilson. McRae sang 

with the Benny Carter, Count Basie, and Mercer 

Ellington big bands during the 1940s and made her 

recorded debut as Carmen Clarke while the wife of 

drummer Kenny Clarke. During the bebop revolution 

at Minton’s Playhouse, McRae was an intermission 

pianist. The Playhouse is likely where she first heard 

Thelonious Monk’s music, which influenced her piano 

playing and musical sense. In the early 1950s, she 

worked with the Mat Mathews Quintet. She signed her 

first significant recording contract with Decca in 1954.

Working as a soloist, she gained wide recognition 

and was often seen in the pantheon of jazz singers that 

included Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, whom 

she idolized and later paid homage to on a recording. 

Her greatest idol was Billie Holiday, whom she feted 

on records and in performances on many occasions. 

Although she admired these singers, she never resorted 

to sheer mimicry and developed her own original style. 

Notably, she recorded alongside Louis Armstrong on 

Dave Brubeck’s extended work The Real Ambassadors, 

a social commentary written with his wife Iola. She 

made several film and television appearances, and 

performed as an actress in the landmark television 

miniseries Roots. In the late 1980s, she returned to her 

first love, recording a full album of Monk’s music with 

lyrics by Jon Hendricks, Abbey Lincoln, Mike Ferro, 

Sally Swisher, and Bernie Hanighen. The album became 

one of her signature recordings. 

McRae performed many times at the Monterey Jazz 

Festival, the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, 

and the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, where she 

shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie and Phil Woods. 

She was forced to retire for health reasons in 1991. 99 Selected Discography Carmen McRae Sings Great American

Songwriters

GRP/Decca, 1955-59 Sings Lover Man

& Other

Billie Holiday 

Classics

Columbia, 1961

At theGreat 

American Music

Hall

Blue Note, 1976 Carmen Sings Mon

k

Novus, 1988

Sarah—

Dedicated 

to You 

Novus, 1990
100

Selected Discography

1987

Born January 12, 1916 in Muskogee, OK 

Died December 7, 2006 

pianist

vocalist

 bandleader

Jay

McShann

Blues from

Kansas City 

MCA, 1941-43

1944-46

Classics, 1944-46

Vine Street 

Boogie

Black Lion, 1974

A Tribute to

Charlie Parker

Music Masters, 1989

Hootie!

Chiaroscuro, 1997

Army, McShann reformed his band, which played New 

York spots and traveled west to California. Towards the 

end of the 1940s, McShann’s small band fronted blues 

singer Jimmy Witherspoon. 

In the early 1950s, McShann moved his home base 

back to Kansas City. In the 1970s and 1980s, McShann 

experienced a bit of a renaissance, with increased 

recording and performing opportunities, often with 

Kansas City violinist Claude “Fiddler” Williams. 

A biographical film, Hootie’s Blues, was made in 

1978, and McShann was featured in The Last of the 

Blue Devils, a film about Kansas City jazz shot between 

1974 and 1979. In addition, he was one of the featured 

players in Clint Eastwood’s documentary Piano Blues

(2003). 

F

or better or worse, Jay 

McShann was tied to 

the legend of Charlie 

Parker. Parker’s first 

real professional work 

was with McShann’s Kansas City 

band, and McShann was credited 

with helping Parker to hone his 

talents. Arguably more important, 

McShann—along with Andy 

Kirk’s Clouds of Joy, the Bennie 

Moten Orchestra, and the great 

Count Basie bands—shaped and 

developed the Kansas City swing 

sound that was so popular in the 

1930s and 1940s. 

Known in jazz circles as 

“Hootie,” McShann is for the most 

part a self-taught artist, though he 

did attend Tuskegee Institute. He 

developed a piano style that drew 

heavily on blues and boogie woogie. 

McShann’s earliest professional job 

came with tenor saxophonist Don 

Byas in 1931. Following his days at 

Tuskegee, McShann played in bands in Oklahoma and 

Arkansas prior to joining a trio with bassist Oliver Todd 

and drummer Elmer Hopkins in late 1936 in Kansas City.

In subsequent months, he worked with alto 

saxophonist Buster Smith and trumpeter Dee Stewart 

before forming a sextet in 1937. In late 1939, McShann 

put together his first big band. His recording career 

commenced in 1941 with the Decca label, often 

featuring blues singer Walter Brown. McShann’s first 

New York appearance, at the Savoy Ballroom, came 

in February 1942. His band during the height of his 

popularity included such notables as Parker, bassist Gene 

Ramey, drummer Gus Johnson, and saxophonists Paul 

Quinichette and Jimmy Forrest, all of whom McShann 

used brilliantly as soloists. Following service in the 

Photo by Lee Tanner
101

Selected Discography

James Moody 

and His 

Swedish

Crowns

Dragon, 1949

Last Train

from

Overbrook 

GRP/Chess, 1954-55

Moody’s Party

Telarc, 1995

Moody Plays 

Mancini

Warner Brothers, 1997

James Moody and Hank Jones

Our Delight

IPO, 2008

Born March 26, 1925 in Savannah, GA 

Died December 9, 2010

saxophonist

flutist

vocalist

educator

James

Moody

1998

Photo by Vance Jacobs

to the Dizzy Gillespie small group, where he largely 

remained until 1971. In 1975, he moved to Las Vegas 

and worked numerous hotel and casino shows with 

singers and comics, picking up the clarinet along the 

way. In 1979, he left Las Vegas and moved back to New 

York to lead his own quintet.

Then in 1989 he moved to San Diego, working as 

a consummate soloist and member of all-star touring 

units. In the 1990s, he teamed up again with his 

lifelong friend Dizzy Gillespie to tour Europe and the 

United States as a member of the United Nations 

Orchestra. He continually experimented with his music, 

sometimes including synthesizers and strings on his 

recordings. Demand for his musicianship extended to 

college and university campuses for master classes, 

workshops, and lectures, and he received honorary 

doctoral degrees from the Florida Memorial College and 

the Berklee College of Music. In 1997, he played an 

acting role in the Clint Eastwood film Midnight in the 

Garden of Good and Evil. In 2010, he was honored with 

the Jazz Journalists Award for Lifetime Achievement 

in Jazz. 

O

ne of the champions of Dizzy Gillespie’s 

music, James Moody was an accomplished 

musician on the tenor and alto 

saxophones, as well as the flute, despite 

being born partially deaf. In addition to 

his instrumental prowess, Moody was an engaging 

entertainer, captivating audiences with his personal 

charm and wit.

Although born in Savannah, he was raised in 

Newark, New Jersey. His interest in jazz was sparked 

by a trumpet-playing father who gigged in the Tiny 

Bradshaw band. Moody took up the alto sax, a gift 

from his uncle, at the age of 16, and received his first 

musical training in the Air Force. After leaving the 

service in 1946, he joined the Dizzy Gillespie big band, 

staying until 1948. Gillespie became his musical mentor. 

In 1949, Moody moved to Paris for three years, often 

playing with visiting American musicians, including the 

Tadd Dameron-Miles Davis band.

In Sweden he recorded his famous improvisation 

on “I’m in the Mood For Love” in 1949, playing on an 

alto saxophone instead of his usual tenor. His solo was 

later set to lyrics by Eddie Jefferson and recorded by 

King Pleasure. Known as 

“Moody’s Mood for Love,” 

it became a surprise hit 

in 1952. Throughout the 

rest of his career, Moody 

was better known for the 

vocal version of the song, 

and obliged requests for 

the song by singing his 

famous solo.

Through the 1950s 

and 1960s, he led 

his own bands, and 

worked alongside other 

saxophonists, notably 

Gene Ammons and Sonny 

Stitt, with whom he 

co-led a three-tenor sax 

band. In 1963 he returned 
102

Selected bibliography

Jazz People

H.N. Abrams, 

1976 (reprinted by 

Da Capo Press, 1993)

Louis 

Armstrong: 

A Cultural 

Legacy 

(with Donald Bogle, Richard A. Long, and 

Marc H. Miller)

University of Washington 

Press, 1994

Living with

Jazz: A Reader,

ed. Sheldon Meyer

Pantheon, 2004

Born October 24, 1929 in Munich, Germany

JAZZ HISTORIAN 

ARCHIVIST 

AUTHOR

EDITOR

EDUCATOR

2007

Dan

Morgenstern

Morgenstern has taught jazz history at the Peabody 

Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Brooklyn College 

(where he was also a visiting professor at the Institute 

for Studies in American Music), New York University, and 

the Schweitzer Institute of Music in Idaho. He served on 

the faculties of the Institutes in Jazz Criticism, jointly 

sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the Music 

Critics Association, 

and is on the faculty 

of the Masters 

Program in Jazz 

History and Research 

at Rutgers University. 

Morgenstern is a 

former vice president 

and trustee of the 

National Academy of 

Recording Arts and 

Sciences; was a cofounder of the Jazz 

Institute of Chicago; 

served on the boards 

of the New York 

Jazz Museum and 

the American Jazz 

Orchestra; and is 

a director of the 

Louis Armstrong 

Educational 

Foundation and the Mary Lou Williams Foundation. He 

has been a member of Denmark’s International JAZZPAR 

Prize Committee since its inception in 1989. 

A prolific annotator of record albums, Morgenstern 

has won seven Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes 

(1973, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1991, 1995, 2006, and 2009). 

He received ASCAP’s Deems Taylor Award for Jazz People 

in 1977 and in 2005 for Living with Jazz.

D

irector of the Institute of Jazz Studies 

at Rutgers University since 1976, Dan 

Morgenstern is a jazz historian and 

archivist, author, editor, and educator 

who has been active in the jazz field 

since 1958. The Institute of Jazz Studies is the largest 

collection of jazz-related materials anywhere. 

Born in Germany 

and reared in Austria 

and Denmark, 

Morgenstern came to 

the United States in 

1947. He was chief 

editor of DownBeat 

from 1967 to 1973, 

and served as New 

York editor from 1964; 

prior to that time he 

edited the periodicals

Metronome and Jazz.

Morgenstern is coeditor of the Annual 

Review Of Jazz Studies

and the monograph 

series Studies In Jazz, 

published jointly by 

the IJS and Scarecrow 

Press, and author of 

Jazz People. He has 

been jazz critic for the New York Post, record reviewer for 

the Chicago Sun Times, and New York correspondent and 

columnist for England’s Jazz Journal and Japan’s Swing 

Journal. He has contributed to reference works including 

the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Dictionary of American 

Music, African-American Almanac, and Encyclopedia 

Britannica Book of the Year; and to such anthologies as

Reading Jazz, Setting The Tempo, The Louis Armstrong 

Companion, The Duke Ellington Reader, The Miles Davis 

Companion, and The Lester Young Reader. 

Photo by Tom Pich

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
103

Selected Discography

The Complete

Recordings, 

1949-50 

Baldwin Street Music, 

1949-50

Swings Cole

Porter with

Billy May 

Verve, 1952-59

Anita Sings 

the Winners 

Verve, 1956-62

Anita Sings 

the Most

Verve, 1957

Rules of

the Road

Pablo, 1993

Born October 18, 1919 in Chicago, IL •

Died November 23, 2006 

Anita

vocalist

O’day

1997

Photo by Ray Avery /CTSIMAGES

A

nita O’Day’s unique sound and swinging 

rhythmic sense put her in the upper 

echelon of jazz singers, as skillful with 

ballads as with scatting and liberal 

 interpretations of standard songs. 

Her career spanned the late swing and bebop eras, 

inspiring many singers who followed her, such as June 

Christy, Chris Connor, and Helen Merrill. She began her 

performing career as a ballroom dance contest winner 

in the 1930s, which is when she adopted the stage 

name O’Day. At 19, she began singing professionally in 

clubs around Chicago. 

In 1941 she joined Gene Krupa’s big band, recording 

a memorable duet with Roy Eldridge on “Let Me Off 

Uptown,” one of the first interracial vocal duets on 

record. She also may have been the first feminist big 

band singer, refusing to appear in the standard gown 

and gloves, instead opting for a band jacket and short 

skirt. She stayed with the Krupa band until 1943, and 

joined Stan Kenton’s band in 1944. She then re-joined 

Krupa in 1945, remaining there until 1946, when she 

began a solo career. In the mid-1950s she made several 

notable albums for the Verve label, demonstrating the 

power of her vocals. 

In 1958 her appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, 

replete with characteristic big hat, 

caused a sensation. She provided one of 

the highlights of the subsequent film of 

the festival, Jazz on a Summer’s Day. 

