NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20506-0001

202.682.5400

Not for sale––Available for free at www.arts.gov

A Great Nation Deserves Great Art.
The National Endowment for the Arts is a public

agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts,

both new and established; bringing the arts to all

Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.

Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent

agency of the federal government, the Endowment is

the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts, bringing

great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner

cities, and military bases.
National Endowment for theArts

America’s Highest Honor in Jazz

25th Anniversary
CREDITS

This publication is published by:

National Endowment for the Arts

Office of Communications

Felicia Knight, Director

Don Ball, Publications Manager/Editor

Designed by:

Fletcher Design Inc., Washington DC

Cover Photo: NEA Jazz Masters Jimmy Heath, Chick Corea, Paquito

D’Rivera, and James Moody take the stage during the 2006 NEA Jazz

Masters concert and awards ceremony at the International Association

for Jazz Education conference in New York City. Photo by Tom Pich

Special Thanks:

Vance Jacobs, Tom Pich, Lee Tanner, and Michael Wilderman for the

use of their photographs. 

Kate Kaiser and Stuart Klawans for their contributions to the text.

The following reference texts were used in researching biographical

information of the Jazz Masters:

All Music Guide to Jazz by Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra,

and Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Backbeat Books

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

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, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20506-0001

(202) 682-5400

Additional copies of this publication can be obtained for free by 

contacting the NEA Web site: www.arts.gov. Additional information

about the jazz artists noted in this publication can be accessed at the

International Association for Jazz Education Web site: www.iaje.org.

This publication was printed on recycled paper.
2007 NEA Jazz Masters iii

A Message from the Chairman

I

t is my great pleasure to introduce the 25th anniversary class of

NEA Jazz Masters. Since the program’s inception in 1982, the title

of NEA Jazz Master has been bestowed upon 90 of the greatest 

living American jazz musicians. 

The NEA Jazz Masters Award is the nation’s highest honor in jazz. It is given to 

individuals who have made a major contribution on this great American art form as a

lifetime achievement award. Since 2004, four non-musicians who have championed 

jazz also have been honored with the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz

Advocacy. 

In addition to honoring achievements in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters initiative has

developed into an ambitious and comprehensive program to honor and promote the art. 

Last year we introduced a groundbreaking jazz education initiative for high school

students, NEA Jazz in the Schools, which was developed in partnership with Jazz at

Lincoln Center and with support from the Verizon Foundation. 

We also have brought jazz to all 50 states through the NEA Jazz Masters on Tour 

program, in partnership with Arts Midwest and sponsored by Verizon, in which 

NEA Jazz Masters presented live jazz performances, master classes, and lectures in 

geographic areas otherwise underserved by high quality live jazz. Additionally, the Arts

Endowment has partnered with Jazz Alliance to support NEA Jazz Masters residencies

on the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The NEA also is supporting the production of nationwide syndicated radio and 

television broadcasts highlighting the lives and careers of individual NEA Jazz Masters,

such as the public television series Legends of Jazz, to further the reach of this unique

American art form. Finally, the agency continues to lend support to major public jazz

archives—among them the Smithsonian Institution—in their efforts to obtain, maintain,

and make permanently accessible to researchers and the public important oral histories

of some of the most significant jazz musicians.

The NEA Jazz Masters honored here are the eminent ambassadors for America’s most

influential musical export. The NEA’s mission is to assist these great musicians by 

lending support to those entrusted with the preservation of our jazz legacy, to assist

organizations focusing on presenting the music, and to provide quality teaching materials for student education to assure future generations of jazz audiences and artists. We

salute the 2007 NEA Jazz Masters, the newest members of this esteemed group. 

