| January 26th, 2006 09:02 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
Richard Wagner – Kick-ass classical guy.
Biography by AMG
Richard Wagner was one of the most revolutionary figures in the history of music, a composer who made pivotal contributions to the development of harmony and musical drama that reverberate even today. Indeed, though Wagner occasionally produced successful music written on a relatively modest scale, opera — the bigger, the better — was clearly his milieu, and his aesthetic is perhaps the most grandiose that Western music has ever known. Early in his career, Wagner learned both the elements and the practical, political realities of his craft by writing a handful of operas which were unenthusiastically, even angrily, received. Beginning with Rienzi (1838-40) and The Flying Dutchman (1841), however, he enjoyed a string of successes that propelled him to immortality and changed the face of music. His monumental Ring cycle of four operas — Das Rheingold (1853-54), Die Walküre (1854-56), Siegfried (1856-71) and Götterdämmerung (1869-74) — remains the most ambitious and influential contribution by any composer to the opera literature. Tristan and Isolde (1857-59) is perhaps the most representative example of Wagner's musical style, which is characterized by a high degree of chromaticism, a restless, searching tonal instability, lush harmonies, and the association of specific musical elements (known as leitmotifs, the flexible manipulation of which is one of the glories of Wagner's music) with certain characters and plot points. Wagner wrote text as well as music for all his operas, which he preferred to call "music dramas."
Wagner's life matched his music for sheer drama. Born in Leipzig on May 22, 1813, he began in the early 1830s to write prolifically on music and the arts in general; over his whole career, his music would to some degree serve to demonstrate his aesthetic theories. He often worked as a conductor in his early years; a conducting engagement took him to Riga, Latvia, in 1837, but he fled the country in the middle of the night two years later to elude creditors. Wagner as a young man had some sympathy with the revolutionary movements of the middle nineteenth century (and even the Ring cycle contains a distinct anti-materialist and vaguely socialist drift); in the Dresden uprisings of 1849 he apparently took up arms, and he had to leave Germany when the police restored order. Settling in Zurich, Switzerland, he wrote little for some years but evolved the intellectual framework for his towering mature masterpieces. Wagner returned to Germany in 1864 under the protection and patronage of King Ludwig II of Bavaria; it was in Bayreuth, near Munich, that he undertook the construction of an opera house (completed in 1876) built to his personal specifications and suited to the massive fusion of music, staging, text, and scene design that his later operas entailed. Bayreuth became something of a shrine for the fanatical Wagnerites who carried the torch after his death; it remains the goal of many a pilgrimage today. His attitude toward Jews was deeply ambivalent (he believed, mistakenly, that his stepfather was Jewish), but some of his writings contain anti-Semitic elements that have aroused considerable controversy among opera lovers, especially in view of Adolf Hitler's apparent predilection for the composer's music.
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W.C. Handy – First educated person to document hearing the blues.
Biography by John Bush
W.C. Handy, the "Father of the Blues," brought the music of rural Southern blacks into the mainstream by copyrighting old songs and writing new songs, spurring the blues into the mainstream of popular music during the 1910s and '20s. He was also a highly trained veteran of the music world who led all manner of groups: string quartets, brass bands, and a touring minstrel-show group.
William Christopher Handy was born in Florence, AL, in 1873. His early years were spent living in a log cabin built by his grandfather, a local minister (as was his father). Handy was musical from an early age, and took lessons on the cornet from a local barbershop. After graduating from school near the top of his class, he began working as a teacher in Birmingham in 1893, but quit soon after (due to low wages) and began working at a factory job.
He also founded a string quartet, named the Lauzetta Quartet, and traveled with the band to perform at the World's Fair in Chicago. Though he also toured with the group, Handy was soon teaching again in his home state, this time at the Huntsville Normal School (later to become Alabama A&M). By 1896, he'd hit the road yet again, a three-year hitch playing cornet with the minstrel show Mahara's Minstrels that saw him appearing as far west as Oklahoma and as far south as Cuba. Around the turn of the century, Handy returned to Huntsville Normal and served as its band director from 1900 to 1902. After another short tour with Mahara's Minstrels (this time playing the Northwest), W.C. Handy moved to Clarksdale and became the director of a black band, the Colored Knights of Pythias, which played before both black and white audiences. Handy spent six years based in Clarksdale, where his previous brushes with blues music were intensified by time spent in the nominal home of the blues. Once, in 1903, while waiting for a train in the town of Tutwiler, he heard a musician playing his guitar with a knife and singing about a local spot where two railroads crossed; he later called it "the weirdest music I'd ever heard," but the song stuck in his head and he later copyrighted a song along the same theme, the famous "Yellow Dog Blues."
By 1909, Handy had moved to Memphis, where he published his first song, "Mr. Crump," that same year. Local political heavyweight Edward H. "Boss" Crump was running for mayor that year, and though the candidate was by no means a music fan, an orchestra led by Handy was hired for entertainment, and the song — actually including some serious criticisms of Crump himself — became famous around the city. Three years later, with different lyrics provided by George Norton, it became "The Memphis Blues," though Handy unwisely sold the copyright for 100 dollars. He soon set up his own publishing company (Pace & Handy Music Co., with Harry Pace) in the heart of Memphis' burgeoning entertainment district on Beale Street. In 1914, he published his most famous piece (and one of the most-recorded songs of all time), "The St. Louis Blues," as well as "Yellow Dog Blues." Two years later came "Beale Street Blues," and in September of 1917 Handy's Orchestra of Memphis (a 12-piece band) recorded several sides for Columbia in New York.
In 1918, Handy moved the entire operation to New York, where Handy Brothers Music Company, Inc. set up on another famous entertainment avenue, Broadway. Though he never produced another hit to rank with his compositions of the mid-'10s, the timing was fortuitous; in August of 1920, Mamie Smith recorded Perry Bradford's "Crazy Blues," not just an unlikely hit but a commercial explosion that made the blues as big a phenomenon as ragtime had been during the early '10s. Handy eventually copyrighted over 150 songs of secular and religious material, and Handy's Orchestra continued to record material, for Paramount and OKeh. In 1926, he wrote Blues: An Anthology, which not only compiled sheet music for the most famous blues songs but also attempted to explain their origins. Handy began to lose his vision during the late '20s, but worked steadily during the '30s, publishing Negro Authors and Composers of the United States in 1935, W.C. Handy's Collection of Negro Spirituals in 1938, and Unsung Americans Sung in 1944. He also authored an autobiography, Father of the Blues, in 1941. By 1943, however, his vision had completely failed after a serious fall. In 1954, he married for the second time (his first wife, Elizabeth, had died in 1937) and in 1958, Nat King Cole starred in the biopic St. Louis Blues. W.C. Handy had already died, of pneumonia, in March of that year. His legacy is not just a function of his copyrights; Memphis named a park on Beale Street after him, and the W.C. Handy Blues Awards is the premier awards ceremony for blues music.
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Cab Calloway – Radical swingin’ hep cat.
Biography by Scott Yanow
One of the great entertainers, Cab Calloway was a household name by 1932, and never really declined in fame. A talented jazz singer and a superior scatter, Calloway's gyrations and showmanship on-stage at the Cotton Club sometimes overshadowed the quality of his always excellent bands. The younger brother of singer Blanche Calloway (who made some fine records before retiring in the mid-'30s), Cab grew up in Baltimore, attended law school briefly, and then quit to try to make it as a singer and a dancer. For a time, he headed the Alabamians, but the band was not strong enough to make it in New York. The Missourians, an excellent group that had previously recorded heated instrumentals but had fallen upon hard times, worked out much better. Calloway worked in the 1929 revue Hot Chocolates, started recording in 1930, and in 1931 hit it big with both "Minnie the Moocher" and his regular engagement at the Cotton Club. Calloway was soon (along with Bill Robinson, Ethel Waters, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington) the best-known black entertainer of the era. He appeared in quite a few movies (including 1943's Stormy Weather), and "Minnie the Moocher" was followed by such recordings as "Kicking the Gong Around," "Reefer Man," "Minnie the Moocher's Wedding Day," "You Gotta Hi-De-Ho," "The Hi-De-Ho Miracle Man," and even "Mister Paganini, Swing for Minnie." Among Calloway's sidemen through the years (who received among the highest salaries in the business) were Walter "Foots" Thomas, Bennie Payne, Doc Cheatham, Eddie Barefield, Shad Collins, Cozy Cole, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, Mario Bauza, Chu Berry, Dizzy Gillespie, Jonah Jones, Tyree Glenn, Panama Francis, and Ike Quebec. His 1942 recording of "Blues in the Night" was a big hit.
With the end of the big band era, Calloway had to reluctantly break up his orchestra in 1948, although he continued to perform with his Cab Jivers. Since George Gershwin had originally modeled the character Sportin' Life in Porgy and Bess after Calloway, it was fitting that Cab got to play him in a 1950s version. Throughout the rest of his career, Calloway made special appearances for fans who never tired of hearing him sing "Minnie the Moocher."
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Jimmie Rodgers – The Singin’ Brakeman
Biography by David Vinopal
His brass plaque in the Country Music Hall of Fame reads, "Jimmie Rodgers' name stands foremost in the country music field as the man who started it all." This is a fair assessment. The "Singing Brakeman" and the "Mississippi Blue Yodeler," whose six-year career was cut short by tuberculosis, became the first nationally known star of country music and the direct influence of many later performers, from Hank Snow, Ernest Tubb, and Hank Williams to Lefty Frizzell and Merle Haggard. Rodgers sang about rounders and gamblers, bounders and ramblers — and he knew what he sang about. At age 14 he went to work as a railroad brakeman, and on the rails he stayed until a pulmonary hemorrhage sidetracked him to the medicine show circuit in 1925. The years with the trains harmed his health but helped his music. In an era when Rodgers' contemporaries were singing only mountain and mountain/folk music, he fused hillbilly country, gospel, jazz, blues, pop, cowboy, and folk; and many of his best songs were his compositions, including "TB Blues," "Waiting for a Train," "Travelin' Blues," "Train Whistle Blues," and his 13 blue yodels. Although Rodgers wasn't the first to yodel on records, his style was distinct from all the others. His yodel wasn't merely sugar-coating on the song, it was as important as the lyric, mournful and plaintive or happy and carefree, depending on a song's emotional content. His instrumental accompaniment consisted sometimes of his guitar only, while at other times a full jazz band (horns and all) backed him up. Country fans could have asked for no better hero/star — someone who thought what they thought, felt what they felt, and sang about the common person honestly and beautifully. In his last recording session, Rodgers was so racked and ravaged by tuberculosis that a cot had to be set up in the studio, so he could rest before attempting that one song more. No wonder Rodgers is to this day loved by country music fans.
The youngest son of a railroad man, Rodgers was born and raised in Meridian, MS. Following his mother's death in 1904, he and his older brother went to live with their mother's sister, where he first became interested in music. Rodgers' aunt was a former teacher who held degrees in music and English, and she exposed him to a number of different styles of music, including vaudeville, pop, and dancehall. Though he was attracted to music, he was a mischievous boy and often got into trouble. When he returned to his father's care in 1911, Rodgers ran wild, hanging out in pool halls and dives, yet he never got into any serious trouble. When he was 12, he experienced his first taste of fame when he sang "Steamboat Bill" at a local talent contest. Rodgers won the concert and, inspired by his success, decided to head out on the road in his own traveling tent show. His father immediately tracked him down and brought him back home, yet he ran away again, this time joining a medicine show. The romance of performing with the show wore off by the time his father hunted him down. Given the choice of school or the railroad, Rodgers chose to join his father on the tracks.