From that point on she worked mainly 

on the club circuit with her own groups.

Always a hit in Japan, she made 

her first tour there in 1964, returning 

on several occasions. Frustrated with 

record label indifference to her artistry, 

she developed her own record labels. In 

the 1980s and 1990s, she continued to 

work the club and jazz festival circuits, 

including notable performances at the 

Vine Street Bar & Grill in Los Angeles 

in 1992. She was also honored with 

a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1985 to 

celebrate her 50 years in jazz.

A documentary about the singer’s 

life, Anita O’Day: The Life of a Jazz 

Singer, won a 2008 Satellite Award from 

the International Press Academy.
104

Selected Discography

Clifford Brown and Max Roach

At Basin Steet

EmArcy, 1956

We Insist! 

Freedom Now

Suite

Candid, 1960

M’Boom

Columbia, 1979

To The Max

Rhino, 1990-91

Explorations 

to the Mth

Degree

Slam, 1994

drummer 

composer 

bandleader

Born January 10, 1924 in New Land, NC 

Died August 16, 2007 

Max

Roach

1984

Roach continued to experiment with his sound, 

eschewing the use of the piano or other chording 

instruments in his bands for the most part from the 

late 1960s on. His thirst for experimentation led 

to collaborations with seemingly disparate artists, 

including duets with saxophonist Anthony Braxton and 

pianist Cecil Taylor, as well as partnerships with pianist 

Abdullah Ibrahim and saxophonist Archie Shepp.

As a drum soloist he had few peers in terms of 

innovations, stemming from his deeply personal 

sound and approach. His proclivities in the area of 

multiethnic percussion flowered with his intermittent 

percussion ensemble M’Boom, founded in 1970. A 

broad-based percussionist who was a pioneer in 

establishing a fixed pulse on the ride cymbal instead 

of the bass drum, Roach also collaborated with voice, 

string, and brass ensembles, lectured on college 

campuses extensively, and composed music for dance, 

theater, film, and television. 

Max Roach was one of the two leading 

drummers of the bebop era (along 

with Kenny Clarke) and was one of 

the leading musicians, composers, and 

bandleaders in jazz since the 1940s. 

His often biting political commentary and strong 

intellect, not to mention his rhythmic innovations, 

kept him at the vanguard of jazz for 

more than 50 years.

Roach grew up in a household where 

gospel music was quite prominent. 

His mother was a gospel singer and he 

began drumming in a gospel ensemble 

at age ten. Roach’s formal study of 

music took him to the Manhattan 

School of Music. In 1942, he became 

house drummer at Monroe’s Uptown 

House, enabling him to play and 

interact with some of the giants of the 

bebop era, such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy 

Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud 

Powell. Roach would later record with 

Parker, Gillespie, Powell, and bassist 

Charles Mingus at the historic Massey 

Hall concert in 1953.

Throughout the 1940s, Roach 

continued to branch out in his playing, 

drumming with Benny Carter, Stan 

Getz, Allen Eager, and Miles Davis. In 1952, 

he and Mingus collaborated to create their own record 

label, Debut Records. In 1954, Roach began a short-lived 

but crucial band with incendiary trumpeter Clifford 

Brown. This historic band, which ended abruptly with 

Brown’s tragic death in 1956, also included saxophonists 

Harold Land and Sonny Rollins. 

In the late 1950s, Roach began adding political 

commentary to his recordings, starting with Deeds Not 

Words, but coming into sharper focus with We Insist! 

Freedom Now Suite in 1960, on which he collaborated 

with singer-lyricist Oscar Brown, Jr. From then on he 

became an eloquent spokesman in the area of racial and 

political justice.

Photo by Michael Wilderman
105

Selected Discography

A Night at 

the Village

Vanguard 

Blue Note, 1957

The Complete

RCA Victor 

Recordings

RCA Victor, 1962–64

Silver City

Milestone, 1972-95

without a

Song: The

9/11 Conce rt

Milestone, 2001

Road Shows, 

Vol. 2

Doxy Records, 2010

Born September 7, 1930 in New York, NY

Sonny

sax

co

oph

mp

on

ose

ist

r

Rollins

1983

Photo by Lee Tanner

By 1959, Rollins had grown impatient with the 

vagaries of the jazz scene and took a hiatus. He 

would often practice his horn deep into the night on 

the upper reaches of the Williamsburg Bridge, which 

crosses the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. In 

1961 he returned to the scene, refreshed and playing 

better than ever. He made a series of recordings for 

the RCA label with musicians such as Jim Hall, Don 

Cherry, Billy Higgins, and Herbie Hancock, and 

also began his long-term employment of bassist Bob 

Cranshaw. 

In London in 1966, he composed and recorded a 

soundtrack album for the film Alfie for the Impulse! 

label, which brought him some popularity beyond jazz 

audiences. By 1968 Rollins again required a break from 

the scene, returning in 1971. He has been playing 

and growing ever since, working almost exclusively on 

concert stages. Rollins’ recordings have continued to 

reflect his interest in Caribbean rhythms, particularly 

the calypso. In 2010, he was elected a fellow of the 

American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was 

awarded the National Medal of Arts.

With more than 

50 years in jazz, 

Theodore “Sonny” 

Rollins’ towering 

achievements on 

the tenor saxophone are many, 

and he continues to be one of the 

most exciting and fiery players in 

concert. Inspired by the example 

of his brother’s pursuit of music, 

Rollins began piano lessons at 

age nine. At 14 he picked up the 

alto saxophone, and switched to 

the tenor two years later. Soon 

he was playing dances in a band 

of youngsters in his New York 

community, which included Jackie 

McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art 

Taylor. Rollins’ first recording was 

made alongside the bop singer Babs 

Gonzales in 1949. Later that year he played at sessions 

with J.J. Johnson and Bud Powell, recording his song 

“Audubon” with Johnson.

In the 1950s, Rollins began by serving as a sideman 

on sessions with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Art 

Farmer, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. In late 1955, 

while living in Chicago, he began one of his most 

fruitful band affiliations when he stood in for Harold 

Land in the superb Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet 

at the Bee Hive club. He remained a regular member 

until Brown’s tragic June 1956 death from an auto 

accident. 

Rollins continued to record, mainly for Prestige, 

where his output was some of the finest music recorded 

in the mid-1950s on any label. Among the highlights 

during this period were Tenor Madness, which included 

an encounter with John Coltrane; Saxophone Colossus, 

a sparkling album that introduced his most noted 

composition, “St. Thomas,” which honored his parents’ 

Virgin Islands roots; and Way Out West, which took 

seemingly mundane songs like “I’m an Old Cowhand” 

and spun them out with extraordinary improvisations. 
106

Selected Discography

Lambert, Hendricks & Ross

Twisted: 

The Best of

Lambert, 

Hendricks & 

Ross

Rhino, 1957-61

Sings a Song 

with Mulligan!

EMI, 1958

Sings a

Handful of

Songs

Fresh Sound, 1963

Music is 

Forever

DRG, 1995

Let Me Sing

Consolidated Artists 

Productions, 2005

Born July 25, 1930 in Surrey, England 

vocalist

lyricist

Annie

Ross

2010

Ross also is an accomplished actress and has 

appeared in a number of films, such as Superman III 

(1983), Throw Mama from the Train (1987), Pump Up the 

Volume (1990), and Blue Sky (1994). Her most notable 

film role was as the jazz singer Tess Trainer in Robert 

Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), in which she also sang. On 

stage, Ross appeared in Cranks (1955) in both London 

and New York, The Threepenny Opera (1972) with 

Vanessa Redgrave, and in the Joe Papp production of The 

Pirates Of Penzance (1982) with Tim Curry.

Ross resides in New York City where she still 

performs regularly.

A

s part of the vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks 

& Ross, Annie Ross was one of the early 

practitioners of a singing style known as 

“vocalese,” which involves the setting 

 of original lyrics to an instrumental jazz 

solo. She has been equally at home in the acting field, 

appearing in numerous films. 

Ross was born in England, but raised in Los Angeles. 

She landed a role in the Our Gang film series at the 

age of eight, singing a musical number on the show. 

Returning to Europe, she began her singing career, 

working with musicians such as James Moody, Kenny 

Clarke, and Coleman Hawkins. 

Ross returned to the United States in 1952, settling 

in New York City, and soon recorded Singin’ and Swingin’

with members of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Later that 

year she recorded an album with vocalist King Pleasure, 

including the classic example of vocalese, “Twisted,” 

which featured her treatment of saxophonist Wardell 

Gray’s solo. It is perhaps her most famous song and has 

been recorded by Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler, and many 

others. 

In 1953, Ross toured Europe with Lionel Hampton’s 

band, which included Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, 

and Quincy Jones. After several years in Europe, she 

returned to the States where she teamed up with 

vocalists Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks on an album 

of Count Basie solos transposed for vocals. That was the 

beginning of the group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross.

Between 1957 and 1962, the group recorded 

seven albums, including the one that put them in the 

spotlight: Sing A Song Of Basie (1957). They toured 

all over the world and also appear in Dave Brubeck’s 

musical theater piece The Real Ambassadors (1961). 

Ross left the group in 1962 and two years later she 

opened her own London nightclub called Annie’s Room; 

a compilation of her 1965 performances there was 

released on Live in London (2006).

Photo by Lee Tanner
107

Selected Discography

Composer 

Arranger 

Theoretician

educator 

Pianist

Drummer 

Jazz Workshop

RCA Victor, 1956

New York, NY

Impulse!, 1958

Ezz-Thetics

Original Jazz Classics, 1961

The African

Game

Blue Note, 1983

The 80th

Birthday 

Conce rt

Concept, 2003

Born June 23, 1923 in Cincinnati, OH • Died July 27, 2009 

George

Russell

1990

modes influenced Miles Davis and Bill Evans (who 

studied with Russell), leading to the creation of Davis’ 

masterpiece, Kind of Blue. In the early 1960s, Russell 

led several small groups, which included musicians 

such as Eric Dolphy and David Baker, and made some 

significant recordings before moving to Scandinavia. 

There he continued to refine his theories and work 

with Scandinavian musicians, among them Jan 

Garbarek and Terje Rypdal, before returning to the U.S. 

in 1969. That year he took a teaching position at the 

New England Conservatory of Music at the invitation of 

then president Gunther Schuller. In the late 1970s, 

Russell formed big bands to play his music, creating 

his Living Time Orchestra in 1978. The orchestra made 

frequent tours of Europe, including residencies at the 

Perugia Jazz Festival. 

In addition to teaching and lecturing at other 

conservatories and universities, Russell was the 

recipient of numerous awards, honors, and grants, 

including a MacArthur award, two Guggenheim 

fellowships, and election to the Royal Swedish 

Academy. In 1969, he received the first NEA grant in 

the area of jazz. Russell published the revised and 

expanded edition of his Lydian Chromatic Concept 

in 2001.

G

eorge Russell was first and foremost a 

composer rather than an instrumentalist, 

and was one of the most important 

jazz theorists of the latter half of 

the 20th century. He first expressed 

himself musically on the drums in the drum and 

bugle corps. After high school, Russell attended 

Wilberforce University, where he found gigs playing 

drums at local clubs. Russell’s study of composing 

and arranging increased while he was bedridden with 

a case of tuberculosis at 19. It was during this time 

that he began formulating his unprecedented musical 

theorems.

While his first arrangements were for the A.B. 

Townsend Orchestra, a Cincinnati dance band, Russell’s 

initial major band affiliation was as a drummer with 

Benny Carter. Later he found work arranging with 

the Earl Hines band. His first major score was “Cubano 

Be, Cubano Bop,” an Afro-Cuban piece written for the 

Dizzy Gillespie big band. Russell followed that with 

charts for Lee Konitz (“Ezz-thetic” and “Odjenar”) and 

Buddy DeFranco (“A Bird in Igor’s Yard”). He continued 

his advanced composition study with Stefan Wolpe. 

His theory, The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal 

Organization, was eventually published in book form 

in the mid-1950s. Russell’s concept 

involves a composition system 

based on using the Lydian scale, 

rather than the major scale, 

as the basis for analysis and 

composition. 

Music theoreticians hailed 

this as a breakthrough, and 

it was perhaps the first major 

contribution by a jazz musician 

to the field of musical theory. 

Russell’s continued refinement 

and study of this concept 

eventually led him to academia.

