,y : ART WORKS. arfs.gov The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector. National Endowment for the Arts 1982-2011 CREDITS This publication is published by: National Endowment for the Arts Office of Public Affairs Jamie Bennett, Director January 2011 Don Ball, Editor Special thanks to poet and author (and former NEA Deputy Chairman) A.B. Spellman for the “liner notes” essay. Spellman is the author of Four Jazz Lives and, most recently. Things I Must Have Known. Thanks to Paulette Beete, Liz Stark, Katja von Schuttenbach, and Judy Zwolak for editorial assistance. Designed by: Fletcher Design, Inc. /Washington, DC Cover Photo: The Modern Jazz Quartet in performance, including NEA Jazz Masters John Lewis (piano), Percy Heath (bass), and Milt Jackson (vibes), and drummer Connie Kay. Photo by Lee Tanner In addition to information provided by the artists, the following reference texts were used in researching biographical information of the NEA Jazz Masters: All Music Guide to Jazz by Vladimir Bogdanov, Chris Woodstra, and Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Backbeat Books (allmusic.com) American Musicians II by Whitney Balliett, Oxford University Press Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz by Leonard Feather and Ira Gitler, Oxford University Press Four Jazz Lives by A.B. Spellman, University of Michigan Press Jazz: The Rough Guide by Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, and Brian Priestley, Rough Guides Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 4th Edition by Richard Cook and Brian Morton, Penguin Talking Jazz: An Oral History by Ben Sidran, Da Capo Press Voice/TYY: (202) 682-5496 For individuals w ho are deaf or hard-of-hearing. Individuals who do not use conventional print may contact the Arts Endowment’s Office for AccessAbility to obtain this publication in an alternate format. Telephone: (202) 682-5532 National Endowment for the Arts 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20506-0001 (202) 682-5400 Additional copies of this publication can be obtained for free by contacting the NEA website: arts.gov. © This publication was printed on recycled paper. A Message from the Chairman Photo by Michael Eastman I T IS MY PLEASURE once again to introduce the new class of NEA Jazz Masters. Like some of my other favorite art forms, country music and musical theater, jazz is a homegrown art form, created on American soil some hundred or so years ago. It's hard to think of an aspect of our country’s history and culture that jazz hasn’t touched since its origin. And that is why we recognize this art form with the NEA jazz Masters program. In addition to the $25,000 award, it also honors artists who have reached the highest pinnacles of their art; musicians and advocates who have had — and continue to have — a significant impact on jazz. And this year’s class again reflects this high standard of artistic excellence. In addition to providing these awards to stellar musicians, the NEA also continues to award grants to arts organizations for jazz-related activities, such as a recent grant to the Apollo Theater Foundation to support the inaugural Harlem Jazz Shrines Festival, celebrating the legacy of jazz in that community. The agency also supports the NEA Jazz Masters Live initiative — administered in partnership with regional arts organization Arts Midwest — which provides grants to presenting organizations to support NEA Jazz Masters’ appearances throughout the country. In addition to making these legends better known to the general public, the initiative also includes an educational component that provides special programming to increase understanding of the music and its key practitioners. Education is an important aspect of keeping jazz alive and well. So the NEA also supports an important educational component designed to bring this American treasure to more young people: NEA Jazz in the Schools. Developed in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center and supported by the Verizon Foundation, this online curriculum provides resources to high school teachers to explore jazz as an art form and a means to understanding history. To reach even more citizens in its pursuit to garner stronger interest for the art form of jazz, the NEA is utilizing the Internet and broadcast media. The NEA’s YouTube page features a section on NEA Jazz Masters, including interviews and panel discussions. The agency’s Art Works podcasts, feature-length interviews with artists and those involved in the arts, include interviews with NEA Jazz Masters Hank Jones and David Baker, among many other artists. And for the first time, we will be presenting a live webcast of the awards ceremony and concert so that many more people can experience this event . Another way we reach out to the public about jazz is through the NEA-produced Jazz Moments , radio shorts featuring NEA Jazz Masters; a CD of a sampling of the segments is included with this publication. These segments have been broadcast on stations throughout the country and are available for free download on the NEA website: arts.gov and through iTunes U. I would like to thank our partner in bringing the NEA Jazz Masters awards ceremony and concert to you: Jazz at Lincoln Center, which has presented the event for the last three years. Join me in honoring the 201 I NEA Jazz Masters for their work in the jazz field and their contributions to the nation’s cidtural heritage. Rocco Landesman Chairman National Endowment for the Arts NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-201 1 iii Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015 https://archive.org/details/jazzmasters1982200nati A Brief History of the Program Program Overview 2011 NEA Jazz Masters 1 3 5 NEA Jazz Masters 1982—2010 (Year Fellowship Awarded) Muhal Richard Abrams (2010) 12 Toshiko Akiyoshi (2007) 13 George Avakian (2010) 14 David Baker (2000) 15 Danny Barker (1991) 16 Ray Barretto (2006) 17 Kenny Barron (2010) 18 Count Basie (1983) 19 Louie Bellson (1994) 20 Tony Bennett (2006) 21 George Benson (2009) 22 Art Blakey (1988) 23 Bolt Brookineyer (2006) 24 Cleo Brown (1987) 25 Ray Brown (1995) 26 Dave Brubeck (1999) 27 Kenny Burrell (2005) 28 Donald Byrd (2000) 29 Candido Cainero (2008) 30 Benny Carter (1986) 31 Betty Carter (1992) 32 Ron Carter (1998) 33 Kenny Clarke (1983) 34 Buck Clayton (1991) 35 Jimmy Cobb (2009) 36 Ornette Coleman (1984) 37 Chick Corea (2006) 38 Miles Davis (1984) 39 Buddy DeFranco (2006) 40 Dorothy Donegan (1992 ) 41 Paquito D’Rivera (2005) 42 Sweets Edison (1992) 43 Roy Eldridge (1982) 44 Gil Evans (1985) 45 Art Farmer (1999) 46 Ella Fitzgerald (1985) 47 Tommy Flanagan (1996) 48 Frank Foster (2002) 49 Curtis Fuller (2007) Dizzy Gillespie (1982) Benny Colson ( 1996) Dexter Gordon (1986) .... Jim Hall (2004) Chico Hamilton (2004) ... Lionel Hampton (1988) ... Slide Hampton (2005) .... Herbie Hancock (2004) .. Barry Harris (1989) Roy Haynes (1995) Jimmy Heath (2003) Percy Heath (2002) Joe Henderson (1999) Luther Henderson (2004) Jon Hendricks (1993) Nat Hentoff (2004) Billy Higgins (1997) Andrew Hill (2008) Milt Hinton (1993) Bill Holman (2010) Shirley Horn (2005) Freddie Hubbard (2006) . Bobby Hutcherson (2010) Milt Jackson ( 1997) Ahmad Jamal (1994) J.J. Johnson (1996) Elvin Jones (2003) Hank Jones (1989) Jo Jones (1985) Quincy Jones (2008) Andy Kirk (1991) Lee Konitz (2009) Yusef Lateef (2010) John Levy (2006) John Lewis (2001) Ramsey Lewis (2007) Abbey Lincoln (2003) NEA Jazz Masters Award Ceremony 126 NEA Jazz Masters hy Year 128 Jazz Moments with NEA Jazz Masters Audio CD .... 129 50 Melba Liston ( 1987) 88 51 Tom McIntosh (2008) 89 52 Jackie McLean (2001) 90 53 Marian McPartland (2000) 91 54 Carmen McRae (1994) 92 55 Jay McShann (1987) 93 56 James Moody (1998) 94 57 Dan Morgenstern (2007) 95 58 Anita O’Day (1997) 96 59 Max Roach ( 1984) 97 60 Sonny Rollins (1983) 98 61 Annie Ross (2010) 99 62 George Russell (1990) 100 63 Gunther Schuller (2008) 101 64 Jimmy Scott (2007) 102 65 Artie Shaw (2005) 103 66 Wayne Shorter (1998) 104 67 Horace Silver (1995) 105 68 Jimmy Smith (2005) 106 69 Sun Ra (1982) 107 70 Billy Taylor (1988) 108 71 Cecil Taylor (1990) 109 72 Clark Terry (1991) 110 73 Toots Thielemans (2009) Ill 74 McCoy Tyner (2002) 112 75 Rudy Van Gelder (2009) 113 76 Sarah Vaughan (1989) 114 77 Cedar Walton (2010) 115 78 George Wein (2005) 116 79 Frank Wess (2007) 117 80 Randy Weston (2001 ) 118 81 Joe Wilder (2008) 119 82 Joe Williams (1993) 120 83 Gerald Wilson (1990) 121 84 Nancy Wilson (2004) 122 85 Teddy Wilson (1986) 123 86 Plnl Woods (2007) 124 87 Snooky Young (2009) 125 A Brief History of the Program A MELDING OF AFRICAN AND EUROPEAN music and cultures, jazz was born in the United States, a new musical form that used rhythm, improvisation, and instruments in unique and exciting ways. Jazz came to prominence in the early 20th century on the dance floors of major cultural centers such as Kansas City and New York. With the advent of sound recording techniques, the increased availability of affordable gramophones, and the rise of rac lio as popular entertainment, jazz quickly conquered the country. By the 1930s and 1940s, jazz had become America’s fiance music, selling albums and performance tickets at dizzying rates and sweeping millions of fans in foreign countries off their feet. By the 1950s, however, with the advent of rock and roll and the tilt in jazz toward bebop rather than the more popular swing, jazz began a decline in its popularity. It was still seen as an important and exciting art form, but by an increasingly smaller audience. Jazz was still being exported overseas, though, especially by Voice of America radio broadcasts and U.S. Department of State goodwill tours that featured such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie, Louis Armstrong, and Dave Brubeck. By the 1960s, when the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was created by Congress, jazz album sales were down and jazz performances were becoming more difficult to find. Large dance orchestras disbanded for lack of work, and musicians found themselves in stiff competition for fewer and fewer gigs. The music, starting with bebop and into hard bop and free jazz, became more cerebral and less dance-oriented, focusing on freeing up improvisation and rhythm. It was moving to a new artistic level, and, if this high quality were to be maintained, it would need some assistance. NEA assistance to the jazz field began in 1969, with its first grant in jazz awarded to pianist/composer George Russell (who would later go on to receive an NEA Jazz Master award in 1990), allowing him to work on liis groundbreaking book, Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization , the first major academic work in jazz. Jazz funding went from $20,000 in 1970 to $1.5 million in 1980 to approximately $3 million in 2010, supporting a wide range of activities, including jazz festivals and concert seasons, special projects such as Dr. Billy Taylor’s Jazzmobile in New York and the Thelonious Monk Institute NEA Jazz Masters Sonny Rollins, Hank Jones, and Dizzy Gillespie at a 1987 rehearsal at Wolf Trap in Virginia. Photo by Michael Wilderman NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 1 of Jazz’s Jazz Sports program, educational jazz programming on National Public Radio, artists-in-schools programs, and research. While the NEA recognized and acted on the need for public funding for jazz, the pioneers of the field were rapidly aging, and many died without the appropriate recognition of their contribution to this great American art form. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, two of the giants of jazz in terms of both musicianship and composition, both died in the early 1970s without the importance of their contributions being fully acknowledged and appreciated. In an effort to nationally recognize outstanding jazz musicians for their lifelong achievements and mastery of jazz, the Arts Endowment in 1982 created the American Jazz Masters Fellowships — now the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships — given to musicians who have reached an exceptionally high standard of achievement in this very specialized art form. In addition to the recognition, the NEA included a monetary award of $20,000 for each fellowship. The rigors of making a living in the jazz field are well documented. Jazz is an art form to which the free market has not been kind. Despite their unparalleled contributions to American art, many jazz greats worked for years just barely scraping by. The monetary award often has provided a much needed infusion of income. That such recognition was long overdue is exemplified by Thelonious Sphere Monk, one of the great American composers and musicians. Monk was nominated for an NEA Jazz Master Fellowship in the first year of the program, hut unfortunately passed away before the announcement was made (the fellowship is not awarded posthumously). The three who were chosen certainly lived up to the criteria of artistic excellence and significance to the art form: Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sun Ra. The panel in that first year included stellar jazz musicians themselves, including some future NEA Jazz Masters: trumpeter Donald Byrd and saxophonists Frank Foster, Chico Freeman, Jackie McLean, and Archie Shepp. In addition, legendary Riverside record company co-owner and producer Orrin Keepnews (now an NEA Jazz Master) was on the panel. From that auspicious beginning, the program has continued to grow and provide increased awareness of America’s rich jazz heritage. In 2004, a new award was created for those individuals who helped to advance the appreciation of jazz. In 2005, the award was designated the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy in honor of A.B. Spellman, a jazz writer, accomplished poet, innovative arts administrator, and former NEA Deputy Chairman, who has dedicated much of his life to bringing the joy and artistry of jazz to all 2 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 Americans. Additionally , the amount of the fellowship was increased to $25,000. In 2005, the NEA Jazz Masters initiative greatly expanded to include several new programs in addition to the fellowships. A two-CD anthology of NEA Jazz Masters' music was produced by Verve Music Croup. NEA Jazz Masters on Tour, sponsored by Verizon, brought jazz musicians to all 50 states throughout 2005-07 for performances, community events, and educational programs. This led to a new program, NEA Jazz Masters [Jve — administered by regional arts organization Arts Midwest — which brings these jazz legends to selected events for performances, master classes, and lectures. A new arts education component was created in partnership with Jazz at Lincoln Center and with support from the Verizon Foundation, NEA Jazz in the Schools. This educational resource for high school teachers of social studies, U.S. history, and music includes a five-unit, web-based curriculum and DVD toolkit that explores jazz as an indigenous American art form and as a means to understand U.S. history (more information can he found at www.neajazzintheschools.org). New broadcasting programming was created, such as 14 one-hour shows on NEA Jazz Masters featured on the public radio series Jazz Profiles, hosted by NEA Jazz Master Nancy Wilson; the Legends of Jazz television series (presented by NEA Jazz Master Ramsey Lewis); anil Jazz Moments radio shorts for broadcast. (A selection of Jazz Moments is included on the CD at the end of this publication.) Each passing year brings increased international recognition of the NEA Jazz Masters awards as the nation’s highest honor for out- standing musicianship in the field of jazz. The recipients of the NEA Jazz Masters award cover all aspects of the music: from boogie-woogie (Cleo Brown) to swing (Count Basie, Andy Kirk, Jay McShann); from bebop (Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Clarke) to Dixieland (Danny Barker); from free jazz (Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor) to cool jazz (Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Ahmad Jamal); and everywhere in between. What ties all these styles together is a foundation in the blues, a reliance on group interplay, and unpredictable improvisation. Throughout the years, and in all the different styles, these musicians have demonstrated the talent, creativity, and dedication that make them NEA Jazz Masters. The award offers a solid platform for raising worldwide awareness of America’s rich jazz heritage by not only honoring those who have dedicated their lives to the music, but also by leading the way in efforts encouraging the preservation and nourishing of jazz as an important musical form for generations to come. Program Overview 1 HE NATIONAL ENDOWMENT for the Arts recognizes the importance of jazz as one of the great American art — H forms of the 20th century. As part of its efforts to honor those distinguished artists whose excellence, impact, and significant contributions in jazz have helped keep this important tradition and art form alive, the Arts Endowment annually awards NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships, the highest honor that our nation bestows upon jazz musicians. Each fellowship award is $25,000. The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship is a lifetime achievement award. The criteria for the fellowships are musical excellence and significance of the nominees’ contributions to the art of jazz. The Arts Endowment honors a wide range of styles while making the awards. There is also a special award given to a non-musician, the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Master Award for Jazz Advocacy, which is awarded to an individual who has made major contributions to the appreciation, knowledge, and advancement of jazz. Fellowships are awarded to living artists on the basis of nominations from the general public and the jazz community. The recipients must be citizens or permanent residents of the United States. An individual may submit only one nomination each year, and nominations are made by submitting a one-page letter detailing the reasons that the nominated artist should receive an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship. Nominations submitted to the Arts Endowment by the deadline are reviewed by an advisory panel of jazz experts and at least one knowledgeable layperson. Panel recommendations are forwarded to the National Council on the Arts, which then makes recommendations to the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Nominations remain active for five years, being reviewed annually during this period. Information on the NEA Jazz Masters award is available on the NEA website: arts.gov. NEA Jazz Master jimmy Cobb addresses the crowd at the 2010 NEA Jazz Masters awards ceremony and concert at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Photo by Frank Stewart NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 3 The Marsalis family in concert, with Carlos Henriquez on bass. * f Photo by Jos L. Knaepen 2011 HUBERT LAWS DAVID LIEBMAN JOHNNY MANDEL THE MARSALIS FAMILY ORRIN KEEPNEWS All recordings listed in Selected Discography are under the artistes name unless otherwise noted. Years listed under recordings in Selected Discography denote the years the recordings were made. SAVOY JAZZ, 2003 SPIRIT PRODUCTIONS, 2008 Remembers the Unforgettable Nat ‘King’ Cole Moondance Flute Adaptations of Rachmaninov & Barber ■■\ED DISCO G/?/ 2011 HUBERT LAWS FLUTIST Afro-Classic MOSAIC CONTEMPORARY, 1970 1974 BORN November 10, 1939 in Houston, TX Photo by Michael Wilderman H COLUMBIA, LIBERT LAWS is one of the very few to specialize on the (lute in jazz, using it as his primary axe, and in doing so he has become the premier musician on the instrument. In three decades of playing, he has also mastered pop, rhythm-and-blues, and classical genres. Laws grew up in a musical family, with his grandfather playing the harmonica and his mother the piano (which influenced his siblings as well as Laws — his brother Ronnie is a well-regarded saxophonist and Eloise, Debra, and Johnnie are vocalists). Laws started on flute for his high school orchestra, initially to play the William Tell Overture. He also became enamored with jazz at this time, and began playing regularly with a Houston group that eventually became known as the Crusaders. Laws won a classical scholarship to the prestigious Juilliard School in New York City, studying with master flutist Julius Baker. At the same time, he was gigging at night, playing with jazz and Latin musicians such as Mongo Santamaria, Lloyd Price, and John Lewis, as well as with classical orchestras such as Orchestra USA and the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. In 1964, he began recording as a bandleader, amassing more than 20 albums to his name. Laws is also an accomplished session musician, and has worked on recordings with Cliick Corea, Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald. Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Sarah the Vaughan, and Stevie Wonder, among others. He also worked on film scores for The Wiz and The Color Purple and collaborated on film soundtracks with Quincy Jones, Boh James, and Claude Bolling for California Suite and with Earl Klngh and Pat Williams on the music for How to Beat the High Cost of Living. hi addition to his jazz work, Laws has appeared as a soloist with the New York Philharmonic under direction of Zubin Mehta, and with the orchestras of Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, Detroit, and Los Angeles, and the Stanford String Quartet. He performed in a sold-out Hollywood Bowl concert with fellow flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal and in the same venue in 1932 with the Modern Jazz Quartet. While a member of the New York Philharmonic and Metropolitan Opera Orchestras, he also was featured at the Playboy Jazz Festival (Los Angeles), Kool Jazz Festival (Rhode Island), and Switzerland’s Montreux Jazz Festival. In addition he has recorded with opera singers Jessye Norman and Kathleen Battle (on the 1991 release Spirituals in Concert). In 2006, a 30-year retrospective video on Laws was released with live performances. DownBeat readers' polls have selected him “Number One Flutist” for 12 years and a Critic’s Choice for seven consecutive years. He has performed annually at Carnegie Hall. 6 NEA J AZZ MASTERS, 1 982-20 1 1 tftDDISCOe/j, VERVE, 2005 DAYBREAK, 2008 D AVID LIEBMAN has shown an abihty to ]»lay in any style of jazz, especially on what has become his instrument of choice, the soprano sax. In addition, he has been a strong advocate of the music, having founded the International Association of Schools of Jazz ( IAS J ) , an organization dedicated to bringing together educators and students from jazz schools worldwide. He began classical piano lessons at age nine, soon switcliing to saxophone. His interest in jazz was sparked especially by hearing John Coltrane perform in various New York City clubs. Throughout high school and college, Liebman continued playing jazz, learning “from the street" as was the way before jazz education was more common, though he did spend periods studying with Joe Allard, Lennie Tristano, and Charles Lloyd. In the 1970s, Liebman came into his own, founding Free Life Communication, a cooperative of several dozen young musicians that became an integral part of the fertile New York “loft” jazz scene. He soon found a spot as saxophonist/flutist in drummer Elvin Jones’ group, and then was hired by Miles Davis. Liebman played on Davis’ last two recordings before the trumpeter’s temporary retirement in the late 1970s, Get Up with It and On the Corner. At the same time, Liebman was also exploring his own music, beginning a long relationship with pianist Richie Beirach in the group Lookout Farm. In 1977, he toured internationally with pianist Chick Corea followed by forming the David Liebman Quintet, featuring guitarist John Scofield. In 1981, he founded Quest, a group that remained active with varying lineups until 1991 and has reunited in recent years. His work lias continued to move in many unusual directions, with projects ranging from Puccini arias to overdubbed solo recordings, from adaptations of jazz standards to world music and fusion. Throughout his career, Liebman has been keen to work on the international jazz scene, playing with influential European musicians such as Joachim Kuhn, Daniel Humair, Paolo Fresu, Jon Christensen, and Bobo Stenson. In addition to serving as IASJ’s artistic director, he is presently artist-in-residence at the Manhattan School of Music and lectures at universities and clinic settings all over the world. He also has received performance and teaching grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Canadian Arts Council. Additional educational activities include publishing instructional books and DVDs such as Self Portrait of A Jazz Artist ; A Chromatic Approach to Jazz Harmony and Melody ; and Developing A Personal Saxophone Sound. Since 1973, he has consistently placed among the “Top Three” in the DownBeat Critics Poll in the category of soprano saxophone; other awards include an honorary doctorate from the Sibelius Academy in Finland and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres from France. DAVID LIEBMAN & RICHIE BEIRACH, Mosaic Select MOSAIC, 1976-91 . . Wb mr-Distance Runner CMP RECORDS ECM RECORDS, 1973 Photo by Jan Persson/CTSIMAGES NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 7 2011 JOHNNY MANDEL COMPOSER ARRANGER TRUMPETER TROMBONIST BORN November 23, 1925 in New York, NY Photo by Carol Friedman ^tOD'SCO^ ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK RECORDING I Want To Live RYKODISC, 1958 J OHNNY MANDEL is considered one of the nation’s top composer/ arrangers in jazz, pop, and film music. The breadth and quality of his work made it possible to he recorded by a wide variety of jazz musicians and singers. Mandel’s parents discovered that he — at the age of five — had perfect pitch, and started him on piano lessons. He eventually moved on to playing horns (“I wanted to play an instrument you could kiss," he is quoted as saying), studying at the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard School, both in New York City. In the 1940s, he played the trumpet with Joe Venuti and Hilly Rogers, and trombone in the orchestras of Boyd Rayburn, Jimmy Dorsey, Buddy Rich, Georgie Auld, and Chubby Jackson. From 1951-53, he played and arranged music in the band of Elliott Lawrence and Count Basie. Later he relocated to Los Angeles, where he played the bass trumpet for Zoot Sims. He also showed a prowess for composing, writing the jazz compositions “Not Really the Blues” for Woody Herman, “Hershey Bar” and “Pot Luck” for Stan Getz, “Straight Life” and “Low Life” for Count Basie, and “Tommyhawk” for Chet Baker. Mandel moved to Hollywood in 1957 and began working on film scores, utilizing his outstanding compositional and arranging gifts. His score for the Susan Hayward movie I Want To Live is considered the first time that jazz had been integrated successfully into a musical frank sinatra, Ring-a-Ding-Ding! anita O'DAV.Trav ’bn’ Light ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK RECORDING, M*A*S*H score. He went on to earn a reputation as a film composer/arranger, including two of his more famous numbers: “Suicide Is Painless,” whieh was used as the theme for the movie M*A*S*H (whose soundtrack includes a version played by Alunad Jamal), and “The Shadow of Your Smile” for the movie The Sandpiper , which won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Song. He has provided music for more than 30 films, including The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming! and Being There. By the early 1960s, Mandel’s reputation was such that the biggest names in jazz and pop wanted to work with him. Frank Sinatra chose him as arranger for liis 1961 release Ring-a-Ding-Ding! In 1966, he served as musical director on Tony Bennett’s The Movie Song Album and collaborated again more recently, on Bennett’s album The A rt of Romance (2004). Other singers who have sought liis talents out include Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Shirley Horn. Diana Krall. Peggy 7 Lee, Anita O’Day, Barbra Streisand, and Nsuicy Wilson. Mandel has received five Grammy Awards: Song of the Near for Tony Bennett’s performance of “The Shadow of Your Smile” and Best Original Score for The Sandpiper (both 1965), Best Arrangment on an Instrumental Recording for Quincy Jones’ song “Velas” (1981). Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Voeal(s) for Natalie Cole’s Unforgettable (1991) and for Shirley Horn’s //ere’s to Life (1992). 8 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 2011 •Ito DISCOg^ Music Redeems THE MARSALIS FAMILY ELLIS PIANIST, EDUCATOR Born November 14, 1934 in New Orleans, LA BRANFORD saxophonist, composer, arranger, bandleader, educator Born August 26, 1960 in Breaux Bridge, LA WYNTON TRUMPETER, COMPOSER, ARRANGER, BANDLEADER, EDUCATOR Born October 18, 1961 in New Orleans, LA DELFEAYO trombonist, producer, educator Born July 28, 1965 in New Orleans, LA JASON Photo by Jos L. Knaepen I T IS PERHAPS not surprising that the first group award of the NEA Jazz Masters has gone to the Marsalis family, which boasts five members who have impacted the field of jazz. The story starts in New Orleans, with the birth of Ellis, Jr. in 1934. Although the city was noted for Dixieland and rhythm-and-blues, Ellis was more interested in bebop. In addition to his skillful piano playing, he became the director of jazz studies at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts high school in 1974, mentoring such contemporary artists as Terence Blanchard, and Harry Connick, Jr. (Branford, Wynton, Delfeayo, and Jason attended the center as well). Later, he headed thej azz studies department of the University of New Orleans for 12 years. In 2008. Ellis was inducted into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame. The story doesn't end with Ellis though — four of his sons continued in the family business of music, including Branford and Wynton, both whom started out in Art Bhikey’s Jazz Messengers and then began working together on albums that introduced some of the emerging stars in the music: Marcus Roberts, Kenny Kirkland, Jeff Watts, and Wessell Anderson, among others. For two years during the 1990s, Branford was the musical director of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno , making jazz more widely known to the general public. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, Branford teamed with Harry Connick, Jr. and Habitat for Humanity to create Musicians’ Village in the city’s Upper ellis marsalis, The Classic Ellis Marsalis wynton marsalis. Standard Time Vol. 3- The Resolution of Romance DRUMMER, VIBRAPHONIST Born March 4, 1977 in New Orleans, LA ellis & branford marsalis. Loved Ones The Marsalis Family: A Jazz Celebration MARSALIS MUSIC, 2001 MARSALIS MUSIC, 2009 COLUMBIA, 1990 Ninth Ward tn assist New Orleans musicians. In 1996, Wynton co-founded Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC), becoming its artistic director and music director of the JALC Orchestra. In 1997, he became the first jazz artist to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music for his work Blood on the Fields. In addition to numerous awards and honorary doctorates he received, Wynton was also awarded the National Medal of Arts in 2005. Younger brother Delfeayo has proven himself a well-regarded jazz producer, working with various family members throughout the years. His insistence upon recording “without usage of the dreaded bass dii •ect” for Branford in the 1980s was the key element to the change in jazz recording techniques over the past 20 years. As a noted trombonist, Delfeayo has also played on his brothers’ albums as well as fronting his own band. Jason, the youngest of the Marsalis sons, took up drumming at age six and began sitting in with his father’s band at age seven, then made his recording debut at age 13 on Delfeayo’s Pontius Pilate's Decision. He joined the band Los Hombres Calientes with Irvin Mayfield and Bill Summers in 1998, playing on their first two albums, which blended Afro-Cuban and Latin American elements with jazz. The Marsalis family, together and individually, have made significant contributions to the preservation of jazz, the expansion of the art form, and the education of students of jazz. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1 982-20 1 1 9 .tfto disco G/?/ r\ A <1 A B SPELLMAN NEA JAZZ MASTERS AWARD FOR 2011 JAZZ ADVOCACY ORRIN KEEPNEWS PRODUCER WRITER BORN March 2, 1923 in New York, NY thelonious monk, Brilliant Corners , RIVERSIDE RECORDS, 1956 Photo courtesy of the Recording Academy bill evans. Everybody Digs Bill Evans R ECOGNIZED AS one of the out- standing record producers in the jazz world, Orrin Keepnews co-founded Riverside Records in the early 1950s, launching or furthering the careers of several of the most notable names in jazz, beginning with such significant artists as Thelonious Monk, Bill E vans, Wes Montgomery, Sonny Rollins and Cannonball Adderley. He lias long been at the forefront of producing reissues of both traditional and modern jazz recordings, and is also known for liis informative, incisive, and extensively detailed liner notes. Graduating from Columbia University in 1943 and then serving in the Air Force, Keepnews returned to Columbia for graduate studies in 1946. Two years later, he became editor of The Record Changer magazine, which was newly owned by his former college classmate and noted jazz record collector. Bill Grauer. In 1952, Grauer and Keepnews founded Riverside, which originally focused on reissues of traditional jazz and blues recordings. In 1954, they signed pianist Randy Weston, their first modern jazz artist. From that point on, the label began to focus on the burgeoning modern jazz scene, with Keepnews doing the producing. Promising new artists such as Clark Terry, Johnny Griffin, and Jimmy Heath were signed to the label, cpiickly making Riverside a major force among the New York-based independent labels. But at the end of 1963, the label folded after the death of Grauer. RIVERSIDE RECORDS, 1958 cannonball adderley. The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco RIVERSIDE RECORDS, 1959 wes Montgomery, The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery RIVERSIDE RECORDS, 1960 mccoy tyner, Fly with the Wind MILESTONE RECORDS, 1976 Keepnews launched Milestone Records in 1966 with a new partner, pianist Dick Katz, attracting such high quality artists as Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, and McCoy Tyner. In 1972, he relocated to San Francisco, heading jazz activities at Fantasy Records (which had acquired the Riverside catalog). Keepnews oversaw the reissue of many of the albums he had produced earlier in his career at Riverside, frequently including unissued alternate performances. He left Fantasy at the end of 1980 to concentrate on independent production and after a few years founded another label. Landmark Records. Among its first releases were two unique albums, one of compositions by Bill Evans and the other primarily involving Thelonious Monk material, both performed by the Kronos Quartet. He sold the company in 1993, hut remains active in the recording industry, primarily by working on reissue and remastering compilations on compact disc. A substantial collection of his essays, album notes, reviews, and other commentaries was published in book form in 1988 as The View from Within: Jazz W ritings. 1048-87. Keepnews has won four Grammy Awards: Best Album Notes for Bill Evans’ The Interplay Sessions (1983); Best Album Notes and Best Historical Album for Thelonious Monk's The Complete Riverside Recordings (1987); and Best Historical Allium for The Duke Ellington Centennial Edition — The Complete RCA Victor Recordings (1927- 1973) (1999). In 2004. he was awarded a NARAS Trustees Award for Lifetime Achievement. 10 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 1982-2010 NOTES: Names in bold in biographies denote NEA Jazz Masters awardees. All recordings listed in Selected Discography are under the artist’s name unless otherwise noted. Years listed under recordings in Selected Discography denote the years the recordings were made. 2010 MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS PIANIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN September 19, 1930 in Chicago, IL Photo by Michael Wilderman Levels and Degrees of Light *£ 'l'' \ ; v ", - ' - 'V , V ' s ■' y> Spiral Live at Montreux 1978 mk v- UHAL RICHARD Abrams— pia- nist, composer, administrator, and educator — is predominately a self-taught musician. He is highly respected by critics and musical peers as both a pianist and composer in a variety of musical styles, includin jazz, extended forms of improvisation, and classical music. In the 1950s, Abrams wrote arrangements for pianist King Fleming’s Jazz Orchestra. From 1957-59, he played hard hop in Walter Perkins’ group MJT + 3 (Modern Jazz Two Plus Three) and accompanied leading jazz performers during their visits to Chicago, including Kenny Durham, Art Farmer, Hank Mobley, Ray Nance, Max Roach, and Sonny Stitt. In 1961, Abrams began his foray into extended forms of composition and improvisation in his Experimental Band, which included musicians such as saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Joseph Jarman. Abrams is a co-founder of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965, founder of the AACM School of Music, and currently president of the AACM New York Chapter. AACM, which has played a crucial role in the development of original approaches to extended forms of composition and improvisation, has produced such distinguished members as Anthony Braxton, Kalaparush Alira Difda, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall, Amina Claudine Myers, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Threadgill, and members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Rejoicing with the Light UMO JAZZ ORCHESTRA, Plays the Music of Muhal Richard .Abrams SLAM, 1988 PI, 2005 Abrams first traveled to Europe in 1973 while still residing in Chicago. After relocating to New York in 1977, he traveled extensively to Europe and Japan, gradually acquiring a greater international reputation. In 1990 he became the first recipient of the prestigious Danish JAZZPAR Award, and almost a decade later Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley issued a proclamation declaring April 11, 1999, to he Muhal Richard Abrams Day. In 2008, he was chosen by United States Artists to he a Prudential Fellow in the field of music. In 2010, lie was selected for the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame. Abrams’ compositional prowess is evident even beyond jazz. His Tran version Op. 6 was performed by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and Iris String Quartet No. 2 was performed by renowned chamber ensemble Kronos Quartet. During the last 30 years, Abrams has taught jazz composition and improvisational classes at Columbia University, Syracuse University, Stanford University, Mills College, University of California in San Diego, the New England Conservatory in Boston, and the BMI Composers Workshop in New York City. He also taught internationally in Finland, Canada, and Italy. Abrams’ current activities include composing for various types of instrumental combinations, performing solo piano concerts, and touring throughout the world with various ensembles. 12 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 •AtO DISCOg/j. RCA, 1974-75 COLUMBIA, 1991 Carnegie Hall Concert Four Seasons of Morita Village 2007 TOSHIKO AKIYOSHI Photo by Lee Tanner BANDLEADER PIANIST COMPOSER ARRANGER BORN December 12, 1929 in Dairen, Manchuria O VER THE COURSE of a six- decade career, pianist, hand- leader, and composer-arranger Toshiko Akiyoshi has made a unique and vital contribution to the art of big band jazz. Born in Manchuria, where she began playing the piano at age six, Akiyoshi moved back to Japan with her parents at the end of World War II. Her family, enduring the hardships of the period, could not provide her with an instrument, and so, just to touch a piano, she took her first job as a musician playing in a dance-hall band. She was not exposed to real jazz until a Japanese record collector introduced her to the work of Teddy Wilson, whose music immediately impressed her. In 1952, pianist Oscar Peterson discovered Akiyoshi while he was on a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of Japan and recommended that producer Norman Granz record her. Thanks to this opportunity, she came to the United States in 1956 to study at the Berklee School of Music in Boston. She moved to New York in 1959, playing at Birdland, the Village Gate, the Five Spot, and the Half Note; but despite a brief attempt in the 1960s to showcase her talents as a composer and arranger for large ensembles, she did not have the opportunity to form a big band until she moved to Los Angeles in 1972 with her husband, saxophonist/flutist Lew Tabackin. The following year, the couple formed the Toshiko Akiyoshi Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss TRUE LIFE, 2001 TOSHIKO AKIYOSHI AND THE SWR BAND, Let Freedom Swing HANSSLER 2007 Jazz Orchestra featuring Lew Tabackin. In 1976, the band placed first in the DownBeat Critics’ Poll, and Akiyoshi’s album Long Yellow Road was named best jazz album of the year by Stereo Review. In the 1970s, Akiyoshi began exploring Japanese themes in her compositions and arrangements, mixing them with the strong jazz base in her music. In 1982, the couple returned to New York, where Akiyoshi re-formed her band with New York musicians. The band enjoyed a critically successfid debut at Carnegie Hall as part of the 1983 Kool Jazz Festival. Akiyoshi has recorded 22 albums to date with the orchestra. Her recording Four Seasons of Morita Village was awarded the 1996 Swing Journal SUver Award, and her big band albums have received 14 Grammy Award nominations. Akiyoshi is the first woman ever to place first in the Best Arranger and Composer category in the DownBeat Readers’ Poll. In 1995, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra was invited to play in China, and in 1996 Akiyoshi completed her autobiography Life With Jazz, which is now in its fifth printing in Japanese. Among the many honors she has received are the Shijahosho (1999, from the Emperor of Japan); the Japan Foundation Award, Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosetta (2004, from the Emperor of Japan); and the Asahi Award (2005, from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper). NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 tftOOISCOG-?. Photo by Ian P. Clifford COLUMBIA, 1954 LOUIS ARMSTRONG, m EOH(;E AVAKIAN is a record V —^-producer and industry executive known particularly for his pro- duction of jazz and popular alliums at Columbia Records, including the first regular series of reissues of jazz albums. In 1948, he helped establish the 33 1/3-rpm LP as the primary format for popular music. Avakian was horn in Russia to Armenian parents, who moved the family to New York City in the early 1920s. In his teens he became enamored of jazz through radio programs such as Let's Dance with Benny Goodman. While a student at Yale University, Avakian convinced Decca Records to let him produce a 78-rpm record of Eddie Condon, Pee Wee Russell, and others from the 1920s jazz scene in Chicago. Entitled Chicago Jazz , the recordings marked the first time jazz songs were produced in an album format rather than as singles. In 1940, he was asked by Columbia to produce the industry’s first annotated reissue album series, called Hot Jazz Classics , which included seminal out-of-print selections from Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Bix Beiderbecke, Fletcher Henderson, ami Duke Ellington. He included the first-ever unreleased and alternate takes in the series. In effect, he had created the first history of jazz on records. After service in the U.S. Army during World War II, Avakian began his 12-year tenure as a Columbia Records executive, eventually presiding over its Popular Music and International Divisions. At the same time, lit' was acquiring a reputation as a jazz researcher and critic of some renown, having pieces printed in Tempo , DownBeat, Metronome , Mademoiselle , Pic, and the New York Times. Concerned about the lack of jazz education, in 1946 Avakian started a course in jazz history at the university level at New York University. In 1948, Avakian introduced the LP record format created by Columbia engineers and produced the industry’s first 100 long-playing discs of popular music and jazz. Two years later, he released the original 1938 recording of Benny Goodman’s Carnegie Hall concert — one of the first jazz albums to sell more than a million copies. This inspired him to use the long-play format for something new — the five recording. From 1939 onward, Avakian served as producer at Warner Brothers, World Pacific, RCA Victor, and Atlantic, among others. During the early 1960s, Avakian branched out, becoming the manager of Charles Lloyd and later of Keith Jarrett. He has received a knighthood from the Knights of Malta (1984); the former Soviet Union’s highest decoration (the Order of Lenin (1990)); a Lifetime Achievement Award from DownBeat magazine (2000); and Europe’s prestigious jazz award, the Django <1 Or (2006). In 2008. France bestowed on him the rank of Commandeur des Arts et Lettres , and in 2009 he received the Trustees Award from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences for contributions to the music industry worldwide. duke ellington,, Ellington at Newport COLUMBIA, 1956 miles davis and gil evans. Miles Ahead COLUMBIA, 1957 BENNY GOODMAN, In MOSCOW RCA VICTOR, 1962 sonny rollins. Our Man in Jazz RCA VICTOR, 1962-63 ^ A.B. SPELLMAN NEA JAZZ MASTERS AWARD FOR 2010 JAZZ ADVOCACY BORN March 15, 1919 in Armavir, Russia GEORGE AVAKIAN PRODUCER MANAGER CRITIC JAZZ HISTORIAN EDUCATOR lU IIIIIII .i. 1 4 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 ^ eD o,sco G , Photo by Ray Avety/CTSIMAGES ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1960 LISCIO, 1985-86, 2003 SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS, 1992-1998 A TRUE JAZZ RENAISSANCE man, David Baker has been active in the jazz community as musician, composer, educator, conductor, and author. Of all the NEA Jazz Masters, he is one of the most active as a college and university educator. Baker’s music career began on the trombone in the early 1950s as he worked with local groups, as well as Lionel Hampton, while working on his doctorate at Indiana University. He lived in California in 1956-57, playing in the bands of Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson, and returned to Indiana in 1958, leading his own big band for two years. He then attended the School of Jazz in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1959- 60, joining a stellar class of musicians that included members of the Ornette Coleman Quartet. Shortly thereafter he worked with the George Russell band, playing on some of his influential early albums. In Russell’s band. Baker’s trombone playing displayed exceptional technique, utilizing avant-garde effects to accent the songs. An accident to his jaw eventually forced Baker to abandon his promising career as a trombonist. He switched to the cello in 1962, concentrating on composition. As a composer he has contributed a broad range of works, from small ensemble to orchestral, often straddling the fence between jazz and chamber music. He has also LISCIO 1998 BUSELLI/WALLARAB JAZZ ORCHESTRA, Basically Baker GM RECORDINGS, 2004 worked on purely chamber and orchestral works. By the early 1970s, he had returned to the trombone — playing on Bill Evans’ 1972 album Living Time, with George Russell arranging — while continuing to play the cello as well. Although a strong player on both instruments, he is most renowned for his compositions. Baker became a distinguished professor of music at Indiana University and chairman of the Jazz Department in 1966. He has published in numerous scholarly journals and has written several musical treatises as well as having more than 2,000 compositions, 500 commissions, 65 recordings, and 70 books on jazz and African-American music to his credit. Since 1991, Baker has been the artistic and musical director of the acclaimed Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra. lie has received numerous awards and citations, including being nominated for a Piditzer Prize in 1973 for his composition Levels , a concerto for bass, jazz band, woodwinds, and strings; and receiving an Emmy Award for his musical score of the PBS documentary For Gold and Glory. He has served as a member of the NEA’s National Council on the Arts, was founding president of the National Jazz Service Organization, and is former president of the International Association for Jazz Education. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 1 5 discos*. COLUMBIA, 1993 BLUE LU BARKER, 1938-39 DIRTY DOZEN BRASS BAND, Jelly DANNY BARKER ** GUITARIST BANJOIST V AVil . .... VOCALIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN January 13, 1909 in New Orleans, LA died March 13, 1994 Photo by Lee Tanner CLASSICS, 1938-39 BLUE LU BARKER. 