For the next ten years, Rodgers worked on the railroad, performing a variety of jobs along the South and West Coasts. In May of 1917, he married Sandra Kelly after knowing her for only a handful of weeks; by the fall, they had separated, even though she was pregnant (their daughter died in 1938). Two years later they officially divorced, and around the same time, he met Carrie Williamson, a preacher's daughter. Rodgers married Carrie in April of 1920 while she was still in high school. Shortly after their marriage, Rodgers was laid off by the New Orleans & Northeastern Railroad, and he began performing various blue-collar jobs, looking for opportunities to sing. Over the next three years, the couple was plagued with problems, ranging from financial to health — the second of their two daughters died of diphtheria six months after her birth in 1923. By that time, Rodgers had begun to regularly play in traveling shows, and he was on the road at the time of her death. Though these years were difficult, they were important in the development of Rodgers' musical style as he began to develop his distinctive blue yodel and worked on his guitar skills.
In 1924, Rodgers was diagnosed with tuberculosis, but instead of heeding the doctor's warning about the seriousness of the disease, he discharged himself from the hospital to form a trio with fiddler Slim Rozell and his sister-in-law Elsie McWilliams. Rodgers continued to work on the railroad and perform blackface comedy with medicine shows while he sang. Two years after being diagnosed with TB, he moved his family out to Tucson, AZ, believing the change in location would improve his health. In Tucson, he continued to sing at local clubs and events. The railroad believed these extracurricular activities interfered with his work and fired him. Moving back to Meridian, Rodgers and Carrie lived with her parents before he moved away to Asheville, NC, in 1927. Rodgers was going to work on the railroad, but his health was so poor he couldn't handle the labor; he would never work the rails again. Instead, he began working as a janitor and a cab driver, singing on a local radio station and events as well. Soon, he moved to Johnson City, TN, where he began singing with the string band the Tenneva Ramblers. Prior to Rodgers, the group had existed as a trio, but he persuaded the members to become his backing band because he had a regular show in Asheville. The Ramblers relented, and the group's name took second billing to Rodgers, and the group began playing various concerts in addition to the radio show. Eventually, Rodgers heard that Ralph Peer, an RCA talent scout, was recording hillbilly and string bands in Bristol, TN. Rodgers convinced the band to travel to Bristol, but on the eve of the audition, they had a huge argument about the proper way they should be billed, resulting in the Tenneva Ramblers breaking away from Rodgers. He went to the audition as a solo artist, and Peer recorded two songs — the old standards "The Soldier's Sweetheart" and "Sleep, Baby, Sleep" — after rejecting Rodgers' signature song, "T for Texas."
Released in October of 1927, the record was not a hit, but Victor did agree to record Rodgers again, this time as a solo artist. In November of 1927, he cut four songs, including "T for Texas." Retitled "Blue Yodel" upon its release, the song became a huge hit and one of only a handful of early country records to sell a million copies. Shortly after its release, Rodgers and Carrie moved to Washington, where he began appearing on a weekly local radio show billed as the Singing Brakeman. Though "Blue Yodel" was a success, its sales grew steadily throughout early 1928, which meant that the couple wasn't able to reap the financial benefits until the end of the year. By that time, Rodgers had recorded several more singles, including the hits "Way Out on the Mountain," "Blue Yodel No. 4," "Waiting for a Train," and "In the Jailhouse Now." On various sessions, Peer experimented with Rodgers' backing band, occasionally recording him with two other string instrumentalists and recording his solo as well. Over the next two years, Peer and Rodgers tried out a number of different backing bands, including a jazz group featuring Louis Armstrong, orchestras, and a Hawaiian combo.
By 1929, Rodgers had become an official star, as his concerts became major attractions and his records consistently sold well. During 1929, he made a small film called The Singing Brakeman, recorded many songs, and toured throughout the country. Though his activity kept his star shining and the money rolling in, his health began to decline under all the stress. Nevertheless, he continued to plow forward, recording numerous songs and building a large home in Kerrville, TX, as well as working with Will Rogers on several fundraising tours for the Red Cross that were designed to help those suffering from the Depression. By the middle of 1931, the Depression was beginning to affect Rodgers as well, as his concert bookings decreased dramatically and his records stopped selling. Despite the financial hardships, Rodgers continued to record.
Not only did the Great Depression cut into Rodgers' career, but so did his poor health. He had to decrease the number of concerts he performed in both 1931 and 1932, and by 1933, his health affected his recording and forced him to cancel plans for several films. Despite his condition, he refused to stop performing, telling his wife that "I want to die with my shoes on." By early 1933, the family was running short on money, and he had to perform anywhere he could — including vaudeville shows and nickelodeons — to make ends meet. For a while he performed on a radio show in San Antonio, but in February he collapsed and was sent to the hospital. Realizing that he was close to death, he convinced Peer to schedule a recording session in May. Rodgers used that session to provide needed financial support for his family. At that session, Rodgers was accompanied by a nurse and rested on a cot in between songs. Two days after the sessions were completed, he died of a lung hemorrhage on May 26, 1933. Following his death, his body was taken to Meridian by train, riding in a converted baggage car. Hundreds of country fans awaited the body's arrival in Meridian, and the train blew its whistle consistently throughout its journey. For several days after the body arrived in Rodgers' hometown, it lay in state as hundreds, if not thousands, of people paid tribute to the departed musician.
The massive display of affection at Rodgers' funeral services indicated what a popular and beloved star he was during his time. His influence wasn't limited to the '30s, however. Throughout country music's history, echoes of Rodgers can be heard, from Hank Williams to Merle Haggard. In 1961, Rodgers became the first artist inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame; 25 years later, he was inducted as a founding father at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Though both honors are impressive, they only give a small indication of what Rodgers accomplished — and how he affected the history of country music by making it a viable, commercially popular medium — during his lifetime.
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Fletcher Henderson – Swing Band Pioneer
Biography by Scott Yanow
Fletcher Henderson was very important to early jazz as leader of the first great jazz big band, as an arranger and composer in the 1930s, and as a masterful talent scout. Between 1923-1939, quite an all-star cast of top young black jazz musicians passed through his orchestra, including trumpeters Louis Armstrong, Joe Smith, Tommy Ladnier, Rex Stewart, Bobby Stark, Cootie Williams, Red Allen, and Roy Eldridge; trombonists Charlie Green, Benny Morton, Jimmy Harrison, Sandy Williams, J.C. Higginbottham, and Dickie Wells; clarinetist Buster Bailey; tenors Coleman Hawkins (1924-1934), Ben Webster, Lester Young (whose brief stint was not recorded), and Chu Berry; altoists Benny Carter, Russell Procope, and Hilton Jefferson; bassists John Kirby and Israel Crosby; drummers Kaiser Marshall, Walter Johnson, and Sid Catlett; guest pianist Fats Waller; and such arrangers as Don Redman, Benny Carter, Edgar Sampson, and Fletcher's younger brother Horace Henderson. And yet, at the height of the swing era, Henderson's band was little-known.
Fletcher Henderson had a degree in chemistry and mathematics, but when he came to New York in 1920 with hopes of becoming a chemist, the only job he could find (due to the racism of the times) was as a song demonstrator with the Pace-Handy music company. Harry Pace soon founded the Black Swan label, and Henderson, a versatile but fairly basic pianist, became an important contributor behind the scenes, organizing bands and backing blues vocalists. Although he started recording as a leader in 1921, it was not until January 1924 that he put together his first permanent big band. Using Don Redman's innovative arrangements, he was soon at the top of his field. His early recordings (Henderson made many records during 1923-1924) tend to be both futuristic and awkward, with strong musicianship but staccato phrasing. However, after Louis Armstrong joined up in late 1924 and Don Redman started contributing more swinging arrangements, the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra had no close competitors artistically until the rise of Duke Ellington in 1927. By then, Henderson's band (after a period at the Club Alabam) was playing regularly at the Roseland Ballroom but, due to the bandleader being a very indifferent businessman, the all-star outfit recorded relatively little during its peak (1927-1930).
With the departure of Redman in 1927, and the end of interim periods when Benny Carter and Horace Henderson wrote the bulk of the arrangements, Fletcher himself developed into a top arranger by the early '30s. However, the Depression took its toll on the band, and the increased competition from other orchestras (along with some bad business decisions and the loss of Coleman Hawkins) resulted in Henderson breaking up the big band in early 1935. Starting in 1934, he began contributing versions of his better arrangements to Benny Goodman's new orchestra (including "King Porter Stomp," "Sometimes I'm Happy," and "Down South Camp Meeting"), and ironically Goodman's recordings were huge hits at a time when Fletcher Henderson's name was not known to the general public. In 1936, he put together a new orchestra and immediately had a hit in "Christopher Columbus," but after three years he had to disband again in 1939. Henderson worked as a staff arranger for Goodman and even played in B.G.'s Sextet for a few months (although his skills on the piano never did develop much). He struggled through the 1940s, leading occasional bands (including one in the mid-'40s that utilized some arrangements by the young Sun Ra). In 1950, Henderson had a fine sextet with Lucky Thompson, but a stroke ended his career and led to his death in 1952. Virtually all of Fletcher Henderson's recordings as a leader (and many are quite exciting) are currently available on the Classics label and in more piecemeal fashion domestically. |
| January 26th, 2006 09:14 AM |
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| Jumacfly |
interesting thread, indeed! |
| January 26th, 2006 01:48 PM |
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| MrPleasant |
I like Voodoo Lounge (1994)!!! |
| January 26th, 2006 01:59 PM |
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| Zanck*Zanck*Zanck |
Richard Wagner is doing the best work he has ever done right this very moment.....Decomposing.
[Edited by Zanck*Zanck*Zanck] |
| January 26th, 2006 04:47 PM |
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| stonedinaustralia |
Tchaikovsky - ahead of his time he was the first to use a cannon as a musical instrument
the 1812 Overture rocks |
| January 26th, 2006 05:36 PM |
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| VoodooChileInWOnderl |
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| January 26th, 2006 07:18 PM |
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| Gazza |
Unusual timing for a thread like this on this board considering the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth is tomorrow!
9 operas, 5 violin concertos and over 30 symphonies by the age of 20.
Prolific little bastard, eh?
[Edited by Gazza] |
| January 26th, 2006 07:23 PM |
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| VoodooChileInWOnderl |
I love Mozart (dad and son), he was a rocker! Imagine a Stones show opening with the overture of "Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serial" and then Jumping Jack Flash as a cover of the original single!
I also use to listen Claudio Monteverdi at work |
| January 26th, 2006 08:34 PM |
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| Ten Thousand Motels |
"Thomas "Fats" Waller began his jazz career early, learned fast, rose quickly, lived hard, and died young. A child prodigy who was playing piano at age six, his life was a furious burst of energy - and it was all reflected in his music."
Born Thomas Wright Waller on 21st May 1904 in New York. His father who was a Baptist minister, disapproved of jazz and it was his wish that Fats should be a church organist, but Fats turned to jazz. However, there remained in his music the serious influence of the religious music he grew up with as a child. As a soloist Fats Waller was one of the outstanding figures of jazz, he paid the most serious attention to acquiring his phenomenal techniques.