During 1958-59, he taught at 

the Lenox School of Jazz. In 

the meantime, his theories on 

Photo by Lee Tanner
108

Selected bibliography

Gunther

Schuller

2008

Author 

Composer 

Arranger 

Conductor 

Educator 

French Horn Player

Born November 22, 1925 in New York, NY

Early Jazz: Its 

Roots and 

Musical 

Developmen t

Oxford University 

Press, 1968

The Swing 

Era: The

Developmen t 

of Jazz, 1930-45

Oxford University 

Press, 1989

Musings: 

The Musical 

Worlds 

of Gunther 

Schuller

Oxford University 

Press, 1989

Gunther 

Schuller: 

A Life in

Pursuit of

Music and 

Beauty

University of Rochester 

Press, 2011

Photo by Tom Pich

In 1975, he started recording and publishing 

businesses that focused on, among other genres, 

the compositions of Duke Ellington. He sold the two 

publishing companies in 2000 to G. Schirmer, Inc., but 

still retains the record company GM Recordings. Schuller 

also served as editor-in-chief of the Smithsonian Jazz 

Masterworks Editions. 

Schuller’s jazz writings include Early Jazz: Its Roots 

and Musical Development (1968), considered one of the 

seminal books on the history of jazz, and The Swing Era 

(1989), the second volume of a planned three-volume 

history of jazz. 

Schuller has written more than 180 compositions 

in a wide range of styles and has won many awards for 

his work, including the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in music for 

Of Reminiscences and Reflections. Schuller also is a 

recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1991).

R

ecognized as a renaissance man of music, 

Gunther Schuller is a leader in both the 

classical and jazz traditions, contributing 

significant musical compositions and 

writings to expand jazz’s horizons.

Schuller was born in 1925 in New York City. At age 

17, he joined the Cincinnati Symphony as principal 

horn. Two years later, he joined the orchestra of the 

Metropolitan Opera while also becoming actively 

involved in the New York bebop scene, performing and 

recording with such jazz greats as Ornette Coleman, 

Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Dizzy Gillespie, John 

Lewis, and Charles Mingus. 

When he was 25, Schuller took a teaching position 

at the Manhattan School of Music, beginning a long 

and distinguished teaching career that includes his 

tenure as co-director, along with David Baker, of 

the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and 

professor of composition of music at Yale. In the late 

1950s, he taught at the legendary Lenox School of 

Jazz. From 1967 to 1977, he was president of the 

New England Conservatory of Music where early in his 

tenure he established a jazz department offering both 

undergraduate and graduate degree programs. He was 

artistic director of Tanglewood Berkshire Music Center 

from 1970 to 1985.

Schuller is a proponent of what he called the Third 

Stream—an effort to fuse the two primary streams 

of music, jazz and classical, into a new hybrid—of 

which John Lewis was one of the main practitioners. 

Schuller also was an early admirer of Charles Mingus’ 

music—so much so that when a 19-movement score 

was discovered of an unproduced Mingus work, Epitaph, 

Schuller was asked to conduct the orchestra for the 

premiere at Lincoln Center in 1989 (produced with 

NEA support). 

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
109

Selected Discography

Born July 17, 1925 in Cleveland, OH

The Savoy Years 

and More

Savoy, 1952-72

Falling in Love

is Wonderful

Rhino, 1962

All the Way

Sire, 1992

Holding Back 

the Years

Artists Only, 1998

Over the

Rainbow

Milestone, 2000

Jimmy

Scott

2007

Scott subsequently spent long periods away from 

the microphone, working for a time as a hotel shipping 

clerk and as a caretaker for his ailing father. He returned 

to the stage in 1985 and began recording again in 1990, 

and his career took off again two years later when 

Seymour Stein heard him perform at songwriter Doc 

Pomus’s funeral and signed him to the Warner Brothers 

Sire label. His resurgence in the public eye included 

appearances on Lou Reed’s 1992 recording Magic and 

Loss and in an episode of David Lynch’s 1990s television 

series Twin Peaks. 

Scott joined Milestone Records in 2000. He sang 

new interpretations of “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool” 

and “When Did You Leave Heaven?” on the Milestone 

CD Over the Rainbow, released in 2001, on which he 

returned the compliment Billie Holiday had paid him 

by performing his own distinctive version of one of her 

signature songs, “Strange Fruit.” 

Scott’s new fans have rediscovered his original hit 

recordings of the 1950s on such collections as the threeCD box set The Savoy Years and More released in 1999, 

which included his 1952 recordings for Roost Records 

and his 1955-72 recordings for Savoy. He continues to 

record and perform frequently. 

F

or more than five decades, vocalist Jimmy 

Scott has numbered among the jazz world’s 

best singers with his select group of fans. No 

less an authority than Billie Holiday named 

Scott—and only Scott—as a vocalist she 

admired. Although he was, for a period, “perhaps the 

most unjustly ignored American singer of the 20th 

century” (according to Joseph Hooper in a New York 

Times Magazine profile), Scott today is once more 

finding a dedicated international audience for his 

emotionally penetrating art. 

Scott was born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, and 

as a child was diagnosed with Kallmann syndrome, a 

rare condition that prevented him from experiencing 

puberty—therefore his voice never changed, giving his 

singing an almost otherworldly sound. He got his first 

big break in 1949 when Lionel Hampton hired him and 

billed him as “Little Jimmy Scott.” As featured vocalist 

with the Hampton big band, Scott achieved fame in 

1950 with the ballad “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool.” His 

success continued throughout the next decade, notably 

with his hit recording in 1955 of the old Bing Crosby 

favorite “When Did You Leave Heaven?,” a song that he 

made his own. 

Photo by Michael Wilderman

vocalist
110

Selected Discography

Born May 23, 1910 in New York, NY 

Died December 30, 2004 

Self Portrait

Bluebird/RCA, 1936-54

Begin the

Beguine

Bluebird/RCA, 1938-41

The Complete

Gramercy Five

Sessions

Bluebird/RCA, 1940-45

Artie Shaw at 

the Hollywood 

Palladium

HEP, 1941

The Last 

Recordings: 

Rare and 

Unreleased

Music Masters, 1954

BANDLEADER

CLARINETIST 

COMPOSER

ARRANGER

Artie

Shaw

2005

Photo courtesy of Ray Avery Photo Archives/CTSIMAGES

a singer, signed a recording contract, and led his first 

orchestra into New York’s Lexington Hotel. During 1938, 

with a more conventional swing band line-up (which 

briefly included Billie Holiday as vocalist), he recorded 

Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” which propelled him 

to the forefront of big band leaders.

After the United States entered World War II, 

Shaw enlisted in the Navy and was soon leading a 

service band throughout the Pacific war zone. Upon 

returning stateside, he organized a new band in 

1944, with which he toured and made recordings 

that included the classic “Little Jazz,” featuring Roy 

Eldridge on trumpet. Over the next ten years, Shaw 

worked in Hollywood, toured extensively (including 

appearances at Carnegie Hall and a performance of 

Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto with Leonard Bernstein and 

the New York Philharmonic), and continued to record, 

both with his big bands and with a small group named 

Gramercy Five.

Although he retired from music in 1954, Shaw 

continued to enjoy popularity through his recordings 

and also through a big band fronted by Dick Johnson 

bearing Artie Shaw’s name. The library of the University 

of Arizona holds his collection of scores.

I

mmensely popular and startlingly innovative, 

Artie Shaw rose to prominence in the 1930s 

as a swing bandleader, master clarinetist, 

and boundary-crossing artist, who infused 

jazz with the influences of modern European 

composers.

Born in 1910, he left New Haven, Connecticut, at 

age 15 to tour as a jazz musician. Though based in 

Cleveland, where he wrote his first arrangements for 

bandleader Austin Wylie, he later made important road 

trips with Irving Aaronson’s band. The band took him 

to Chicago, where he played in jam sessions and first 

heard recordings by Stravinsky and Debussy. Next, in 

1929, the Aaronson band brought him to New York, 

where he played in Harlem jam sessions and came under 

the influence of Willie “The Lion” Smith. He decided to 

stay on and at age 21 became one of New York’s most 

successful reed players for radio and recording sessions.

He made his breakthrough in his first appearance 

as a bandleader at a 1936 swing concert at Broadway’s 

Imperial Theater. To fill a spot between headliners, 

he performed his chamber composition Interlude 

in B Flat––scored for string quartet, three rhythm 

instruments, and clarinet––which created a sensation. 

He then added two trumpets, trombone, saxophone, and 
111

Selected Discography

Speak No Evil

Blue Note, 1964

Miles Davis

Miles Smiles

Columbia, 1966

Weather Report

Live in Tokyo

Columbia, 1972

Herbie Hancock/Wayne Shorter

1+1 

Verve, 1997

Beyond the

Sound Barrier

Verve, 2002–04

Born August 25, 1933 in Newark, NJ

saxophonIST 

composer

Wayne

Shorter

1998

Photo by Michael Wilderman

Dreamer, Juju, and Speak No Evil, are considered the 

quintessential Blue Note sound: sophisticated structures 

and rhythms, strong melodies, and exceptional playing. 

He left Blakey in 1964 to assume another 

productive affiliation with the Miles Davis Quintet, 

where he remained until 1970. While with Davis, 

he further solidified his position as one of the most 

intriguing composers of his time, contributing tunes 

such as “Nefertiti,” “Fall,” “ESP,” “Paraphernalia,” and 

“Sanctuary.” He also developed his sound, a mixture 

of technique and emotion, to fit the 

appropriate mood of whatever song he 

was playing. During the latter stages 

of his Davis tenure, he took up the 

soprano saxophone, which thereafter 

often became his principal horn.

In 1971 he and pianist Joe Zawinul, 

who also had been part of Davis’ 

recording sessions in the late-1960s 

to early-1970s, formed one of the 

pioneering jazz fusion bands, Weather 

Report. The band stayed together for 

15 years through several different 

permutations, engaging electronics 

and numerous ethnic influences and 

furthering Shorter’s reputation as a 

composer. The band scored a major hit, 

“Birdland,” in 1977 on their bestselling 

record, Heavy Weather.

After the breakup of Weather 

Report, Shorter made occasional 

recordings and tours, continuing to 

write intriguing music based on the 

influences of other musical cultures. He is a major 

influence on the generations of musicians who have 

entered the scene since the 1970s. In 2001, he began 

touring and releasing recordings with a new quartet 

comprising Danilo Pérez on piano, John Patitucci on 

bass, and Brian Blade on drums. Shorter, who originally 

studied as a visual artist, continues to pursue the visual 

arts as well as music. 

E

qually renowned for his compositions as for 

his saxophone playing, Wayne Shorter has 

contributed many songs to the jazz canon 

while participating in some of the major 

changes in jazz music over the last 40 years, 

and has received nine Grammy Awards for 

his recordings. 

Shorter’s musical pursuits started on the clarinet, at 

age 16, evolving to the tenor saxophone soon thereafter. 

Shorter majored in music education at New York 

University from 1956-58, working for a short while with 

Horace Silver in 1956. After serving in the Army, he 

joined Maynard Ferguson’s band for a couple of months 

in 1959, followed by one of his most fruitful jobs: 

playing with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He remained 

in the Messengers until 1964, establishing himself as 

both composer and saxophonist, and began making his 

own records, first for Vee Jay, then for the Blue Note 

label. His three releases for Blue Note in 1964, Night 
112

Selected Discography

Horace Silver 

and the Jazz

Messengers

Blue Note, 1954

Blowin’ the

Blues Away

Blue Note, 1959

Song For My 

Father

Blue Note, 1964

Cape Verdean

Blues

Blue Note, 1965

The Hardbop

Grandpop

GRP, 1996

pianIST 

composer

Born September 2, 1928 in Norwalk, CT

Horace

Silver

1995

In 1951, he moved to New York and quickly found 

work with Coleman Hawkins, Bill Harris, Oscar Pettiford, 

Lester Young, and Art Blakey. In 1952, as a result of a 

Lou Donaldson record session, he began what became a 

28-year relationship with the Blue Note label. Between 

1953-55 he played in the groundbreaking band the 

Jazz Messengers, co-led by Blakey. The band was at 

the forefront of the hard bop movement that followed 

bebop. By 1956, Silver formed his own band and Blakey 

maintained the Jazz Messengers name as his own. Both 

Silver’s band and the Jazz Messengers turned out to be 

proving grounds for a number of exceptional, aspiring 

musicians. Among those who passed through his band 

were Art Farmer, Donald Byrd, Joe Henderson, Blue 

Mitchell, Charles Tolliver, Stanley Turrentine, Woody 

Shaw, and Randy and Michael Brecker. Silver’s terse, 

funky playing has influenced pianists as disparate as 

Herbie Hancock and Cecil Taylor. For several years in 

the 1980s, he recorded on his own Silveto label, writing 

lyrics to his compositions with a decidedly metaphysical 

bent. In the 1990s, he returned to the hard bop sound 

he helped create. His autobiography, Let’s Get to the 

Nitty Gritty, was published in 2006.