Dana Gioia

Chairman

National Endowment for the Arts

Photo by Vance Jacobs
1982–2007

1982ROY

ELDRIDGE*

DIZZYGILLESPIE*

SUN

RA*

1983COUNT

BASIE*

KENNY

CLARKE*

SONNY

ROLLINS

1984ORNETTE

COLEMAN

MILESDAVIS*

MAX

ROACH

1985GIL

EVANS*

ELLA

FITZGERALD*

J

OJONES*

1986BENNY

CARTER*

DEXTER

GORDON*

TEDDY

WILSON*

1987CLEO

BROWN*

MELBA

LISTON*

J

AYMCSHANN

1988ART

BLAKEY*

LIONEL

HAMPTON*

BILLY

TAYLOR

1989BARRY

HARRIS

HANKJONES

SARAHVAUGHAN*

1990GEORGE

RUSSELL

CECILTAYLOR

GERALDWILSON

1991DANNY

BARKER*

BUCK

CLAYTON*

ANDY

KIRK*

CLARK

TERRY

1992BETTY

CARTER*

DOROTHYDONEGAN*

SWEETS

EDISON*

1993JON

HENDRICKS

MILTHINTON*

JOE

WILLIAMS*

1994LOUIE

BELLSON

AHMADJAMAL

CARMENMCRAE*

1995RAY

BROWN*

ROY

HAYNES

HORACESILVER

1996TOMMY

FLANAGAN*

BENNY

GOLSON

J.J. JOHNSON*

1997BILLY

HIGGINS*

MILT

JACKSON*

ANITA O’D

AY*

1998RON

CARTER

JAMESMOODY

WAYNESHORTER

1999DAVE

BRUBECK

ARTFARMER*

JOE

HENDERSON*

2000DAVID

BAKER

DONALDBYRD

MARIANMCPARTLAND

2001JOHN

LEWIS*

JACKIE

MCLEAN*

RANDY

WESTON

2002FRANK

FOSTER

PERCYHEATH*

M

CCOYTYNER

2003JIMMY

HEATH

ELVINJONES*

ABBEY

LINCOLN

2004JIM

HALL

CHICOHAMILTON

HERBIEHANCOCK

LUTHERHENDERSON*

NAT

HENTOFF

NANCYWILSON

2005KENNY

BURRELL

PAQUITO D’RIVERA SLIDE HAMPTON SHIRLEY HORN* JIMMY SMITH* ARTIE SHAW* GEORGE WEIN

2006RAY

BARRETTO*

TONY

BENNETT

BOBBROOKMEYER

CHICKCOREA

BUDDYDEFRANCO

FREDDIEHUBBARD

JOHNLEVY

2007TASHIKO

AKIYOSHI

CURTISFULLER

RAMSEYLEWIS

DANMORGENSTERN

JIMMYSCOTT

FRANKWESS

PHILWOODS

* DECEASED
Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION ..............................................................................1

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE PROGRAM..............................................3

PROGRAM OVERVIEW ....................................................................5

2007 NEA JAZZ MASTERS ...........................................................7

Toshiko Akiyoshi .........................................................................8

Curtis Fuller .................................................................................9

Ramsey Lewis..............................................................................10

Dan Morgenstern .......................................................................11

Jimmy Scott .................................................................................12

Frank Wess .................................................................................13

Phil Woods .................................................................................14

NEA Jazz Master Barry Harris

performs during the 2006

awards ceremony at the

International Association for

Jazz Education conference in

New York City.

Photo by Tom Pich
THERE IS GENERAL AGREEMENT THAT THE

United States has produced three original art

forms: movies, modern dance, and jazz. All

speak to the genius of American culture. Film is

indicative of our ability to convert new technology

into a medium for mass consumption, frequently

achieving the status of high art. Modern dance, 

an indigenous kinesthetic art capable of an

unbounded range of expression, from treatments 

of contemporary issues to pure abstraction. 

And then there is jazz. 