Thomas Fats Waller became a professional musician at the age of 15 and was heard in many cabarets and theatres during the twenties, accompanying Bessie Smith and other blues singers as well as playing organ and piano solos. Waller worked in Chicago with Erskine Tate in 1925 and during the late twenties made a name for himself as a composer of popular songs for such shows as 'Connie's Hot Chocolates' (starring Louis Armstrong). Waller compositions which have become standards are among others Ain't Misbehavin', Keepin' Out Of Mischief Now and Honeysuckle Rose.
Pianist Russell Brooks recalls a 16 year old Fats Waller who had just lost his mother Adeline Waller (late in the afternoon of November 8, 1920 Adeline suffered a massive stroke): "One morning I came in to see my mom... I didn't know Fats had moved in but I heard the piano upstairs and I was surprised to see him sitting there. He was teaching himself with a piano roll. He was kind of embarassed. Fats was practicing James P. Johnson's Carolina Shout." (Maurice Waller and Anthony Calabrese, 1977) Duke Ellington says that he also learnt the piece by slowing down his player piano and watching how the keys went down.
"Many pianists had learned indirectly from Johnson by way of his piano rolls, but Waller, a native New Yorker, had the advantage of private tutelage and the prerogative of playing alongside James in public places and at private sessions. He carried the Johnson imprint on his music for the rest of his life." (Joe Goldberg, 1991) "Fats would bang on our piano till all hours of the night," Lil Johnson recalls. "sometimes to two, three, four o'clock in the morning. I would say to him, 'Now, go on home,' or 'Haven't you got a home?' But he'd come every day, and my husband would teach." (Richard Hadlock, 1965)
In 1934 Fats began recording with six piece groups which were known as 'Fats Waller and His Rhythm'. Although Fats Waller was to achieve most of his fame and popularity with these sextets, he did front a rather impressive thirteen-piece band for a short period during the early 1940s. This band appeared mainly in theatres and made only a few recordings, which of course, featured Fats' superior piano-playing and his delightful tongue-in-cheek singing style.
It came as a great shock when Fats died at the age of 39 due to long-term alcohol abuse. However, his legacy was carried on by jazz 'greats' such as James P. Johnson, Count Basie, and Art Tatum.
"Thomas "Fats" Waller began his jazz career early, learned fast, rose quickly, lived hard, and died young. A child prodigy who was playing piano at age six, his life was a furious burst of energy - and it was all reflected in his music.
A genius of the stride piano, Fats was admired and loved in jazz circles everywhere. He was known for his infectious good spirits, his crazy antics as a performer, the derby hat cocked to one side, his spoofing of sappy lyrics, his ability to consume massive quantities of food and liquor - up to twenty-seven pork chops and a bottle of gin at one sitting - and his songs: "Honeysuckle Rose," "Ain't Misbehavin'," "Black and Blue," and hundreds more.
...The public knew Fats as an effervescent, energetic entertainer. His friends saw anoher side, the serious piano stylist and composer. [However, he was also a loyal] family man... [His life is] a story of high hopes, hard struggles, some hilarious incidents, the trials of a black musician in a white-dominated industry, and, ultimately, great commercial success.
Welcome to the world of Fats Waller: Joe Louis, Legs Diamond, George Gershwin - he knew them all; Harlem, Hollywood, Chicago, Paris, London - he saw it all; sex, fame, success, money - he had it all. His incredible gusto made him one of a kind. Fats was a giant, and he might just live, through his music, forever." (Michael Lipskin, 1977)
"[Fats Waller was] a musical wizard who was famous for his reckless energy, bottomless capacity for food and drink, and prodigious talents as composer, entertainer, and piano stylist.
Fats's story is the story of the Harlem rent parties, where jazz flourished in the Twenties, of Tin Pan Alley, "race records," a stormy marriage, some outrageous adventures (including a hair-raising encounter with Al Capone), the desperate years of selling songs for the price of a drink, the countless jazz clubs and one-night stands, and the sweet rise to the top.
It's also the story of a generation of jazz legends, Fats's friends: James P. Johnson, who taught Fats the Harlem Stride piano style, Duke Ellington and Count Basie, whom Fats helped to teach, Louis Armstrong, Irving Berlin, Eubie Blake, Eddie Condon, Andy Razaf, Willie "The Lion" Smith, George Gershwin, and many others.
...The exuberant life and times of a jazz giant with an unmatched zest for life and music" (Maurice Waller and Anthony Calabrese, 1977)
[Edited by Ten Thousand Motels] |
| January 26th, 2006 08:40 PM |
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| Zanck*Zanck*Zanck |
~TEN THOUSAND~
Very Cool and interesting thread (Despite Wagner)
Keep 'em coming!!! |
| January 26th, 2006 08:58 PM |
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| the good |
In 1983, John Bongiovi was being paid $50 a week to work as a "gofer" at New York City's legendary Power Station recording studios. He was running errands, fetching coffee and sweeping floors (the very same ones upon which he often found himself sleeping,) all the while watching the Who's Who of the rock 'n' roll world pass through the front doors. When Jon wasn't working as a gofer, he was working on his own music. At all odd hours of the night, using the empty studios and any lingering musicians he could recruit, John recorded his own original songs.
Armed with a demo tape, John shopped his music to lawyers, managers, record labels and radio stations in New York and LA with little luck. That is until he was approached by Chip Hobart, a DJ at the (now defunct) Long Island/NYC radio station WAPP. WAPP was putting together a compilation album of local unsigned artists and Hobart wanted to include John's song "RUNAWAY" on the LP. John was reluctant. He wanted to sign with a label and record an album, not donate one song to a radio station sampler of homegrown talent. But, with a little convincing, John agreed to let "RUNAWAY" be a part of the album. After that decision, John's life would never be the same.
"RUNAWAY" by John Bongiovi got airplay... lots of airplay (not just on WAPP in New York, but in major markets all over the country that were affiliated with WAPP.) Without John being signed to a label, his song was becoming a hit, breaking nationwide. WAPP booked a handful of live shows to promote the album and wanted John to perform. The problem? John didn't have a band! "RUNAWAY" was one of the tracks John had recorded at the Power Station with a combination of musicians he had wrangled in to help him - they weren't really a band! So, John recruited his long-time friend, Julliard-bound keyboardist DAVID BRYAN, Franke & The Knockouts drummer TICO TORRES and Jersey bassist ALEC JOHN SUCH. On guitar, John asked a neighborhood friend to help him out. John now had the band he needed to play the promotional concerts. Backstage after one of these shows, John was approached by guitarist RICHIE SAMBORA. Sambora declared that HE should be the guitarist for this band. Though initially leery, John was impressed by Sambora's attitude and after hearing him play, was impressed by his talent too.
So, when John Bongiovi finally signed to Mercury Records (several record companies had suddenly come around and tried to sign the young musician,) the band's line-up was as it would remain for more than ten years: JOHN BONGIOVI, DAVE BRYAN, TICO TORRES, ALEC JOHN SUCH and RICHIE SAMBORA. Following label advice, John shed the "h" from his first name and de-ethnicized his last name. He re-emerged as JON BON JOVI and the band BON JOVI was born.
Jon had been approached by a manager who promised to make BON JOVI the biggest band in the world so now DOC McGHEE was overseeing the band's career. They opened for ZZ TOP at Madison Square Garden before the label had released the band's self-titled debut album, BON JOVI, in FEBRUARY of 1984. The record included the proven hit "RUNAWAY" which was released as a single, as well as what would be the second single "SHE DON'T KNOW ME" (a song Mercury requested Jon record and include on the album as part of his deal - to this date, that song remains the only track that has ever been included on a Bon Jovi album for which Jon does not have any writing credit.) "RUNAWAY" broke into the Top 40. MTV played the video and BON JOVI made their debut on American Bandstand.
As was the fashion at the time, the band's look was as much a part of their image as was their music. Tight leather pants and colorful scarves, ripped shirts and elaborate jewelry, big hair and eyeliner... this was the norm. But live performance was how the band would build a following and earn their reputation. After BON JOVI was released, the band hit the road, opening for heavy metal acts SCORPIONS in the United States and KISS in Europe. Solo dates in JAPAN caused mayhem, selling out in three days and certifying the album gold. The band was determined to play anywhere and everywhere in an attempt to reach new audiences and learn from the headliners they were supporting.
In December of 1984, BON JOVI came home from the road and immediately headed in a Philadelphia studio to work on their next album. In APRIL of 1985, BON JOVI released their sophomore effort, 7800o FAHRENHEIT (the album's title was a reference to the supposed melting point of rock.) The band released three singles (with accompanying videos): "ONLY LONELY," "IN & OUT OF LOVE" and the ballad "SILENT NIGHT, all of which received widespread airplay on MTV. While the album did not do as well as they'd hoped in terms of sales, it allowed BON JOVI to get out on the road touring again, exposing them to a vast new audience and fine-tuning their live show.
In April and May of 1985, BON JOVI headlined 3,000 seat venues in Europe and Japan. In May, the band began a 6-month run of U.S. tourdates supporting RATT (in the midst of that tour they managed to make appearances at the Texas Jam andd Castle Donnington's Monsters of Rock concerts in England, plus Jon did a solo appearance at the very first FARM AID.) Self-proclaimed workaholics, by the end of 1985, JON and RICHIE were anxious to get to work on the new material they'd begun to write for album #3.
In April of 1986, BON JOVI packed up and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia to record their third album. Six months of decadent living and non-stop studio work resulted in SLIPPERY WHEN WET. The album, produced by Bruce Fairbairn and recorded and mixed by Bob Rock, was released in JUNE of 1986 and was destined to represent what would become the trademark BON JOVI sound. The first single, "YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME" became the band's first Number One single on the Billboard charts. The follow-up single, "LIVIN' ON A PRAYER," hit Number One as well, spending four weeks at the top position. MTV wholeheartedly embraced BON JOVI, whose camera-friendly good looks and larger-than-life live concert videos helped catapult the band into superstardom.
The album's third single, "WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE," peaked at #7 on the Billboard charts but emerged, and still remains to this day, the BON JOVI "National Anthem" - the band's most recognizable hit. But while all this was happening at home in The States, BON JOVI was out touring, earning their superstar status by proving they were the real deal on stage, night after night after night. This time, when BON JOVI made the trip to Castle Donnington, they were the headliners.
When SLIPPERY WHEN WET was released in April of 1986, BON JOVI was the support act for .38 SPECIAL. By the end of 1986, BON JOVI were well into six months of headline dates in arenas across America (including a sold-out New Year's Eve concert at their hometown venue, New Jersey's Brendan Byrne Arena.) With the overwhelming success of SLIPPERY WHEN WET (it spent 94 weeks on the Billboard charts and eight of those weeks at #1,) BON JOVI were bona fide superstars. While they were determined to succeed based upon musical merits alone, the appeal of the band, especially Jon's cover-boy good looks, made them MTV staples and the chosen wall decoration for many teenagers' walls.
While the band adamantly denounced any labels that tried to define the band as anything other than rock 'n' roll, BON JOVI's melodic hard rock style can be credited with expanding the audience for the late '80s style of "pop metal" to include females. BON JOVI is also largely responsible for opening the floodgates to a slew of hard rock / melodic pop bands that made it big in the latter half of the decade (in the wake of BON JOVI's massive success, A&R departments scrambled to sign copycat bands and touted every up & coming group to be the next BON JOVI.)