Horace Silver was the heart of the 

hard bop era, He helped to form 

the influential Jazz Messengers and 

composed many blues and gospelflavored songs that have become part of 

the jazz canon, including “Song For My Father,” “Señor 

Blues,” “The Preacher,” “Nica’s Dream,” and “Peace.” 

His piano playing is heavily rhythmic, driving his 

musical colleagues to greater heights in their solos.

Silver was exposed to music at an early age, hearing 

Cape Verde Islands folk music from his father. Silver 

later used the island rhythms and flavor to great effect 

on his 1960s albums Song For My Father and Cape 

Verdean Blues. He took up the saxophone and piano in 

high school, and was influenced early on by the blues 

of Memphis Slim, various boogie woogie piano players, 

and the bebop pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious 

Monk. After a 1950 stint backing guest soloist Stan Getz 

on a gig in Hartford, Connecticut, Silver was enlisted 

by Getz to join him on tour for the next year. Getz 

recorded three of Silver’s earliest compositions, “Split 

Kick,” “Potter’s Luck,” and “Penny.”

Photo by Lee Tanner
113

Selected Discography

organist

A New Sound,

A New Star: 

Jimmy Smith

at the Organ, 

Vols. 1-2

Blue Note, 1956

The Sermon!

Blue Note, 1958

Root Down

Verve, 1972

Fourmost

Milestone, 1990

Dot Com Blues

Verve, 2000

Born December 8, 1928 in Norristown, PA 

Died February 8, 2005 

Jimmy

Smith

2005

Photo by Lee Tanner

and Stanley Turrentine. His appearances at Birdland 

and the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival solidified his 

international prominence as the first jazz organ star.

He toured extensively through the 1960s and 1970s 

and continued to release hit albums, this time on 

Verve (1963-72), including several big band recordings 

with such stellar arrangers as Oliver Nelson and Lalo 

Schifrin. His reputation in the 1990s was enhanced by 

the sampling of his Verve work by rap group the Beastie 

Boys on the song “Root Down.” 

He recorded for the Blue Note and Milestone labels in 

the late 1980s through the 1990s, and in 2001 released 

his first new recording after a five-year layoff: Dot Com 

Blues, which featured guest appearances by Dr. John, 

Taj Mahal, Etta James, Keb’ Mo’, and B.B. King. 

J

immy Smith personified the jazz organ 

revolution. He raised the organ—specifically 

the legendary Hammond B3, over which he 

reigned during the 1950s and 1960s—from 

a novelty instrument in jazz to primary 

status. Having first learned piano from his parents in 

his native Norristown, Pennsylvania, he was playing 

stride piano by 14 and performing with his father by 

the early 1940s. He joined the Navy at age 15 and 

after discharge attended the Hamilton School of Music 

(1948) and Ornstein’s School of Music (1949-50), where 

he studied bass and piano. He then switched to the 

Hammond organ, practicing in a warehouse for a year.

Inspired by the great horn players of the day—Don 

Byas, Arnett Cobb, Coleman Hawkins—as well as by 

pianists Art Tatum, 

Erroll Garner, and Bud 

Powell, he cut the 

tremolo off and began 

playing horn lines 

with his right hand. 

He also created a new 

organ registration 

to simulate Garner’s 

sound, establishing 

the standard for jazz 

organists who would 

follow.

Smith’s burgeoning 

reputation soon took 

him to New York, where 

he debuted at Café 

Bohemia. His fame grew 

with his influential 

Blue Note recordings 

(1956-63), including 

brilliant collaborations 

with Kenny Burrell, 

Lou Donaldson, 

Jackie McLean, Wes 

Montgomery, Lee 

Morgan, Ike Quebec, 
114

Selected Discography

Born May 22, 1914 in Birmingham, AL

Died May 30, 1993 

bandleader 

keyboardist

composer 

arranger 

The Singles

Evidence, 1954-82

Jazz in

Silhouette

Evidence, 1958

The

Heliocentric

Worlds of

Sun Ra, Vol. 1 & 2

ESP, 1965

Space is 

the Place

Evidence, 1972

Purple Night

A&M, 1989

Sun

Ra

1982

Photo by Michael Wilderman

attraction. Their performances would often stretch 

on for hours, and would include hypnotic, chanting 

processionals while marching through the audience. 

Sun Ra’s global following had become significant, 

though his recordings had become sporadic. His 

arrangements of his songs, however, were among the 

best in jazz. He made excellent use of his soloists, 

especially the great saxophone section: tenor John 

Gilmore, alto Marshall Allen, and baritone Pat Patrick, 

all of whom were with the Arkestra on and off for 

decades. 

An outsider who linked the African-American 

experience with ancient Egyptian mythology and 

outer space, Sun Ra was years ahead of all other 

avant-garde musicians in his experimentation with 

sound and instruments, and was a pioneer in group 

improvisations and the use of electric instruments 

in jazz. Since Sun Ra’s death, the Arkestra has 

continued to perform under the direction of Allen. 

S

un Ra was one of the most 

unusual musicians in the 

history of jazz, moving 

from Fletcher Henderson 

swing to free jazz with ease, 

sometimes in the same song. Portraying 

himself as a product of outer space, 

he “traveled the spaceways” with a 

colorful troupe of musicians, using a 

multitude of percussion and unusual 

instrumentation, from tree drum to 

celeste.

Sun Ra, who enjoyed cloaking his 

origins and development in mystery, 

is known to have studied piano early 

on with Lula Randolph in Washington, 

DC. His first noted professional job was 

during 1946-47 as pianist with the 

Fletcher Henderson Orchestra at the Club 

DeLisa on the South Side of Chicago. In 

addition to playing piano in the band he 

also served as one of the staff arrangers. 

Finding his calling as an arranger, he put together a 

band to play his compositions. In the 1950s, he began 

issuing recordings of his unusual music on his Saturn 

label, becoming one of the first jazz musicians to record 

and sell his own albums. 

Sun Ra’s band became a central part of the early 

avant-garde jazz movement in Chicago, being one of 

the first jazz bands to employ electronic instruments 

(as early as 1956), including electric piano, clavioline, 

celeste, and synthesizers. In 1960, he moved his band to 

New York, where he established a communal home for 

his musicians, known as the Sun Palace. In March 1966, 

the band began one of its most significant residencies, 

playing every Monday night at Slug’s nightclub on New 

York’s Lower East Side. 

By the 1970s, the Sun Ra Arkestra and its various 

permutations began touring Europe extensively. His 

performances had by then expanded to include singers, 

dancers, martial arts practitioners, film, and colorful 

homemade costumes, becoming a true multimedia 
115

Selected Discography

pianist

composer

educator

broadcaster

Born July 24, 1921 in Greenville, NC 

Died December 28, 2010

Billy

Taylor

Cross-Section

Original Jazz Classics, 

1953-54

My Fair Lady

Loves Jazz

Impulse!, 1965

White Nights 

and Jazz in

Leningrad 

Taylor-Made Music, 1988

It’s a Matter 

of Pride

GRP, 1993

Live at the

IAJE, New York

Soundpost, 2001

1988

Photo by Tom Pich

syndicated Jazz Alive radio series. Taylor also profiled 

some of the biggest names in jazz as an interviewer and 

reporter for CBS television’s Sunday Morning program.

As a jazz educator, Taylor’s experience was vast, 

starting with a series of beginning piano primers he 

authored. He was a founder of New York’s successful 

Jazzmobile community performance and school-withoutwalls, which debuted in 1965. He earned his doctorate 

in Music at the University of Massachusetts in 1975, 

with a dissertation on The History and Development 

of Jazz Piano: A New Perspective for Educators. Taylor 

subsequently taught at Yale, Manhattan School of Music, 

Howard University, University of California, Fredonia 

State University, and C.W. Post College. His experience 

at the University of Massachusetts led to a lead faculty 

position at the university’s annual summer intensive 

program, Jazz in July.

As a composer he wrote a number of commissioned 

works, his most well-known composition being “I 

Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.” In the 

1990s, Taylor became artistic director of the Jazz at 

the Kennedy Center program in Washington, DC, from 

which he launched his syndicated NPR radio series, 

Billy Taylor’s Jazz at the Kennedy Center. He was the 

recipient of two Peabody 

Awards, an Emmy, a 

Grammy, and a host of 

prestigious awards, such 

as the Tiffany Award, 

a DownBeat Lifetime 

Achievement Award, 

and the National Medal 

of Arts (1992). 

A

lthough well respected for his tasteful, 

non-intrusive accompaniment as a 

sideman, Billy Taylor was known for his 

championing of jazz music, especially 

 through his various broadcasting and 

educational ventures. 

After growing up in Washington, DC, Taylor earned 

a degree at Virginia State College in 1942, then moved 

to New York. He spent the 1940s frequently playing 

the clubs on New York’s famed 52nd Street, performing 

with greats such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, 

Ben Webster, Stuff Smith, Machito, Slam Stewart, and 

Don Redman. His adroit abilities enabled him to freely 

cross over from swing to the then-burgeoning modern 

jazz called bebop.

In the 1950s, he served as the ideal sideman, finding 

work with Roy Eldridge, Oscar Pettiford, and Lee 

Konitz while employed as house pianist at Birdland 

in 1951. Beginning in 1952 he became a bandleader, 

primarily heading trios with bass and drums. 

Taylor started in radio with a program in the 1960s 

on WLIB in New York. From 1969-72 he was house 

bandleader for the David Frost television show, and 

in the 1970s also served as host-director of the NPR 
116

Selected Discography

Jazz Advance

Blue Note, 1956

3 Phasis

New World, 1978

For Olim

Soul Note, 1986

Alms/Tiegarten

FMP, 1988

Cecil Taylor and the Italian 

Instabile Orchestra

The Owner of

the River Bank 

Enja, 2000

Born March 15, 1929 in New York, NY

Pianist

Composer

Cecil

Taylor

1990

Photo by Michael Wilderman

keyboard with open palms, elbows, and forearms. His 

solo piano recordings are some of the most challenging 

and rewarding to listen to in all of jazz.

His work as a pianist and composer gained muchneeded momentum in the 1970s and beyond, as touring 

and recording opportunities increased, largely overseas, 

though finding regular work for his uncompromising 

style of music still remains a struggle. Throughout his 

career, he has worked with many important, likeminded musicians, including Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, 

Steve Lacy, Sam Rivers, Max Roach, the Art Ensemble 

of Chicago, and a host of European and Scandinavian 

musicians. In 1979, he performed at the White House, 

and he has received numerous awards, including a 

Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and a MacArthur 

Foundation Fellowship in 1991. His influence on the 

avant-garde, especially of the 1960s and 1970s, in terms 

of performance and composition, is enormous. 

C

ecil Taylor is one of the 

most uncompromisingly 

gifted pianists in jazz 

history, utilizing a 

nearly overwhelming 

orchestral facility on the piano. 

While his work has elicited 

controversy almost from the start, 

Taylor’s artistic vision has never 

swayed.

At his mother’s urging he 

began piano studies at age five. 

He later studied percussion, which 

undoubtedly influenced his highly 

percussive keyboard style. At age 

23 he studied at the New England 

Conservatory, concentrating 

on piano and music theory. He 

immersed himself in 20th-century 

classical composers, including 

Stravinsky, and found sustenance 

for his jazz proclivities in the 

work of Lennie Tristano and Dave 

Brubeck. Later Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and 

Horace Silver began to influence his playing. By 1956 

he was working as a professional, taking a prolonged 

engagement at New York’s Five Spot Cafe, recording his 

first album, Jazz Advance, and making his Newport 

Jazz Festival debut.

Playing in this style—an aggressive near-assault 

on the piano, sometimes breaking keys and strings—

presented challenges in terms of finding steady work. 