Jazz lives at the very center of the American 

vernacular. It is the gift of the generations of new

urban African American people whose capacity 

for the synthesis of diverse strains of musical forms

brought schottisches, quadrilles, habaneras, and

marches into the bases of the blues and ragtime to

create a whole new way of making music. It was

built on the discipline of collective improvisation, 

a remarkable skill when you think about it, which

allowed for maximum expression of the individual

within the context of the group. Jazz is democratic

and virtually without hierarchy: the composer is one

more collaborator in the group, and even bandleaders

do not stand above the soloists. 

These qualities are entirely appropriate for what

is best about America. The old jazz principle that

“you’ve got to make it new” is so American that it

could go on the dollar bill. These defining qualities

have made jazz arguably the United States’ most welcomed cultural export. It has taken root wherever it

has been planted, moving into and becoming a part

of the cultures of other countries and then becoming

an aspect of their national expression, in the way

that Russian jazz is vastly different from Afro-Cuban

jazz. Some years ago, just after apartheid had fallen,

I heard a young South African ensemble that comprised an Indian pianist, a tabla player, a white

female flutist, and a black bassist. Distinct traces of

each of these musicians’ heritages were audible in

their solos, yet they performed with intimate ease. 

I thought, how marvelous that, as these young people are at a point in history when they can speak to

each other as equals, jazz provides the vocabulary. 

It is no accident that jazz has been a favored

medium of cultural diplomacy. For decades, Willis

Conover’s jazz series on the Voice of America kept

ears open to the United States Information Agency

(USIA) all over the world. Uncounted numbers 

of jazz musicians have traveled abroad under the

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 1

Introduction

A.B. Spellman

Photo by Vance Jacobs
2 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

auspices of the State Department. Many of the

National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters, such

as Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, and Billy Taylor,

have toured the globe as our cultural representatives. 

The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships program was

created to say to jazz musicians that their government values the way that they keep our culture rich

by continually producing such fabulous music.

Mastery is a difficult status to achieve. No creative

discipline has more than a few true masters, for it

takes exceptional talent, dedication, hard work, and 

opportunity to become one. NEA Jazz Masters 

have demonstrated these qualities and more. The

National Endowment for the Arts is honored to 

recognize these great artists for the outstanding 

contributions they have made to American culture.

A. B. Spellman

Poet and Author, Four Jazz Lives

Former Deputy Chairman for Guidelines & Panel Operations

National Endowment for the Arts
2007 NEA Jazz Masters 3

Buck Hill (sax) and NEA Jazz Master Clark Terry (flugelhorn) at the 1991 Awards ceremony.

Photo by Michael Wilderman Amelding of African and European music and

cultures, jazz was born in America, a new

musical form that used rhythm, improvisation, and instruments in unique and exciting ways.

Jazz came to prominence in the early 20th century

on the dance floors of major cultural centers such as

Kansas City and New York. With the advent of sound

recording techniques, the increased availability of

affordable gramophones, and the rise of radio as popular entertainment, jazz quickly conquered the country. By the 1930s and 1940s, jazz had become

America’s dance music, selling albums and performance tickets at dizzying rates and sweeping millions

of fans in foreign countries off their feet. 

By the 1950s, however, with the advent of rock

and roll and the tilt in jazz toward bebop rather than

the more popular swing, jazz began a decline in its

popularity. It was still seen as an important and

exciting art form, but by an increasingly smaller

audience. Jazz was still being exported overseas,

though, especially by Voice of America radio broadcasts and U.S. Department of State goodwill tours

that featured such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie,

Louis Armstrong, and Dave Brubeck. 

By the 1960s, when the National Endowment for

the Arts (NEA) was created by Congress, jazz album

sales were down and jazz performances were becoming more difficult to find. Large dance orchestras disbanded for lack of work, and musicians found themselves in stiff competition for fewer and fewer gigs.

The music, starting with bebop and into hard bop

and free jazz, became more cerebral and less danceoriented, focusing on freeing up improvisation and

rhythm. It was moving to a new artistic level, and if

this high quality were to be maintained, it would

need some assistance. 