Perhaps, JON BON JOVI and RICHIE SAMBORA's most influential performance was on the 1989 MTV VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS. Armed only with acoustic guitars, JON and RICHIE performed "WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE" and "LIVIN' ON A PRAYER." To Jon and Richie, it wasn't much of a big deal; the songs were written on two acoustic guitars and, therefore, stripping them down to their basic form was a natural thing to do. However, the response from those who witnessed the performance, both live at the awards and at home on television, was instantaneous and enthusiastic. This performance has generally been acknowledged (even among MTV staffers) as the inspirational spark that led to the MTV UnPlugged series and the catalyst for the subsequent popularity of the unplugged movement in popular music.
By this point, BON JOVI was bigger than ever. JON appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone. Tickets to BON JOVI concerts were impossible to get your hands on - every show was sold out. Everywhere the band was met with media frenzy and hysterical fans. BON JOVI was a household name. Could it last?
Though exhausted and burnt out from excessive touring, BON JOVI was ecstatic with their newfound success and rushed right back into the same Vancouver recording studios (again with Bruce Fairbairn and Bob Rock at the helm) to work on their next album. Determined to prove that the success of SLIPPERY WHEN WET was not a fluke, the band released their fourth album, NEW JERSEY in OCTOBER of 1998. And prove it they did.
NEW JERSEY was a more mature album, both in terms of musical styles and lyrical content but, the end result was undeniable: massive hits. "BAD MEDICINE" was the first single and it spent two weeks at #1. The follow up singles "BORN TO BE MY BABY," "I'LL BE THERE FOR YOU" (which also hit #1) and "LIVING IN SIN" all charted in the top 10 and were huge hits on MTV. BON JOVI even made the news when the video for "LIVING IN SIN" was banned by MTV for being too risqué (it was re-edited and MTV aired put it in heavy rotation.)
BON JOVI mounted another huge worldwide tour that continued throughout 1989 and 1990. They visited more than 20 countries and performed more than 150 shows before it was all over. The personal highpoint for the band was their June 11, 1989 sell-out HOMECOMING at GIANTS STADIUM in New Jersey. In August of 1989, the band headed to RUSSIA for the MOSCOW MUSIC PEACE FESTIVAL, a 2-day rock concert staged at the Lenin Olympic Stadium to promote two goals: 1) raise awareness about and provide treatment for drug and alcohol abuse among Russian teens and 2) introduce Russia to rock 'n' roll American style. BON JOVI were the first band officially sanctioned by the Russian government to perform in Russia and NEW JERSEY was released on the state-owned record label, Melodiya, a privilege no Western artist had ever been granted before (not the Beatles, not the Rolling Stones... just BON JOVI.) But the non-stop touring was taking its toll on the band. By the end of the New Jersey tour, BON JOVI had 16 months of concerts under their belt and the band members were exhausted -- physically, mentally and emotionally. Finally, after the last tourdate, and without any clear plans for their future, the band members just went home.
Having been originally approached by his friend Emilio Estevez to lend "WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE" as the theme song for his upcoming Billy The Kid sequel, JON BON JOVI ended up composing an all new theme song for the film's soundtrack and delivering his first solo album. In 1990, BLAZE OF GLORY (Songs Written and Performed by Jon Bon Jovi; Inspired by the film YOUNG GUNS II) was released. The song "BLAZE OF GLORY" was a #1 hit. Jon won a GOLDEN GLOBE AWARD for Best Song From a Motion Picture. He also received GRAMMY and the OSCAR nominations for the song and, although he didn't take home either of those statuettes, JON had the honor of performing the song at The Academy Award Ceremonies. Now JON had a Number One hit without the band... and RICHIE SAMBORA had released his own solo album (1990's STRANGER IN THIS TOWN.) The future of the band was terribly unclear.
Disillusioned with the music business, despite all his success, and unhappy with the status quo, in 1991 JON BON JOVI cleaned house. He fired the band's management, business advisors and agents. Starting with a clean slate, JON decided that, yes, there would be a future for BON JOVI. But unable to find someone willing to eat, sleep and breathe BON JOVI like he did, Jon took on the quarterbacking responsibilities himself by closing ranks and creating BON JOVI MANAGEMENT. Now self-managing the band's career, Jon regrouped the members of BON JOVI and headed back into the Vancouver studios with Bob Rock to work on BON JOVI's fifth album.
KEEP THE FAITH was released in November of 1992 to the most critical acclaim the band had ever received. Much more complex, lyrically and musically, the album proved BON JOVI could still be a viable (and very successful) band in 1992, despite the decline of the late '80s pop metal genre into which the band had been lumped and despite the industry's (and audience's) growing affinity for grunge rock. As BON JOVI's sound morphed itself to work in the 90's music scene, their image changed as well. Gone were the excessive rock 'n' roll trappings of spandex and hairspray and hair... CNN carried the news when JON cut his trademark long locks. And, though the media focused far too much attention on Jon's hair (as it always had,) the new look represented what had always been the mission of the band: no frills, just rock.
The album's title track was it's first release, followed by the ballad "BED OF ROSES" which was a huge Top Ten hit. Amidst a landscape filled with flannel-clad Seattle bands, BON JOVI was proving it could emerge from the '80s and not just survive in the '90s, but excel - both on the charts and on the stage. BON JOVI headed out on the road and visited countries the band had never seen before (headlining stadiums in Europe, South America, Asia and Australia.) The second chapter in BON JOVI's career had begun.
To mark the beginning of the band's next phase, in 1994 BON JOVI released a greatest hits compilation entitled CROSS ROAD. The album was expected to do well but no one could have anticipated just how well... Included among the band's biggest hits were two completely new tracks, "SOMEDAY I'LL BE SATURDAY NIGHT" and "ALWAYS," a monster ballad that spent thirty-two weeks on the charts and became one of BON JOVI's all-time hugest hits. The "ALWAYS" single sold more than 3 million copies worldwide. Album sales soared all over the world and BON JOVI's popularity grew and grew exponentially on an international level. But while the album was flourishing on the charts and tallying up sales, the band saw the departure of original bass player Alec John Such. Faced with the first change in their line-up since the band's inception and CROSS ROAD lingering on the charts as a massive hit, BON JOVI had to decide what to do about their next album, which was finished and just about ready to be released....
With Hugh McDonald called in to handle bass duties, BON JOVI opted to tour heavily in support of CROSS ROAD and, while out on tour, THESE DAYS was released in JUNE of 1995. "THIS AIN'T A LOVE SONG" was the first single off the album and with an exotic video filmed in Malaysia, the ballad emerged as another worldwide hit for the band. Critics responded to THESE DAYS much as they had to KEEP THE FAITH, noting that the band had continued to mature lyrically and explore different styles of music, while keeping the music undeniably BON JOVI. The band's popularity continued to grow by leaps and bounds internationally and the summer of 1995 saw BON JOVI merging their CROSS ROAD tour into the THESE DAYS tour. The tour that kicked off in India took the band though Asia, Europe and the Americas before the band's first-ever shows in South Africa. A career highpoint came in JUNE 1995 when BON JOVI sold out three-nights at London's historical WEMBLEY STADIUM in LONDON, ENGLAND. With film crews in tow, the concerts were documented for BON JOVI: LIVE FROM LONDON, a Grammy-nominated video of their record-breaking appearance.
Following the overwhelming success of the THESE DAYS album and tour, the members of BON JOVI went their separate ways. But unlike the period following the NEW JERSEY tour, tainted with uncertainty, this hiatus was a conscious group decision. The members of BON JOVI agreed to a self-imposed two-year sabbatical from the band. Each member pursued outside interests. In 1997, JON released a second solo album, DESTINATION ANYWHERE, and focused more time and attention on the acting career he'd begun in 1994. RICHIE released his second solo album, UNDISCOVERED SOUL. TICO matched his success as a musician when he was recognized as a respected painter and sculptor in the art community. DAVE released a solo album of piano compositions, UNDER A FULL MOON, and began work on movie soundtracks and musical theater projects. The idea was that each band member would explore interests other than the band thus, bringing to the table more experiences upon which to draw once they next regrouped. This time, there was no doubt as to the future of the band. It was merely a question of timing.
Movement towards a new album began in January of 1999 when JON, RICHIE and TICO (no Dave, due only to a hand injury from which he was recovering) convened in, of all places, the former Power Station recording studios to work on the song "REAL LIFE" for the movie soundtrack of EDTV. One year later, the members of BON JOVI stepped into the studio with sixty songs from which would emerge the tracklisting of the seventh BON JOVI studio album.
The question at hand was whether five years between the release of BON JOVI albums would be too big an obstacle for the band to overcome. Signs that the band's following was as devoted as ever were proven when a server-crashing number of Bon Jovi fans logged into www.bonjovi.com to watch a live webcast performance from Sanctuary Sound II studio in February 2000. By the time CRUSH was released (May 2000 internationally and June 2000 domestically,) the first single, "IT'S MY LIFE," was a bona fide smash hit around the globe and was well on its way to becoming a huge hit in America. CRUSH went double platinum in the United States. The band that had become international superstars was reminding the folks back in America just what was so special about one of their best rock exports.
CRUSH debuted on the U.S. Billboard charts at #9. Worldwide it sold more than 7.5 million albums and spawned three singles: "IT'S MY LIFE", "SAY IT ISN'T SO" and "THANK YOU FOR LOVING ME." BON JOVI received two GRAMMY nominations: Best Rock Album for "CRUSH" and Best Rock Performance by Duo/Group for "IT'S MY LIFE." The video for "IT'S MY LIFE" won the MY VH-1 AWARD for "My Favorite Video." BON JOVI played stadiums in Japan and Europe over the summer of 2001 (including two sold-out concerts at London's historic WEMBLEY STADIUM, becoming the last ever concerts held at the legendary venue before it's demolition) - and in just that short span, BON JOVI played to more than one million fans in less than 30 shows.
Upon their return to the U.S. the band did a sold-out arena tour in the Fall of 2000, followed in the Spring of 2001 with a sold-out arena/amphitheatre run of dates in America. They revisited stadiums in Japan and Europe before one more victory lap of shed dates in America, all of which led up to the most triumphant declaration that BON JOVI was bigger than ever: In July 2001, BON JOVI sold-out two homecoming concerts at New Jersey's GIANTS STADIUM. The Friday and Saturday concerts, filmed for VH-1 and aired on Sunday night, were not only fulfilling career and personal highlights for the band but the broadcast broke ratings records for the VH-1 network.
While the band was out touring in 2001, they released ONE WILD NIGHT: LIVE 1985-2001. This was BON JOVI's first-ever live album. The songs were culled from archives of recorded material the band had been collecting from their earliest days on the road right through the current tour. Considered by the band to be a "snapshot" of Bon Jovi in concert over the years, to date the live album has sold more than 2 million copies. And, to solidify what concertgoers and Bon Jovi fans had known all along, BON JOVI received the 2002 MY VH-1 AWARD for "HOTTEST LIVE SHOW." (It was at this same awards show that Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora surprised a live theatre full of attendees and a live television audience with a beautiful rendition of "Here Comes The Sun" as a tribute to the recently-deceased George Harrison.)