Taylor struggled to find gigs for most of the 1950s 

and 1960s, despite being recognized by DownBeat

magazine in its “New Star” poll category. He eventually 

found work overseas, touring Scandinavian countries 

during the winter of 1962-63 with his trio, including 

Jimmy Lyons on alto saxophone, and Sunny Murray 

on drums. His approach had evolved to incorporate 

clusters and a dense rhythmic sensibility, coupled with 

a sheer physicality that often found him addressing the 
117

Selected Discography

trumpetER

flugelhorniST 

vocalIST 

educator

In Orbit

Original Jazz Classics, 1958

Color Changes

Candid, 1960

The Clark 

Terry Spacemen

Chiaroscuro, 1976

One-on-One

Chesky Jazz, 2000

Live at 

Marihans

Chiaroscuro, 2004

Photo by Lee Tanner

employed in a television house band—he came to 

prominence through his popular “Mumbles” persona, his 

unique way of mumbling a scat vocal solo. He worked 

and recorded with artists such as J.J. Johnson, Oscar 

Peterson, and Ella Fitzgerald, then co-led a quintet 

with Bob Brookmeyer. Thereafter he led his own small 

and large bands, including his Big Bad Band, beginning 

in 1972. He also became part of Norman Granz’s 

traveling all-stars, Jazz at the Philharmonic. 

As a jazz educator he was one of the earliest active 

practitioners to take time off from the road to enter 

the classroom, conducting numerous clinics and jazz 

camps. This work culminated in his own music school 

at Teikyo Westmar University in Le Mars, Iowa. A 

distinctive stylist, he is also a consummate entertainer, 

often alternating trumpet and flugelhorn in a solo duel 

with himself in concerts. He continues to play in both 

the U.S. and Europe, recording and performing in a wide 

variety of settings, such as the One-on-One recording of 

duets with 14 different pianists. Over the years, Terry 

has received numerous awards and honors, including 

a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the French 

Officier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, a knighthood in 

Germany, and a star on St. Louis’ Walk of Fame. 

C

lark Terry is the consummate freelance 

musician, able to add a distinctive element 

to whatever band or jam session of which 

he is a part. His exuberant, swinging horn 

playing was an important contribution to 

two of the greatest big bands in jazz, Count Basie’s 

and Duke Ellington’s. In addition, his use of the 

flugelhorn as an alternative to trumpet influenced Art 

Farmer and Miles Davis, among others. 

In high school, Terry took up the valve trombone, 

later playing the bugle with the Tom Powell Drum 

and Bugle Corps. Upon his discharge from the Navy in 

1945, he found work with Lionel Hampton’s band. He 

rounded out the 1940s playing with bands led by Charlie 

Barnet, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Charlie Ventura, and 

George Hudson. From 1948-51, Terry was a member of 

Basie’s big band and octet. 

Terry’s reputation grew with Ellington’s band, with 

whom he worked from 1951-59, often featured as a 

soloist on trumpet and flugelhorn. He also led his own 

recording dates during this time. After working with 

Quincy Jones in 1959-60, he found steady work as 

a freelance studio artist, eventually becoming a staff 

musician at NBC. As a member of the Tonight Show

orchestra—one of the first African-American musicians 

Clark

Terry

1991

Born December 14, 1920 in St. Louis, MO
118

Selected Discography

Born April 29, 1922 in Brussels, Belgium

Man Bites 

Harmon ica

Riverside/OJC, 1957-58

Do Not Leave Me

Vintage Jazz, 1986

Only Trust 

Your Heart

Concord Jazz, 1988

East Coast West 

Coast

Private Music, 1994

European

Quartet Live

Challenge Jazz, 2006–08

Harmonica Player 

Guitarist

Toots

Thielemans

2009

Photo by Lee Tanner

United States in 1952, getting a chance to play with 

Charlie Parker’s All-Stars. His performance so impressed 

George Shearing that he invited Thielemans into his 

band, where he stayed until 1959. 

In 1961, Thielemans composed and recorded 

“Bluesette” using unison whistling and guitar, and ever 

since has been greatly in demand—particularly for his 

harmonica and his whistling—on pop records and as 

a jazz soloist. Thielemans began freelancing, playing 

and recording with Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, 

Bill Evans, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Astrud Gilberto, and 

Elis Regina, among others. He also made prominent 

appearances on movie soundtracks, notably on The 

Pawnbroker, Midnight Cowboy, and The Sugarland 

Express.

Thielemans has appeared as a leader of swing 

and bop quartets on recordings and at international 

festivals. At the Montreux International Jazz Festival, he 

recorded as a sideman with Oscar Peterson in 1975, 

then with Dizzy Gillespie in 1980. Thielemans’ 

two-volume Brasil Project was popular in 

the 1990s and featured top Brazilian 

musicians. 

A perennial winner of DownBeat

readers’ and critics’ polls in 

the category “miscellaneous 

instruments,” Thielemans was 

called “one of the greatest 

musicians of our time” by 

Quincy Jones in 1995. 

Thielemans has received 

many awards and titles, 

including the French Chevalier 

des Arts et des Lettres and 

honorary doctorates from 

both universities in the city of 

Brussels. In 2001, Belguim’s King 

Albert II bestowed on him the 

title “Baron,” making him Baron 

Jean “Toots” Thielemans. 

Harmonica player, guitarist, and whistler 

Jean Baptiste “Toots” Thielemans 

has been credited by jazz aficionados 

as being among the greatest jazz 

harmonica players of the 20th century, 

improvising on an instrument better known in folk 

and blues music. Thielemans is known to audiences 

young and old: his harmonica heard on the Sesame 

Street theme and his whistling heard in an “Old Spice” 

commercial. 

Thielemans learned to play the accordion at the 

age of three, took up chromatic harmonica at 17, and 

taught himself to play the guitar. Influenced by Django 

Reinhardt and Charlie Parker, he became interested in 

jazz. In 1950, Thielemans toured Europe as a guitarist 

with the Benny Goodman Sextet. He immigrated to the 
119

Selected Discography

pianist

composer

arranger

Born December 11, 1938 in Philadelphia, PA

The Real McCoy

Blue Note, 1967

Sahara

Original Jazz Classics, 1972

Remembering 

John

Enja, 1991

Illuminations

Telarc, 2003

Guitars

Half Note, 2006

McCoy

Tyner

2002

that produced some of the 

most influential music in jazz. 

From 1960-65, Tyner played a 

major role in the success of the 

Coltrane quartet (which included 

Elvin Jones on drums and 

Jimmy Garrison on bass), using 

richly textured harmonies 

as rhythmic devices against 

Coltrane’s “sheets of sound” 

saxophone playing. 

After leaving the quartet, 

Tyner demonstrated his 

tremendous melodic and 

rhythmic flair for composition 

on such albums as The Real 

McCoy, which featured “Passion 

Dance,” “Contemplation,” 

and “Blues on the Corner,” 

and Sahara, which featured 

“Ebony Queen” and the title 

track. Tyner has continued to 

experiment with his sound, 

pushing rhythms and tonalities 

to the limit, his fluttering right hand creating a 

cascade of notes. In particular, he has explored the 

trio form, recording with a series of different bassists 

and drummers, such as Ron Carter, Art Davis, Stanley 

Clarke, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, and Al Foster. In 

the 1980s, he recorded with a singer for the first time, 

Phylis Hyman. 

In the 1990s, he led a big band in new 

arrangements of previously recorded songs, used 

Latin American rhythms and forms, and revealed the 

romantic side of his playing with a surprising album 

of Burt Bacharach songs. While experimenting with 

his sound, Tyner has eschewed the use of electric 

pianos, preferring the warm sound of an acoustic piano, 

and earned five Grammy Awards for his recordings. A 

dynamic performer in live settings, Tyner has continued 

to tour steadily. 

McCoy Tyner’s powerful, propulsive style 

of piano playing was an integral part 

of the John Coltrane Quartet in the 

early 1960s and influenced countless 

musicians that followed him. His rich 

chord clusters continue to be copied by many young 

jazz pianists.

Growing up in Philadelphia, Tyner’s neighbors were 

jazz musicians Richie and Bud Powell, who were very 

influential to his piano playing. Studying music at the 

West Philadelphia Music School and later at the Granoff 

School of Music, Tyner began playing gigs in his teens, 

and first met Coltrane while performing at a local club 

called the Red Rooster at age 17. His first important 

professional gig was with the Benny Golson–Art 

Farmer band Jazztet in 1959, with which he made his 

recording debut. 

Soon he began working with Coltrane, a relationship 

Photo by Lee Tanner
120

Selected Discography

recording engineer

Rudy

Van Gelder

2009

Born November 2, 1924 in Jersey City, NJ

Sonny Rollins

Volume 2

Blue Note, 1957

Cannonball Adderley

Somethin’ Else

Blue Note, 1958

Eric Dolphy

Outward Bound

Prestige/OJC, 1960

John Coltrane

A Love Supreme

Impulse!, 1964

Joe Henderson

Lush Life: 

The Music

of Billy

Strayhorn

Verve, 1991

Photo by Francis Wolff © Mosaic Images

his other clients, Van Gelder finally quit his day job and 

moved his studio to a new facility he built in Englewood 

Cliffs, New Jersey, where he has remained ever since. He 

became the house engineer for Creed Taylor’s CTI label in 

the early 1970s. 

The signature Van Gelder sound features a clearly 

defined separation among the instruments, ensuring 

that every sonic detail is clear and audible. This was 

accomplished by the strategic placement of instruments 

in the studio, though his exact technique has always 

been a closely guarded secret. Van Gelder’s main goal 

was to create the best mood for the musicians to 

perform in, and from the results, he seems to have 

greatly succeeded. Among the timeless recordings made 

under his aegis are John Coltrane’s Blue Train (Blue 

Note) Miles Davis’ Workin’ (Prestige), Andrew Hill’s 

Point of Departure (Blue Note), Freddie Hubbard’s Red 

Clay (CTI), and Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil (Blue 

Note).

Van Gelder still freelances for a variety of labels 

and since 1999 has been instrumental in the modern 

remastering of his original recordings—most notably the 

Blue Note RVG series—with the conversion from analog 

to digital formats.

C

onsidered by many to be the greatest 

recording engineer in jazz, Rudy Van 

Gelder has recorded practically every major 

jazz musician of the 1950s and 1960s on 

thousands of albums. 

Van Gelder became involved with amateur radio as 

a teenager, which led to his interest in microphones 

and electronics. Since recording consoles were not 

then manufactured commercially, he created his own 

equipment and set up a studio in his parents’ living 

room in Hackensack, New Jersey. An optometrist by 

day, Van Gelder began recording local jazz musicians in 

his free time. 

In 1953, saxophonist Gil Mellé introduced Van 

Gelder to Blue Note founder Alfred Lion, beginning 

a 14-year association with the label. He recorded 

practically every session that Blue Note produced during 

that time period, from obscure sessions like Jutta Hipp 

with Zoot Sims in 1956 to the popular Maiden Voyage

by Herbie Hancock in 1965. Van Gelder’s notable 

recordings helped establish Blue Note’s reputation 

as an elite jazz label. They also enticed other labels, 

such as Prestige, Savoy, and Impulse!, to seek out 

his recording skills. 

In 1959, needing a larger space for Blue Note and 

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
121

Selected Discography

vocalist

pianist

1944-46

Classics, 1944-46

In Hi-Fi

Columbia/Legacy, 1949-53

The Complete

Sarah Vaughan

on Mercury, 

Vol. 1

Mercury, 1954-56

Sarah Vaughan

with Clifford 

Brown

Verve, 1955

The Duke

Ellington

Songbook, 

Vol. 1

Pablo, 1979

Sarah

Vaughan

Born March 27, 1924 in Newark, NJ 

Died April 3, 1990 

1989

piano lessons at age seven. Winner 

of the amateur contest at the 

Apollo Theatre, Vaughan was hired 

by Earl Hines for his big band as a 

second pianist and singer on the 

recommendation of Billy Eckstine in 

1943. She joined Eckstine’s band in 

1944, and made her first recording 

under her own name that same year.

After leaving Eckstine, Sarah 

worked briefly in the John Kirby 

band, and thereafter was primarily 

a vocal soloist. Charlie Parker and 

Dizzy Gillespie often sang her 

praises, assisting her in gaining 

recognition, particularly in 

musicians’ circles. They worked with 

her on a May 25, 1945, session as 

well, which was highlighted by her 

vocal version of Gillespie’s “A Night 

in Tunisia,” called “Interlude” on the 

album. Her first husband, trumpeterbandleader George Treadwell, helped 

re-make her “look” and she began 

to work and record more regularly, 

starting in 1949 with Columbia 

Records. In the 1960s, Vaughan 

made records with bandleaders such 

as Count Basie, Benny Carter, 

Frank Foster, and Quincy Jones 

on the Mercury and Roulette labels among others. It 

was during this time that her level of international 

recognition began to grow as she toured widely, 

generally accompanied by a trio, and on occasion by 

an orchestra. 