1946-49 CLASSICS, 1946-49 Save the Bones ORLEANS, 1988 BLUE LU BARKER, Live at New Orleans Jazz Festival ORLEANS, 1989 U PHOLDER OF THE New Orleans tradition of jazz and blues, this master guitar and banjo player was as well known for his humor and storytelling as for his playing. Many of the younger New Orleans musicians also credit him with providing invaluable information, instruction, and mentorin He started his musical training on the clarinet, instructed by the great Barney Bigard, and moved on to the drums, taught by his uncle, Paid Barbarin. These instances of musical guidance and instruction available in New Orleans would inspire him to carry on the tradition of mentoring younger musicians. He later took up the ukulele and the banjo, and began finding work with jazz and blues artists such as the Boozan Kings and Little Brother Montgomery. In 1930 he moved to New York, where he met his wife, vocalist Blue Lu Barker, with whom he frequently recorded. He also wrote many of the songs she performed, such as “Don’t You Feel My Leg." By then he had switched from banjo to guitar and found work with Sidney Bechet, James P. Johnson, Albert Nicholas, Fess Williams, and Henry “Red” .Alien. He spent the rest of the 1930s working with the big bands of Lucky Millinder. Benny Carter, and Cab Calloway, with whom he stayed for seven years. In the late 1940s he traveled as a freelance musician, making recordings in Los Angeles and New Orleans. In 1947, Barker appeared on the This Is Jazz radio series, and began playing banjo again. He returned to New York in 1949, working with trombonists Wilbur De Paris and Conrad Janis, and accompanied his wife on gigs. In the early 1960s, he led his own band at Jimmy Ryan’s on .52nd Street, then returned to the Crescent City in 1965. Barker continued playing up to the end of his life, even appearing on the Dirty Dozen Brass Band’s 1993 recording. Jelly. A number of his compositions have been widely interpreted, such as “Save the Bones for Henry Jones.” Just as important as his performing career were his educational activities. When he returned home to New Orleans in 1965, he worked for 10 years as an assistant curator for the New Orleans Jazz Museum, helping to continue interest in the culture and tradition of the music. He also mentored young musicians through his leadership of the Fairview Baptist Church Brass Band. Barker was a writer as well, co-authoring with Jack Buerkle a study on New Orleans music. Bourbon Street Black, and writing his memoirs, .4 Life in Jazz. 1991 l6 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 Photo by Lee Tanner T HE MOST WIDELY recorded con- guero in jazz, Ray Barretto grew up listening to the music of Puerto Rico and the swing bands of Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Benny Goodman. Barretto credited Dizzy Gillespie’s recording of “Manteca,” featuring conguero Chano Pozo, with liis decision to become a professional musician. He first sat in on jam sessions at the Orlando, a G.I. jazz club in Munich. In 1949, after military service, he returned to Harlem and taught himself to play the drums, getting his first regular job with Eddie Bonnemere’s Latin Jazz Combo. Barretto then played for four years with Cuban bandleader/pianist Jose Curbelo. In 1957, he replaced Mongo Santamaria hi Tito Puente’s band, with which he recorded his first album. Dance Mania. After four years with Puente, he was one of the most sought- after percussionists hi New York, attending jam sessions with artists including Max Roach and Art Blakey and recording with Sonny Stitt, Lou Donaldson, Red Garland, Gene Ammons, Edtlie “Lockjaw” Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Freddie Hubbard, Cal Tjader, and Dizzy Gillespie. Barretto was so much in demand that in 1960 he was CONCORD PICANTE, 1992 Homage to Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers SUNNYSIDE, 2002 gold. a house musician for the Prestige, Blue Note, and Riverside record labels. Barretto’s first job as a bandleader came in 1961, when Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews asked him to form a charanga for a recording, Pachanga With Barretto. His next album, Charanga Modern a , featured “El Watusi,” wliicli became the first Lathi number to penetrate Billboard's Top-20 chart. In 1963, “El Watusi” went In 1975 and 1976, Barretto earned back-to-back Grammy nominations for Ins albums Barretto (with the prize-winning hit “Guarere”) and Barretto Live... Tomorrow. His 1979 album for Fania, Ricanl Struction, considered a classic of salsa, was named Best Album ( 1980) by Latin N.Y. magazine, and Barretto was named Conga Player of the Year. He won a Grammy Award hi 1990 for the song “Ritmo en el Corazon" with Celia Cruz. Barretto was inducted into the International Latin Music Hall of Fame hi 1999. He was voted Jazz Percussionist of 2004 by the Jazz Journalists Association and won the DownBeat critics poll for percussion hi 2005. His recording Time Was , Time Is was nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 If ■tfcD DISCOg^ Canta Brasil Peruvian Blue W ITH MORE THAN 40 albums to his name, and scores more that lie lias appeared on, Kenny Barron’s imprint on jazz is large. The pianist has been recognized the world over as a master of performance and composition. Barron started playing professionally in Philadelphia as a teenager with Mel Melvin’s orchestra, which also featured Barron’s brother Bill on tenor saxophone. At age 19, Barron moved to New York City and was hired by James Moody after the tenor saxophonist heard him play at the Five Spot. In 1962, he joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band, an association that developed his appreciation for Latin and Caribbean rhythms. After five years with Gillespie, Barron began to perform with Freddie Hubbard, Milt Jackson, Buddy Rich, and Stanley Turrentine. In 1971, he joined Yusef LateeFs band, an experience that Barron acknowledges as having been a key influence on his improvisational skills. Three years later, Barron recorded Sunset to Dawn , his first album as a leader. Throughout the 1980s, Barron collaborated with the great tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, touring with his quartet and recording several albums, one of which was nominated for a Grammy Award ( People Time). In 1982, he co-founded the quartet Sphere, which was dedicated to Thelonious Monk's music and inspiration. Sphere comprised Barron, Buster Williams, and Monk band alumni Ben Riley and Charlie Rouse. After Rouse’s passing in 1988, the f band took a hiatus before reuniting in 1998 (with alto saxophonist Gary Bartz replacing Rouse) and releasing a recording for Verve Records. Barron’s own recordings have earned him nine Grammy nominations, among them Spirit Song , Sambao , Night and the City (a duet recording with Charlie Haden), and Wanton Spirit (a trio recording with Rov Haynes and Haden). He has won numerous jazz critics and readers’ polls from DownBeat, JazzTimes , and Jazziz magazines; and is a seven- time recipient of the Jazz Journalists Association’s “Best Pianist” honors. As a composer, Barron’s works have been featured in film and documentaries, and he most recently scored the film Another Harvest Moon. In 2009 he was named a living Legacy by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and was inducted into the American Jazz Hall of Fame in 2005. As a long-standing professor of music at Rutgers University (1974- 2000), Barron mentored many of today’s established jazz talents, including David Sanchez, Terence Blanchard, and Regina Bell. He continues to tour internationally solo and with his trio. sphere. Four in One ELEKTRA 1982 VERVE 1994 SUNNYSIDE SUNNYSIDE, 2007 Photo by Lee Tanner 2010 KENNY BARRON PIANIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN Bom June 9, 1943 in Philadelphia, PA 18 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 q\£D discog/^ MCA, 1937-39 The Original American Decca Recordings VERVE. 1956 ROULETTE, 1957 IMPULSE!, 1962 T HOUGI I A PIANIST and occasional organist, William “Count” Basie’s fame stems mainly from his history :>ne of the great bandleaders. Basie’s arrangements made good use of soloists, allowing musicians such as Lester Young, Buck Clayton, Sweets Edison, and Frank Foster to create some of their best work. Although his strength was as a bandleader, Basie’s sparse piano style often delighted audiences with its swinging simplicity. Basie’s first teacher was his mother, who taught him piano. Later, the informal organ lessons from his mentor Fats Waller helped him find work in a theater accompanying silent films. In 1927, Basie found himself in Kansas City, playing with two of the most famous hands in the city: Walter Page’s Blue Devils and the Bennie Moten hand. In 1935, Basie started his own Kansas City band, engaging the core of the Moten hand. They performed nightly radio broadcasts, which caught the attention of music producer John Hammond. In 1936, Hammond brought the Basie band to New York, where it opened at the Roseland Ballroom. By the next year, the hand was a fixture on 52nd Street, in residence at the Famous Door. During this time the key to Basie’s hand was what became known as the “All-American Rhythm Section” — Freddie Green on guitar, Walter Page on bass, and Jo Jones on drums. The horns were also quite potent, including Lester Young, Earl Warren, The Basie Big Band PABLO, 1975 ami Herschel Evans on saxophones; Buck Clayton and Sweets Edison on trumpets; and Benny Morton and Dicky Wells on trombones. With a swinging rhythm section and top-notch soloists in the horn section, Basie’s band became one of the most popular between 1937-49, scoring such swing hits as “One O’Clock Jump” and “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.” Lester Young’s tenor saxophone playing during this period, in particular on such recordings as “Lester Leaps In" and “Taxi War Dance,” influenced jazz musicians for years to come. In addition, Basie’s use of great singers such as Helen Humes and Jimmy Rushing enhanced his band’s sound and popularity. Economics forced Basie to pare down to a septet in 1950. By 1952 he had returned to his big band sound, organizing what became euphemistically known as his “New Testament” band, which began a residency at Birdland in New York. The new band retained the same high standards of musicianship as the earlier version, with such standouts as Frank Foster, Frank Wess, Eddie “Lockjaw” Smith, Thad Jones, and Joe Williams. Foster’s composition “Shiny Stockings” and Williams' rendition of “Every Day” brought Basie a couple of much- needed hits in the mid-1950s. In addition to achieving success with his own singers, he also enjoyed acclaim for records backing such stars as Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., and Tony Bennett. Basie continued to perform and record until his death in 1984. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 19 CONCORD, 1979 ^, 6D D,sco G/? Photo by Lee Tanner Live in Stereo at the Flamingo Hotel, Vol. 1 R eferred to by duke Ellington as “not only the world’s greatest drummer... [but also] the world’s greatest musician,” Louie Bellson had expressed himself on drums since age three. At 15, he pioneered the double bass drum set-up, and two years later he triumphed over 40,000 drummers t< win the Gene Krupa drumming contest. Bellson performed on more than 200 albums as one of the most sought-after big band drummers, working with such greats as Duke Ellington (who recorded many of Bellson’s compositions). Count Basie. Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, Woody Herman, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Louie Armstrong, and Lionel Hampton. He toured with Norman Granz’s all-star Jazz at the Philharmonic, and worked with many vocalists, including Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Tony Bennett, Joe Williams, and liis wife. Pearl Bailey, for whom he served as musical director. He also appeared in several films in the 1940s, including The Power Girl , The Gang's All Here , and A Song is Born. A prolific composer, Bellson had more than 1,000 compositions and arrangements to his name, embracing jazz, swing, orchestral suites, symphonic works, and ballets. As an author, he published more than JAZZ HOUR, 1959 MUSICMASTERS, 1987 TELARC, 1993 PERCUSSION POWER. 2005 a dozen books on drums and percussion, and was a six-time Grammy Award nominee. In 1998, he was hailed — along with Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, and Max Roach — as one of four Living Legends of Music” when he received the American Drummers Achievement Award from the Zildjian Company. Bellson also was a highly sought-after educator, giving music and drum workshops and clinics, teaching not only his dynamic drumming technique hut also jazz heritage. He was awarded four honorary doctoral degrees from Northern Illinois University, Denison University, Augustana College, and DePaul University. In 2003, a historical landmark was dedicated at his birthplace in Rock Falls, Illinois, inaugurating an annual three-day celebration there in his honor. His 2005 recording. The Sacred Music of Louie Bellson , showcased his prowess for blending orchestral music, choir, and big band. In 2007, Bellson was one of 36 musicians receiving the Living Jazz Legend Award from the Kennedy Center and one of three honored as ASCAP Jazz Living Legends by the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. 1994 LOUIE BELLSON DRUMMER COMPOSER ARRANGER BANDLEADER EDUC/ BORN July 6, 1924 in Rock Falls, IL DIED February 14, 2009 20 NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 2006 TONY BENNETT VOCALIST BORN August 3, 1926 in Queens, NY Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES The Beat of My Heart C ALLED “THE BEST singer in the business” by Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett was born as Anthony Dominick Benedetto in 1926 in the Astoria section of Queens, New York. By age 10, he bad attracted such notice that he was tapped to sing at the opening ceremony for the Triborough Bridge. He attended the High School of Industrial Arts, worked as a singing waiter, and then performed with military bands during his Army service in World War II. After the war, be continued his vocal studies formally at the American Theatre Wing school and informally in the 52nd Street jazz clubs. His break came in 1949, when Bob Hope saw him working in a Greenwich Village club with Pearl Bailey, invited him to join his show at the Paramount, and changed his stage name to Tony Bennett. Bennett's recording career began in 1950, when lie signed with the Columbia label, with the number one hit “Because of You,” followed by his cover of Hank Williams’ “Cold, Cold Heart.” With a string of hits to his credit, Bennett was able to exert greater artistic influence over his recordings, allowing him to express his interest in jazz, notably The Heat of My Heart , on which he was accompanied primarily with jazz percussionists, and his work with Count Basie, In Person with Count Basie and His Orchestra. COLUMBIA, 1957 In Person with Count Basie and His Orchestra The Tonv Bennett Bill Evans Album COLUMBIA, 1975 On Hobday: A Tribute to Bilhe Hobday COLUMBIA, 1996 Playin' with my Friends Bennett Sings the Blues COLUMBIA, 2001 In 1962, Bennett recorded “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” the song that would become his signature, and for which he won Grammy Awards for Record of the Year and Best Solo Male Vocal Performance. Over the next years, while putting out singles and albums that were consistently among the most popular in the country, he continued to infuse his singing with the spontaneity of jazz and to record and tour with bands composed almost exclusively of jazz musicians. In the 1970s, Bennett formed his own record company and made albums including two duet recording with pianist Bill Evans. His 1992 release. Perfectly Frank, a tribute to Frank Sinatra, and 1993 Steppin ’ Out . a tribute to Fred Astaire, went gold and won him back- to-back Grammy Awards. Bennett received Grammy’s highest award. Album of the Year, in 1994 for his live recording, MTV Unplugged, and was honored with the academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. Also in 2001, he founded the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts (named for his friend) in Queens, a public school dedicated to teaching the performing arts. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 21 WARNER BROTHERS, 1977 WARNER BROTHERS, 1989 Weekend in L.A, Tenderly Absolute Benson 200Q GEORGE BENSON GUITARIST VOCALIST BORN March 22, 1943 in Pittsburgh, PA ^ddisco^ The New Boss Guitar of George Benson Photo by Lee Tanner The Other Side of Abbey Road A ppreciated as both a mu- sician and performer, George 1 Benson plays the dual role of expert improviser and vibrant entertainer. Rounding out his singular approach with a strong sense of swing, he is considered one of the greatest guitarists in jazz. Benson began his career as a guitarist working the corner pubs of his native Pittsburgh. Legendary jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery came across Benson early on, complimenting him and urging him to continue his already impressive work. In the early 1960s, Benson apprenticed with organist Brother Jack McDuff; he foimd the organist’s gritty swing a fertile ground for tlie sly, confident, and adventurous guitar lines that earned him an early reputation as a master. By the time legendary talent scout John Hammond signed Benson to Columbia, the guitarist’s name was becoming known throughout the industry. In the late 1960s he sat in on Miles Davis’ Miles in the Sky sessions, and also put a personal spin on the times from the Beatles’ Abbey Road. Joining the CTI label in 1970, Benson was united with many of jazz's finest instrumentalists — including Stanley Turrentine, Hon Carter, and Freddie Hubbard — and released classic albums, such as Beyond the Blue Horizon. Despite his success, Benson’s desire to combine his singing ami guitar playing was blocked until he worked with music producer Tommy LiPuma. The result was Breezin ' , the first jazz record to attain platinum sales. The 1976 blockbuster, his first in a long association with Warner Brothers Records, brought Benson to the attention of the general public with such hits as his soulful rendition of Leon Russell’s “This Masquerade,’’ which featured the guitarist scatting along with his solo break. He followed up with many pop hits, including a sultry version of “On Broadway” and the irresistible “Give Me the Night" (produced by Quincy Jones). I 11 the mid-1990s Benson followed LiPuma to the GRP label where they released three well-received albums highlighting Benson’s vocal and guitar prowess. In 2006, Benson and vocalist/songwriter A1 Jarreau released Givin' It Up with Benson’s current label. Concord Music Group. Benson lias won ten Grammy Awards, th rillin g many crowds around the world with his performances, including recent appearances at Malaysia’s 50th Merdeka celebration and the Mawazine Festival in Morocco. 22 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 ••\to DISCOg/j. Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk A RT BLAKEY’S JAZZ Messengers not only supplied consistently exciting and innovative music for nearly 40 years, but also provided the experience and mentoring for young musicians to learn their trade. Though self-taught, Blakey was already leading his own dance band by age 14. Blakey’s first noted sideman job came in 1942 with Mary Lou Williams, whom he joined for a club engagement at Kelly’s Stables in New York. The following year be joined the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, where be stayed until joining Billy Eekstine’s modern jazz big band in 1944. A subsequent trip to Africa, ostensibly to immerse himself in Islam, revealed to him that jazz was truly an American music, which he preached from the bandstand thereafter, lie adopted the Muslim name of Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, but continued to record under Art Blakey. In the early 1950s, he worked with such greats as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, and Clifford Brown. The latter two became members of the Jazz Messengers, which was originally a cooperative unit. Brown, then Silver, left to form their own bands and Blakey became the leader of the Jazz Messengers. The Messengers went on to play in a style that critics called hard bop, a logical progression on the bebop style that was more hard-driving and blues-oriented. ATLANTIC, 1957 BLUE NOTE, 1958 BLUE NOTE, 1961 CONCORD, 1982 The Messengers made a concerted effort at rekindling the black audience for jazz that had begun to erode when the ballroom era of jazz declined. Blakey powered bis bands with a distinctive, take-no-prisoners style of drumming that recalled the thunderous and communicative drum traditions of Africa. Though his drumming became among the most easily recognized sounds in jazz, Blakey always played for the band, prodding on his immensely talented colleagues’ solos. From the first Jazz Messengers band lie formed, Blakey has welcomed generations of exceptional young musicians who have evolved into prominent bandleaders and contributors themselves. That list, reading like a Who’s Who of jazz, includes Donald Byrd, Curtis Fuller, Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Keith Jarrett. Woody Shaw, Joanne Brackeen, Bobby Watson, James W illiams, and three of the Marsalis brothers (Wynton, Branford, and Delfeayo). His mentoring of these musicians, helping them to hone their skills and preparing them to lead their own bands, lias helped keep the jazz tradition alive and thriving. For the remainder of his career, Blakey continued to take the Jazz Messengers message across the globe. 1988 ART BLAKEY A Night at Birdland, Vols. 1-2 Photo by Lee Tanner Rl I IP MHTF 1Q5/1 BORN October 11, 1919 in Pittsburgh, PA DIED October 16, 1990 DRUMMER BANDLEADER NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 23 2006 BOB BROOKMEYER TROMBONIST PIANIST COMPOSER ARRANGER EDUCATO BORN December 19, 1929 in Kansas City, MO A N INNOVATIVE composer and gifted arranger for both small and large ensembles, as well as an outstanding performer on valve trombone and piano. Bob Brookmeyer has been making music for more than 50 years. A professional performer with dance bands since the age of 14, he studied composition for three years at the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, where he won the Carl Busch Prize for Choral Composition. In the early 1950s, he traveled to New York as a pianist with Tex Benecke and Mel Lewis and stayed on to freelance with artists including Pee Wee Russell, Ben Webster, and Coleman Hawkins. Alter a period with Claude Thornhill, Brookmeyer joined Stan Getz in late 1952, an association that took him to California, where Gerry Mulligan asked him to join his quartet. Brookmeyer gained renown as a member of that group (1954-57) and as a member of the experimental Jimmy Giuffre 3 (1957-58), comprising Giuffre’s reeds, Jim llalPs guitar, and Brookmeyer’s valve trombone. His long association with Mulligan included work with the Concert Jazz Band, which Brookmeyer helped to form and maintain, and for which he wrote arrangements. CHALLENGE, 1993 CHALLENGE, 2002 In 1961, Brookmeyer and Clark Terry formed their legendary Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, formed in 1965. After a decade spent in California as a studio ; musician, Brookmeyer returned to New York in 1978 to play with Stan Getz and Jim Hall, and then in 1979 rejoined the Mel Lewis Orchestra, becoming its musical director after the departure of Tliad Jones. From 1981 to 1991, Brookmeyer was busy as a composer and performer in Europe, working in both classical and jazz idioms. He began teaching at the Manhattan School of Music in 1985 and directed the BM1 Composers Workshop from 1989 to 1991. He has served as musical director of the Schlewsig- Holstein Musik Festival Big Band/New Art Orchestra, the Stanley Ixnowles Distinguished Visiting Professor at Brandon University in Manitoba, and director of the New England Conservatory’s Jazz Composers’ Workshop Orchestra. A composer whose work has been widely published, studied, and performed, Brookmeyer has received grants in composition from the National Endowment for the Arts and nominations from the National Association of Recording Arts and Sciences for composing and performing, and he was commissioned by the 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic to write a piece for an EMI disc featuring trumpet player 'fill Broenner. A concert-length piece for the New Art Orchestra, Spirit Music , was released in 2007. quintet, which lasted until 1968. Brookmeyer was also busy during tltis time as lead trombonist and arranger-composer for The Thad 2 4 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 C LEG BROWN bears the distinction of being the first woman instrumentalist honored with the NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship. Her family moved to Chicago in 1919 and four years later, at age 14, she started working professionally with a vaudeville show. Her brother Everett, who worked with “Pine Top” Smith, taught her the boogie woogie piano style that became her trademark. Brown performed in the Chicago area during the late 1920s. In 1935, she replaced Fats Waller on his New York radio series on WABC, and soon began recording. Her version of “Pine Top’s Boogie Woogie” was influential on pianists that came after her, and she is credited with being an early influence on Dave Brubeck, who played during the intermissions of her shows, and Marian McPartland, among others. Through the 1950s she worked frequently at that city’s Three Deuces club, establishing a reputation as a two-fisted, driving Living in the Afterglow AUDIOPHILE, 1987 pianist. Brown began to gam international renown for her work, and she continued to perform regularly in New York, Hollywood, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco until 1953, making records for Capitol Records and performing with the Decca All-Stars, among others. Brown then dropped out of the music business completely and took up full-tune nursing. After retiring from nursing in 1973, she returned to music, spending her latter years as a church musician in her Seventh Day Adventist Church in Denver, Colorado. In 1987, Marian McPartland sought out Brown as a guest on her long-running radio series, Piano Jazz. A recording of the program was released as Living in the Afterglow , Brown’s last recording. Although all the numbers are gospel songs (many are originals by Brown), they are played in the same rollicking style as her 1930s recordings. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 ^" 8 “ a v Photo bv Lee Tanner VERVE, 1956-64 VERVE, 1962-65 CONCORD, 1988 TELARC, 1995 R AY BROWN’S dexterity and rich sound on the bass made him one of the most popular and prolific musicians in jazz for more than 50 years. The Penguin Guide to jazz on CD notes that Brown is the most cited musician in the first edition of the guide, both for his own small ensemble work and as a sideman, testifying to his productivity. Brown started on piano at age eight and began playing the bass at 17, performing his first professional job at a Pittsburgh club in 1943. His first significant tour was with bandleader Snookiun Russell in 1944; he moved to New York the following year. By 1946 he was working in Dizzy Gillespie’s hand, and in 1940 he formed a trio with Hank Jones and Charlie Smith. In 1948. he married EUa Fitzgerald and became musical director on her solo and Jazz at the Philharmonic tours until their breakup in 1952. In 1951 . he began a stint with the Oscar Peterson Trio that lasted until 1966. It was in Peterson’s group that Brown’s prowess on the bass began getting attention, anchoring the trio’s sound in both the piano- guitar and piano-drums configurations. In the mid-1960s. Brown co-led a quintet with vibraphonist Mill Jackson, with whom he had worked in the 1940s as part of RAY BROWN WITH JOHN CLAYTON AND CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE, Super Bass 2, Dizzy Gillespie’s rhythm section and later as a member of the Milt Jackson Quartet, the precursor to the Modern Jazz Quartet. In the late 1970s, Brown formed his first full-time trio, which was to become his favored touring and performance unit over the next couple of decades. He utilized a variety of up-and-coming musicians in his bands, including pianists Gene Harris, Monty Alexander, Benny Green, and Geoff Keezer and drummers Jeff Hamilton, Lewis Nash, Gregory Hutchinson, and Kariem Riggins. Brown was also involved in jazz education, including authoring the Hay Brown Hass Hook 1, an instructional volume. He served as mentor to numerous young musicians, including those who have passed through his groups and special guests he invited to play on a series of 1990s recordings for the Telarc label titled Some of My Best Friends are These have included pianists, saxophonists, trumpeters, and vocalists. Some of the great younger bassists, such as John Clayton and Christian McBride, count him as a major influence on their sound. In 2003, Brown was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame. 26 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 1999 DAVE BRUBECK PIANIST COMPOSER BORN December 6, 1920 in Concord, CA DISC 0 Gff ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1953 COLUMBIA, 1959 COLUMBIA/LEGACY, 1961 TELARC, 2004 Jazz at Oberlin Classical Brubeck London Flat, London Sharp Photo by Tom Pich D AVE BRUBECK, declared a “Livin';; Legend” by the Library of Congress, continues to be one of t lie most active and popular jazz musicians in the world today. His experiments with odd time signatures, improvised counterpoint, and a distinctive harmonic approach are the hallmarks of his unique musical style. Born into a musically inclined family — his two older brothers were professional musicians — he began taking piano lessons from his mother, a classical pianist, at age four. After graduating from College of the Pacific in 1942, he enlisted in the Army, and while serving in Europe led an integrated G.l. jazz band. At the end of World War II, be studied composition at Mills College with French classical composer Darius Milhaud, who encouraged him to introduce jazz elements into his classical compositions. This experimentation with mixed genres led to the formation of the Dave Brubeck Octet that included Paid Desmond, Hill Smith, and Cal Tjader. In 1949, Brubeck formed an award-winning trio with Cal Tjader and Hon Crotty, and in 1951 expanded the band to include Desmond. Brubeck became the first jazz artist to make the cover of Time magazine, in 1954, and in 1958 performed in Europe and the Middle East for the U.S. State Department, leading to the introduction of music from other cultures into his repertoire. In 1959, the Dave Brubeck Quartet recorded an experiment in time signatures, Time Out. The album sold more than a million copies, and Brubeck’s TELARC, 2002 “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” based on a Turkish folk rhythm, and Desmond’s “lake Five” appeared on jukeboxes throughout the world. Throughout bis career, Brubeck has continued to experiment with integrating jazz anti classical music. In 1959, be premiered and recorded his brother Howard’s Dialogues for Jazz Combo ami Orchestra with the New York lilharmonic under Leonard Bernstein. In I960, he composed Points on Jazz for the American Ballet Theatre, and in later decades composed for and performed with the Murray Louis Dance Co. His musical theater piece. The Real Ambassadors starring Louis Armstrong and Carmen McRae, was also written and recorded in 1960 and performed to great acclaim at the 1962 Monterey Jazz Festival. The classic Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond, Eugene Wright, and Joe Morello was dissolved in December 1967 and Brubeck’s first of many oratorios. The Light in the Wilderness , premiered in 1968. He has received many honors in the U.S. and abroad for his contribution to jazz, including the National Medal of Arts, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, the Kennedy Center Honors, and the Austrian Medal of the Arts. In 2008, Brubeck received the Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Diplomacy from the U.S. State Department for “introducing the language, the sounds, and the spirit of jazz to new generations around the world.” NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1 982-20 11 1~J PRESTIGE/OJC, 1958 BLUE NOTE, 1963 Kenny Burrell & John Coltrane Midnight Blue Guitar Forms KENNY BURRELL & THE BOYS CHOIR OF HARLEM, Love is the Answer Photo by Lee Tanner K ENNY BURRELL pioneered the guitar-led trio with bass and drums in the late 1950s. Known for his harmonic creativity, lush tones, and lyricism on the guitar, he is also a prolific and highly regarded composer. Born in Detroit in 1931, he found musical colleagues at an early age among Paul Chambers, Tommy Flanagan, Frank Foster, Yusef Lateef, and the brothers Thad, Hank, and Elvin Jones. While still a student at Wayne State University, he made his first major recording in 1951 with Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Percy Heath, and Milt Jackson. After graduation, he toured for six months with the Oscar Peterson Trio and then moved to New York, where he performed in Broadway pit hands, on pop and R&B studio sessions (with Lena Horne, Tony Bennett, and James Brown), in jazz venues, and on jazz recordings. He went on to work and/or record with such artists as Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Gene Ammons, Kenny Dorham, Benny Goodman, Coleman Hawkins, and Jimmy Smith. As a leader, he has recorded more than 90 albums and is a featured guitarist on more than 200 jazz recordings, including ones with Art Blakey, Herbie Hancock, and (Jnincy Jones. CONCORD JAZZ, 1997 75th Birthday Bash Live! BLUE NOTE, 2006 Burrell’s compositions have been recorded by artists including Ray Brown, June Christy, Grover Washington, Jr., Frank Wess, and Stevie Ray Vaughan. His extended composition for the Boys Choir of Harlem was premiered at New York’s Lincoln Center, and his “Dear Ella,” performed by Dee Dee Bridgewater, won a 1998 Grammy Award. In addition to performing and recording, he is a professor of music and ethnomusicology at the University of California at Los Angeles. A recognized authority on the music of Duke Ellington, he developed the first regular college course ever taught in the United States on Ellington in 1978. In 1997, he was appointed director of the jazz studies program at UCLA, where he has enlisted such faculty members as George Bohanon, Billy Childs, Billy Higgins, Harold Land, Bobby Rodriguez, and Gerald Wilson. Kenny Burrell is the author of two hooks. Jazz Guitar and Jazz Guitar Solos. In 2004. he received a Jazz Educator of the Year Award from DowuBeat. He is a founder of the Jazz Heritage Foundation and the Friends of Jazz at UCLA and is recognized as an international ambassador for jazz and its promotion as an art form. 2005 KENNY BURRELL GUITARIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN July 31, 1931 hi Detroit, MI 28 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1082-20 1 1 BLUE NOTE, 1970 ^°“co G ^ Photo by Lee Tanner DENMARK, 1955 BLUE NOTE, 1960 BLUE NOTE, 1974 A City Called Heaven LANDMARK, 1991 A PIONEER JAZZ educator on African-American college and uni- versity campuses, as well as general colleges and universities, Donald Byrd has also been a leading improviser on trumpet. Raised in lilt' home of a Methodist minister and musician, ^ he learned music in the then higldy regarded music education system in the Detroit high schools. Byrd went on to earn degrees from Wayne State University and the Manhattan School of Music, eventually earning a doctorate from the University of Colorado School of Education. He studied music with the famed teacher Nadia Boulanger in Paris in 1963. Byrd played in the Air Force hand during 1951-52, then relocated to New York. Some of his earliest gigs in New York were with the George Wallington group at Cafe Bohemia. He joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in December 1955. Following his Messengers experience, he worked in a variety of hands with Max Roach, John Coltrane, Red Garland, and Gigi Gryce, refining his playing skills. In 1953 he co-led a hand with fellow Detroiter Pepper Adams, which continued for the next three years. In the early 1960s, he became a bandleader of Iris own touring quintet. During 1965-66 he was a house arranger for the Norwegian Radio Orchestra. It was also at this time that he became more active as an educator, teaching at New York’s Music & Art High School. He held clinics for the National Stage Band Camps, giving private lessons and instruction. Among the college and university teaching appointments that followed were Rutgers University, Hampton University, Howard University, North Carolina Central University, North Texas State, and Delaware State l iiiversity. He also earned a law degree between teaching appointments. At Howard University, where he was chairman of the Black Music Department, he brought together a group of talented students to form Donald Byrd & the Blackbyrds, a pop-jazz band that had a hit record for Blue Note, and continued to record — sans Byrd — for the Fantasy label. His recorded innovations included the use of a vocal chorus, which resulted in his popular recording of “Cristo Redemptor,” as well as his engagements of gospel texts. 2000 DONALD BYRD TRUMPETER FLUGELHORNIST EDUCATOR BORN December 9, 1932 in Detroit, MI NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 ■t£D DISCQ G/? PRESTIGE/OJC, 2008 1 CANDIDO CAMERO PERCUSSIONIST BORN April 22, 1921 iii Havana, Cuba Photo by Tom Pich billy taylor, The Billy Taylor Trio with Candido S O WELL KNOWN and respected, his first name alone — Candido — is all that is necessary for jazz aficionados to know who he is. Credited with being the first percussionist to bring conga drumming to jazz, Candido Camero is also known for his contributions to the development of mambo and Afro-Cuban jazz. Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1921, Camero first began making music as a young child, beating rhythms on empty condensed milk cans in place of bongos. He worked for six years with the CMQ Radio Orchestra and at the famed Cabaret Tropicana. He came to the United States in 1946 with the dance team Carmen and Rolando, and very soon after was playing with Billy Taylor, who wrote in 1954, “I have not heard anyone who even approaches the wonderful balance between jazz and Cuban elements that Candido demonstrates.” By the early 1950s, Camero was a featured soloist with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, with whom he toured the U.S. playing three congas 1954 VERVE 1956 Brujerias de Candido: Candido’s Latin McGuffa’s Dust CANDIDO CAMERO/CARLOS VALDES/ giovanni hidalgo. Conga Kings CHESKY, 1999 Hands of Fire LATIN JAZZ USA, 2006 (at a time when other congueros were playing only one) in addition to a cowbell and guiro (a fluted gourd played with strokes from a stick). He created another unique playing style by tuning liis congas to specific pitches so that he could play melodies like a pianist. He became one of the best known congueros in the country, appearing on such television shows as the Ed Sullivan Show and the Jackie Gleason Show. He has recorded and performed with seemingly everybody in the jazz field, including such luminaries as Tony Bennett, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Slide Hampton, Charles Mingus, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan. Charlie Barker, Sonny Rollins, and Clark Terry. Among his many awards are the Latin Jazz LISA Lifetime Achievement Award (2001) and a special achievement award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers as a “Legend of Jazz” (2005). The subject of the 2006 documentary, Candido: Hands of Fire, Camero (entering his 90s) continues to perform throughout the world. 30 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 D1 C °G^ 1 ! BORN August 8, 1907 in New York, NY DIED July 12, 2003 Photo by Lee Tanner BLUEBIRD, 1934-59 B ORIGINAL JAZZ ENNY CARTER made memorable impressions as a great bandleader \ and improviser with a highly influential style. Largely self-taught, Carter’s first instrument was the trumpet, although the alto saxophone eventually became his principal instrument. Some of his earliest professional jobs were with bands led by cornetist June Clark and pianist Earl Hines, where his unusual ability lo play both trumpet and saxophone was highly regarded. In 19.30- 31 he spent a year with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, then for a short time he succeeded Don Redman as musical director of McKinney's Cotton Pickers. During the early 1930s, he also made his first recordings with the Chocolate Dandies, which included Coleman Hawkins. In 1932, Carter formed Iris own big band. At various times the band included such significant players as Ben Webster, Chu Berry, Teddy Wilson, Dicky Wells, Bill Coleman, and Sid Catlett. In 1934, Carter dissolved his band, migrating to Europe the next year, where he served as a staff arranger for the BBC Orchestra in London until 1938. His work in Europe took on an ambassadorial tint: he freelanced with musicians in England and France and led a multiethnic band in Scandinavia in 1937. Growing restless. Carter returned to the U.S. in 1938 and assembled a new big band, which became the house band at the Savoy Ballroom through 1940. In 1942, Further Definitions CLASSICS, 1957-58 | with another new hand in tow, he settled in Los Angeles, his longtime home base. With lucrative film studios calling, Carter began scoring films and television. He became one of the first African Americans to be employed in the field, easing the way for other black composers. His first film work was in 1943 on Stormy Weather. Starting in 1946, with his composing and arranging skills in constant demand. Carter disbanded his orchestra and became largely a freelance player. He participated in tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic and wrote arrangements for major singers such as Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughan, and Lotus Armstrong. Many of Iris subsequent recordings, such as the widely hailed Further Definitions, were evidence of the depth of his composing and arranging mastery. Carter has received numerous awards during his long lifetime, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, a DownBeat International Critics Poll in the arranger’s category in 1988, Jazz Artist of the Year in both DoumBeat and JazzTimes International Critics’ polls in 1990, and the National Medal of Arts in 2000. In 1996, a documentary on Carter, Symphony in Riffs , was released. 1986 BENNY CARTER SAXOPHONIST TRUMPETER ARRANGER COMPOSER BANDLEADER NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 31 199 2 BETTY CARTER VOCALIST BANDLEADER EDUCATOR BORN May 16, 1930 in Flint, MI DIED September 26, 1998 Photo by Lee Tanner B ETTY CARTER developed a legendary reputation, along with Art Blakey, as one of the great mentors for young jazz musicians. Equally legendary was her singing prowess, creating a distinctive style of improvisation that could transcend any song. Carter studied piano at the Detroit Conservatory, a skill that served her well later in her career in writing original songs. Growing up in Detroit, she was exposed to numerous jazz greats who passed through town, even getting a golden opportunity as a teenager to sit in with Charlie Parker. Carter’s big break came in 1948. when she was asked to join the Lionel Hampton band. Developing her vocal improvisations during the three years with the band led to her singular singing style. Hampton, impressed with her saxophone-like improvisatory vocals, dubbed her “Betty Bebop.” After leaving Hampton’s band, she worked variously with such greats as .Miles Davis, Ray Charles, and Sonny Hollins before creating her own band. Although she recorded for major record labels early in her career. Carter became increasingly frustrated with record company dealings and disparities and formed her own label Bet-Car in 1971, IMPULSE!, 1958-60 VERVE 1970 VERVE, 1979 VERVE, 1988 r eed the Fire VERVE, 1993 one of the first jazz artists to do so. Selling her own recordings through various distributors, she was able to sustain her performing career. Carter was uncomfortable with studio recordings, but live recordings, like The Audience with Betty Carter , demonstrate her remarkably inventive singing and her ability to drive the band. Carter’s bands served a dual purpose: to create her own great music and to help young musicians develop their craft. Many of the musicians who passed through her groups went on to lead their own groups, such as Geri Allen, Stephen Scott, Don Braden, and Christian McBride. She also developed a mentoring program called Betty Carter’s Jazz Ahead through links with organizations such as the International Association for Jazz Education, 651 Aits, and the Kennedy Center. The program was a one- to two- week teaching seminar where nationally selected promising young jazz musicians learned from Carter and other seasoned musicians, culminating in a final concert of instructors and students together. Jazz Ahead was one of Carter’s proudest achievements, and she worked with the program up until her death. She received the National Medal of Arts in 1997. 32 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 1998 RON CARTER BASSIST CELLIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN May 4, 1937 iii Femdale, M I Photo by Lee Tanner R ON CARTER’S dexterity and harmonic sophistication on the hass have few rivals in the history of jazz. In addition to the bass, he has also employed both the cello and the piccolo bass (a downsized hass pitched somewhere between cello and contrabass), one of the first musicians to use those instruments in jazz settings. His pursuit of music began with the cello, at age 10. One of the many stuelents aspiring to be musicians in the Detroit public schools, he switched to the bass at Cass Tech High School. He studied at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and eventually made his way to New York City, where he earned his master’s degree in Music from the Manhattan School of Music in 1961. He began freelancing, playing with a host of jazz greats, such as Chico Hamilton. Randy Weston, Bobby Timmons, Thelonious Monk, and Art Farmer. Carter cut three substantial albums with the great saxophonist Eric Dolphy, two under Dolphy’s name and one under his own. Carter’s Where? and Dolphy’s Out There were groundbreaking in that Carter played cello against George Duvivier’s hass, creating a rich lower texture against which Dolphy could contrast his playing. In 196.3, he joined Miles Davis in what would become the trumpeter’s second great quintet that included Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, and Herbie Hancock. Davis even recorded some of Carter’s compositions — notably “R.J.,” “Mood,” and “Eighty-One” — and the rhythm section of Carter, Williams, and Hancock powered the horn section to greater heights. He remained with Davis from 1963-68, whereupon he grew tired of the rigors of the road, preferring to freelance, lead his own groups, and teach. Among the cooperative bands he performed with during the remainder of the 1960s were the New York Jazz Sextet and the New York Bass Choir. Throughout the 1970s, he was a recording studio bassist in high demand, though he never stopped gigging with a variety of artists and bands, including several touring all-star units such as the CTI All-Stars, V.S.O.P. (ostensibly a reunion of the Davis band minus the leader), and the Milestone Jazzstars, which included Sonny Rollins on tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyner on piano, and A1 Foster on drums. His freelance work has continued throughout his career, including chamber and orchestral work, film and television soundtracks, and even some hip hop recordings. Carter continues to record with young musicians such as Stephen Scott and Eewis Nash, and his college and university teaching career has also been quite active. He is distinguished professor of music, emeritus of the City College of New York, and has received honorary doctorate degrees from the Berklee School of Music, the Manhattan School of Music, and the New England Conservatory in Boston. He has also written several books on playing the hass. including Building A Jazz Bass Line. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 33 tffcD DIS COg/j. modern jazz quartet. The Artistry of the Modern Jazz Quartet Photo by Herman Leonard Photography LLC/CTSIMAGES PRESTIGE, 1952-55 Bohemia After Dark SAVOY 1955 SAVOY, 1955 K ENNY CLARKE, known among musicians as “Klook” for one of liis characteristic drum licks, is truly a jazz pioneer. He was a leader in the rhythmic advances that signaled the beginning of the modern jazz era, his drum style becoming the sound of bebop and influencing drummers such as Art Blakey and Max Roach. Clarke studied music broadly wliile in high school including piano, trombone, drums, vibraphone, and theory. Such versatility of knowledge would later serve him well as a bandleader. Clarke moved to New York in late 1935, where he first began developing liis unique approach to the drums, one with a wider rhythmic palette than that of the swing band drummers. Instead of marking the count with the top cymbal, Clarke used counter-rhythms to accent the heat, what became known as “dropping of bombs.” He found a kindred spirit in Dizzy Gillespie when they hooked up in Teddy Hill's band in 1939. A key opportunity to further expand liis drum language came in late 1940 when he landed a gig in the house band (with Thelonious Monk on piano, and Nick Fenton on bass) at Minton’s Playhouse. It was this trio that welcomed such fellow travelers as guitarist Charlie Christian, Gillespie, and a host of others to its nightly jam sessions. These sessions became the primary laboratory for their brand of jazz, which came to be called bebop. Kenny Clarke Meets the Detroit Jazzmen SAVOY, 1956 Clarke-Boland Big Band RTE. 1968 A stint in the Army from 1943-46 introduced him to pianist John Lewis. After their discharge he and Lewis joined Gillespie’s bebop big band, wlrich gave Clarke his first taste of Paris during a European tour. After returning to New York, he joined the Milt Jackson Quartet, which metamorphosed into the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1952. Though he and Lewis remained friends, Clarke chafed at what he felt was the too-staid atmosphere of the MJQ. In 1956, he migrated to Paris, which became his home for nearly 30 years, working with Jacques Helian’s band and backing up visiting U.S. jazz artists. During the years 1960-73, he co-led the major Europe-based jazz big band with Belgian pianist Francy Boland, the Clarke-Boland Big Band. The band featured the best of Europe’s jazz soloists, including a number of exceptional U.S. expatriate musicians living in Europe. Among these were saxophonists Johnny Griffin and Sahib Shihab, and trumpeter Idrees Sulieman. After the disbanding of his hig band, Clarke found numerous opportunities both on the bandstand and teaching in the classroom. He remained quite active as a freelancer, often working with visiting U.S. jazz musicians, until his death in 1985. In 1988, Clarke was inducted into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame. KENNY CLARKE DRUMMER BANDLEADER BORN January 2, 1914 in Pittsburgh, PA DIED January 26, 1985 34 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 1991 % # BUCK CLAYTON TRUMPETER COMPOSER ARRANGER BANDLEADER EDUCATOR BORN November 12, 1911 in Parsons, KS DIED December 8, 1991 Photo by Lee Tanner Totto d'scog^ ; The Classic Swing of Buck Clayton ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1946 A VALUED MEMBER OF a variety of classic big bands, Wilbur “Buck” Clayton was versatile enough to thrive as a bandleader, session man, and trumpet soloist. Clayton first studied piano with his father beginning at age six, taking up the trumpet at age 17. He played in his church’s orchestra until 1932 when he moved to California, taking various band jobs. In 1934, Clayton assembled his own band and took it to China for two years. He joined Count Basic’s band in Kansas City in 1936 at the height of its popularity, playing his first prominent solo on “Fiesta in Blue.” He wrote several arrangements for Basie, including “Taps Miller” and “Red Bank Boogie,” before joining the Army in 1943. Following his discharge, he performed around New York through the end of the decade. Jazz at the Philharmonic tours took him overseas, and he made record sessions with artists like Jimmy Rushing and wrote charts for Duke Ellington and Harry James. In the early 1950s, he partnered with pianist Joe Bushkin in the first of the influential Embers quartets. Other artists he worked with include Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Eddie Condon, Sidney Bechet, and Humphrey Littleton. His ability to improvise in a variety of styles made him much in demand for sessions, especially with vocalists such as Billie Holiday. Physical issues with his embouchure — how the mouth forms against the mouthpiece of the instrument — caused him to relinquish the trumpet from 1972 until late in the decade, when he was able to resume playing for a U.S. State Department-sponsored tour of Africa. By 1979, however, he stopped playing permanently. While he was unable to perform, Clayton wrote arrangements for various bands. That skill was fully exercised when he put together his own big band in the mid-1980s, playing almost exclusively his own compositions and arrangements. He also became an educator, teaching at Hunter College in the 1980s. He continued to freelance for the remainder of his career, spending much of his last two decades teaching, lecturing, and arranging. His autobiography. Hack Clayton's Jazz World , co-authored with Nancy M. Elliot, was published in 1987. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 ^ 0DISC0G "< Photo by Lee Tanner COLUMBIA, 1959 wes Montgomery, Smokin' at the Half Note VERVE, 1965 son, F our! VERVE. 1968 Marsalis Music Honor Series MARSALIS MUSIC/ROUNDER. 2005 Cobh s Corner CHESKY, 2006 A N ACCOMPLISHED accompanist ami soloist, Jimmy Cobb is best known for being a key part ( rf Miles Davis' first great quintet in the late 1950s. Largely self-taught, Cobb spent Iris younger days in bis hometown of Washington, DC, playing engagements with Charlie Rouse, Frank Wess, and Billie Holiday, among others. He left DC in 1950, joining Earl Bostic, with whom he cut his first recordings, before finding work with Dinah Washington, Pearl Bailey, Clark Terry, Dizzy Gillespie, and Cannonball Adderley. In 1957, Cobh began playing with Miles Davis, eventually becoming part of a formidable rhythm section that included Paul Chambers on bass and Wynton Kelly on piano. Between 1957 and 1963, Cobb played (along with saxophonists John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley) on some of Davis' most noted records: Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain , Someday My Prince Will Come, Live at Carnegie Hall , Live at the Blackhawk, and Porgy and Bess, among others. In 1963, Cobh left the Davis band to continue working as a trio with Chambers and Kelly. The trio disbanded in the late 1960s, and Cobb worked with singer Sarah Vaughan for nine years. He then freelanced for the next 20 years with artists such as Sonny Stitt, Nat Adderley, Ricky Ford, Hank Jones, Ron Carter, George Coleman, David “Fathead” Newman, and Nancy Wilson. Cobb released his first CD (and music video) for the A&E network in 1986; it featured Freddie Hubbard, Gregory Hines, and Bill Cosby. In 2006, Cobh was produced by Branford Marsalis for the Marsalis Music Honor Series , recorded around Cobh’s 75th birthday. In the last few years, he has released several albums as a leader — New York Time, Cobb’s Corner, and West of 5th — playing with stalwart musicians such as pianists Cedar Walton and Hank Jones and relative newcomers such as bassist Christian McBride and trumpeter Roy Hargrove. Jimmy Cobb continues to play music in New York City, where he lives with his wife and two children. He now leads the Jimmy Cobh “So What" Band, celebrating 50 years of Kind of Blue and the music of Miles Davis, and travels the international circuit. Cobh currently teaches master classes at Stanford University’s Jazz Workshop and has taught at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music, the University of Greensboro in North Carolina, the International Center for the Arts at San Francisco State University in California, and international educational institutions. 36 NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 c ^DDISCO G/f ATLANTIC, 1959-60 ATLANTIC, 1960 BLUE NOTE, 1965 VERVE/HARMOLODIC, 1987 SOUND GRAMMAR, 2005 SAXOPHONIST TRUMPETER VIOLINIST COMPOSER BORN March 9, 1930 in Ft. Worth, TX Photo by Lee Tanner O RNETTE COLEMAN is one of the true jazz innovators, whose sound is instantly recognizable and unquestionably unique. Coleman's work has ranged front dissonance and atonality to lil teral use of electronic accompaniment in his ensembles, as well as the engagement of various ethnic influences and elements from around the globe. While experimenting with time and tone, his strong blues roots are always evident. For the most part, Coleman has been self-taught, beginning on the alto saxophone at age 14. Coleman’s earliest performing experiences were mostly with local rhythm-and-blues bands. Coleman settled in Los Angeles in 1952. His search for a different sound and approach, a means of escaping traditional chord patterns and progressions, led some critics to suggest that he did not know how to play liis instrument. In reality, he was studying harmony and theory zealously from books while supporting himself as an elevator operator. His performances in clubs and jam sessions were often met witb derision if not outright rejection and anger from his fellow musicians and critics. Coleman soldiered on, honing Iris sound with like-minded musicians, including trumpeter Don Cherry, drummer Billy Higgins, and bassist Charlie Haden. The year 1959 was an important one for Coleman and his band: he signed a recording contract with Atlantic Records, recording the first album to really present his new sound. Tomorrow Is The Question ! ; his quartet was invited to participate in what became a historic session at the Lenox School of Jazz in Massachusetts, being championed by Joint Lewis and Gunther Schuller; and the band began an extended engagement at the Five Spot Cafe in New York. Meanwhile, Ornette Coleman was developing an approach to Iris music that he was to dub “harmolodics.” Coleman’s albums for Atlantic were quite controversial at the time. Perhaps the most controversial of this series of albums was Free Jazz , recorded with a double ENJA, 1982 ' \ ^ I Thelonica Beyond the Bluebird T OMMY FLANAGAN was noted as both a stimulating accompanist and a superb small ensemble leader, playing with some of the biggest names in jazz. A product of a noteworthy arts education system in the Detroit public schools, he began his musical pursuits on clarinet at six years old, switching to the piano at age 1 1. At 15, he made bis professional debut. Thereafter he performed with fellow Detroiters Milt Jackson, Rudy Rutherford, Billy Mitchell. Kenny Burrell, and Thad and Elvin Jones as part of the fertile Detroit jazz scene in the 1950s. Flanagan moved to New York in 1956, securing his first job as a replacement for Bud Powell at Birdland. Powell, along with Art Tatum and Nat “King” Cole, was a major influence on Flanagan’s playing. Throughout tilt* 1950s, he worked with many of the biggest names in jazz, including J.J. Johnson, Miles Davis, Harry “Sweets” Es High School in Chicago. In 1923, he found his voice when he switched to string bass. One of his earliest professional affiliations was with violinist Eddie South, with whom he played intermittently between 1931-36. Other early affiliations included Zutty Singleton, Erskine Tate, Art Tatum, and Jabbo Smith. CHIAROSCURO 973-95 PROGRESSIVE COLUMBIA 1988 Laughing at Life COLUMBIA, 1995 Hinton’s early career experience was centered around the Cab Calloway Orchestra, with wliich he worked from 1936-51. After leaving Calloway, he worked with the big bands of Joe Bushkin, Jackie Gleason, Phil Moore, and Count Basie. He played with Louis Armstrong between 1952-55, then became a staff musician for CBS, one of the first African-American musicians welcomed into the TV studios. From 1956 on, Hinton was a much in-demand studio musician, adept at different styles of playing, from the pop of Paul Anka to the jazz of Teddy W ilson. He also was in demand in live settings, performing with Jimmy McPartland, Benny Goodman, Ben Webster, Sammy Davis, Jr., Judy Garland, and Harry Belafonte, among others. In the 1960s, he became a staff musician at ABC, working on the Dick Cavett Sho iv. I 11 the last decades of his life, Hinton continued to play and record, inspiring new generations of jazz musicians and fans. He received numerous honorary doctoral degrees and taught jazz at several colleges and universities, including Hunter College, Baruch College, Skidmore College, and Interlochen Music Camp. A 2003 documentary. Keeping Time: The Life , Music + Photographs of Milt Hinton , chronicled his career. NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-201 1 69 2010 BILL HOLMAN COMPOSER ARRANGER SAXOPHONIST BORN May 21, 1927 iii Olive, CA Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES ILL HOLMAN'S unique and com- plex arrangements have long been appreciated by musicians and critics alike, although he is best known on the West Coast. He took up clarinet in junior high school and tenor saxophone in high school, by which time he was leading his own band. After serving in the U.S. Navy and studying engineering, Holman decided in the late 1940s that he wanted to write big hand music and enrolled at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles. He also studied composition privately with Russ Garcia and saxophone with Lloyd Reese. By 1949, Holman’s career was well underway. Alter writing for Charlie Barnet, in 1952 he began his association with Stan Kenton, for whom he would compose (and perform) for many years to come. During the 1950s, he also was active in the West Coast jazz movement, playing in small bands led by Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne and co-leading a ipiintet with Mel Lewis. During the following decade, Hohnan expanded his writing efforts, working for bands led by jazz greats such as Louie Bellson, Count Basie, Bob Brookmeyer, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich, Gerry Mulligan, Doc Severinsen, and others. In addition, he wrote for high-profile vocalists such as Natalie Cole (including her Grammy Award-winning album Unforgettable ), Tony Bennett, Carmen MacRae, Anita O’Day, Ella Fitzgerald, and Sarah Vaughan. The Fabulous Bill Iiobnan CORAL, 1954-57 CAPITOL 1960 JVC 1987 JVC 1997 JAZZED MEDIA, 2005-06 In 1975, Hohnan launched the Bill Hohnan Band but recording was elusive; the recording of The Bill Holman Band in 1987 was his first release as a leader in 27 years. Since 1980. Hohnan increasingly has become more active in Europe, including writing, conducting, and performing extended works for the WDR Symphony Orchestra in Cologne, Germany, and the Metropole Orchestra in the Netherlands. To date, Hohnan has received 14 Grammy nominations and won three Grammy Awards: Best Instrumental Arrangement of “Take the ‘A’ Train” for Doc Severinsen and tin* Tonight Show Orchestra (1987); Best Instrumental Composition for “A View from the Side” for the Bill Hohnan Band (1995); and Best Instrumental Arrangement of “Straight, No Chaser” for the Bill Hohnan Band ( 1997). He was voted “Best Arranger” in the JazzTimes Readers' Poll four times; and received the “Arranger of the Year” award three times in DownBeat magazine’s Readers’ Poll and Critics' Poll. In 2000, the Bill Hohnan Collection of scores and memorabilia became part of the Smithsonian Institution’s permanent collection in Washington, DC. In 2006, he was inducted into the Rutgers Jazz Hall of Fame, and in 2008, he was doubly honored: a Golden Score Award from the American Society of Music Arrangers and Composers and a place in the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers Jazz Wall of Fame. 70 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 VERVE, 1998 VERVE, 2003 Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES 2005 SHIRLEY HORN VOCALIST PIANIST BORN May 1, 1934 in Washington, DC died October 20, 2005 S HIRLEY HORN began leading her own group in the mid-1950s, and in 1960 recorded her first album. Embers and Ashes , which established her reputation as an exceptional and sensitive jazz vocalist. Horn in 1934 in Washington, DC, she studied classical piano as a teenager at Howard University’s Junior School of Music. Under the influence of artists such as Oscar Peterson and Alunad Jamal, she then began a career as a jazz pianist and soon after discovered the great expressive power of her voice. When Miles Davis heard Embers and Ashes, he brought her to New York, where she began opening for him at the Village Vanguard. Soon she was performing in major venues throughout the United States and recording with Quincy Jones for the Mercury label. For some years she spent much of her time in Europe, then took a ten-year liiatus to raise her family in Washington. She continued to appear in and around the DC area, and in the 1980s she returned to the recording studio. The overwhelming critical success of her 1981 appearance at Holland’s North Sea Jazz Festival reintroduced STEREO-CRAFT, 1960 STEEPLE CHASE, 1981 You Won t Forget Me VERVE, 1990 her to old fans, won her new followers, and revitalized her career, allowing her to take to the road with her trio and record more albums. Her association with the Verve label, which began in 1987, gave a new showcase to her inimitable style and cemented her reputation as a world-class jazz artist. Six of her more than 20 albums have been nominated for Grammy Awards, and she lias collaborated with jazz artists including llank Jones, Kenny Burrell, Wynton Marsalis, Roy Hargrove, Buck Hill, Branford Marsalis, and Toots Thielemans. I 11 1990, she collaborated with Miles Davis on her critically acclaimed album You Won't Forget Me. Her 1992 recording Here's to Life was that year’s top-selling jazz album and earned a Grammy Award for arranger Johnny Mandel. I 11 1998, Horn paid tribute to her mentor with the brilliant recording / Remember Miles, winning the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Performance. Health problems in the early 2000s forced her to cut back on her appearances. NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 J1 BORN April 7, 1938 in Indianapolis, IN DIED December 29, 2008 Photo by Lee Tanner BLUE NOTE, 1961 MMM BLUE NOTE, 1962 COLUMBIA, 1970 CLP, 1983 O NE OF THE greatest trumpet virtuosos ever to play in the jazz idiom, and arguably one of the most influential, Freddie Hubbard played mellophone and then trumpet in his school band and studied at the Jordan Conservatory with the principal trumpeter of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. As a teenager, he worked with Wes and Monk Montgomery and eventually founded his own band, the Jazz Contemporaries, with bassist Larry Ridley and saxophonist James Spaulding. After moving to New York in 1958, he quickly astonished fans and critics alike with his depth and maturity, playing with veteran artists Philly Joe Jones, Sonny Rollins, Slide Hampton. J.J. Johnson. Erie Dolphy, and Quincy Jones, with whom he toured Europe. In June 1960, on the recommendation of Miles Davis, he recorded his first solo album, Open Sesame , for Rlue Note Records, just weeks after his 22nd birthday. Within the next 10 months, he recorded two more albums. Gain ’ Up and Hub Cap , and then in August 1961 made what many consider to he his masterpiece, Ready for Freddie , which was also his first Rlue Note collaboration with Wayne Shorter. That same year, Hubbard joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, replacing Lee Morgan. Ry now, he had indisputably developed his own sound and had won the DownBeat “New Star” award on trumpet. HIP BOP ESSENCE, 2000 Hubbard remained with the Jazz Messengers until 1964, when he left to form his own small group, which over the next years featured Keimy Barron and Louis Hayes. Throughout the 1960s, Hubbard also played in bands led by other legends, including Max Roach, and was a significant presence on the Blue Note recordings of Shorter, llcrhic Hancock, and Hank Mobley. Hubbard was also featured on four classic, groundbreaking 1960s sessions: Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz , Oliver Nelson’s Blues and the Abstract Truth, Erie Dolphy’s Out to Lunch , and John Coltrane’s Ascension. In the 1970s, Hubbard achieved his greatest popular success with a series of crossover albums on Atlantic and CTI Records, including the Grammy Award-winning First Light. He returned to acoustic hard bop in 1977 when he toured with the V.S.O.P. quintet, which teamed him with the members of Miles Davis’ 1960s ensemble: Shorter, Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. In the 1980s, Hubbard again led his own groups, often in the company of Joe Henderson, and he collaborated with fellow trumpet legend Woody Shaw on a series ol albums for tbe Blue Note and Timeless labels. FREDDIE HUBBARD TRUMPETER 72 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 Photo by Francis Wolff © Mosaic Images B OBBY HUTCHERSON’S sound and H innovative style on the vibraphone fS helped revitalize the instrument in I||| the 1960s, adding an adventurous new voice to .1 the free jazz and post hop eras. As a child, Hutcherson studied piano with his aunt, hut his interest in becoming a professional musician was sparked after hearing vibraphonist Milt Jackson playing on a recording of the Thelonious Monk song “Bemsha Swing.” Jackson’s playing impressed him so much that he began working with his father (a brick mason) to save up money for a vibraphone. Studies under renowned vibraphonist Dave Pike followed, and soon Hutcherson played at local Los Angeles school dances in his friend Herbie Lewis’ group. In 1960, Hutcherson joined an ensemble co-led by A1 Grey and Billy Mitchell. A year later, the group performed at New York's legendary Birdland club and the vibraphonist made his first live appearance opposite bassist Charles Mingus. Hutcherson soon relocated to New York City and signed with the Blue Note label. According to Hutcherson’s own account, he made 45 records as a bandleader and appeared on more than 250 records as a sideman during his years with Blue Note — working with jazz luminaries such as Dizzy Gillespie, Herbie Hancock, Jackie McLean, and McCoy Tyner, among others. His work on Eric Dolphy’s recording Out to BLUE NOTE, 1965 CONTEMPORARY/OJC, 1981-82 Lunch is considered one of his most masterful sideman performances, providing a vibrant texture to the piano-less quintet. In 1965, Blue Note released his astounding debut record as a bandleader, Dialogue. Hutcherson was accompanied on the album by some of the biggest names emerging in jazz at the time: drummer Joe Chambers, bassist Richard Davis, pianist Andrew Hill, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and saxophonist Sam Rivers. In 1967, he returned to California and co-lead a quintet with saxophonist Harold Land for several years. Hutcherson eventually settled in Moiitara, a small coastal town south of San Francisco, where he continues to live. Hutcherson is a founding member of the SFJAZZ Collective, an all-star octet that debuted in 2004. In 2008. Hutcherson was the recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Sedona Jazz on the Rocks festival in Arizona. In addition to his own recordings and tours, Hutcherson also appears on other artists’ records, including Tyner’s Manhattan Moocls (1993) and Hammond B-3 organist Joey DeFrancesco’s Organic Vibes (2006). Hutcherson continues to perform at a masterful level on Iris instrument, playing with both his contemporaries and the new generation of jazz musicians. NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 73 ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1978 WARNER BROTHERS, 1996 MODERN JAZZ QUARTET, MJQ Photo by Lee Tanner BY a slower predecessors, C haracterized vibrato than his Milt Jackson’s ability to swing and to create vocal-like inflections made Iris an instantly recognizable sound on the vibes. Another jazz musician whose earliest experience was in the church, he sang gospel duets with his brother and played the guitar. At age II. he began playing the piano, moving to the xylophone and the vibes in his early teens. After studying music at Michigan State University, his musical career actually began with a touring gospel ensemble in the early 1940s. Upon hearing him in Detroit, Dizzy Gillespie arranged for Jackson, known by the nickname “Bags,” to come to New York in 1945 to join his band. After leaving Gillespie’s pioneering bebop big band in 1948, he went on to play with Howard McGhee, Thelonious Monk, Tadd Dameron, and Charlie Parker, applying the bebop sound to the vibes. He replaced Terry Gibbs in the Woody Herman band during 1949-50, returning to the Gillespie band from 1950-52. Thereafter he formed his own quartet, featuring John Lewis, Ray Brown, and Kenny Clarke. The Milt Jackson Quartet then became the Modern Jazz Quartet, with Percy Heath replacing Brown, and Connie ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1954- ATLANTIC 1957 ATLANTIC 1959 Kay eventually replacing Clarke. The MJQ woidd become an enduring jazz institution for more than 40 years, with Jackson’s blues- drenched solos being a crucial ingredient in their sound. When the MJQ wasn’t touring, Jackson occasionally led bands featuring Jimmy Heath and Bay Brown and worked on recording sessions that included Cannonball Adderley and Kay Charles. He left the MJQ in 1974, leading his own groups or playing with all-star aggregations until 1981, when the MJQ reunited for a concert in Japan. Following that concert, the quartet made annual tours from 1982 through the early 1990s. For most of the remainder of his career he worked with his own groups, which often included such musicians as Mickey linker. Bob Cranshaw, and Mike LeDonne. The winner of numerous jazz polls, Jackson’s vibe-playing dominated the field for much of his career, leading to his induction into the Percussion Hall of Fame and DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame, among other honors. 1997 MILT JACKSON VIBRAPHONIST PIANIST BANDLEADER BORN January 1, 1923 in Detroit, MI DIED October 9, 1999 74 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 1994 AHMAD JAMAL PIANIST COMPOSER BORN July 2, 1930 in Pittsburgh, PA Photo by Michael Wilderman O NE OF THE subtlest virtuosos of jazz piano, Ahmad Jamal’s uncanny use of space in liis playing and leadership of his small ensembles have been hallmarks of his influential career. Among those he has influenced is most notably Miles Davis. 