When the CRUSH and ONE WILD NIGHT tours were complete, the members of BON JOVI had anticipated a brief vacation before work would begin on the band's 8th studio album. But on September 11th, the world changed. Within days of the terrorist attacks, JON and RICHIE had filmed Public Service Announcements for the Red Cross, recorded AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL for the NFL and performed as part of the historic A TRIBUTE TO HEROES live telethon. One month later, the band participated at two Monmouth County Alliance of Neighbors concerts in Red Bank, NJ to raise funds for the families close the band's hometowns, which were affected by the World Trade Center disaster. And on October 21st, BON JOVI performed at the monumental CONCERT FOR NEW YORK at Madison Square Garden, raising relief funds and honoring those who worked to save lives during the terror.
JON and RICHIE had already begun songwriting together in New Jersey when the terrorist attacks took place. Greatly moved by what they witnessed, they continued the writing process and emerged with a fresh new batch of songs inspired by the tragedy. Despite the horrific events that may have served as inspirations for aspects of the new songs, JON and RICHIE promise the songs themselves are optimistic and uplifting. The songs are not about the horror, but about the human condition and spirit in the wake of that day.
In March 2002, BON JOVI entered the recording studio to begin recording their 8th studio album, BOUNCE. The title is a subtle reference not only to New York City's and the United States' ability to bounce back from the World Trade Center attacks as a nation but, it also refers to BON JOVI and the band's ability to bounce back again and again, over the years. BON JOVI has proven they are a formidable force. Music trends come and go but good songs stand the test of time... and so do BON JOVI, who have more good songs they're looking forward to sharing with the world in the Fall of 2002. One can only imagine what the future will bring for BON JOVI and their fans... but one thing's for sure: BON JOVI keeps going.
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| January 27th, 2006 12:56 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
Bon Jov-eye? I for the life of me can't figure out how anybody could confuse the word "old" with "shitty!"
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| January 27th, 2006 01:22 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
Chu Berry – Excellent saxophonist cut short way before his time.
"It might have been," said the poet, are the saddest of words. in a way, that is part of the story of Leon "Chu" Berry, a Wheeling, West Virginia native who during his short life became the jazz world's dominant tenor saxophone player.
Had Berry's life not been cut short when he died at age 33 as the result of an automobile accident, he probably could have become the most significant jazz saxophonist of the 20th century.
But what he did achieve was enough. Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University, says of Berry, "Considering the brevity of 'Chu's' life, and that his recording career spans a mere decade, it is remarkable that his name continues to loom large in the annals of jazz. had he lived, there is no doubt thathe would be ensconced in the jazz pantheon alongside Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. He was that good."
Even today, Branford Marsalis, James Carter and other leading young exponents of the tenor saxophone mention "Chu" prominently among their musical ancestors.
"Chu" Berry was born in Wheeling on Sept. 13, 1908, the son of Brown Berry and Maggie Glasgow Berry. He died on Oct. 31, 1941, near Conneaut Lake, Ohio, as the result of injuries he received in an accident three days earlier while a passenger in an auto taking members of the Cab Calloway Band to Canada for a job.
Born into a relatively well-to-do family that included a "very musical" half sister who played piano in a jazz trio that rehearsed in the Berry home, "Chu's" love of music and the saxophone was born.
Inspired by Coleman Hawkins (whom he heard on tour) to take up the saxophone, he played the alto instrument while at Lincoln High School in Wheeling and at West Virginia State College in Charleston. After playing with his sister for high school dances, Berry's first band experience occurred in a 15-piece group in Wheeling and a college band in Charleston.
In summer 1928, Berry returned to the Ohio Valley after a year in college and joined the "swingingest jazz band around," Perry's Broadway Buddies, a fixture at the old state fairgrounds on Wheeling Island and at the old Henry Clay Tavern beyond West Alexander.
In 1929, he received his first nationally important professional engagement when he joined the Sammy Stewart band in Columbus and Chicago. Within months he made his first foray into New York and its jazz scene.
He switched from alto sax to tenor sax after he joined the Stewart band and met and performed with tenor saxophonist Cecil Scott's band.
Among the major groups with which he played were the bands of Benny Carter, Teddy Hill, Fletcher Henderson (to whom he contributed the song "Christopher Columbus") and ultimately Cab Calloway. He performed as sideman or on recordings with many of the best known artists of the era from Bessie Smith to Count Basie.
The magazine Metronome named Berry to its All-Star Band for 1937 and again in 1938. With Berry as 4th tenor sax player, the leaders of this mythical band were no less than Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman. In addition to Berry, members included Jimmy Dorsey on lead sax, Goodman on clarinet, Harry James on lead trumpet, Jack Teagarden on hot trombone, Teddy Wilson on piano, Bob Haggart on bass, Gene Krupa on drums and Ella Fitzgerald as "girl singer."
As a member of Cab Calloway's Cotton Club Orchestra, Berry also was chosen as the tenor saxophonist for the Colliers Weekly All-American Dance Orchestra as selected by Paul Whiteman, "the dean of American music."
According to The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Berry was "strongly influenced by Coleman Hawkins, but soon developed his own distinctive style ... His sound was less voluptuous than Hawkins' and its melodic imagination not as fertile, but he was the older man's equal in harmonic sophistication and his superior when it came to swing and drive. Berry excelled at performing in fast tempos, where his remarkable breath control, unerring sense of time, and even, strong tone production stood him in good stead."
Despite his short life, Berry managed to secure for himself the ultimate accolade of being regarded as a muscian's musician. When Berry died, Calloway said it was "like losing a brother."
Berry's own inspiration, Coleman Hawkins, said of him, "'Chu' was about the best."
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LEON BERRY RITES SUNDAY AFTERNOON
Obsequies will be conducted in Simpson Methodist church Sunday afternoon at 2:30 o'clock for Leon (Chu) Berry, 33, native of this city and featured saxaphonist with Cab Calloway's orchestra, who was fatally hurt in an automobile accident near Conneat, Ohio, early Monday.
Rev. Mapson F. Hayling, church pastor, will officiate and burial is to follow in Peninsula cemetery.
"Chu" Berry, as he was known, had been connected with prominent dance bands over a period of years. The Calloway orchestra had just completed an engagement at Conneaut Lake Sunday night and Berry and another member of the group were en route to Toronto, Canada, to fill an engagement when the accident occurred. Their car struck a stone bridge abutment during a heavy fog.
Berry is survived by his wife, his mother, one sister, a step-daughter and a stepgrandson.
The body will remain in the Kepner chapel until 2 o'clock Sunday afternoon when it will be taken to the church. ---Wheeling Intelligencer, Nov. 1, 1941.
http://wheeling.weirton.lib.wv.us/people/hallfame/1998berr.htm
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Bird Parker – Greatest Saxophonist of All Time
Biography by Scott Yanow
One of a handful of musicians who can be said to have permanently changed jazz, Charlie Parker was arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time. He could play remarkably fast lines that, if slowed down to half speed, would reveal that every note made sense. "Bird," along with his contemporaries Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, is considered a founder of bebop; in reality he was an intuitive player who simply was expressing himself. Rather than basing his improvisations closely on the melody as was done in swing, he was a master of chordal improvising, creating new melodies that were based on the structure of a song. In fact, Bird wrote several future standards (such as "Anthropology," "Ornithology," "Scrapple From the Apple," and "Ko Ko," along with such blues numbers as "Now's the Time" and "Parker's Mood") that "borrowed" and modernized the chord structures of older tunes. Parker's remarkable technique, fairly original sound, and ability to come up with harmonically advanced phrases that could be both logical and whimsical were highly influential. By 1950, it was impossible to play "modern jazz" with credibility without closely studying Charlie Parker.
Born in Kansas City, KS, Charlie Parker grew up in Kansas City, MO. He first played baritone horn before switching to alto. Parker was so enamored of the rich Kansas City music scene that he dropped out of school when he was 14, even though his musicianship at that point was questionable (with his ideas coming out faster than his fingers could play them). After a few humiliations at jam sessions, Bird worked hard woodshedding over one summer, building up his technique and mastery of the fundamentals. By 1937, when he first joined Jay McShann's Orchestra, he was already a long way toward becoming a major player.
Charlie Parker, who was early on influenced by Lester Young and the sound of Buster Smith, visited New York for the first time in 1939, working as a dishwasher at one point so he could hear Art Tatum play on a nightly basis. He made his recording debut with Jay McShann in 1940, creating remarkable solos with a small group from McShann's orchestra on "Lady Be Good" and "Honeysuckle Rose." When the McShann big band arrived in New York in 1941, Parker had short solos on a few of their studio blues records, and his broadcasts with the orchestra greatly impressed (and sometimes scared) other musicians who had never heard his ideas before. Parker, who had met and jammed with Dizzy Gillespie for the first time in 1940, had a short stint with Noble Sissle's band in 1942, played tenor with Earl Hines' sadly unrecorded bop band of 1943, and spent a few months in 1944 with Billy Eckstine's orchestra, leaving before that group made their first records. Gillespie was also in the Hines and Eckstine big bands, and the duo became a team starting in late 1944.
Although Charlie Parker recorded with Tiny Grimes' combo in 1944, it was his collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945 that startled the jazz world. To hear the two virtuosos play rapid unisons on such new songs as "Groovin' High," "Dizzy Atmosphere," "Shaw 'Nuff," "Salt Peanuts," and "Hot House," and then launch into fiery and unpredictable solos could be an upsetting experience for listeners much more familiar with Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. Although the new music was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the recording strike of 1943-1944 resulted in bebop arriving fully formed on records, seemingly out of nowhere.
Unfortunately, Charlie Parker was a heroin addict ever since he was a teenager, and some other musicians who idolized Bird foolishly took up drugs in the hope that it would elevate their playing to his level. When Gillespie and Parker (known as "Diz & Bird") traveled to Los Angeles and were met with a mixture of hostility and indifference (except by younger musicians who listened closely), they decided to return to New York. Impulsively, Parker cashed in his ticket, ended up staying in L.A., and, after some recordings and performances (including a classic version of "Lady Be Good" with Jazz at the Philharmonic), the lack of drugs (which he combated by drinking an excess of liquor) resulted in a mental breakdown and six months of confinement at the Camarillo State Hospital. Released in January 1947, Parker soon headed back to New York and engaged in some of the most rewarding playing of his career, leading a quintet that included Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, and Max Roach. Parker, who recorded simultaneously for the Savoy and Dial labels, was in peak form during the 1947-1951 period, visiting Europe in 1949 and 1950, and realizing a lifelong dream to record with strings starting in 1949 when he switched to Norman Granz's Verve label.
But Charlie Parker, due to his drug addiction and chance-taking personality, enjoyed playing with fire too much. In 1951, his cabaret license was revoked in New York (making it difficult for him to play in clubs) and he became increasingly unreliable. Although he could still play at his best when he was inspired (such as at the 1953 Massey Hall concert with Gillespie), Bird was heading downhill. In 1954, he twice attempted suicide before spending time in Bellevue. His health, shaken by a very full if brief life of excesses, gradually declined, and when he died in March 1955 at the age of 34, he could have passed for 64.
Charlie Parker, who was a legendary figure during his lifetime, has if anything grown in stature since his death. Virtually all of his studio recordings are available on CD along with a countless number of radio broadcasts and club appearances. Clint Eastwood put together a well-intentioned if simplified movie about aspects of his life (Bird). Parker's influence, after the rise of John Coltrane, has become more indirect than direct, but jazz would sound a great deal different if Charlie Parker had not existed. The phrase "Bird Lives" (which was scrawled as graffiti after his death) is still very true.