These large ensemble dates ranged from the Boston 

Pops to the Cleveland Orchestra as her voice became 

recognized as one of the most beautiful and versatile 

in all of jazz, blessed with a range that literally went 

from baritone to soprano. In the 1970s and 1980s, her 

voice darkened, providing a deeper and all the more 

alluring tone.

T

he power, range, and flexibility of her voice 

made Sarah Vaughan, known as “Sassy” or 

“The Divine One,” one of the great singers 

in jazz. With her rich, controlled tone 

and vibrato, she could create astounding 

performances on jazz standards, often adding boporiented phrasing. Along with Billie Holiday and 

Ella Fitzgerald, Vaughan helped popularize the art 

of jazz singing, influencing generations of vocalists 

following her. 

Vaughan began singing at the Mt. Zion Baptist 

Church in her native Newark, and started extensive 

Photo by Paul Hoeffler/CTSIMAGES
122

Selected Discography

Art Blakey and the 

Jazz Messengers

Mosaic

Blue Note, 1961

Cedar!

Prestige/OJC, 1967

Eastern Rebellion

Eastern

Rebellion

Timeless, 1975

Composer

Astor Place, 1996

Seasoned Wood

High Note, 2008

Born January 17, 1934 in Dallas, TX

pianist

composer

Cedar

Walton

2010

Photo by Lee Tanner

drummer Billy Higgins, and saxophonist Clifford Jordan 

to form the group Eastern Rebellion, which would 

perform and record sporadically over the subsequent 

two decades. Other musicians rotated in and out of 

the band, including George Coleman, Bob Berg, Ralph 

Moore, David Williams, Curtis Fuller, and Alfredo 

“Chocolate” Armenteros. Higgins became a regular 

accompanist for Walton throughout the 1980s—along 

with other stellar musicians such as Ron Carter, Bobby 

Hutcherson, Harold Land, and Buster Williams. In 

addition, he continued to perform in rhythm sections 

for Milt Jackson, Frank Morgan, and Dexter Gordon

and accompanied vocalists Ernestine Anderson and 

Freddy Cole. He also led the backup trio for the 

Trumpet Summit Band, which started as a project for 

the 1995 Jazz in Marciac festival in France. He continues 

to perform and record with his own groups all over the 

world. 

O

ne of the great hard bop pianists, Cedar 

Walton is also known for his compositions, 

some of which have become jazz 

standards, such as “Bolivia,” “Clockwise,” 

and “Firm Roots.”

Walton was first taught piano by his mother, and, 

after high school, moved to Colorado to commence 

studies at the University of Denver. There, during afterhours jazz club gigs, he met musicians, such as Charlie 

Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and John Coltrane, who would 

sit in with Walton’s group when traveling through town. 

Eventually, Walton moved to New York. In 1955, 

he was drafted into the U.S. Army and sent to Germany 

where he performed in a military jazz ensemble. Upon 

his return to New York City two years later, he began 

playing and recording with Kenny Dorham, J. J. 

Johnson, and Gigi Gryce. In 1959, he recorded with 

Coltrane on his seminal album Giant Steps, but the 

recordings weren’t included on the initial issue of the 

album; the alternate tracks were later issued on the CD 

version. From 1960-61, Walton 

worked with Art Farmer and 

Benny Golson’s band Jazztet. 

Walton’s next significant 

musical association was with 

Art Blakey and the Jazz 

Messengers. During his years 

with Blakey (1961-64), Walton 

stepped forward as composer, 

contributing originals such 

as “Mosaic,” “Ugetsu,” and 

“The Promised Land” to the 

group’s repertoire. Walton 

left the Jazz Messengers to 

lead rhythm sections and trios 

featured in various New York 

clubs and work as a sideman 

for well-known artists such as 

Abbey Lincoln (1965-66) and 

Lee Morgan (1966-68). 

In 1974, Walton joined 

with bassist Sam Jones, 
123

Selected Discography

Wein, Women

& Song

Atlantic, 1955

George Wein & 

the Newport 

All-Stars 

Impulse!, 1962

George Wein’s 

Newport 

All-Stars

Atlantic, 1969

European Tour

Concord Jazz, 1987

Swing That 

Music

Columbia, 1993

Born October 3, 1925 in Boston, MA

producer

pianist

George

Wein

2005

Photo by Lee Tanner

Music and Rhode Island College of Music, a DownBeat

Lifetime Achievement Award, the Commandeur de 

L’Ordre des Arts et Lettres from France, and invitations 

to be honored at the White House in 1978 and 1993. In 

addition, he is an author, whose autobiography Myself 

Among Others was recognized by the Jazz Journalists 

Association as 2004’s best book about jazz, and he 

continues to perform as a pianist with his group, the 

Newport All-Stars.

In 2009, Wein again became involved with the 

jazz festivals in New York and Newport, finding a new 

sponsor (CareFusion) when the longtime festivals 

lost their sponsorship. As Wein said when he started 

with the festivals again, “I never went into it as ‘a 

business’... I mean, the music was in my head, in my 

heart, in my soul. And it still is.”

J

azz impresario 

George Wein is 

renowned for his 

work in organizing 

and booking music 

festivals, and in particular 

for creating the Newport 

Jazz Festival, an event that, 

in the words of the late 

jazz critic Leonard Feather, 

started the “festival era.”

A professional pianist 

from his early teens, Wein 

went on to lead his own 

band in and around his 

native Boston, frequently 

accompanying visiting 

jazz musicians. In 1950, 

he opened his own club 

in Boston, formed the 

Storyville record label, 

and launched his career 

as a jazz entrepreneur. In 

1954, he was invited to 

organize the first Newport 

Jazz Festival. He subsequently 

played an important role in establishing numerous 

other international festivals, including the annual 

Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. In 1969, Wein 

established Festival Productions, Inc., which has offices 

in six cities and produces hundreds of musical events 

internationally each year. In 1971, unruly crowds forced 

Wein to move the jazz festival from Newport to New 

York City, where he pioneered the idea of corporate 

underwriting of festivals, first with the Kool Jazz 

Festival and then with the JVC Jazz Festival. Though 

he sold Festival Productions in 2007, he remains active 

in the music scene, serving on the boards of Jazz at 

Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theatre Foundation, and 

Carnegie Hall. 

Wein has received numerous honors over the years, 

including honorary degrees from the Berklee College of 

A.B. Spellman 

NEA Jazz Masters 

Award for 

Jazz 

Advocacy
124

Selected Discography

Born January 4, 1922 in Kansas City, MO

Count Basie

Verve Jazz

Masters

Verve, 1954-65

I Hear Ya

Talkin’ Savoy, 1959

Flute Juice

Progressive, 1981

Going Wess

Town Crier, 1993

Once is Not 

Enough

Labeth, 2009

FLUTIST 

SAXOPHONIST 

COMPOSER

frank

Wess

2007

off by Neal Hefti’s arrangements, contributed strongly 

to the Basie Orchestra’s new sound, while his tenor 

saxophone playing served as a counterpoint to the more 

fiery sound of Frank Foster.

Wess has played since the 1960s in countless 

settings: with Clark Terry’s big band, the New York 

Quartet with Roland Hanna, Dameronia (1981-85), 

and Toshiko Akiyoshi’s Jazz Orchestra. During this 

period, he also bridged the worlds of jazz and popular 

show business. Wess performed as a staff musician for 

ABC Television, both for The Dick Cavett Show and for 

The David Frost Show (with the Billy Taylor Orchestra). 

In Broadway pit bands, he played for shows such as 

Golden Boy (starring Sammy Davis), Irene (with Debbie 

Reynolds), and Sugar Babies (with Mickey Rooney). For 

ten years, he played first-chair tenor saxophonist in the 

Carnegie Hall Jazz Band. 

He has also led his own big bands on world tours, 

and has played recently in the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni 

Big Band. Widely recorded on many labels, both as a 

leader and a sideman, Wess is a perennial favorite in 

DownBeat polls and a now-legendary presence on the 

jazz scene.

A multi-instrumentalist whose inspired solos 

have kept big-band jazz fresh and vital 

into the present, Frank Wess is revered as 

a smoothly swinging tenor saxophone 

 player in the Lester Young tradition, 

as an expert alto saxophonist, and as one of the most 

influential, instantly recognizable flutists in jazz 

history. 

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Wess first studied 

classical music and played with the Kansas All-State 

High School Orchestra. After moving to Washington, 

DC as a teenager in 1935, he began to play jazz 

in lunchtime jam sessions with fellow students, 

including Billy Taylor. An early touring career was 

interrupted by military service—he played in a 

17-piece band during World War II—and then was 

resumed when Wess came out of the Army and joined 

an outstanding lineup in the Billy Eckstine Orchestra. 

It was at this time that he took up the flute, studying 

at the Modern School of Music in Washington. 

All this time, Count Basie had been calling. 

Wess finally joined his big band in 1953, helping it to 

evolve during its so-called “New Testament” phase and 

remaining with it until 1964. Wess’s flute playing, set 

Photo by Michael Wilderman
125

Selected Discography

Uhuru Africa/

Highlife

Roulette, 1960-63

Blues to Africa

Arista/Freedom, 1974

The Spirit of

Our Ancestors 

Verve, 1991

Zep Tepi

Random Chance, 2005

The

Storyteller

Motema Music, 2009

Pianist

Composer

Born April 6, 1926 in Brooklyn, NY

Randy

Weston

2001

early age, and he lectured and performed in Africa in 

the early 1960s. He toured 14 African countries with 

his ensemble in 1967 on a State Department tour, 

eventually settling in Rabat, Morocco. He later moved 

to Tangier, opening the African Rhythms Club in 1969. 

It was in Morocco that Weston first forged unique 

collaborations with Berber and Gnawan musicians, 

infusing his jazz with African music and rhythms. 

Since returning to the U.S. in 1972, he has lived in 

Brooklyn, traveling extensively overseas with bands that 

generally include trombonist Benny Powell and longtime 

musical director, saxophonist Talib Kibwe (aka T.K. 

Blue). In recent years, a number of Weston’s U.S. concert 

appearances have been true events, including 1998 and 

1999 Brooklyn and Kennedy Center collaborations with 

the Master Musicians of Gnawa, and a triumphant 1998 

recreation of his masterwork suite “Uhuru Africa” in 

Brooklyn. Many of Weston’s compositions, such as “Hi 

Fly” and “Berkshire Blues,” have become jazz standards. 

In 2010, Weston’s autobiography, African Rhythms, was 

published.

R

andy Weston has spent most of his career 

combining the rich music of the African 

continent with the African-American 

tradition of jazz, mixing rhythms and 

 melodies into a hybrid musical stew. 

Weston received his earliest training from private 

teachers in a household that nurtured his budding 

musicianship. Growing up in Brooklyn, Weston was 

influenced by such peers as saxophonist Cecil Payne 

and trumpeter Ray Copeland as well as the steady 

influx of great jazz musicians who frequented Brooklyn 

clubs and jam sessions on a regular basis. Such 

musicians as Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington 

would have a lasting influence on Weston’s music, both 

in terms of his piano playing and composition.

After a 1945 stint in the Army, Weston began 

playing piano with such rhythm-and-blues bands as 

Bull Moose Jackson and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. 

At the Music Inn educational retreat in Lenox, 

Massachusetts, in 1954, he took work as a cook during 

the summer, while playing the piano at night. The 

head of Riverside Records, Orrin 

Keepnews, heard him and signed 

Weston to do a record of Cole Porter 

standards. 

Weston’s recording sessions 

frequently included contributions 

from his Brooklyn neighborhood 

buddies Copeland, Payne, and 

bassist Ahmed Abdul-Malik. It was 

at this early juncture that he also 

began his long and fruitful musical 

partnership with trombonistarranger Melba Liston (a listing 

of some of the albums on which 

they collaborated can be found in 

the Liston Selected Discography), 

a relationship that would continue 

until her death in 1999, forming 

some of Weston’s best recordings. 

Weston’s interest in the African 

continent was sparked at an 

Photo by Lee Tanner
126

Selected Discography

Softly with

Feeling

Savoy, 1956

Jazz from

“Peter Gunn” Columbia, 1959

Benny Carter

A Gentleman

and His Music

Concord, 1985

No Greater 

Love

Evening Star, 1993

Among Friends

Evening Star, 2002

Born February 22, 1922 in Colwyn, PA

trumpeter

Joe

Wilder

2008

’50s, he played in the orchestras of Jimmie Lunceford, 

Herbie Fields, Sam Donahue, Lucky Millinder, Noble 

Sissle, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie, while also 

playing in the pit orchestras for Broadway musicals.