NEA assistance to the jazz field began in 1969,

with its first grant in jazz awarded to pianist/composer George Russell (who would later go on to

receive an NEA Jazz Master award in 1990), allowing

him to work on his groundbreaking book, Lydian

Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, the first

major academic work in jazz. In a decade, jazz funding went from $20,000 in 1970 to $1.5 million in

1980 to more than $2.8 million in 2005, supporting a

wide range of activities, including jazz festivals and

concert seasons, special projects such as Dr. Billy

Taylor’s Jazzmobile in New York and the Thelonious

A Brief History of the Program
4 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

Monk Institute of Jazz’s Jazz Sports program, educational jazz programming on National Public Radio,

artists-in-schools programs, and research. 

While the NEA recognized and acted on the need

for public funding for jazz, the pioneers of the field

were rapidly aging, and often dying without the

appropriate recognition of their contribution to this

great American art form. Louis Armstrong and Duke

Ellington, two of the giants of jazz in terms of both

musicianship and composition, both died in the

early 1970s without the importance of their contributions being fully acknowledged and appreciated. 

In an effort to nationally recognize outstanding

jazz musicians for their lifelong achievements and

mastery of jazz, the Arts Endowment in 1982 created

the American Jazz Masters Fellowships—now the

NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships—given to musicians

who have reached an exceptionally high standard of

achievement in this very specialized art form. 

In addition to the recognition, the NEA included

a monetary award of $20,000 for each fellowship.

The rigors of making a living in the jazz field are

well documented. Jazz is an art form to which the

free market has not been kind. Despite their unparalleled contributions to American art, many jazz greats

worked for years just barely scraping by. The monetary award often has provided a much needed infusion of income. 

That such recognition was long overdue is exemplified by Thelonious Sphere Monk, one of the great

American composers and musicians. Monk was

nominated for an NEA Jazz Master Fellowship in the

first year of the program, but unfortunately passed

away before the announcement was made (the fellowship is not awarded posthumously). The three

who were chosen certainly lived up to the criteria 

of artistic excellence and significance to the art form:

Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sun Ra. The

panel in that first year included stellar jazz musicians themselves, including some future NEA Jazz

Masters: trumpeter Donald Byrd and saxophonists

Frank Foster, Chico Freeman, Jackie McLean, and

Archie Shepp. In addition, legendary Riverside

record company co-owner and producer Orrin

Keepnews was on the panel. 

From that auspicious beginning, the program has

continued to grow and provide increased awareness

of America’s rich jazz heritage. In 2004, the number

of fellowships awarded increased from three to six

(in 2005, the number increased to seven), and a new

award was created for those individuals who helped

to advance the appreciation of jazz. In 2005, the

award was designated the A. B. Spellman NEA Jazz

Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy in honor of A. B.

Spellman, a jazz writer, accomplished poet, innovative arts administrator, and former NEA Deputy

Chairman, who has dedicated much of his life to

bringing the joy and artistry of jazz to all Americans.

Additionally, the amount of the fellowship was

increased to $25,000.

In 2005, Chairman Dana Gioia greatly expanded

the NEA Jazz Masters initiative to include several new

programs in addition to the fellowships. A two-CD

anthology of NEA Jazz Masters’ music was produced

by Verve Music Group. NEA Jazz Masters on Tour,

sponsored by Verizon, is bringing jazz musicians to all

50 states throughout 2005-06 for performances, community events, and educational programs. A new arts

education component was created in partnership with

Jazz at Lincoln Center and with support from the

Verizon Foundation, NEA Jazz in the Schools. This

educational resource for high school teachers of social

studies, U.S. history, and music includes a five-unit,

Web-based curriculum and DVD toolkit that explores

jazz as an indigenous American art form and as a

means to understand U.S. history (more information

can be found at www.neajazzintheschools.org). New

broadcasting programming was created, such as 14

one-hour shows on NEA Jazz Masters featured on the

public radio series Jazz Profiles, hosted by NEA Jazz

Master Nancy Wilson, and NEA Jazz Moments, radio

shorts for broadcast on satellite radio XM. Since 2005,

the Arts Endowment has partnered with Legends of

Jazz, a weekly public television series dedicated to

legendary jazz artists and often highlighting NEA 

Jazz Masters. 