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The King of All, Sir Duke!
Biography by William Ruhlmann
Duke Ellington was the most important composer in the history of jazz as well as being a bandleader who held his large group together continuously for almost 50 years. The two aspects of his career were related; Ellington used his band as a musical laboratory for his new compositions and shaped his writing specifically to showcase the talents of his bandmembers, many of whom remained with him for long periods. Ellington also wrote film scores and stage musicals, and several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. In addition to touring year in and year out, he recorded extensively, resulting in a gigantic body of work that was still being assessed a quarter century after his death.
Ellington was the son of a White House butler, James Edward Ellington, and thus grew up in comfortable surroundings. He began piano lessons at age seven and was writing music by his teens. He dropped out of high school in his junior year in 1917 to pursue a career in music. At first, he booked and performed in bands in the Washington, D.C., area, but in September 1923 the Washingtonians, a five-piece group of which he was a member, moved permanently to New York, where they gained a residency in the Times Square venue The Hollywood Club (later The Kentucky Club). They made their first recordings in November 1924, and cut tunes for different record companies under a variety of pseudonyms, so that several current major labels, notably Sony, Universal, and BMG, now have extensive holdings of their work from the period in their archives, which are reissued periodically.
The group gradually increased in size and came under Ellington's leadership. They played in what was called "jungle" style, their sly arrangements often highlighted by the muted growling sound of trumpeter James "Bubber" Miley. A good example of this is Ellington's first signature song, "East St. Louis Toodle-oo," which the band first recorded for Vocalion Records in November 1926, and which became their first chart single in a re-recorded version for Columbia in July 1927.
The Ellington band moved uptown to The Cotton Club in Harlem on December 4, 1927. Their residency at the famed club, which lasted more than three years, made Ellington a nationally known musician due to radio broadcasts that emanated from the bandstand. In 1928, he had two two-sided hits: "Black and Tan Fantasy"/"Creole Love Call" on Victor (now BMG) and "Doin' the New Low Down"/"Diga Diga Doo" on OKeh (now Sony), released as by the Harlem Footwarmers. "The Mooche" on OKeh peaked in the charts at the start of 1929.
While maintaining his job at The Cotton Club, Ellington took his band downtown to play in the Broadway musical Show Girl, featuring the music of George Gershwin, in the summer of 1929. The following summer, the band took a leave of absence to head out to California and appear in the film Check and Double Check. From the score, "Three Little Words," with vocals by the Rhythm Boys featuring Bing Crosby, became a number one hit on Victor in November 1930; its flip side, "Ring Dem Bells," also reached the charts.
The Ellington band left The Cotton Club in February 1931 to begin a tour that, in a sense, would not end until the leader's death 43 years later. At the same time, Ellington scored a Top Five hit with an instrumental version of one of his standards, "Mood Indigo" released on Victor. The recording was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. As "the Jungle Band," the Ellington Orchestra charted on Brunswick later in 1931 with "Rockin' in Rhythm" and with the lengthy composition "Creole Rhapsody," pressed on both sides of a 78 single, an indication that Ellington's goals as a writer were beginning to extend beyond brief works. (A second version of the piece was a chart entry on Victor in March 1932.) "Limehouse Blues" was a chart entry on Victor in August 1931, then in the winter of 1932, Ellington scored a Top Ten hit on Brunswick with one of his best-remembered songs, "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)," featuring the vocals of Ivie Anderson. This was still more than three years before the official birth of the swing era, and Ellington helped give the period its name. Ellington's next major hit was another signature song for him, "Sophisticated Lady." His instrumental version became a Top Five hit in the spring of 1933, with its flip side, a treatment of "Stormy Weather," also making the Top Five.
The Ellington Orchestra made another feature film, Murder at the Vanities, in the spring of 1934. Their instrumental rendition of "Cocktails for Two" from the score hit number one on Victor in May, and they hit the Top Five with both sides of the Brunswick release "Moon Glow"/"Solitude" that fall. The band also appeared in the Mae West film Belle of the Nineties and played on the soundtrack of Many Happy Returns. Later in the fall, the band was back in the Top Ten with "Saddest Tale," and they had two Top Ten hits in 1935, "Merry-Go-Round" and "Accent on Youth." While the latter was scoring in the hit parade in September, Ellington recorded another of his extended compositions, "Reminiscing in Tempo," which took up both sides of two 78s. Even as he became more ambitious, however, he was rarely out of the hit parade, scoring another Top Ten hit, "Cotton," in the fall of 1935, and two more, "Love Is Like a Cigarette" and "Oh Babe! Maybe Someday," in 1936. The band returned to Hollywood in 1936 and recorded music for the Marx Brothers' film A Day at the Races and for Hit Parade of 1937. Meanwhile, they were scoring Top Ten hits with "Scattin' at the Kit-Kat" and the swing standard "Caravan," co-written by valve trombonist Juan Tizol, and Ellington was continuing to pen extended instrumental works such as "Diminuendo in Blue" and "Crescendo in Blue." "If You Were in My Place (What Would You Do?)," a vocal number featuring Ivie Anderson, was a Top Ten hit in the spring of 1938, and Ellington scored his third number one hit in April with an instrumental version of another standard, "I Let a Song Go out of My Heart." In the fall, he was back in the Top Ten with a version of the British show tune "Lambeth Walk."
The Ellington band underwent several notable changes at the end of the 1930s. After several years recording more or less regularly for Brunswick, Ellington moved to Victor. In early 1939 Billy Strayhorn, a young composer, arranger, and pianist, joined the organization. He did not usually perform with the orchestra, but he became Ellington's composition partner to the extent that soon it was impossible to tell where Ellington's writing left off and Strayhorn's began. Two key personnel changes strengthened the outfit with the acquisition of bassist Jimmy Blanton in September and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster in December. Their impact on Ellington's sound was so profound that their relatively brief tenure has been dubbed "the Blanton-Webster Band" by jazz fans. These various changes were encapsulated by the Victor release of Strayhorn's "Take the 'A' Train," a swing era standard, in the summer of 1941. The recording was later inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
That same summer, Ellington was in Los Angeles, where his stage musical, Jump for Joy, opened on July 10 and ran for 101 performances. Unfortunately, the show never went to Broadway, but among its songs was "I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)," another standard. The U.S. entry into World War II in December 1941 and the onset of the recording ban called by the American Federation of Musicians in August 1942 slowed the Ellington band's momentum. Unable to record and with touring curtailed, Ellington found an opportunity to return to extended composition with the first of a series of annual recitals at Carnegie Hall on January 23, 1943, at which he premiered "Black, Brown and Beige." And he returned to the movies, appearing in Cabin in the Sky and Reveille with Beverly. Meanwhile, the record labels, stymied for hits, began looking into their artists' back catalogs. Lyricist Bob Russell took Ellington's 1940 composition "Never No Lament" and set a lyric to it, creating "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." The Ink Spots scored with a vocal version (recorded a cappella), and Ellington's three-year-old instrumental recording was also a hit, reaching the pop Top Ten and number one on the recently instituted R&B charts. Russell repeated his magic with another 1940 Ellington instrumental, "Concerto for Cootie" (a showcase for trumpeter Cootie Williams), creating "Do Nothin' Till You Hear from Me." Nearly four years after it was recorded, the retitled recording hit the pop Top Ten and number one on the R&B charts for Ellington in early 1944, while newly recorded vocal cover versions also scored. Ellington's vintage recordings became ubiquitous on the top of the R&B charts during 1943-1944; he also hit number one with "A Slip of the Lip (Can Sink a Ship)," "Sentimental Lady," and "Main Stem." With the end of the recording ban in November 1944, Ellington was able to record a song he had composed with his saxophonist, Johnny Hodges, set to a lyric by Don George and Harry James, "I'm Beginning to See the Light." The James recording went to number one in April 1945, but Ellington's recording was also a Top Ten hit.
With the end of the war, Ellington's period as a major commercial force on records largely came to an end, but unlike other big bandleaders, who disbanded as the swing era passed, Ellington, who predated the era, simply went on touring, augmenting his diminished road revenues with his songwriting royalties to keep his band afloat. In a musical climate in which jazz was veering away from popular music and toward bebop, and popular music was being dominated by singers, the Ellington band no longer had a place at the top of the business; but it kept working. And Ellington kept trying more extended pieces. In 1946, he teamed with lyricist John Latouche to write the music for the Broadway musical Beggar's Holiday, which opened on December 26 and ran 108 performances. And he wrote his first full-length background score for a feature film with 1950's The Asphalt Jungle.
The first half of the 1950s was a difficult period for Ellington, who suffered many personnel defections. (Some of those musicians returned later.) But the band made a major comeback at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 7, 1956, when they kicked into a version of "Dimuendo and Crescendo in Blue" that found saxophonist Paul Gonsalves taking a long, memorable solo. Ellington appeared on the cover of Time magazine, and he signed a new contract with Columbia Records, which released Ellington at Newport, the best-selling album of his career. Freed of the necessity of writing hits and spurred by the increased time available on the LP record, Ellington concentrated more on extended compositions for the rest of his career. His comeback as a live performer led to increased opportunities to tour, and in the fall of 1958 he undertook his first full-scale tour of Europe. For the rest of his life, he would be a busy world traveler.
Ellington appeared in and scored the 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder, and its soundtrack won him three of the newly instituted Grammy Awards, for best performance by a dance band, best musical composition of the year, and best soundtrack. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his next score, Paris Blues (1961). In August 1963, his stage work My People, a cavalcade of African-American history, was mounted in Chicago as part of the Century of Negro Progress Exposition.
Meanwhile, of course, he continued to lead his band in recordings and live performances. He switched from Columbia to Frank Sinatra's Reprise label (purchased by Warner Bros. Records) and made some pop-oriented records that dismayed his fans but indicated he had not given up on broad commercial aspirations. Nor had he abandoned his artistic aspirations, as the first of his series of sacred concerts, performed at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco on September 16, 1965, indicated. And he still longed for a stage success, turning once again to Broadway with the musical Pousse-Café, which opened on March 18, 1966, but closed within days. Three months later, the Sinatra film Assault on a Queen, with an Ellington score, opened in movie houses around the country. (His final film score, for Change of Mind, appeared in 1969.)
Ellington became a Grammy favorite in his later years. He won a 1966 Grammy for best original jazz composition for "In the Beginning, God," part of his sacred concerts. His 1967 album Far East Suite, inspired by a tour of the Middle and Far East, won the best instrumental jazz performance Grammy that year, and he took home his sixth Grammy in the same category in 1969 for And His Mother Called Him Bill, a tribute to Strayhorn, who had died in 1967. "New Orleans Suite" earned another Grammy in the category in 1971, as did "Togo Brava Suite" in 1972, and the posthumous The Ellington Suites in 1976.
Ellington continued to perform regularly until he was overcome by illness in the spring of 1974, succumbing to lung cancer and pneumonia. His death did not end the band, which was taken over by his son Mercer, who led it until his own death in 1996, and then by a grandson. Meanwhile, Ellington finally enjoyed the stage hit he had always wanted when the revue Sophisticated Ladies, featuring his music, opened on Broadway on March 1, 1981, and ran 767 performances.