Wilder returned to school in the 1960s, earning a 

bachelor’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music 

where he was also principal trumpet with the school’s 

symphony orchestra under conductor Jonel Perlea. At 

that time, he performed on several occasions with the 

New York Philharmonic under Andre Kostolanitz and 

Pierre Boulez.

From 1957 to 1974, Wilder did studio work for 

ABC-TV while building his reputation as a soloist with 

his albums for Savoy and Columbia. He was also a 

regular sideman with such musicians as Gil Evans, 

Benny Goodman, and Hank Jones, even accompanying 

Goodman on his tour of Russia. He became a favorite 

with vocalists and played for Harry Belafonte, Tony 

Bennett, Eileen Farrell, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, 

Johnny Mathis, and many others.

He is the only surviving member of the Count Basie 

All-Star Orchestra that appeared in the classic 1959 film 

The Sound of Jazz.

J

oe Wilder has played with a virtual Who’s 

Who of jazz—Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, 

Cab Calloway, Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, 

Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Billie 

Holiday, Lena Horne, Quincy Jones, John 

Lewis, Charles Mingus, George Russell, and Dinah 

Washington, to name just a few.

Wilder was born in 1922 into a musical family 

led by his father Curtis, a bassist and bandleader in 

Philadelphia. Wilder’s first performances took place on 

the radio program Parisian Tailor’s Colored Kiddies of 

the Air. He and the other young musicians were backed 

up by such illustrious bands as Duke Ellington’s and 

Louis Armstrong’s that were also then playing at the 

Lincoln Theater. Wilder studied at the Mastbaum School 

of Music in Philadelphia but turned to jazz when he 

felt that there was little future for an African-American 

classical musician. Wilder joined his first touring big 

band, Les Hite’s band, in 1941.

Wilder was one of the first thousand African 

Americans to serve in the Marines during World War 

II. He worked first in Special Weapons and eventually 

became assistant bandmaster at the headquarters’ 

band. Following the war during the 1940s and early 

Photo by Tom Pich
127

Selected Discography

Count Basie

Count Basie

Swings/

Joe Williams 

Sings

Verve, 1955-56

Every Day—The

Best of the

Verve Years

Verve, 1955-90

Count Basie

Count on the

Coast, Vol. 1 & 2

Phontastic, 1958

Me and 

the Blues

RCA, 1963

Here’s to Life

Telarc, 1993

Born December 12, 1918 in Cordele, GA 

Died March 29, 1999 

vocalist

Joe

Williams

1993

Photo by Lee Tanner

duplicate Rushing’s vocal style, but offered a new range 

of opportunities for Basie to use. Williams’ sound was 

smoother, strong on ballads and blues, while Rushing 

was a more aggressive singer, best on the up-tempo 

numbers.

Williams’ hits with the Basie band included “Alright, 

Okay, You Win,” “The Comeback,” and what would 

become one of his most requested tunes, “Every Day.” 

Starting in the 1960s, he was a vocal soloist, fronting 

trios led by such pianists as Norman Simmons and 

Junior Mance. Simmons would later become his longest 

tenured musical director-pianist. He also toured with 

fellow Basie alumnus Harry “Sweets” Edison. He 

continued to expand his range, becoming a superior 

crooner and exhibiting a real depth of feeling on ballads. 

Among his many awards and citations were a 

number of jazz poll commendations and honors. Late 

in life, he had a recurring role on the Cosby Show

television program as the star’s father-in-law.

J

oe Williams’ versatile baritone voice made 

him one of the signature male vocalists 

in jazz annals, responsible for some of the 

Count Basie band’s main hits in the 1950s.

Though born in Georgia, Williams was 

raised in that great haven of the blues, Chicago, Illinois. 

His first professional job came with clarinetist Jimmie 

Noone in 1937. In the 1940s, in addition to singing in 

Chicago area groups, he worked with the big bands of 

Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, and Andy Kirk. 

Later he sang with two of Cafe Society’s renowned 

pianists, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. From 1950-

53, he worked mostly with the Red Saunders band. 

What came after would be a job he would cherish and 

return to frequently throughout his career: fronting 

the Count Basie band. Often referred to jokingly as 

“Count Basie’s #1 son,” he stepped right into the 

band upon the departure of Jimmy Rushing. Williams 

was the perfect replacement in that he did not just 
128

Selected Discography

1945-46

Classics, 1945-46

The Complete

Pacific Jazz

Recordings 

Mosaic, 1961-69

Love You Madly

Discovery, 1982

Theme For 

Monterey

Mama, 1998

Detroit

Mack Avenue, 2009

bandleader 

composer 

 arranger 

trumpetER

Born September 4, 1918 in Shelby, MS

Gerald

Wilson

1990

Liston, and replaced the Duke Ellington band at the 

Apollo Theatre when they hit New York. Wilson’s work 

as a composer-arranger enabled him to work for the 

Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie bands. Wilson then 

accompanied Billie Holiday on her tour of the South in 

1949. 

In the early 1960s, he again led his own big bands. 

His series of Pacific Jazz recordings established his 

unique harmonic voice, and showcased the influence of 

Mexican culture—especially the bullfight tradition—in 

his work. His appearance at the 1963 Monterey Jazz 

Festival increased his popularity. 

He has contributed his skill as an arranger and 

composer to artists ranging from Duke Ellington, 

Stan Kenton, and Ella Fitzgerald to the Los Angeles 

Philharmonic to his guitarist-son Anthony. Additionally 

he has been a radio broadcaster at KBCA and a frequent 

jazz educator. Among his more noted commissions 

are one for the 40th anniversary of the Monterey 

Jazz Festival in 1998, which he revisited in 2007 

with his album Monterey Moods, and one for the 30th 

anniversary of the Detroit International Jazz Festival 

in 2009.

G

erald Wilson’s use of multiple harmonies is 

a hallmark of his big bands, earning him 

a reputation as a leading composer and 

arranger. His band is one of the greats in 

jazz, leaning heavily on the blues while 

integrating other styles. His arrangements influenced 

many musicians that came after him, including multiinstrumentalist Eric Dolphy, who dedicated the song 

“G.W.” to Wilson on his 1960 release Outward Bound.

Wilson started out on the piano, learning from 

his mother, then taking formal lessons and classes 

in high school in Memphis, Tennessee. The family 

moved to Detroit in 1934, enabling him to study in 

the noted music program at Cass Tech High School. As 

a professional trumpeter, his first jobs were with the 

Plantation Club Orchestra. He took Sy Oliver’s place in 

the Jimmie Lunceford band in 1939, remaining in the 

seat until 1942, when he moved to Los Angeles. 

In California, he worked in the bands of Benny 

Carter, Les Hite, and Phil Moore. When the Navy sent 

him to its Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago, 

he found work in Willie Smith’s band. He put together 

his own band in late 1944, which included Melba 

Photo by Vance Jacobs
129

Selected Discography

Born February 20, 1937 in Chillicothe, OH

Nancy Wilson

and 

Cannon ball 

Adderley

Capitol, 1962

Yesterday’s 

Love Songs—

Today’s Blues 

Capitol, 1963

But Beautiful

Blue Note, 1969

Ramsey Lewis & Nancy Wilson

Meant ToBe

Narada, 2002

R.S.V.P. (Rare

Songs, 

Very Persona l)

MCG Jazz, 2004

vocalist

broadcaster

Nancy

Wilson

2004

first hit, “Guess Who 

I Saw Today,” came in 

1961. One year later, 

a collaborative album 

with Adderley solidified 

her standing in the jazz 

community and provided 

the foundation for her 

growing fame and career. 

During her years with 

Capitol, she was second 

in sales only to the 

Beatles, surpassing Frank 

Sinatra, the Beach Boys, 

and even Nat “King” 

Cole.

Wilson also has 

worked in television, 

where in 1968 she won 

an Emmy Award for her 

NBC series, The Nancy 

Wilson Show. She has 

performed on The Andy 

Williams Show and The 

Carol Burnett Show and 

has appeared in series 

such as Hawaii Five-O, The Cosby Show, Moesha, and

The Parkers. 

Although she often has crossed over to pop and 

rhythm-and-blues recordings, she still is best known for 

her jazz performances. In the 1980s, she returned to 

jazz with a series of performances with such jazz greats 

as Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and Hank Jones. And 

to start the new century, Wilson teamed with pianist

Ramsey Lewis for a pair of highly regarded recordings.

She has been the recipient of numerous awards and 

accolades, including two Grammy Awards and honorary 

degrees from Berklee School of Music and Central 

State University in Ohio. Wilson also hosted NPR’s Jazz 

Profiles, a weekly documentary series, from 1986 to 

2005.

N

ancy Wilson first found her voice singing 

in church choirs, but found her love of 

jazz in her father’s record collection. 

It included albums by Jimmy Scott, 

Nat “King” Cole, Billy Eckstine, Dinah 

Washington, and Ruth Brown; this generation of 

vocalists had a profound influence on Wilson’s singing 

style. She began performing on the Columbus, Ohio, 

club circuit while still in high school, and in 1956 she 

became a member of Rusty Bryant’s Carolyn Club Band. 

She also sat in with various performers, such as 

Cannonball Adderley, who suggested that she come to 

New York. When Wilson took his advice, her distinctive 

voice enchanted a representative from Capitol Records 

and she was signed in 1959. In the years that followed, 

Wilson recorded 37 original albums for the label. Her 

Photo by Tom Pich
130

Selected Discography

1934-35

Classics, 1934-35

Benny Goodman

The Complete

Small Group

Recordings

RCA, 1935-39

Masters of

Jazz, Vol. 11

Storyville, 1968-80

With Billie

in Mind

Chiaroscuro, 1972

Runnin’ Wild

Black Lion, 1973

Born November 24, 1912 in Austin, TX • Died July 31, 1986 

Teddy

Wilson

1986

pianIST 

arranger 

educator

T

eddy Wilson was one of the swing era’s 

finest pianists, a follower of Earl Hines’ 

distinctive “trumpet-style” piano playing. 

Wilson forged his own unique approach 

from Hines’ influence, as well as from the 

styles of Art Tatum and Fats Waller. He was a truly 

orchestral pianist who engaged the complete range of 

his instrument, and he did it all in a controlled and 

refined manner at the keyboard.

Raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, Wilson studied piano 

at nearby Talladega College for a short time. Among 

his first professional experiences were Chicago stints 

in the bands of Jimmie Noone and Louis Armstrong. 

In 1933, he moved to New York to join Benny Carter’s 

band, known as the Chocolate Dandies, and made 

records with the Willie Bryant band during 1934-35. 

In 1936, he became a member of Benny Goodman’s 

regular trio, which included drummer Gene Krupa, and 

remained until 1939, participating on a number of 

Goodman’s small group recordings. Wilson was the first 

African-American musician to work with Goodman, 

one of the first bandleaders to integrate a jazz band. 

Wilson later appeared as himself in the cinematic 

treatment of The Benny Goodman Story.

During his time with Goodman, Wilson made some 

of his first recordings as a leader. These records featured 

such greats as Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, 

and Ella Fitzgerald. Wilson’s arrangements with Holiday 

in particular constitute some of the singer’s finest work, 

mostly due to Wilson’s ability to find the right sound to 

complement Holiday’s voice and singing style. 

Following his Goodman days, Wilson led his own big 

band for a short time, but most of his work came with 

his own small groups, particularly a sextet that played 

regularly at the famous Cafe Society in New York. In 

1946, he was a staff musician at CBS Radio, and also 

conducted his own music school. During the early 1950s, 

he taught at the Juilliard School, one of the first jazz 

musicians to do so. Wilson’s relationship with Goodman 

was his most noted, and was an ongoing factor in his 

work. He was part of Goodman’s storied Soviet tour in 

1962, and continued to work occasional festival gigs 

with the clarinetist. Photo by Rolf Ambor/CTSIMAGES
131

Selected Discography

Rights of Swing

Candid, 1960

Live at the

Montreux Jazz

Festival

MGM/Verve, 1969

I Remember

Gryphon, 1978

Blues for 

New Orleans

Philology, 2005

The Children’s 

Suite

Jazzed Media, 2007

Born November 2, 1931 in Springfield, MA

Phil

Woods saxophonist

composer 

arranger 

bandleader 

 EDUCATOR

2007

Photo by Michael Wilderman

Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and formed a jazz group with 

Mike Melillo, Steve Gilmore, and Bill Goodwin. With this 

ensemble, he staked his claim to being the finest alto 

saxophonist in mainstream jazz, a reputation confirmed 

by his performances on Images (1975, with Michel 

Legrand), Live from the Showboat (1976), and Billy 

Joel’s 1977 hit recording, “Just the Way You Are,” all of 

which received Grammy Awards. 