'I Davis made numerous and prominent mentions of Jamal’s influence on his playing, particularly in his use of space, allowing the music to “breathe,” and his choice of compositions. Several tunes that were in Jamal’s playlist, such as the standard “Autumn Leaves” and Jamal’s own “New Rhumba,” began appearing in the playlist of Davis’ 1950s hands. Jamal’s textured rhythms on piano influenced Davis’ piano players as well, from Wynton Kelly in the 1950s to Herbie Hancock in the 1960s. Jamal’s piano studies began at age three, anti by age 1 1, he was making his professional dehut with a sound strongly influenced by Art Tatum and Erroll Garner. Following graduation from Pittsburgh’s Westinghouse High School, he joined the George Hudson band in 1947. In 1949, he joined swing violinist Joe Kennedy’s group Four Strings as pianist. This led to formation of his trio Three Strings in 1950-52, which debuted at Chicago's Blue Note club, and later became the Ahmad Jamal Trio. His 1958 album At the Pershing became a surprising smash hit, highlighted by his interpretation of “Poinciana.” With the popularity of the album and the advocacy of Davis, Jamal’s trio was one of the most popular jazz acts in the late 1950s and early 1960s. For the most part, Jamal has worked in piano- bass-drums trios, using the intricate relationship of the band to explore his sound, directing the trio through seemingly abrupt time and tempo shifts. His piano virtuosity has also been welcomed by a number of orchestras and his abilities as a composer are considerable. His approach lias been described as being chamber-jazz-like, and he has experimented with strings and electric instruments in his compositions. Among his many awards are the Living Jazz Legend Award from the Kennedy Center and the Officier cle L’Ordre ties Arts et ties Lett res from France. Big Byrd: The Essence, Part 2 VERVE, 1994-95 After Faj BIRDOLOGY/DREYFUS JAZZ, 2004 DREYFUS JAZZ, 2007 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 f 5 1996 JOHNSON TROMBONIST COMPOSER ARRANGER BORN January 22, 1924 in Indianapolis, IN DIED February 4, 2001 Photo by Lee Tanner The Eminent Jay Jay Johnson, Vol. 1 & 2 BLUE NOTE, 1953-55 O FTEN REFERRED TO as the “Charlie Parker of the trombone” due to his uncanny musical dexterity and fluency, James Louis “J.J.” Johnson dominated his instrument for more than 40 years, and was known as a potent composer and arranger. He was a perennial jazz magazine poll winner for his peerless trombone playing. Between ages nine and 11, lie studied piano with Iris family’s church organist, picking up the trombone at age 14. His first professional experience came with the bands of Clarence Love and Snookum Russell. It was in the Russell band that he met jazz trumpeter Fats Navarro, an early influence on the young trombonist. After leaving Russell, he spent three years with Benny Carter’s band, then gigged with Count Basie in 1945-46. He worked briefly with Dizzy Gillespie and Woody Herman, then toured the Far East with Oscar Pettiford. The difficulty of making a living in the jazz field affected Johnson; from 1952-54 he held a day job as a blueprint reader. Then came one of his most significant early bands, a two-trombone group be co-led with Kai Winding — the Jay and Kai Quintet — from 1954-56; after a period of freelancing and bandleading. Stan Getz & J.J. Johnson at the Opera House The Great Kai and J.J. Live at the Village Vanguard EMARCY 1988 VERVE 1994 he re-joined Winding in 1958. The group was instrumental in demonstrating the power and possibilities of the trombone in modern jazz. In the late 1950s, he began to gain recognition as a composer. Two of his extended works, “El Camino Real” and “Sketch for Trombone and Orchestra,” were commissioned by the Monterey Jazz Festival. A commission from Dizzy Gillespie resulted in “Perceptions,” a large-scale work for orchestra that was recorded for Verve Records. I 11 addition to his work as a composer, he performed with groups led by Miles Davis, Clark Terry, and Sonny Stitt, then moved to California in 1970. There he immersed himself in lucrative television and film scoring. His scores can be heard on such television programs as Mayberry RFD, That Girl , Mod Squad , Six Million Dollar Man. and Starsky and Hutch. I 11 1987, he returned to his hometown Indianapolis and began playing, touring, and recording again. His awards include an honorary doctoral degree from Indiana University and the Indiana Governor’s Arts Award in 1989. 76 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 19J52-201 1 Photo by Lee Tanner IMPULSE!, 1961 T HE PROPULSIVE style of drummer Elvin Jones powered the John Coltrane Quartet during his six-year stint with the group and influenced countless percussionists that followed him over the past 40 years. As with fellow 2004 NEA Jazz Master Jimmy Heath, and a number of other jazz greats, Elvin Jones was the product of a musical family. His brothers include pianist Hank Jones and cornetist Thad Jones. The youngest of 10 siblings, Jones began learning the drums during his middle school years, studying the styles of Chick Webb, Jo Jones, Buddy Rich, and the beboppers that followed them, including Kenny Clarke, Max Roach, and Art Blakey. After serving in the Army from 1946-49, he returned to Detroit, immersing himself in the fertile jazz scene there in the early 1950s, before heading to New York in 1955. After playing with Harry “Sweets” Edison. J.J. Johnson, and Somiy Rollins (at Rollins' famous Village Vanguard session), he joined the John Coltrane Quartet in 1960. His dynamic drumming pushed Coltrane’s improvisations to new heights. Poly-Currents BLUE NOTE, 1969 «§ m david Murray, Special Quartet COLUMBIA 1990 ENJA 1993 bill frisell, With Dave Holland and Elvin Jones NONESUCH, 2001 and provided innovative accompaniment to the rest of the rhythm section: pianist McCoy Tyner and bassists Jimmy Garrison and Reggie Workman. In 1965, Jones left the Coltrane group and formed his own band, a trio with Garrison and reed player Joe Farrell, beginning a series of recordings for the Blue Note label. Since that time, Jones’ trios and his latter day bands, known as the Jazz Machine, have welcomed numerous adventurous players. These have ranged from Steve Grossman, Sonny Fortune, and Roland Prince to such younger players as Delfeayo Marsalis, Nicholas Payton, David Sanchez, and John Coltrane’s son Ravi. Jones frequently performed free for schools and other institutions, and at jazz clinics. Aside from music, he made his acting debut as Job Caine in the 1970 film Zachariah. He toured extensively with bis group Jazz Machine and made later recordings with Cecil Taylor, Dewey Redman, Dave Holland, and Bill Frisell. 2003 ELVIN JONES DRUMMER COMPOSER BORN September 9, 1927 in Pontiac, MI died May 18, 2004 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 77 1989 HANK JONES V v u w c$ y The Jazz Trio of Hank Jones Photo by Michael Wilderman SAVOY, 1955 Upon Reflection VERVE, 1993 VERVE, 1994 For My Father JUSTIN TIME, 2004 West of Oth CHESKY, 2006 PIANIST BORN July 31, 1918 in Vicksburg, MS DIED May 16, 2010 H ANK JONES, a member of the famous jazz family that includes brothers cornetist Thad and drummer Elvin, served as a pianist in a vast array of settings, always lending a distinctive, swinging sensibility to the sessions. Although born in Mississippi, Jones grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, listening to such performers as Earl Hines, Fats Waller, and Art Tatum. A performer by the time he was 13, Jones played with territory bands that toured Michigan and Ohio. In one such band he met saxophonist Lucky Thompson, who got him a job in the Hot Lips Page band in 1944, prompting Jones’ move to New York. Once in New York, Jones became exposed to bebop, embracing the style in his playing and even recording with Charlie Parker. Meanwhile, he took jobs with such bandleaders as John Kirby. Coleman Hawkins, Andy Kirk, Hilly Eckstine, and Howard McGhee. He toured with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic from 1947- 51. As a result, he became Ella Fitzgerald's pianist, touring with her from 1948-53. These experiences served to broaden his musical palette and sophistication. A consummate freelancer, Jones found work with artists such as Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Milt Jackson, and Cannonball Adderley. The versatility Jones acquired through such affiliations served him well when he joined the staff of CBS as a studio musician, remaining for 17 years. Although his studio work found him working on productions like the Eel Sullivan Show , Jones continued his touring and recording experiences in a variety of settings. His broad range and ability to fit in different settings also landed him in Broadway stage bands, where he served as pianist and conductor for such shows as Ain’t Misbphavin \ Jones was the first regular pianist in brother Thad’s coded orchestra with Mel Lewis, beginning in 1966. Throughout the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, Jones continued to be much in demand for record dates and tours. Among his affiliations was the Great Jazz Trio, a cooperative unit with Ron Carter and Tony Williams, who were later supplanted by Buster Williams and Ben Riley. Jones has also experienced his share of piano duos, with the likes of Toiiunv Flanagan — with whom he became acquainted when both were developing around the Detroit area — George Shearing, and John Lewis. I 11 2008, Jones received the National Medal of Arts and the following year the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. As a leader and valued sideman, Jones can be found on thousands of recordings. 78 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 count basie, The Original American Decca Recordings Photo by Herman Leonard Photography LLC/CSTIMAGES MCA, 1937-39 The Essential j o Jones VANGUARD, 1955 Jo Jones Irio FRESH SOUNDS, 1959 and si ONATHAN “JO” Jones’ uncanny way around the drums, ability to truly swing a band without ever overpowering it, and slick, smiling sense of showmanship made him one of the most influential of the early swin« band drummers. Jones made an art form of the use of brushes on the drum kit, with accents timely and thoroughly appropriate for whatever band with which he played. Jo Jones is credited with the transfer of the essential pulse of jazz music from the bass drum to the hi-hat cymbal, influencing such modern drummers as Max Roach. His technique was to leave the hi-hat cymbals just slightly apart, which produced a sound different from the relative staccato approach of his predecessors. Never one to engage in extended solos, his delight was in driving a hand with his incomparable swing. Jones grew up in Alabama, touring with various shows and carnivals as a tap dancer and instrumentalist while still in his teens. His first major jazz job came when he joined the territory hand known as Walter Page’s Blue Devils in Oklahoma City in the late 1920s. Jones stayed in the Midwest for quite some time, working with trumpeter Lloyd Hunter and moving to Kansas City in 1933. FRESH SOUNDS, 1960 ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1976 In 1934 came the affiliation with which liis artistry is forever identified, drumming with the Count Basie band, with which he worked Kg’ on and off for more than 15 years. Jones’ drumming was the final ingredient to what became known as the “All-American Rhythm Section.” Besides Jones, this included guitarist Freddie Green, bassist Walter Page, and Basie on piano. Tliev provided the irresistible pulse that drove the Count Basie band of the day to he called the swinging-est hand in the land. Jones served two years in the Army from 1944- 46, then returned to the Basie hand, where he remained a full-time member until 1943. Thereafter, though frequently reuniting with Basie on special occasions, Jones became a freelance drummer. He played on tours with Jazz at the Philharmonic, and recorded with many of the jazz greats, including Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, Teddy Wilson, Lester Young, Art Tatum, and Benny Goodman. Jones was constantly in demand for a variety of all-star swing sessions and made numerous recordings as a highly valued sideman. In 1979, Jones was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame for his contributions to Alabama’s musical heritage. 1985 1 JO 4 JONES DRUMMER BORN July 10, 1911 in Chicago, IL DIED September 3, 1985 NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 79 2008 ( ' Avery/CTSIMAGES Q UINCY JONES has distinguished himself in just about every aspect of music, including as a bandleader, record producer, musical composer and arranger, trumpeter, and record label executive. He has worked with everyone from Dizzy Gillespie. Miles Davis, and Count Basie to Frank Sinatra, Aretha Franklin, and Michael Jackson. Born in Chicago in 1933, Jones was brought up in Seattle. He began learning the trumpet as a teenager. He moved to New York City in the early 1950s, finding work as an arranger and musician with Count Basie, Tommy Dorsey, and Lionel Hampton. In 1956, Dizzy Gillespie chose Jones to play in his big band, later having him put together a band and act as musical director on Gillespie’s U.S. State Department tours of South America and the Middle East. The experience honed Jones’ skills at leading a jazz orchestra. Jones moved to Paris, France, in 1957 and put together a jazz orchestra that toured throughout Europe and North America. Though critically acclaimed, the tour did not make money, and Jones disbanded the orchestra. He became music director for Mercury Records in 1960, rising to vice president four years later. Also in 1964, he composed his first film score for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker. After the success of that film, he left Mercury Records for Los Angeles to pursue what became * QUINCY , JONES BANDLEADER TRUMPETER COMPOSER ARRANGER PRODUCER BORN March 14, 1933 in Chicago, IL This Is How I Feel About Jazz PARAMOUNT, 1956 MERCURY, 1962 Walking in Space miles davis/quincy jones. Live at Montreux WARNER BROS., 1991 QUINCY JONES/SAMMY NESTICO ORCHESTRA, Basie & Beyond WARNER BROS., 2000 a highly successful career as a film score composer. To date he has written scores for more than 35 films, including In Cold Blood, In the Heat of the Night, and The Italian Job. In addition to his film scoring, he also continued to produce and arrange sessions in the 1960s, notably for Frank Sinatra on his albums with Count Basie, It Might .4s II ell Be Swing in 1964 and Sinatra at the Sands in 1966. He later produced Sinatra’s L.A. Is My Lady album in 1984. Returning to the studio with his own work, he recorded a series of Grammy Award-winning albums between 1969 and 1981, including Walking in Space and You've Got It Bad. Girl. Following recovery from a near-fatal cerebral aneurysm in 1974, he focused on producing albums, most successfully with Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller , and the “We Are the World” sessions to raise money for the victims of Ethiopia’s famine in 1985. In 1991, he coaxed Miles Davis into revisiting his 1950s orchestral collaborations with Gil Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, conducting the orchestra for Davis last concert. Jones holds the record for the most Grammy Award nominations at 79, of which he won 27. In the 1980s and 1990s, Jones ventured into filmmaking, co-producing with Steven Spielberg The Color Purple, and managing his own record label Qwest Records, along with continuing to make and produce music. 80 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 1991 ANDY KIRK BANDLEADER SAXOPHONIST BORN May 28, 1898 in Newport, KY DIED December 11, 1992 discog^ Photo courtesy of Ray Avery Photo Archives/CTSIMAGES 1929-1931 CLASSICS, 1929-31 A NDY KIRK, though virtually unknown nowadays outside of jazz circles, led one of the hottest swing bands in the country during the 1930s, rivaling Basie’s. His band, the Clouds of Joy, also introduced some of the biggest names in jazz, most notably Mary Lou Williams. Kirk grew up in Denver, Colorado, where lie came under the musical tutelage of Paul Whiteman’s father, Wilberft >rce Whiteman. His first job, as bass saxophonist and tuba player, came with the George Morrison Orchestra in 1918. In 1925 he relocated to Dallas and joined Terence Holder’s Dark Clouds ol Joy, a band he eventually took over in 1929, changing the name to the Clouds of Joy (sometimes known as the Twelve Clouds of Joy, depending on the number of musicians hi the band). He moved the hand to Kansas City, where they made their first recordings in 1929-30, including Mary Lou Williams’ “Froggy Bottom,” which has been covered countless times since. Kirk’s band was highly popular, becoming — along with the Count Basie CLASSICS, 1936-37 BLACK AND BLUE, 1939-40 1940-1942 CLASSICS, 1940-42 - band, the Benny Moten Orchestra, and Jay McShann’s hand — one of the purveyors of |# the Kansas City swing sound. Particularly popular was their recording of “Until the Real Thing Comes Along” in 1936. Although the leader of the band, Kirk usually was not a soloist, u tiliz ing the talent in his band for the spotlight instead. Ilis genius lay in realizing how best to make use of his hand members’ skills. Realizing the awesome writing and arranging aptitude of Mary Lou Williams, for example, he made her the chief composer and arranger for the Clouds of Joy from 1929-42. Other notable band members who Kirk highlighted as soloists included Shorty Baker, Don Byas, Kenny Kersey, Howard McGhee, Fats Navarro, and Dick Wilson. The band continued to tour and record until disbanding in 1948. Kirk led another band in California in the early 1950s, then went into other professions. In the 1970s he led pickup bands on occasion, though he spent the remainder of his life working for his Jehovah’s Witness church. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 8l ■■XtD DBCOg/j. Photo by Michael Wilderman 2009 LEE KONITZ SAXOPHONIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN October 13, 1927 in Chicago, IL Subconscious-Lee PRESTIGE/OJC, 1949-50 The Lee Konitz Duets L EE KONITZ is one of the more distinctive alto saxophonists in jazz since Charlie Parker (and one of the few that did not outright copy Parker’s style), pairing his individual style and voice with a strong sense of innovation. Born to an Austrian father and a Russian mother in Chicago. Konitz as a youth studied clarinet, then alto saxophone with various teachers. In the early 1940s, Konitz met noted pianist Lennie Tristano, under whose influence and tutelage Konitz’s mature style in jazz began to emerge. His recordings with Tristano include the 1949 releases “Intuition” and “Digression” — precursors to the “free jazz” movement of the 1960s. In 1947, Konitz played with the Claude Thornhill Orchestra, meeting Gil Evans, who was then arranging for Thornhill. Evans brought Konitz along to participate in Miles Davis' nonet performances and recordings (ttirtli of the Cool. 1948-50), considered the beginning point for what came to he called “cool jazz." Konitz went on to play with Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker’s influential band and worked from 1952-53 in Stan Kenton’s big band. From then on, he mainly led his own small groups, occasionally touring abroad. In the early 1960s, as opportunities for performances declined, Konitz withdrew from the music business and took on day work. He continued to develop his unique sound, however, occasionally working with such musicians as Paul Bley, Martial Solal, Charlie Haden, and Brad Mehldau. He also worked as private teacher, conducting lessons by tape with students worldwide. Konitz joined with Warne Marsh, his fellow sideman from early Tristano sessions, to tour Europe and record in 1975-76; he also founded his own nonet and performed regularly during the 1980s. In 1992, Konitz won the prestigious Danish JAZZPAR Prize. With his insatiable musical curiosity, Konitz records in a variety of different settings. His later albums include French impressionist music with a string quartet (Lee Konitz & The Axis String Quartet Play French Impressionist Music from the 20th Century ), work with the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos ( Portology ), and an album with the big band Mark Masters Ensemble (One Day with Lee). Konitz divides his time between residences in the United States and Germany and continues to travel and perform around the globe. MILESTONE/OJC, 1967 SOUL NOTE, 1987 OMNITONE, 2006 LEE KONITZ-OHAD TALMOR BIG BAND Portology OMNITONE, 2007 82 NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-201 1 ■AtO DIS COGAj. PRESTiGE/OJC, 1961 IMPULSE!, 1964 META/YAL, 2003 Eastern Sounds SAXOPHONIST FLUTIST OBOIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, TN Photo by Michael Wilderman A VIRTUOSO ON the traditional jazz instruments of saxophone and flute, Yusef Lateef also brings a broad spectrum of sounds to his music through his mastery of such Middle Eastern and Asian reed instruments as the bamboo flute, shanai, shofar, argol, sarewa, and taiwan koto. A major force on the international musical scene for more than six decades, he was one of the first to bring a world music approach to traditional jazz. Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and moved with his family to Detroit in 1925. In Detroit’s fertile musical environment, Lateef established personal and musical relationships with such jazz legends as Kenny Burrell. Donald Byrd, Paul Chambers, Tommy Elanagan, Mill Jackson, Barry Harris, the Jones brothers (Hank, Thad and Elvin), and Lucky Thompson. By the time he was 18 years old, he was touring professionally with swing hands led by Lucky Millinder, Hoy Eldridge, Hot Lips Page, and Ernie Fields, performing under the name Bill Evans. In 1949, he was invited to perform with the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra. At that time he converted to Islam and took the name by which he is now known: Yusef Lateef. From 1955—59 he led a quintet in Detroit that included Ernie Farrell, Curtis Fuller, Louis Hayes, and Hugh Lawson. During that ATLANTIC 1976 time, he began recording under his own name for Savoy Records. In 1960, he moved to New York City and joined Charles Mingus’ band. He then performed and recorded with Cannonball Adderley from 1962-64. His albums as leader on Impulse! (1962-66) and Atlantic (1967-76) are considered some of his most exciting and diverse recordings. As a composer, Lateef has compiled a body of work for soloists, small ensembles, chamber and symphony orchestras, stage bands, and choirs. His extended works have been performed by orchestras in Germany and the LJnited States — including the Atlanta, Augusta, and Detroit symphony orchestras — and the Symphony of the New World. In 1987, he won a Grammy Award for his recording Yusef Lateef s Little Symphony , on which Lateef played all the instruments. Lateef holds a bachelor’s degree in music and a master’s degree in music education from the Manhattan School of Music. From 1987 to 2002, he was a professor at the Lniversity of Massachusetts in Amherst, from which he was awarded a doctorate in education. Lateef has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and Africa. His touring ensembles have included master musicians such as Keimy Barron, Albert “Tootie" Heath, and Cecil McBee. 2010 YUSEF LATEEF NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 83 2006 A.B. SPELLMAN NEA JAZZ MASTERS AWARD FOF JAZZ ADVOCACY JOHN LEVY MANAGER BASSIST BORN April 11, 1912 iii New Orleans, LA Photo by Leroy Hamilton DISC 0 G/t 4/O stuff smith. The 1943 Trio R ENOWNED AS a leading repre- sentative of jazz musicians, and as the first African American to work in the music industry as a personal manager, John Levy was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1912. Ilis mother was a midwife and nurse, and his father was an engine stoker on the railroad. When Levy was six, his family moved to Chicago, where a well-meaning schoolteacher would encourage him to find a steady job at the post office. He did work there for a while, hut he also began gigging around town as a jazz bassist. In 1944, Levy left Chicago with the Stuff Smith Trio to play an extended engagement at the Onyx club on New York City’s 52nd Street. Over the next years, he was to play with many jazz notables, including Ben Webster, Buddy Rich, Errol Garner, Milt Jackson, and Billy Taylor, as well as with Billie Hobday at her comeback performance at Carnegie Hall in 1948. In 1949, George Shearing heard Levy play at Birdland with Buddy Rich’s big band and hired him for Iris own group, which featured Buddy DeFranco. As Levy toured the country playing with the original George Shearing Quintet, he gradually took on the role of road manager. Finally, in 1951, Levy put aside performing to become PROGRESSIVE, 1943 billie holiday. The Complete Decca Recordings GRP, 1944-50 erroll GARNER; Penthouse Serenade SAVOY, 1945 BILLY TAYLOR, 1945-49 CLASSICS, 1945-49 george shearing. Complete Savoy Trio and Quintet Sessions JAZZ FACTORY, 1945-50 the group’s full-time manager, making music- industry history and establishing the career he would follow for the next half-century. Levy’s client roster over the years has included Nat and Cannonball Adderley, Betty Carter, Roberta Flack, Herbie Hancock, Shirley Horn. Freddie Huhhard. Alunad Jamal. Ramsey Lewis. Abbey Lincoln. Herbie Mann. Wes Montgomery, Carol Sloane, Joe Williams, and Nancy Wilson, as well as Arsenio Hall (the only comedian he has managed among some 100 entertainers). In recognition of Iris achievements, Levy has received awards such as a certificate of appreciation from Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley (1991), induction into the International Jazz Hall of Fame (1997), and the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Los Angeles Jazz Society (2002). His autobiography, Men , Women, and Girl Singers: My Life as a Musician Turned Talent Manager , written with his wife Devra Hall, was published in 2001 and expanded into a photo book. Strollin ': ,4 Jazz Life through John Levy’s Personal Lens, released in 2008 on the occasion of his 96th birthday. John Levy continues to he active today in representing his clients. 