The many celebrations of the Ellington centenary in 1999 demonstrated that he continued to be regarded as the major composer of jazz. If that seemed something of an anomaly in a musical style that emphasizes spontaneous improvisation over written composition, Ellington was talented enough to overcome the oddity. He wrote primarily for his band, allowing his veteran players room to solo within his compositions, and as a result created a body of work that seemed likely to help jazz enter the academic and institutional realms, which was very much its direction at the end of the 20th century. In that sense, he foreshadowed the future of jazz and could lay claim to being one of its most influential practitioners.
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He Taught Us How to Swing
Biography by William Ruhlmann
Louis Armstrong was the first important soloist to emerge in jazz, and he became the most influential musician in the music's history. As a trumpet virtuoso, his playing, beginning with the 1920s studio recordings made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven ensembles, charted a future for jazz in highly imaginative, emotionally charged improvisation. For this, he is revered by jazz fans. But Armstrong also became an enduring figure in popular music, due to his distinctively phrased bass singing and engaging personality, which were on display in a series of vocal recordings and film roles. Armstrong had a difficult childhood. William Armstrong, his father, was a factory worker who abandoned the family soon after the boy's birth. Armstrong was brought up by his mother, Mary (Albert) Armstrong, and his maternal grandmother. He showed an early interest in music, and a junk dealer for whom he worked as a grade-school student helped him buy a cornet, which he taught himself to play. He dropped out of school at 11 to join an informal group, but on December 31, 1912, he fired a gun during a New Year's Eve celebration, for which he was sent to reform school. He studied music there and played cornet and bugle in the school band, eventually becoming its leader. He was released on June 16, 1914, and did manual labor while trying to establish himself as a musician. He was taken under the wing of cornetist Joe "King" Oliver, and when Oliver moved to Chicago in June 1918, he replaced him in the Kid Ory Band. He moved to the Fate Marable band in the spring of 1919, staying with Marable until the fall of 1921. Armstrong moved to Chicago to join Oliver's band in August 1922 and made his first recordings as a member of the group in the spring of 1923. He married Lillian Harden, the pianist in the Oliver band, on February 5, 1924. (She was the second of his four wives.) On her encouragement, he left Oliver and joined Fletcher Henderson's band in New York, staying for a year and then going back to Chicago in November 1925 to join the Dreamland Syncopators, his wife's group. During this period, he switched from cornet to trumpet. Armstrong had gained sufficient individual notice to make his recording debut as a leader on November 12, 1925. Contracted to OKeh Records, he began to make a series of recordings with studio-only groups called the Hot Fives or the Hot Sevens. For live dates, he appeared with the orchestras led by Erskine Tate and Carroll Dickerson. The Hot Fives' recording of "Muskrat Ramble" gave Armstrong a Top Ten hit in July 1926, the band for the track featuring Kid Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet, Lillian Harden Armstrong on piano, and Johnny St. Cyr on banjo.
By February 1927, Armstrong was well-enough known to front his own group, Louis Armstrong and His Stompers, at the Sunset Café in Chicago. (Armstrong did not function as a bandleader in the usual sense, but instead typically lent his name to established groups.) In April, he reached the charts with his first vocal recording, "Big Butter and Egg Man," a duet with May Alix. He took a position as star soloist in Carroll Dickerson's band at the Savoy Ballroom in Chicago in March 1928, later taking over as the band's frontman. "Hotter than That" was in the Top Ten in May 1928, followed in September by "West End Blues," which later became one of the first recordings named to the Grammy Hall of Fame. Armstrong returned to New York with his band for an engagement at Connie's Inn in Harlem in May 1929. He also began appearing in the orchestra of Hot Chocolates, a Broadway revue, given a featured spot singing "Ain't Misbehavin'." In September, his recording of the song entered the charts, becoming a Top Ten hit. Armstrong fronted the Luis Russell Orchestra for a tour of the South in February 1930, then in May went to Los Angeles, where he led a band at Sebastian's Cotton Club for the next ten months. He made his film debut in Ex-Flame, released at the end of 1931. By the start of 1932, he had switched from the "race"-oriented OKeh label to its pop-oriented big sister Columbia Records, for which he recorded two Top Five hits, "Chinatown, My Chinatown" and "You Can Depend on Me" before scoring a number one hit with "All of Me" in March 1932; another Top Five hit, "Love, You Funny Thing," hit the charts the same month. He returned to Chicago in the spring of 1932 to front a band led by Zilner Randolph; the group toured around the country. In July, Armstrong sailed to England for a tour. He spent the next several years in Europe, his American career maintained by a series of archival recordings, including the Top Ten hits "Sweethearts on Parade" (August 1932; recorded December 1930) and "Body and Soul" (October 1932; recorded October 1930). His Top Ten version of "Hobo, You Can't Ride This Train," in the charts in early 1933, was on Victor Records; when he returned to the U.S. in 1935, he signed to recently formed Decca Records and quickly scored a double-sided Top Ten hit, "I'm in the Mood for Love"/"You Are My Lucky Star." Armstrong's new manager, Joe Glaser, organized a big band for him that had its premiere in Indianapolis on July 1, 1935; for the next several years, he toured regularly. He also took a series of small parts in motion pictures, beginning with Pennies From Heaven in December 1936, and he continued to record for Decca, resulting in the Top Ten hits "Public Melody Number One" (August 1937), "When the Saints Go Marching in" (April 1939), and "You Won't Be Satisfied (Until You Break My Heart)" (April 1946), the last a duet with Ella Fitzgerald. He returned to Broadway in the short-lived musical Swingin' the Dream in November 1939. With the decline of swing music in the post-World War II years, Armstrong broke up his big band and put together a small group dubbed the All Stars, which made its debut in Los Angeles on August 13, 1947. He embarked on his first European tour since 1935 in February 1948, and thereafter toured regularly around the world. In June 1951 he reached the Top Ten of the LP charts with Satchmo at Symphony Hall ("Satchmo" being his nickname), and he scored his first Top Ten single in five years with "(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas" later in the year. The single's B-side, and also a chart entry, was "A Kiss to Build a Dream On," sung by Armstrong in the film The Strip. In 1993, it gained renewed popularity when it was used in the film Sleepless in Seattle. Armstrong completed his contract with Decca in 1954, after which his manager made the unusual decision not to sign him to another exclusive contract but instead to have him freelance for different labels. Satch Plays Fats, a tribute to Fats Waller, became a Top Ten LP for Columbia in October 1955, and Verve Records contracted Armstrong for a series of recordings with Ella Fitzgerald, beginning with the chart LP Ella and Louis in 1956. Armstrong continued to tour extensively, despite a heart attack in June 1959. In 1964, he scored a surprise hit with his recording of the title song from the Broadway musical Hello, Dolly!, which reached number one in May, followed by a gold-selling album of the same name. It won him a Grammy for best vocal performance. This pop success was repeated internationally four years later with "What a Wonderful World," which hit number one in the U.K. in April 1968. It did not gain as much notice in the U.S. until 1987 when it was used in the film Good Morning, Vietnam, after which it became a Top 40 hit. Armstrong was featured in the 1969 film of Hello, Dolly!, performing the title song as a duet with Barbra Streisand. He performed less frequently in the late '60s and early '70s and died of a heart ailment at 69. Louis Armstrong was embraced by two distinctly different audiences: jazz fans who revered him for his early innovations as an instrumentalist, but were occasionally embarrassed by his lack of interest in later developments in jazz and, especially, by his willingness to serve as a light entertainer; and pop fans, who delighted in his joyous performances, particularly as a vocalist, but were largely unaware of his significance as a jazz musician. Given his popularity, his long career, and the extensive label-jumping he did in his later years, as well as the differing jazz and pop sides of his work, his recordings are extensive and diverse, with parts of his catalog owned by many different companies. But many of his recorded performances are masterpieces, and none are less than entertaining.
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| January 27th, 2006 07:33 AM |
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| Zanck*Zanck*Zanck |
OOOPPPS-MY BAD! 
~Barney fife !!!Thanks for this interesting thread.(despite Wagner) Keep 'em coming |
| January 27th, 2006 09:06 AM |
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| Voodoo Scrounge |
Bobby Darin
Now he IS the man! |
| January 27th, 2006 09:28 AM |
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| gimmekeef |
quote:
Gazza wrote:
Unusual timing for a thread like this on this board considering the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth is tomorrow!
9 operas, 5 violin concertos and over 30 symphonies by the age of 20.
Prolific little bastard, eh?
[Edited by Gazza]
But what the hell has he done lately?..... |
| January 27th, 2006 02:48 PM |
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| the good |
quote:
Barney Fife wrote:
Bon Jov-eye? I for the life of me can't figure out how anybody could confuse the word "old" with "shitty!"
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Do you deny that Bon Jovi has had a long and prolific career? |
| January 27th, 2006 04:07 PM |
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| Riffhard |
Uhhh,excuse me but did ya'll forget about this man?!?! 'Cause if ya did that would be a shame,and we wouldn't want that.
Riffy |
| January 27th, 2006 11:11 PM |
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| Barney Fife |
quote:
the good wrote:
Do you deny that Bon Jovi has had a long and prolific career?
Budweiser has been the largest selling beer for a long time but it's a really low quality, defective product.
I really have to question your taste in music if you think Bon Jovi is good. Do you listen to a lot of Toby Queef and Barf Brooks too? Maybe some Janet Jackson for variety?
Do you get your musical education from commercial rock radio in the US? Lord help ya!
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| January 28th, 2006 12:23 AM |
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| the good |
quote:
Barney Fife wrote:
Budweiser has been the largest selling beer for a long time but it's a really low quality, defective product.
I really have to question your taste in music if you think Bon Jovi is good. Do you listen to a lot of Toby Queef and Barf Brooks too? Maybe some Janet Jackson for variety?
Do you get your musical education from commercial rock radio in the US? Lord help ya!
Dude, it was a joke. |
| January 29th, 2006 01:03 AM |
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| keefjunkie |
quote:
the good wrote:
Do you deny that Bon Jovi has had a long and prolific career?
yes |
| January 29th, 2006 01:04 AM |
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| keefjunkie |
quote:
Riffhard wrote:
Uhhh,excuse me but did ya'll forget about this man?!?! 'Cause if ya did that would be a shame,and we wouldn't want that.
Riffy
ROBERT JOHNSON, the reason we have blues guitarists |
| January 30th, 2006 04:17 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
quote:
the good wrote:
Dude, it was a joke.
Right, "dude." |
| January 30th, 2006 04:30 AM |
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| Jumacfly |
Can someone post something about Wes montgomery? |
| January 31st, 2006 09:09 AM |
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| Barney Fife |
Listen to Wes, then listen again, more profoundly!
Biography by Scott Yanow
Wes Montgomery was one of the great jazz guitarists, a natural extension of Charlie Christian, whose appealing use of octaves became influential and his trademark. He achieved great commercial success during his last few years, only to die prematurely.
It had taken Wes a long time to become an overnight success. He started to teach himself guitar in 1943 (using his thumb rather than a pick) and toured with Lionel Hampton during 1948-1950; he can be heard on a few broadcasts from the period. But then Montgomery returned to Indianapolis, where he was in obscurity during much of the 1950s, working a day job and playing at clubs most nights. He recorded with his brothers vibraphonist Buddy and electric bassist Monk during 1957-1959 and made his first Riverside album (1959) in a trio with organist Melvin Rhyne. In 1960 the release of his album The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery made him famous in the jazz world. Other than a brief time playing with the John Coltrane Sextet (which also included Eric Dolphy) later in the year, Wes would be a leader for the rest of his life.