In 1975, he received an NEA Music grant that he 

used to compose the work “The Sun Suite,” one of 

more than 200 songs Woods has composed. He has 

recorded several albums with new arrangements of 

famous composers—such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, 

Tadd Dameron, Quincy Jones, and Henry Mancini—and 

in 2006 released a well-received album of standards, 

American Songbook. He remains active internationally 

as a bandleader, composer-arranger, and soloist.

B

orn in Springfield, Massachusetts, Philip 

Wells Woods has devoted himself to the 

alto saxophone since the age of 12. As a 

teenager, he briefly took private lessons 

in improvisation from Lennie Tristano and 

also studied for a summer at the Manhattan School 

of Music. In 1948, he enrolled in the Juilliard School, 

where he remained through 1952, majoring in clarinet 

performance. While at Juilliard, he played for a brief 

period in Charlie Barnet’s dance band. Subsequently, 

he worked with leaders including George Wallington 

(replacing Jackie McLean), Kenny Dorham, and 

Friedrich Gulda and then, joining with one of his 

musical idols, traveled to the Near East and South 

America with Dizzy Gillespie. 

By now established as one of the most brilliant 

alto saxophonists in jazz, Woods went on to perform in 

Buddy Rich’s quintet and toured Europe with Quincy 

Jones (1959-60) and the U.S.S.R. with 

Benny Goodman (1962). From 1964 

to 1967, Woods took a summer break 

from the bandstand, teaching at the 

Ramblerny performing arts camp in 

New Hope, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, 

still much in demand, he performed 

in New York in 1967 both as the 

leader of his own quartet (featuring 

Hal Galper, Richard Davis, and Dottie 

Dodgion) and as a member of Clark 

Terry’s big band. 

In 1968, Woods moved to France 

and formed the European Rhythm 

Machine quartet, with George Gruntz 

on keyboards, Henri Texier on bass, 

and Daniel Humair on drums. His 

talent as a composer blossomed 

during this period, when he wrote 

music for Danish and Belgian radio 

and composed a ballet for French 

television. After disbanding the 

quartet in 1972, Woods returned to 

the United States, settled in Delaware 
132

Selected Discography

Snooky

Young

2009

trumpeter

Jimmie Lunceford

1939-1940

Classics, 1939-40

Count Basie

Kansas City 

Suite

Roulette, 1960

Thad Jones-Mel Lewis 

Orchestra

Live at the

Village

Vanguard

 Solid State, 1967

Horn of Plenty

Concord Jazz, 1979

Gerald Wilson

State Street 

Suite

MAMA Foundation, 1994

Born February 3, 1919 in Dayton, OH 

Died May 11, 2011

K

nown for his prowess 

with the plunger mute, 

Eugene Edward “Snooky” 

Young’s trumpet playing 

was most often heard in 

the context of the big band. For 30 

years, he was heard every weeknight 

as a member of The Tonight Show 

orchestra. 

Young began playing the trumpet 

at age five and by his early teens was 

working in various regional bands. 

From 1939-1942 he made a name for 

himself as lead trumpeter and soloist 

in the Jimmie Lunceford band. From 

1942 to 1947 Young worked with 

Les Hite, Benny Carter, and Gerald 

Wilson, as well as with the Count 

Basie band, where he replaced trumpet 

player Ed Lewis. Young led his own 

band in his hometown of Dayton, Ohio, 

from 1947 to 1957 and continued to 

perform periodically with both Lionel 

Hampton and Basie through the 

early 1960s.

Upon leaving Basie in 1962, Young 

began his longest engagement with 

a band as a trumpeter for the Doc 

Severinsen band on The Tonight Show. 

In 1972, he moved to Los Angeles 

when the show relocated, and remained 

until Johnny Carson left in 1992.

Young continued to work on other projects as well. 

He was a founding member of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis 

Orchestra in 1966, and throughout the 1960s and early 

1970s, he played with a variety of big bands, including 

on recordings by such jazz greats as Louis Bellson, 

Gil Evans, Quincy Jones, Charles Mingus, and Jimmy 

Smith. Young also worked outside of jazz as well, 

playing with the rock group the Band on New Year’s Eve 

in 1971 and on the classic 1976 blues recording Bobby 

Bland and B.B. King Together Again...Live.

Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMA GES

Young also worked with several Los Angeles big 

bands, and issued three albums under his own name, 

including Horn of Plenty, which demonstrated his solo 

gifts as a strong lead trumpeter. Young appeared as 

a soloist at jazz festivals in Montreux, Switzerland; 

The Hague, Holland; Antibes, France; and Concord, 

California. His work appeared on numerous soundtracks 

as well, including The Color Purple. 
1982

Roy Eldridge*

Dizzy Gillespie*

Sun Ra*

1983

Count Basie*

Kenny Clarke*

Sonny Rollins

1984

Ornette Coleman

Miles Davis*

Max Roach*

1985

Gil Evans*

Ella Fitzgerald*

Jo Jones*

1986

Benny Carter*

Dexter Gordon*

Teddy Wilson*

1987

Cleo Brown*

Melba Liston*

Jay McShann*

1988

Art Blakey*

Lionel Hampton*

Billy Taylor*

1989

Barry Harris

Hank Jones*

Sarah Vaughan*

1990

George Russell*

Cecil Taylor

Gerald Wilson

* Deceased

1991

Danny Barker*

Buck Clayton*

Andy Kirk*

Clark Terry

1992

Betty Carter*

Dorothy Donegan*

Sweets Edison*

1993

Jon Hendricks

Milt Hinton*

Joe Williams*

1994

Louie Bellson*

Ahmad Jamal

Carmen McRae*

1995

Ray Brown*

Roy Haynes

Horace Silver

1996

Tommy Flanagan*

Benny Golson

J.J. Johnson*

1997

Billy Higgins*

Milt Jackson*

Anita O’Day*

1998

Ron Carter

James Moody*

Wayne Shorter

1999

Dave Brubeck

Art Farmer*

Joe Henderson*

2000

David Baker

Donald Byrd

Marian McPartland

2001

John Lewis*

Jackie McLean*

Randy Weston

2002

Frank Foster*

Percy Heath*

McCoy Tyner

2003

Jimmy Heath

Elvin Jones*

Abbey Lincoln*

2004

Jim Hall

Chico Hamilton

Herbie Hancock

Luther Henderson*

Nat Hentoff

Nancy Wilson

2005

Kenny Burrell

Paquito D’Rivera

Slide Hampton

Shirley Horn*

Jimmy Smith*

Artie Shaw*

George Wein

2006

Ray Barretto*

Tony Bennett

Bob Brookmeyer*

Chick Corea

Buddy DeFranco

Freddie Hubbard*

John Levy

2007

Toshiko Akiyoshi

Curtis Fuller

Ramsey Lewis

Dan Morgenstern

Jimmy Scott

Frank Wess

Phil Woods

2008

Candido Camero

Andrew Hill*

Quincy Jones

Tom McIntosh

Gunther Schuller

Joe Wilder

2009

George Benson

Jimmy Cobb

Lee Konitz

Toots Thielemans

Rudy Van Gelder

Snooky Young*

2010

Muhal Richard Abrams

George Avakian

Kenny Barron

Bill Holman

Bobby Hutcherson

Yusef Lateef

Annie Ross

Cedar Walton

2011

Orrin Keepnews 

Hubert Laws

David Liebman

Johnny Mandel

The Marsalis Family

2012

Jack DeJohnette

Von Freeman

Charlie Haden

Sheila Jordan

Jimmy Owens

1982-

 2012

133
Nancy Wilson, 

John Levy, 

Ahmad Jamal, 

Ramsey Lewis

Photo by Tom Pich

Frank Foster, 

Dan Morgenstern

Photo by Tom Pich

Hank Jones, 

Barry Harris, 

Billy Taylor 

Photo by Tom Pich

Jazz Masters

Award 

Ceremony

NEA Jazz Masters events include a luncheon for all 

attending NEA Jazz Masters (and a group photo), 

portraits of the new class of honorees, and a special 

concert and awards ceremony. Here are a few candid 

moments from the last few years.

NEA

134

Chico Hamilton

Photo by Tom Pich

George Wein,

Louis Bellson

Photo by Tom Pich

Annie Ross, 

George Avakian

Photo by Tom Pich

Benny Golson,

Jimmy Heath,

Percy Heath

Photo by Tom Pich
David Baker, 

Freddie Hubbard, 

James Moody 

Photo by Tom Pich

Chick Corea,

Roy Haynes,

Ron Carter

Photo by tom pitch

Jimmy Smith, 

Kenny Burrell, 

Slide Hampton, 

Paquito D’Rivera

Photo by Vance Jacobs 

Frank Wess, 

Gerald Wilson, 

Jon Hendricks 

Photo by Tom Pich

135

Quincy Jones, 

Tom McIntosh

by Tom Pich

Ornette Coleman

Photo by Katja von Schuttenbach
136

With an eye—or ear—toward sharing the enriching power of jazz with the public, 

the NEA produces a series of Jazz Moments for radio broadcast. The short radio 

segments (running from 30 seconds to three minutes) are interviews with 

legendary and contemporary jazz artists about their own work and that of other 

artists. They include musical samples, historical information, and first-person 

anecdotes designed to give listeners added insight into NEA Jazz Masters and their art. From the 

more than 200 segments that were created, an accompanying audio CD, produced by Molly Murphy 

exclusively for the NEA, presents the various NEA Jazz Masters’ views on everything from early 

inspiration to first performances to musical influences and mentors. All the Jazz Moments can be 

found on the NEA website at arts.gov. 

Noted jazz bassist, composer, arranger, educator Christian McBride narrates the segments for the 

2011 NEA Jazz Masters and NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis narrates all the Jazz Moments with 

previous NEA Jazz Masters. Poet and jazz writer A.B. Spellman hosts the CD. Listen and enjoy. 

Jazz Mome ts

with NEA 

Jazz Masters 

1. Introduction by

A.B. Spellman

2. Early Inspiration

from Hearing 

Live Music

Kenny Barron (2010)

Muhal Richard Abrams (2010)

Marian McPartland (2000)

Buddy DeFranco (2006)

3. Early Inspiration

from Radio & 

Recordings

Jim Hall (2004)

Cedar Walton (2010)

Toshiko Akiyoshi (2007)

Dan Morgenstern (2007)

George Avakian (2010)

4. Early Inspiration

from Teachers

Johnny Mandel (2011)

Ramsey Lewis (2007)

Curtis Fuller (2007)

5. First Instruments

Roy Haynes (1995)

Yusef Lateef (2010)

George Benson (2009)

Lee Konitz (2009)

Jimmy Heath (2003)

Hubert Laws (2011)

6. First Performing 

Experiences

Quincy Jones (2008)

Bobby Hutcherson (2010)

Buddy DeFranco (2006)

Annie Ross (2010)

McCoy Tyner (2002)

Slide Hampton (2005)

Jimmy Cobb (2009)

Chico Hamilton (2004)

7. Relating to Audiences

Bobby Hutcherson (2010)

Slide Hampton (2005)

8. The Art of

Improvisation

Lee Kontiz (2009)

Jim Hall (2004)

Kenny Barron (2010)

9. Composing and 

Arranging

Yusef Lateef (2010)

Jon Hendricks (1993)

Bill Holman (2010)

Frank Foster (2002)

Gerald Wilson (1990)

Johnny Mandel (2011)

10. Musical Influences 

and Mentors

Snooky Young (2009)

Frank Wess (2007)

Marian McPartland (2000)

Curtis Fuller (2007)

George Benson (2009)

Herbie Hancock (2004)

11. Jazz Education

Wynton Marsalis (2011)

Ellis Marsalis (2011)

Kenny Barron (2010)

Dave Liebman (2011)

12. Why Jazz? 

George Benson (2009)

Jimmy Heath (2003)

Dave Brubeck (1999)

Tracks
The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 

1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the 

NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, 

creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. 

The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, 

local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector.

All NEA Jazz Masters concert photos on inside covers by Tom Pich, 

except top left of back inside by Vance Jacobs.
National Endowment for the Arts

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20506-0001

202.682.5400