Each passing year brings increased international

recognition of the NEA Jazz Masters Awards as the

nation’s highest honor for outstanding musicianship

in the field of jazz. The recipients of the NEA Jazz

Masters Award cover all aspects of the music: from

boogie-woogie (Cleo Brown) to swing (Count Basie,

Andy Kirk, Jay McShann); from bebop (Dizzy

Gillespie, Kenny Clarke) to Dixieland (Danny

Barker); from free jazz (Ornette Coleman, Cecil

Taylor) to cool jazz (Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Ahmad

Jamal); and everywhere in between. What ties all

these styles together is a foundation in the blues, a

reliance on group interplay, and unpredictable

improvisation. Throughout the years, and in all the

different styles, these musicians have demonstrated

the talent, creativity, and dedication that make them

NEA Jazz Masters. 

Celebrating its 25th anniversary in 2007, the

award offers a solid platform for raising worldwide

awareness of America’s rich jazz heritage by not only

honoring those who have dedicated their lives to the

music, but also by leading the way in efforts encouraging the preservation and nourishing of jazz as an

important musical form for generations to come. 
2007 NEA Jazz Masters 5

The National Endowment for the Arts recognizes the importance of jazz as one of the

great American art forms of the 20th century.

As part of its efforts to honor those distinguished

artists whose excellence, impact, and significant contribution in jazz have helped keep this important tradition and art form alive, the Arts Endowment annually awards NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships, the highest honor that our nation bestows upon jazz musicians. Each fellowship award is $25,000.

The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship is a lifetime

achievement award. The criteria for the fellowships

are musical excellence and significance of the nominees’ contributions to the art of jazz. The Arts

Endowment honors a wide range of styles with

awards currently given in the categories of rhythm

instrumentalist, solo instrumentalist, vocalist, keyboardist, arranger/composer, and bandleader. There

is also a special award given to a non-musician, the

A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Master Award for Jazz

Advocacy, which is awarded to an individual who

has made major contributions to the appreciation,

knowledge, and advancement of jazz. 

Fellowships are awarded to living artists on the

basis of nominations from the general public and the

jazz community. The recipients must be citizens or

permanent residents of the United States. An individual may submit only one nomination each year,

and nominations are made by submitting a one-page

letter detailing the reasons that the nominated artist

should receive an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship.

Nominations submitted to the Arts Endowment by

the deadline are reviewed by an advisory panel of

jazz experts and at least one knowledgeable layperson. Panel recommendations are forwarded to the

National Council on the Arts, which then makes recommendations to the Chairman of the National

Endowment for the Arts. Nominations remain active

for five years, being reviewed annually during this

period.

Information on submitting a nomination and on

the NEA Jazz Masters award is available on the NEA

Web site: www.arts.gov.

NEA Jazz Masters Louie Bellson, Roy Haynes, Chico Hamilton, and James Moody at the luncheon for the 2005 

NEA Jazz Masters event in Long Beach, California.

Photo by Vance Jacobs Program Overview

Photo by Lee Tanner 2007 Fellows

BANDLEADER

Toshiko Akiyoshi

SOLO INSTRUMENTALIST

Curtis Fuller

KEYBOARDIST

Ramsey Lewis

JAZZ ADVOCATE

Dan Morgenstern

VOCALIST

Jimmy Scott

SOLO INSTRUMENTALIST

Frank Wess

COMPOSER-ARRANGER

Phil Woods

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.

2007 NEA Jazz Master

Toshiko Akiyoshi
8 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

Over the course of a six-decade career, pianist, bandleader, and composer-arranger 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 opening, 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 Down Beat 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 the 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 Down Beat 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 and will soon be translated into Korean.