Montgomery's recordings can be easily divided into three periods. His Riverside dates (1959-1963) are his most spontaneous jazz outings, small-group sessions with such sidemen as Tommy Flanagan, James Clay, Victor Feldman, Hank Jones, Johnny Griffin, and Mel Rhyne. The one exception was the ironically titled Fusion!, a ballad date with a string section. All of the Riverside recordings have been reissued in a massive 12-CD box set. With the collapse of Riverside, Montgomery moved over to Verve, where during 1964-1966 he recorded an interesting series of mostly orchestral dates with arranger Don Sebesky and producer Creed Taylor. These records were generally a good balance between jazz and accessibility, even if the best performances were small-group outings with either the Wynton Kelly Trio or Jimmy Smith.
In 1967 Wes signed with Creed Taylor at A&M and during 1967-1968 he recorded three best-selling albums that found him merely stating simple pop melodies while backed by strings and woodwinds. His jazz fans were upset, but Montgomery's albums were played on AM radio during the period. He helped introduce listeners to jazz, and his live performances were as freewheeling as his earlier Riverside dates. Unfortunately at the height of his success, he died of a heart attack. However, Montgomery's influence is still felt on many young guitarists.
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If you don't like Billie, you might as well kill yourself!
Biography by John Bush
The first popular jazz singer to move audiences with the intense, personal feeling of classic blues, Billie Holiday changed the art of American pop vocals forever. Almost fifty years after her death, it's difficult to believe that prior to her emergence, jazz and pop singers were tied to the Tin Pan Alley tradition and rarely personalized their songs; only blues singers like Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey actually gave the impression they had lived through what they were singing. Billie Holiday's highly stylized reading of this blues tradition revolutionized traditional pop, ripping the decades-long tradition of song plugging in two by refusing to compromise her artistry for either the song or the band. She made clear her debts to Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong (in her autobiography she admitted, "I always wanted Bessie's big sound and Pops' feeling"), but in truth her style was virtually her own, quite a shock in an age of interchangeable crooners and band singers.
With her spirit shining through on every recording, Holiday's technical expertise also excelled in comparison to the great majority of her contemporaries. Often bored by the tired old Tin Pan Alley songs she was forced to record early in her career, Holiday fooled around with the beat and the melody, phrasing behind the beat and often rejuvenating the standard melody with harmonies borrowed from her favorite horn players, Armstrong and Lester Young. (She often said she tried to sing like a horn.) Her notorious private life — a series of abusive relationships, substance addictions, and periods of depression — undoubtedly assisted her legendary status, but Holiday's best performances ("Lover Man," "Don't Explain," "Strange Fruit," her own composition "God Bless the Child") remain among the most sensitive and accomplished vocal performances ever recorded. More than technical ability, more than purity of voice, what made Billie Holiday one of the best vocalists of the century — easily the equal of Ella Fitzgerald or Frank Sinatra — was her relentlessly individualist temperament, a quality that colored every one of her endlessly nuanced performances.
Billie Holiday's chaotic life reportedly began in Baltimore on April 7, 1915 (a few reports say 1912) when she was born Eleanora Fagan Gough. Her father, Clarence Holiday, was a teenaged jazz guitarist and banjo player later to play in Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. He never married her mother, Sadie Fagan, and left while his daughter was still a baby. (She would later run into him in New York, and though she contracted many guitarists for her sessions before his death in 1937, she always avoided using him.) Holiday's mother was also a young teenager at the time, and whether because of inexperience or neglect, often left her daughter with uncaring relatives. Holiday was sentenced to Catholic reform school at the age of ten, reportedly after she admitted being raped. Though sentenced to stay until she became an adult, a family friend helped get her released after just two years. With her mother, she moved in 1927, first to New Jersey and soon after to Brooklyn.
In New York, Holiday helped her mother with domestic work, but soon began moonlighting as a prostitute for the additional income. According to the weighty Billie Holiday legend (which gained additional credence after her notoriously apocryphal autobiography Lady Sings the Blues), her big singing break came in 1933 when a laughable dancing audition at a speakeasy prompted her accompanist to ask her if she could sing. In fact, Holiday was most likely singing at clubs all over New York City as early as 1930-31. Whatever the true story, she first gained some publicity in early 1933, when record producer John Hammond — only three years older than Holiday herself, and just at the beginning of a legendary career — wrote her up in a column for Melody Maker and brought Benny Goodman to one of her performances. After recording a demo at Columbia Studios, Holiday joined a small group led by Goodman to make her commercial debut on November 27, 1933 with "Your Mother's Son-In-Law."
Though she didn't return to the studio for over a year, Billie Holiday spent 1934 moving up the rungs of the competitive New York bar scene. By early 1935, she made her debut at the Apollo Theater and appeared in a one-reeler film with Duke Ellington. During the last half of 1935, Holiday finally entered the studio again and recorded a total of four sessions. With a pick-up band supervised by pianist Teddy Wilson, she recorded a series of obscure, forgettable songs straight from the gutters of Tin Pan Alley — in other words, the only songs available to an obscure black band during the mid-'30s. (During the swing era, music publishers kept the best songs strictly in the hands of society orchestras and popular white singers.) Despite the poor song quality, Holiday and various groups (including trumpeter Roy Eldridge, alto Johnny Hodges, and tenors Ben Webster and Chu Berry) energized flat songs like "What a Little Moonlight Can Do," "Twenty-Four Hours a Day" and "If You Were Mine" (to say nothing of "Eeny Meeny Miney Mo" and "Yankee Doodle Never Went to Town"). The great combo playing and Holiday's increasingly assured vocals made them quite popular on Columbia, Brunswick and Vocalion.
During 1936, Holiday toured with groups led by Jimmie Lunceford and Fletcher Henderson, then returned to New York for several more sessions. In late January 1937, she recorded several numbers with a small group culled from one of Hammond's new discoveries, Count Basie's Orchestra. Tenor Lester Young, who'd briefly known Billie several years earlier, and trumpeter Buck Clayton were to become especially attached to Holiday. The three did much of their best recorded work together during the late '30s, and Holiday herself bestowed the nickname Pres on Young, while he dubbed her Lady Day for her elegance. By the spring of 1937, she began touring with Basie as the female complement to his male singer, Jimmy Rushing. The association lasted less than a year, however. Though officially she was fired from the band for being temperamental and unreliable, shadowy influences higher up in the publishing world reportedly commanded the action after she refused to begin singing '20s female blues standards.
At least temporarily, the move actually benefited Holiday — less than a month after leaving Basie, she was hired by Artie Shaw's popular band. She began singing with the group in 1938, one of the first instances of a black female appearing with a white group. Despite the continuing support of the entire band, however, show promoters and radio sponsors soon began objecting to Holiday — based on her unorthodox singing style almost as much as her race. After a series of escalating indignities, Holiday quit the band in disgust. Yet again, her judgment proved valuable; the added freedom allowed her to take a gig at a hip new club named Café Society, the first popular nightspot with an inter-racial audience. There, Billie Holiday learned the song that would catapult her career to a new level: "Strange Fruit."
The standard, written by Café Society regular Lewis Allen and forever tied to Holiday, is an anguished reprisal of the intense racism still persistent in the South. Though Holiday initially expressed doubts about adding such a bald, uncompromising song to her repertoire, she pulled it off thanks largely to her powers of nuance and subtlety. "Strange Fruit" soon became the highlight of her performances. Though John Hammond refused to record it (not for its politics but for its overly pungent imagery), he allowed Holiday a bit of leverage to record for Commodore, the label owned by jazz record-store owner Milt Gabler. Once released, "Strange Fruit" was banned by many radio outlets, though the growing jukebox industry (and the inclusion of the excellent "Fine and Mellow" on the flip) made it a rather large, though controversial, hit. She continued recording for Columbia labels until 1942, and hit big again with her most famous composition, 1941's "God Bless the Child." Gabler, who also worked A&R for Decca, signed her to the label in 1944 to record "Lover Man," a song written especially for her and her third big hit. Neatly side-stepping the musician's union ban that afflicted her former label, Holiday soon became a priority at Decca, earning the right to top-quality material and lavish string sections for her sessions. She continued recording scattered sessions for Decca during the rest of the '40s, and recorded several of her best-loved songs including Bessie Smith's "'Tain't Nobody's Business If I Do," "Them There Eyes," and "Crazy He Calls Me."
Though her artistry was at its peak, Billie Holiday's emotional life began a turbulent period during the mid-'40s. Already heavily into alcohol and marijuana, she began smoking opium early in the decade with her first husband, Johnnie Monroe. The marriage didn't last, but hot on its heels came a second marriage to trumpeter Joe Guy and a move to heroin. Despite her triumphant concert at New York's Town Hall and a small film role — as a maid (!) — with Louis Armstrong in 1947's New Orleans, she lost a good deal of money running her own orchestra with Joe Guy. Her mother's death soon after affected her deeply, and in 1947 she was arrested for possession of heroin and sentenced to eight months in prison.
Unfortunately, Holiday's troubles only continued after her release. The drug charge made it impossible for her to get a cabaret card, so nightclub performances were out of the question. Plagued by various celebrity hawks from all portions of the underworld (jazz, drugs, song publishing, etc.), she soldiered on for Decca until 1950. Two years later, she began recording for jazz entrepreneur Norman Granz, owner of the excellent labels Clef, Norgran, and by 1956, Verve. The recordings returned her to the small-group intimacy of her Columbia work, and reunited her with Ben Webster as well as other top-flight musicians such as Oscar Peterson, Harry "Sweets" Edison, and Charlie Shavers. Though the ravages of a hard life were beginning to take their toll on her voice, many of Holiday's mid-'50s recordings are just as intense and beautiful as her classic work.
During 1954, Holiday toured Europe to great acclaim, and her 1956 autobiography brought her even more fame (or notoriety). She made her last great appearance in 1957, on the CBS television special The Sound of Jazz with Webster, Lester Young, and Coleman Hawkins providing a close backing. One year later, the Lady in Satin LP clothed her naked, increasingly hoarse voice with the overwrought strings of Ray Ellis. During her final year, she made two more appearances in Europe before collapsing in May 1959 of heart and liver disease. Still procuring heroin while on her death bed, Holiday was arrested for possession in her private room and died on July 17, her system completely unable to fight both withdrawal and heart disease at the same time. Her cult of influence spread quickly after her death and gave her more fame than she'd enjoyed in life. The 1972 biopic Lady Sings the Blues featured Diana Ross struggling to overcome the conflicting myths of Holiday's life, but the film also illuminated her tragic life and introduced many future fans. By the digital age, virtually all of Holiday's recorded material had been reissued: by Columbia (nine volumes of The Quintessential Billie Holiday), Decca (The Complete Decca Recordings), and Verve (The Complete Billie Holiday on Verve 1945-1959).
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| January 31st, 2006 09:11 AM |
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| Jumacfly |
great, thanks a lot, Wes is a genious!! |
| January 31st, 2006 08:38 PM |
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| Cactus Ed |
Yes, Bovi's career has gone on far too long. |
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