84 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 EMARCY, 1990 Kansas City Breaks Private Concert D'SCOGfl 4/o MODERN JAZZ QUARTET, DjangO Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1953-55 J OHN LEWIS’ artistry flowered during Iiis historic tenure as musical director of the longest continuing small ensemble in the annals of jazz, the Modern Jazz (Quar- tet, with whom he was able to realize his unique vision of fusing blues, bebop, and classical music into an artful, elegant balance. Lewis’ mother was a primary musical influence during Iiis younger years growing lip in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After high school, Lewis joined the Army in 1942, where he met drummer Kenny Clarke and trumpeter/bandleader Dizzy Gillespie. In 1946, Lewis and Clarke joined the rhythm section of Gillespie’s pioneer big band, which included vibraphonist Milt Jackson and bassist Hay Brown. The Gillespie band provided a convenient canvas for Lewis to write compositions and craft arrangements, utilizing the talents of some of the finest young musicians in jazz. Lewis’ first extended composition for Gillespie was his 1947 “Toccata for Trumpet,” which premiered at Carnegie Hall. Other early contributions to the Gillespie book included Lewis’ arrangements of the tunes “Two Bass Hit” and “Emanon.” Coinciding with his work with the Gillespie band, Lewis continued his music studies at the Manhattan School of Music, eventually earning his master’s degree in 1953. Lewis also worked with other jazz greats in between tours with Gillespie’s band, including serving as pianist and arranger for the Miles Davis recording Birth of the Cool in 1950. BLUE NOTE, 1956 ATLANTIC. 1960 In 1951, the Gillespie band rhythm section of 1946 — Lewis, Clarke, Jackson, and Brown — reunited in the recording studio as the Milt Jackson Quartet, later becoming the Modern Jazz Quartet. By the time those recordings were issued, Percy Heath hail replaced Brown. In 1954, the Modern Jazz Quartet began touring and Connie Kay replaced Clarke on drums the following year. During his more than 40 years with MJQ, Lewis honed his composing and arranging skills, experimenting with form and sound, while collaborating with guests ranging in diversity from Sonny Rollins to the Beaux Arts String Quartet to singer Diahann Carroll to full orchestras. Perhaps his most widely interpreted composition is “Django,” which he wrote in honor of the legendary Gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt. Throughout his career, Lewis wrote for a vast number of musical configurations in a dizzying array of styles, from solo piano to symphonies, from ballets to film and television scores. Lewis was part of the first wave of what composer Gunther Schuller dubbed the Third Stream — an effort at forging a third stream through the fusing of the two primary streams: jazz and European classical music. As an educator, he served as director of faculty at the Lenox School of Jazz, where he first championed Ornette Coleman; on the trustee board of the Manhattan School of Music; and in faculty positions at Harvard University and City College of New York. BORN May 3, 1920 in La Grange, IL DIED March 29, 2001 2001 JOHN LEWIS PIANIST COMPOSER ARRANGER EDUCATOR NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 85 ■1&> DIS C0 Gff CADET, Appassionata The In Crowd 2007 Photo by Michael Wilderman CHESS, 1965 W ITH A STYLE that springs from his early gospel experi- ence, his classical training, and a deep love of jazz, pianist and composer Ramsey Lewis has built a decades-long career as one of America’s most popular performers. Horn in Chicago, where he continues to make his home, he began taking piano lessons at the age of four and credits his teacher Dorothy Mendelsohn with awakening liim to the communicative power of music. He recalls her telling him to “‘Listen with your inner ear,’ and "Make the piano sing.’ These concepts were revelations!” During these early years, though, Lewis had no experience with jazz, except for the records his father woidd play at home from artists such as Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, and Meade “Lux” Lewis. He was already 15, and an accomplished gospel pianist, when a fellow church musician, Wallace Burton, asked him to join his hand and helped Lewis learn the fundamentals of jazz. With his very first trio album, Ramsey Lewis and the Gentlemen of Swing, Lewis captivated a large and diverse jazz audience. By 1965, he was one of the nation’s most successful jazz pianists, topping the charts with “The ‘In’ Crowd,” “Hang On Sloopy,” and “Wade in the Water.” Since then, he has won three Grammy Awards and the Recording Academy Governor’s Award (2000), and earned seven gold records and three honorary doctorates. RAMSEY LEWIS PIANIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BROADCASTER BORN May 27, 1935 in Chicago, IL Dancing in the Streets 1968 COLUMBIA 1988 With One Voice NARADA, 2005 Expanding his career through teaching, programming, and work in radio and television, he also has become an ambassador for jazz. Lewis has served as Art Tatum Professor in Jazz Studies at Roosevelt University; as artistic director of the Jazz at Ravinia series of the Ravinia Festival; and as host of a weekday morning drive-time radio show on Chicago’s WNUA-FM, for which lie has been awarded R&R’s 1999 and 2000 Personality of the Year Award. He hosts the syndicated Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, a two-hour radio program that airs throughout the United States, and was the co-producer (with PBS television station WTTW-Chicago) and host of a television series of the same name, which featured emerging and established jazz musicians. Active in community affairs, especially on behalf of youth, Lewis helped organize the Ravinia Festival’s Jazz Mentor Program. In recognition of his activities, he was featured as the “Person of the Week” on ABC Nightly News in February 1995 and received the prestigious Lincoln Academy of Illinois Laureate Award in Springfield, Illinois, in April 1997. He currently tours and performs with his own trio, featuring Larry Gray on bass and Leon Joyce on drums. 86 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 c^° 0ISC °G /?, Straight Ahead max roach, We Insist! Freedom Now Suite CANDID, 1960 1961 CANDID Photo by Lee Tanner S TRONGLY INFLUENCED by jazz icons Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, both of whom she met early in her career. Abbey Lincoln’s distinctive voeal style, thought-provoking writing, and spirited personality secured her a place among the jazz luminaries. Born in Chicago and raised in rural Michigan, Lincoln began performing while still in high school. In 1951, she moved to the West Coast, working under various names (Gaby Lee, Anna Marie, Gaby Wooldridge) before settling on Abbey Lincoln. She recorded her first album with jazz great Benny Carter in 1956 and appeared in the 1957 film. The Girl Can't Help It. Lincoln then recorded a series of albums for the Riverside label with drummer Max Roach, who had introduced her to the label’s owner. Lincoln’s collaborations with Roach (to whom she was married from 1962-70) lasted more than a decade, and included the seminal recording, We Insist! Freedom Note Suite in 1960. This was the beginning of a more social and political activist approach to her music. Abbey Sings Billie, Vol. 1 & 2 The World Is Falling Down VERVE, 1990 Abbey Sings Abbey VERVE, 2006 Over the years, she has worked with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Sonny Rollins, Eric Dolphy, Coleman Hawkins, Miles Davis, Jackie McLean, Clark Terry, and Stan Getz. In addition to her music, Lincoln also pursued acting, appearing in the films Nothing But A Man and For Love of Ivy and on television series, such as Mission: Impossible and the Flip Wilson Show. She also taught drama at the California State University. She did not record any albums as a leader from 1962-72, but made a grand return to jazz witli her 1973 recording, People In Me, her first album of all original material. Lincoln returned to her influences in 1987, recording two albums in tribute to Billie Holiday, and then a series of recordings for Verve throughout the 1990s and 2000s that showcased her writing prowess. Her emotionally honest, mature style was present in every song she sang. VOCALIST COMPOSER BORN August 6, 1930 in Chicago, IL died August 14, 2010 2003 ABBEY LINCOLN NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 87 TROMBONIST ARRANGER COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN January 13, 1926 in Kansas City, MO DIED April 23, 1999 Photo by Lee Tanner A LTHOUGH A formidable trombone player, Melba Liston was primarily known for her arrangements, especially working with Kandy Weston, and compositions. Growing up mostly in Los Angeles, some of her first work came during the 1940s with two West Coast masters: bandleader Gerald Wilson and tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon. In Gordon’s small combos, she began to blossom as a trombone soloist, and Gordon wrote a song as a tribute to her, “Mischievous Lady.” Despite her obvious talent as a soloist, Liston became an in-demand big band section player, which likely fueled her later work as an arranger. During the 1940s, Liston also worked with the Count Kasie band and with Killie Holiday. Following a brief hiatus from music, she joined Dizzy Gillespie’s bebop big band in 1950, and again for two of Gillespie’s State Department tours in 1956 and 1957, which included her arrangements of “Annie’s Dance” and “Stella by Starlight” in performances. She started her own all-woman quintet in 1958, working in New York and Bermuda, before joining Quincy Jones’ band in 1959 to play the musical Free and Easy. She stayed in Jones’ touring band as one of two woman members until 1961. C AED DISCOG/j. CAP 1956 FRESH SOUNDS RECORDS, 1956-58 quincy jones, Q Live in Paris WARNER BROTHERS, 1960 randy weston, Tanjah VERVE, 1973 RANDY WESTON/MELBA LISTON Volcano Blues VERVE, 1993 In the 1950s, Liston began a partnership that she would return to on and off for more than 40 years. From the seminal 1959 recording Little Niles through 1998’s Khepera. Liston was the arranger on many of Randy Weston’s albums. Her arrangements, with a powerful base of brass and percussion and expressive solo performances, helped shape and embellish Weston’s compositions. Other affiliations during the 1960s included co-leading a band with trumpeter Clark Terry, and writing for the Duke Ellington orchestra, singers Tony Beimelt and Eddie Fisher, and the Buffalo Symphony Orchestra. During the 1970s, she worked with youth orchestras in Los Angeles, continuing to write for Basie, Ellington, and singer Abbey Lincoln. Liston also became a staff arranger for the Motown label. Later that decade she took up residence in Jamaica, where she taught at the University of the West Inches and was director of Popular Music Studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music. Slowed hy a stroke in 1985, which effectively ended her playing career, she was able to resume work as a composer and arranger in the 1990s through the aid of computer technology. Liston’s career helped pave the way for women in jazz in roles other than as vocalists. 1987 MELBA LISTON 88 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 ■■\to disco G/?/ ARGO/LONE HILL JAZZ, 1956-59 james moody. Hey! It’s James Moody the jazztet. At Birdhouse MCINTOSH X Al * . COMPOSER ARRANGER TROMBONIST EDUCATOR BORN February 6, 1927 in Baltimore, MD Photo by Tom Pich thad jones/mel lewis orchestra, The Complete Solid State Recordings T HOUGH NOT well known outside of jazz circles, the unique voice of composer and arranger Tom “Mac’" McIntosh made him a favorite of Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Mill Jackson, and Tommy Flanagan, among other jazz giants. McIntosh was born and raised in Baltimore. After a stint with the Army, he attended Juilliard and later became an active participant in the New York jazz scene as a trombone player and composer. He was a member of the famous Jazztet, formed by Benny Golson and Art Farmer, and was one of the founders of the New York Jazz Sextet. Many outstanding New York-based instrumentalists of the 1950s and ’60s migrated in and out of the band, including Thad Jones, Art Farmer, James Moody, Tommy Flanagan, Roland Hanna, and Richard Davis. McIntosh and Moody have a long history of friendship and collaboration that dates to the 1950s when McIntosh played and wrote for Moody’s bands and provided arrangements for some of Moody’s 1960s recordings. He also wrote and arranged for Milt Jackson, including his And milt jackson, And the Hip String Quartet With Malice Toward None: The Music of Tom McIntosh IPO RECORDINGS, 2003 the Hip String Quartet album, and was a favorite of Dizzy Gillespie, who featured th ree of McIntosh’s songs on liis Something Old , Something New recording. McIntosh was an original member of the Thad Jones- Mel Lewis Orchestra, to which he contributed songs and arrangements. He was also much admired by Tommy Flanagan, who often noted that McIntosh was his favorite composer, recording several of his songs. When jazz’s popularity waned towards the end on the 1960s, McIntosh went to Hollywood as a film composer for two Gordon Parks’ films. The Learning Tree and Shaft. He remained in California for the next 20 years as a music director for films ami TV . Finally tiring of Hollywood, McIntosh returned to the East Coast in the 1990s, teaching at various conservatories, including as music director of the Thelonious Monk Institute at the New England Conservatory of Music. He also continued to write music. In 2004, he released his first recording under his own name (at the age of 77), with a second volume of his works forthcoming. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 89 ■TED DISCOgaj. ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1956 BLUE NOTE, 1959 Photo by Lee Tanner K NOWN IN THE jazz community as “Jackie Mac,” Jackie McLean was a stalwart, enduring force in jazz since the early 1950s, and a distinguished educator since 1968. Long the possessor of one of the most recognizable alto saxophone sounds and styles, he explored the cutting edge of jazz creativity. McLean grew up in a musical family: his father was a guitarist for bandleader Tiny Bradshaw and his stepfather owned a record store. By age 15, he chose the alto saxophone as his instrument. Jackie’s earliest studies came through the tutelage of Foots Thomas, Cecil Scott, Joe Napoleon, and Andy Brown in his native New York. Another of his informal teachers was piano master Bud Powell. McLean’s most significant early band affiliation came during the years 1918-19. when he joined a Harlem neighborhood band led by tenor saxophonist Soimy Rollins and including pianist Kenny Drew. McLean’s stmts with the Miles Davis band, between 1949-53, yielded his first recording sessions as a sideman and marked the beginning of what became known as hard bop, an advanced progression on bebop. During McLean’s busiest period as a sideman in the 1950s, he worked with pianist George Wallington, drummer Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, and bassist Charles Mingus. McLean’s first recording as a leader came in 1955, when lie cut a quintet date for the Ad Lib label. Let Freedom Ring The Jackie Mac Attack Live Nature Boy BLUE NOTE, 2000 His intense playing lias fit in well with both hard hop and the avant-garde, two schools of jazz in which McLean has experimented. Throughout the 1960s, McLean continued to work witli his own hands and occasional all-star aggregations, hut also became more interested in social issues. In 1959-60 he acted in the off-Broadway play The Connection, a cautionary tale dealing with jazz and the perils of drug abuse, which evolved into a 1961 film. In 1967 he took his music into prisons, working as a music instructor and counselor. Then in 1968, he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, to take a teaching position at Hartt College of Music of the University of Hartford. It was in Hartford that McLean and his wife Dollie founded the Artists Collective, a widely hailed combination community center/fine arts school, primarily aimed at troubled youth. The Artists Collective opened a beautiful new building in 1999 following years of residence in a former schoolhouse in one of Hartford’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods. At the University of Hartford, McLean established the school’s African American Music Department and subsequent Jazz Studies degree program, which was renamed the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz on November 17, 2000. The program has instructed a number of exceptional young jazz musicians, including saxophonist Antoine Honey, drummer Eric MacPherson, trombonist Steve Davis, and pianist Alan Palmer. 2001 JACKIE MCLEAN SAXOPHONIST COMPOSER EDUCATOR BORN May 17, 1931 in New York, NY DIED March 31, 2006 90 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 2000 MARIAN MCPARTLAND PIANIST BROADCASTER BORN March 20, 1918 iii Slough, England Photo by Melisa B EST KNOWN as the host of the weekly national radio program Piano Jazz , Marian McPartland has helped to popularize jazz with her intricate knowledge and prowess on the piano. She has made the program one of the most popular in the history of public radio. Horn to a musical mother who played classical piano, she studied at the famed Guildhall School of Music in London. Her first professional activity was as part of a touring vaudeville act featuring four pianists. During World War II, she entertained the troops and while playing in Belgium met her late husband, cornetist Jimmy McPartland, whom she married in 1945. They relocated to the U.S. in 1946, whereupon she performed in his band in Chicago. She formed her first active trio in 1950 for an engagement at the Embers in New York. Two years later, she began what would he an eight-year residency at the Hickory House in New York with her trio. In 1963, she worked with the Benny Goodman Sextet, and in 1965 she began her radio career, at WBAI in New York. In 1970 she started her own record company. Halcyon Records, one of the first jazz women to do so. In 1979, she began her weekly radio show Piano Jazz , wliich — after 30 years of continuous programming — has become the longest-running syndicated National Public Radio Plays the Benny Carter Songbook program, and led to McPartland’s induction into the National Radio Hall of Fame in 2007. An ultimate program involving just her and a guest — usually a pianist — the program has won numerous awards, including the Peabody Award. Many of the programs have been subsequently released on compact disc. As part of the segments, McPartland interviews the guest, drawing out colorful anecdotes and stories about their careers. The shows also include performances of McPartland and the guest together. Taken as a whole, the series presents a formidable history of jazz. Her playing career has also included piano tours with such greats as Earl Hines, Teddy Wilson, Ellis Larkins, and Benny Carter. She has performed with symphony orchestras and at many of the major jazz festivals, and has reeeived numerous awards, including a DownBeat Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997. McPartland has received several honorary doctorates as well as a Grammy Trustee’s Award for lifetime achievement. She also authored The Artistry of Marian McPartland , a collection of transcriptions, and Marian McPartland’s Jazz World: All in Good Time , a collection of her jazz profiles. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 91 ^tODISCOc/j, GRP/DECCA, 1955-59 Carmen McRae Sings Great American Songwriters CARMEN MCRAE VOCALIST PIANIST BORN April 8, 1920 in New York, NY DIED November 10, 1994 Photo by Lee Tanner COLUMBIA, 1961 At the Great American Music Hall BLUE NOTE, 1976 Carmen Sings Monk NOVUS, 1988 T ENDER AND warm with a ballac Carmen McRae was one of the great singers of jazz, finding the depth of feeling in the lyrics of the songs she interpreted. An accomplished pianist who in her early career accompanied herself, she occasionally returned to the piano later in her career. McRae learned piano through private lessons and was discovered hy Irene Wilson Kitchings, a musician and former wife of pianist Teddy Wilson. McRae sang with the Benny Carter, Count Basie, and Mercer Ellington big bands during the 1940s and made her recorded debut as Carmen Clarke wliile the wife of drummer Kenny Clarke. During the bebop revolution at Minton’s Playhouse, McRae was an intermission pianist. At the Playhouse is likely where she first heard Thelonious Monk’s music, which influenced her piano playing and musical sense. In the early 1950s, she worked with the Mat Mathews Quintet. She signed her first significant recording contract with Decca in 1954. Working as a soloist, she gamed wide recognition and was often seen in the pantheon of jazz singers that included Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah — Dedicated to You NOVUS, 1990 Sarah Vaughan, whom she idolized and later paid homage on a recording. Her greatest idol was Billie Holiday, whom she feted on record and in performances on many occasions. Although she admired these singers, she never resorted to sheer mimicry and developed her own original style. She recorded notably alongside Louis Armstrong on Dave Bruheek’s extended work The Real Ambassadors , a social commentary written with his wife Iola. She made several film and television appearances, and performed as an actress in the landmark television series Roots. In the late 1980s, she returned to her first love, recording a full album of Monk’s music with lyrics hy Jon Hendricks. Abbey Lincoln, Mike Ferro, Sally Swisher, and Bernie Hanighen. The album became one of her signature recordings. McRae performed many tunes at the Monterey Jazz Festival, the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands, and the Montrenx Jazz Festival in Switzerland, where she shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie and Phil Woods. She was forced to retire for health reasons in 1991. 92 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 U A OR BETTER OR worse. Jay • McShann was tied to the legend of — CharUe Parker. Parker’s first real professional work was with McShann’s Kansas City hand, and McShann was credited with helping Parker to hone his talents. Arguably more important, McShann — along with Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy, the Bennie Moten Orchestra, and the great Count Basie hands — shaped and developed the Kansas City swing sound that was so popular in the 1930s and 1940s. Known in jazz circles as “Hootie,” McShann is for the most part a self-taught artist, though he did attend Tuskegee Institute. He developed a piano style that drew heavily on blues and boogie woogie. McShann’s earliest professional job came with tenor saxophonist Don Byas in 1931. Following his days at Tuskegee, McShann played in bands in Oklahoma and Arkansas prior to joining a trio with bassist Oliver Todd and drummer Elmer I lopkins in late 1936 in Kansas City. In subsequent months, he worked with alto saxophonist Buster Smith and trumpeter Dee Stewart before forming a sextet in 1937. In late 1939, McShann put together his first big band. His recording career commenced in 1941 with the Decca label, records that often featured Vine Street Boogie BLACK LION, 1974 A Tribute to Charlie Parker MUSIC MASTERS, 1989 Hootie! CHIAROSCURO, 1997 blues singer Walter Brown. McShann’s first New York appearance, at the Savoy Ballroom, came in February 1942. His band during the height of his popularity included such notables as Parker, bassist Gene Rainey, drummer Gus Johnson, and saxophonists Paul Quinichette and Jimmy Forrest, all of whom McShann used brilliantly as soloists. Following service in the Army, McShann reformed his band, which played New York spots and traveled west to California. Towards the end of the 1940s, McShann’s small hand fronted blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon. In the early 1950s, McShann moved liis home base hack to Kansas City. In the 1970s and 1980s, McShann experienced a bit of a renaissance, with increased recording and performing opportunities, often with Kansas City violinist Claude “Fiddler” V ilhams. A biographical film, Hootie '. s Blues , was made in 1978, and he was featured in The Last of the Blue Devils , a film about Kansas City jazz shot between 1974 and 1979. In addition, he was one of the featured players in Chut Eastwood’s documentary Piano Blues (2003). 