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). 

BANDLEADER PIANIST COMPOSER ARRANGER

Toshiko

Akiyoshi

Born December 12, 1929 in Dairen, Manchuria

Photo by Lee Tanner

Long Yellow Road, RCA, 1974-75

Farewell, Ascent, 1980

Carnegie Hall Concert, Columbia, 1991

Four Seasons of Morita Village, BMG, 1996

Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss,

True Life, 2001

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2007 NEA Jazz Masters 9

Aremarkably 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 began his music studies in high school. 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 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, Harvard,

Stanford, the University of Pittsburgh, Duke, 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.

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

TROMBONIST EDUCATOR

Curtis 

Fuller

Born December 15, 1934 in Detroit, MI

S

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Photo by Lee Tanner
10 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

With a style that springs from his early gospel experience, 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, 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 drive-time 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 is the co-producer (with PBS

television station WTTW-Chicago) and

host of a television series of the same

name, which features 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 has

received the prestigious Lincoln Academy of Illinois

Laureate Award in Springfield, Illinois, in April 1997. He

currently tours and performs with his own trio, featuring

Larry Gray on bass and Leon Joyce on drums.

The In Crowd, Chess, 1965

Dancing in the Streets, Cadet, 1968

Ramsey Lewis/Billy Taylor, We Meet Again,

Columbia, 1988-89

Appassionata, Narada, 1999

With One Voice, Narada, 2005

PIANIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BROADCASTER

Ramsey

Lewis

Born May 27, 1935 in Chicago, IL

Photo by Michael Wilderman

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2007 NEA Jazz Masters 11

Director 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 jazzrelated materials anywhere. 

Born in Germany and reared in Austria and Denmark,

Morgenstern came to the United States in 1947. He was

chief editor of Down Beat 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 co-editor

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. 

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 (NARAS); 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 six Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes (1973, 1974,

1976, 1981, 1991, and 1995). He received ASCAP’s Deems

Taylor Award for Jazz People in 1977 and in 2005 for Living

with Jazz.

JAZZ HISTORIAN ARCHIVIST

AUTHOR EDITOR EDUCATOR 

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Photo by Ed Berger

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

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Dan

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Born October 24, 1929 in Munich, Germany
12 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

For more than five decades,

vocalist Jimmy Scott has

numbered the jazz world’s

best singers among 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. 

Born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, where he still lives,

James Victor Scott 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. 

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. Since that time, Scott

recorded two albums for Sire, one for Warner

Bros., and one for Artists Only! before joining

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 three-CD box

set The Savoy Years and More released in 1999, which

included his 1952 recordings for Roost Records and his

1955-75 recordings for Savoy, and 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. He continues to record and

perform frequently. 

Photo by Michael Wilderman

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

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Jimmy

Scott

Born July 17, 1925 in Cleveland, OH

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Amulti-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 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 Down Beat polls and a

now-legendary presence on the jazz scene.

Count Basie, Verve Jazz Masters, 

Verve, 1954-65

I Hear Ya Talkin’, Savoy, 1959

Flute Juice, Progressive, 1981

Going Wess, Town Crier, 1993

Without A Doubt, Koch, 2000

FLUTIST SAXOPHONIST COMPOSER

Frank

Wess

Born January 4, 1922 in Kansas City, MO

Photo by Michael Wilderman

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Born 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 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 wellreceived album of standards, American

Songbook. He remains

active internationally as

a bandleader, composerarranger, and soloist.

Rights of Swing, Candid, 1960

Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival,

MGM/Verve, 1969

I Remember, Gryphon, 1978

Encontro, Philology, 2000

Plays Woods, Philology, 2004

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Photo by Michael Wilderman

COMPOSER ARRANGER SAXOPHONIST BANDLEADER EDUCATOR

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Phil

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Born November 2, 1931 in Springfield, MA
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