1987 JAY MCSHANN PIANIST VOCALIST BANDLEADER BORN January 12, 1916 in Muskogee, OK DIED December 7, 2006 :£• Photo by Lee Tanner NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 TELARC, tffcD DISCOg^ Photo by Vance Jacobs James Moody and His Swedish Crowns O NE OF THE champions of Dizzy Gillespie’s music, James Moody was an accomplished musician on the tenor and alto saxophones, as well as the (lute, despite being born partially deaf. In addition to his instrumental prowess. Moody was an engaging entertainer, captivating audiences with liis personal charm and wit. Although born in Savannah, he was raised in Newark New Jersey. His interest in jazz was sparked by a trumpet- playing father who gigged in the Tiny Bradshaw hand, and he took up the alto sax, a gift from his uncle, at the age of 16. His first musical training came in the Air Force, and after leaving the service in 1946 he joined the Dizzy Gillespie big band, staying until 1948. Gillespie became liis musical mentor. In 1949, he moved to Paris for three years, often playing with visiting American musicians, including the Tadd Dameron- Miles Davis band. In Sweden he recorded his famous improvisation on “I’m in the Mood For Love” in 1949, playing on an alto saxophone instead of liis usual tenor. His solo was later set to lyrics by Eddie Jefferson and recorded by king Pleasure, known as “Moody’s Mood for Love,” becoming a surprise hit in 1952. Throughout the rest of liis career. Moody was more known for the vocal version of the song based on his solo than for the instrumental version itself, and obliged requests Hi Wjmm DRAGON 1949 GRP/CHESS 1954-55 1995 WARNER BROTHERS, 1997 JAMES MOODY AND HANK JONES Our Dehght IPO 2008 for the song by singing his famous solo. Through the 1950s and 1960s, he led his own bands, and worked alongside other saxophonists, notably Gene Ammons and Sonny Stitt, with whom he co-led a three-tenor sax band. In 1963 he returned to the Dizzy Gillespie small group, where he largely remained until 1971. In 1975, he moved to Las Vegas and worked numerous hotel and casino shows with singers and comics, picking up the clarinet along the way. In 1979, he left Las Vegas and moved back to New York to lead his own quintet. Then in 1989 he moved to San Diego, working as a consummate soloist and member of all-star touring units. In the 1990s, he teamed up again with his lifelong friend Dizzy Gillespie to tour Europe and the LTnited States as a member of the United Nations Orchestra. He continually experimented with liis music, sometimes including synthesizers and strings on liis recordings. Demand for his musicianship extended to college and university campuses for master classes, workshops, and lectures, and he received honorary doctoral degrees from the Florida Memorial College and the Berklee College of Music. In 1997, he played an acting role in the Clint Eastwood film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. In 2010. he was honored with the Jazz Journalists Award for Lifetime Achievement in Jazz. 94 NEA J AZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 -a to bibl/oq^ H.N. ABRAMS, 1976 (REPRINTED BY DA CAPO PRESS, 1993) D irector of the institute of jazz Studies at Rutgers University since 1976, Dan Morgenstern is a jazz historian and archivist, author, editor, and educator who has been active in the jazz field since 1958. The Institute of Jazz Studies is the largest collection of jazz-related materials anywhere. Born in Germany and reared in Austria and Denmark, Morgenstern came to the United States in 1947. He was chief editor of DownBeat from 1967 to 1973, and served as New York editor from 1964; prior to that time he edited the periodicals Metronome and Jazz. Morgenstern is co-editor of the Annual Review Of Jazz Studies and the monograph series Studies In Jazz, published jointly by the IJS and Scarecrow Press, and author of Jazz People. He has been jazz critic for the New York Post, record reviewer for the Chicago Sun Times, and New York correspondent and columnist for England’s Jazz Journal and Japan’s Swing Journal. He has contributed to reference works including the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Dictionary of American Music, African- American Almanac, and Encyclopedia Britannica Book of the Year; and to such anthologies as Reading Jazz, Setting The Tempo, The Louis Armstrong Companion, The Duke Ellington Reader, The Miles Davis Companion, and The Lester Young Reader. Morgenstern lias taught jazz history at the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Brooklyn College (where he was also a visiting professor at the Institute for Studies in American Music), New York University, and the Schweitzer Institute of Music in Idaho. He served on the facidties of the Institutes in Jazz Criticism, jointly sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and the Music Critics Association, and is on the faculty of the Masters Program in Jazz History and Research at Rutgers University. Morgenstern is a former vice president anti trustee of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences; was a co-founder of the Jazz Institute of Chicago: served on the boards of the New York Jazz Museum and the American Jazz Orchestra; and is a director of the Louis Armstrong Educational Foundation and the Mary Lou Williams Foundation. He has been a member of Denmark’s International JAZZPAR Prize Committee since its inception in 1989. A prolific annotator of record albums, Morgenstern has won seven Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes (1973, 1974, 1976, 1981, 1991, 1995, 2006, and 2009). He received ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award for Jazz People in 1977 and in 2005 for Living with Jazz. Louis Armstrong: A Cultural Legacy (with Donald Bogle, Richard A. Long, and Marc H. Miller) UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESS, 1994 Living with Jazz: A Reader, ed. Sheldon Meyer PANTHEON, 2004 _ _ _ _ A.B. SPELLMAN NEA JAZZ MASTERS AWARD FOR 200 7 JAZZ ADVOCACY DAN MORGENSTERN JAZZ HISTORIAN ARCHIVIST AUTHOR EDITOR EDUCATOR BORN October 24, 1929 in Munich, Germany Photo by Tom Pich NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 9 5 ........ BALDWIN STREET MUSIC, 1949-50 Photo by Ray Avery /CTSIMAGES A NITA ©’DAY’S unique sound and swinging rhythmic sense put her in the upper echelon of jazz singers, as s killf ul with ballads as with scatting and liberal interpretations of standard songs. Her career spanned the late swing and bebop eras, inspiring many singers who followed her, such as June Christy, Chris Connor, and Helen Merrill. She began her performing career as a ballroom dance contest winner in the 1930s, which is when she adopted the stage name O’Day. At 19, she began singing professionally in clubs around Chicago. In 1941 she joined Gene Krupa’s big band, recording a memorable duet with Hoy Eldridge on “Let Me Off Uptown,” one of the first interracial vocal duets on record. She also may have been the first feminist big band singer, refusing to appear in the standard gown and gloves, instead opting for a hand jacket and short skirt. She stayed with the Krupa band until 1943. In 1944 she joined Stan Kenton’s band. She then re-joined Krupa in 1945, remaining there until 1946, when she began a solo career. In the mid-1950s she made a few notable Swings Cole Porter with Billy May VERVE. 1952-59 .Anita Sings the Winners VERVE, 1956-62 Anita Sings the Most VERVE, 1957 Rides of the Road PABLO, 1993 albums for the Verve label, demonstrating the power of her vocals. In 1958 her appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival, replete with characteristic big hat, caused a sensation. She provided one of the highlights of the subsequent film of the festival, Jazz on a Summer's Day. From that point on she worked mainly on the club circuit with her own groups. Always a hit in Japan, she made her first tour there in 1964, returning on several occasions. Frustrated with record label indifference to her artistry, she developed her own record labels. In the 1980s and 1990s, she continued to work the club and jazz festival circuits, including a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1985 to celebrate her 50 years in jazz and notable performances at the Vine Street Bar & Grill in Los Angeles in 1992. A documentary about the singer’s life, Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer , won a 2008 Satellite Award from the International Press Academy. 96 NEA JAZZ M ASTERS, 19«2-201 1 .tf to disc °g^ EMARCY, 1956 CANDID, 1960 COLUMBIA, 1979 RHINO, 1990-91 SLAM, 1994 CLIFFORD BROWN AND MAX ROACH, At Basin Steet We Insist! Freedom Now Suite Explorations to the Mth Degree 1984 MAX ROACH DRUMMER COMPOSER BANDLEADER BORN January 10, 1924 in New Land, NC died August 16, 2007 Photo by Michael Wilderman of the of the M AX ROACH was one two leading drummers bebop era (along with Kenny Clarke) and was one of the leading musicians, composers, and bandleaders in jazz since the 1940s. His often biting political commentary and strong intellect, not to mention bis rhythmic innovations, kept him at the vanguard of jazz for more than 50 years. Roach grew up in a household where gospel music was quite prominent. His mother was a gospel singer and he began drumming in a gospel ensemble at age 10. Roach’s formal study of music took him to the Manhattan School of Music. In 1942, be became bouse drummer at Monroe’s Uptown House, enabling him to play and interact with some of the giants of the bebop era, such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell. Roach would later record with Parker, Gillespie, Powell, and bassist Charles Mingus at the historic Massey Hall concert in 1953. Throughout the 1940s, Roach continued to branch out in his playing, drumming with Benny Carter, Stan Getz, Allen Eager, and Miles Davis. In 1952, he and Mingus collaborated to create their own record label. Debut Records. I 11 1954, Roach began a short-lived but crucial band with incendiary trumpeter Clifford Brown. This historic band, which ended abruptly with Brown’s tragic death in 1956, also included saxophonists Harold Land and Soiuiy Rollins. In the late 1950s, Roach began addhig pohtical commentary to his recordings, starting with Deeds Not Words , but coming into sharper focus with We Insist! Freedom Now Suite in 1960, on which he collaborated with singer-lyricist Oscar Brown, Jr. From then on he became an eloquent spokesman in the area of racial and political justice. Roach continued to experiment with Ins sound, eschewing the use of the piano or other chording instruments in his bands for the most part from the late 1960s on. His thirst for experimentation led to collaborations with seemingly disparate artists, including duets with saxophonist Anthony Braxton and pianist Cecil Taylor, as well as partners hi| is with pianist Abdullah Ibrahim and saxophonist Archie Shepp. As a drum soloist he had few peers in terms of innovations, stemming from his deeply personal sound and approach. His proclivities in the area of multiethnic percussion flowered with his intermittent percussion ensemble M’Boom, founded in 1970. A broad- based percussionist wbo was a pioneer in establishing a fixed pulse on the ride cymbal instead of the bass drum. Roach also collaborated with voice, string, and brass ensembles, lectured on college campuses extensively, and composed music for dance, theater, film, and television. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 97 SONNY ROLLINS Photo by Lee Tanner SAXOPHONIST COMPOSER BORN September 7, 1930 in New York, NY A Night at the Village Vanguard BLUE NOTE, 1957 mi MURK THAN 50 years in jazz, Theodore “Sonny” Rollins' towering achievements S on the tenor saxophone are many, ami he continues to be one of the most exciting and fiery players in concert. Inspired by the example of his brother’s pursuit of music, Rollins began piano lessons at age nine. At 14 he picked up the alto saxophone, and switched to the tenor two years later. Soon he was playing dances in a band of youngsters in his New York community, which included Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor. Rollins’ first recording was made alongside the hop singer Babs Gonzales in 1949. Later that year he played at sessions with J.J. Johnson and Bud Powell, recording his song “Audubon” with Johnson. In the 1950s, Rollins began by serving as a sideman on sessions with Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk. Art Farmer, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. In late 1955, while living in Chicago, he began one of his most fruitful band affiliations when he stood in for Harold Land hi the superb Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet at the Bee Ilive club. He remained a regular member until Brown’s tragic June 1956 death from an auto accident. Rollins continued to record, mainly for Prestige, where his output was some of the finest music recorded in the mid-1950s on any label. Among the highlights during this period were Tenor Madness , which included an encounter with John Coltrane; Saxophone Colossus, a sparkling album that S introduced his most noted composition, “St. Rf Thomas,” which honored his parents’ Virgin Islands roots; and Way Out Rest, which took seemingly mundane songs like “I’m an Old Cowhand” and spun them out with extraordinary improvisations. By 1959, Rollins had grown impatient with the vagaries of the jazz scene and took a hiatus. He would often practice his horn deep into the night on the upper reaches of the Williamsburg Bridge, wliich crosses the East River from Manhattan to Brooklyn. In 1961 he returned to the scene, refreshed and playing better than ever. I le made a series of recordings for the RCA label with musicians such as Jim Hall. Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, and Herbie Hancock, and also began his long-term employment of bassist Bob Cransbaw. In London in 1966, be composed and recorded a soundtrack album for the film Alfie for the Impulse! label, which brought him some popularity beyond jazz audiences. By 1968 Rollins again required a break from the scene, returning in 1971. He lias been playing and growing ever since, working almost exclusively on concert stages. Rollins’ recordings have continued to refleet his interest in Caribbean rhythms, particularly the calypso. In 2010, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Complete RCA Victor Recordings RCA VICTOR, 1962-64 Silver Ci MILESTONE, 1972-95 EMARCY. 1980-2007 MILESTONE, 2001 98 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1 982-201 1 2010 LAMBERT, HENDRICKS & ROSS, Twisted: The Best of Lambert, Hendricks & Ross ANNIE ROSS VOCALIST LYRICIST BORN July 25, 1930 in Surrey, England Photo by Lee Tanner ^—was one of the early practitioners of a singing style known as “vocalese,” which involves the setting of original lyrics to an instrumental jazz solo. She has been equally at home in the acting field, appearing in numerous films. Ross was born in England, but raised in Los Angeles. She landed a role in the Our Gang film series at the age of eight, singing a musical number on the show. Returning to Europe, she began her singing career, working with musicians such as Janies Moody, Kenny Clarke, and Coleman Hawkins. Ross returned to the United States in 1952, settling in New York City, and soon recorded Singin' and Swingin’ with members of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Later that year she recorded an album with vocalist king Pleasure, including the classic example of vocalese, “Twisted,” which featured her treatment of saxophonist Wardell Gray’s solo. It is perhaps her most famous song and has been recorded by Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler, and many others. In 1953, Ross toured Europe with Lionel Hampton's band, which included Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, and Quincy Jones. After several years in Europe, she returned to the States where she Sings a Song with Mulligan! Sings a Handful of Songs ' Music is Forever DRG, 1995 CONSOLIDATED ARTISTS PRODUCTIONS, 2005 teamed up with vocalists Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks on an album of Coimt Basie solos transposed for vocals. That was the beginning of the group Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. Between 1957 and 1962, the group recorded seven albums, including the one that put them in the spotlight: Sing A Song Of Basie (1957). They toured all over the world and also appear in Dave Brubeck’s musical theater piece The Real Ambassadors (1961). Ross left the group in 1962 and two years later she opened her own London nightclub called Annie’s Room; a compilation of her 1965 performances there was released on Live in London (2006). Ross also is an accomplished actress and has appeared in a number of films, such as Superman III (1983), Throw Mama from the Train (1987), Pump Up the Volume (1990), and Blue Sky (1994). Her most notable film role was as the jazz singer Tess Trainer in Robert Altman’s Short Cuts (1993), in which she also sang. On stage, Ross appeared in Cranks ( 1955) in both London ami New York, The Threepenny Opera (1972) with Vanessa Redgrave, and in the Joe Papp production of The Pirates Of Penzance (1982) with Tim Curry. Ross resides in New York City where she still performs regularly. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 99 Photo by Lee Tanner - G EORGE RUSSELL was first and foremost a composer rather than an instrumentalist, and was one of the most important jazz theorists of the latter half of the 20th century. He first expressed himself musically on the drums in the drum and bugle corps. After high school, Russell attended Wilberforce University, where he found gigs playing drums at local clubs. Russell’s study of composing and arranging increased while he was bedridden with a case of tuberculosis at 10. It was during this time that he began formulating his unprecedented musical theorems. \V hilt* his first arrangements were for the A.B. Townsend Orchestra, a Cincinnati dance band, Russell's initial major band affiliation was as a drummer with Benny Carter. Later he found work arranging with the Earl Hines band. His first major score was “Cubano Be, Cubano Bop,” an Afro-Cuban piece written for the Dizzy Gillespie big band. Russell followed that with charts for Lee Konitz (“Ezz-thetic” and “Odjenar”) and Buddy DeFranco (“A Bird in Igor’s Yard”). He continued his advanced composition study with Stefan Wolpe. His theory. The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, was eventually published in book form in the mid-1950s. Russell’s concept involves a composition system based on using the Lydian scale, rather than the major scale, as the basis for analysis and composition. Music theoreticians hailed this as a breakthrough, and it was Ezz-Thetics ORIGINAL JAZZ CLASSICS, 1961 The 80th Birthday Concert CONCEPT, 2003 perhaps the first major contribution by a jazz musician to the field of musical theory. Russell’s continued refinement and study of this concept eventually led him to academia. During 1958-59, he taught at the Lenox School of Jazz. In the meantime, his theories on modes influenced Miles Davis and Bill Evans (who studied with Russell), leading to the creation of Davis’ masterpiece. Kind of Blue. In the early 1960s, Russell led several small groups, which included musicians such as Eric Dolphy and David Baker, and made some significant recordings before moving to Scandinavia. There he continued to refine his theories and work with Scandinavian musicians, among them Jan Garbarek and Terje Rypdal, before returning to the U.S. in 1969. That year he took a teaching position at New England Conservatory of Music at the invitation of then president Gunther Schuller. In the late 1970s, Russell formed big bands to play his music, creating his Living Time Orchestra in 1978. The orchestra made frequent tours of Europe, including residencies at the Perugia Jazz Festival. In addition to teaching and lecturing at other conservatories and universities, Russell was the recipient of numerous awards, honors, and grants, including a MacArthur award, two Guggenheim fellowships, and election to the Royal Swedish Academy. In 1969, he received the first NEA grant in the area of jazz. Russell published the revised and expanded edition of his Lydian Chromatic Concept in 2001. 100 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 Photo by Tom Pich BORN November 22, 1925 in New York, NY c ^ 0 BIBL,o G * Vy OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1968 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1989 R ECOGNIZED AS a renaissance man of music, Gunther Schuller is a leader in both the classical and jazz traditions, contributing significant musical compositions and writings to expand jazz’s horizons. Schuller was born in 1 025 in New York City. At age 17, he joined the Cincinnati Symphony as principal horn. Two years later, he joined the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera while also becoming actively involved in the New York bebop scene, performing and recording with such jazz greats as Ornette Coleman, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Dizzy Gillespie, Jolm Lewis, and Charles Mingus. When he was 25, Schuller took a teaching position at the Manhattan School of Music, beginning a long and distinguished teaching career that includes his tenure as co-director, along with David Baker, of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra and professor of composition of music at Yale. In the late 1950s, he taught at the legendary Lenox School of Jazz. From 1967 to 1977, he was president of the New England Conservatory of Music where early in his tenure he established a jazz department offering both undergraduate and graduate degree programs. He was artistic director of Tanglewood Berkshire Music Center from 1970 to 1985. Schuller is a proponent of what he called the Third Stream — an Musings: The Musical Worlds of Gunther Schuller OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1989 effort to fuse the two primary streams of music, jazz and classical, into a new hybrid — of which John Lewis was one of the main practitioners. Schuller also was an early admirer of Charles Mingus’ music — so much so that when a 19-movement score was discovered of an unprodueed Mingus work. E/iitapIt. Schuller was asked to conduct the orchestra for the premiere at Lincoln Center in 1989 (produced with NEA support). In 1975, he started recording and publishing businesses that focused on, among other genres, the compositions of Duke Ellington. He sold the two publisliing companies in 2000 to G. Schirmer, Inc., hut still retains the record company GM Recordings. Schuller also served as editor-in-chief of the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Editions. Schuller’s jazz writings include Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development (1968), considered one of the seminal books on the history of jazz, and The Swing Era (1989), the second volume of a planned three-volume history of jazz. Schuller has written more than 180 compositions in a wide range of styles and has won many awards for liis work, including the 1994 Pulitzer Prize in music for Of Reminiscences and Reflections. Schidler also is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (1991). 2008 A.B. SPELLMAN JAZZ MASTERS AWARD FOR JAZZ ADVOCACY GUNTHER SCHULLER AUTHOR COMPOSER ARRANGER CONDUCTOR EDUCATOR FRENCH HORN PLAYER NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 101 200 7 JIMMY SCOTT VOCALIST BORN July 17, 1925 in Cleveland, OH u c ^to DISCO G/? Photo by Michael Wilderman The Savoy Years and More SAVOY, 1952-72 F allinn stepped forward as composer, contributing originals such Eastern Rebellion as “Mosaic,” “Ugetsu,” and “The Promised Land” to the group’s repertoire. Walton left the Jazz Messengers to lead rhythm sections and trios featured in various New York clubs and work as a sideman for well-known artists such as Abbey Lincoln (1965-66) and Lee Morgan (1966-68). In 1974, Walton joined with bassist Sam Jones, drummer Billy Higgins, and saxophonist Clifford Jordan to form the group Eastern Rebellion, which would perform and record sporadically over the subsequent two decades. Other musicians rotated in and out of the band, including George Coleman, Boh Berg, Ralph Moore, David Williams, Curtis Fuller, and Alfredo “Chocolate” Armenteros. Higgins became a regular accompanist for Walton throughout the 1980s — along with other stellar musicians such as Ron Carter, Bobby Hutcherson. Harold Land, and Buster Williams. In addition, he continued to perform in rhythm sections for Milt Jackson, Frank Morgan, and Dexter Gordon and accompanied vocalists Ernestine Anderson and Freddy Cole. He also led the backup trio for the Trumpet Summit Band, which started as a project for the 1995 Jazz in Marciac festival in France. He continues to perform and record with his own groups all over the world. 2010 CEDAR WALTON PIANIST COMPOSER BORN Bom January 17, 1934 in Dallas, TX NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-20 11 1 1 5 George Wein & the Newport All-Stars J AZZ IMPRESARIO George Wein is renowned for his work in organizing and booking music festivals, and in particular for creating the Newport Jazz Festival, an event that, in the words of the late jazz critic Leonard Feather, started the “festival era.” A professional pianist from his early teens, Wein went on to lead liis own band in and around Iris native Boston, frequently accompanying visiting jazz musicians. In 1950, he opened his own club in Boston, formed the Storyville record label, and launched his career as a jazz entrepreneur. In 1954, he was invited to organize the first Newport Jazz Festival. He subsequently played an important role in establishing numerous other international festivals, including the annual Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. In 1969, Wein established Festival Productions, Inc., which has offices in six cities and produces hundreds of musical events internationally each year. In 1971, unruly crowds forced Wein to move the jazz festival from Newport to New York City, where he pioneered the idea of corporate underwriting of festivals, first with the Kool Jazz Festival and then with the JVC Jazz Festival. Though he IMPULSE!, 1962 George Wein’s Newport All-Stars European Tour CONCORD JAZZ, 1987 COLUMBIA, 1993 sold Festival Productions in 2007, he remains active in the music scene, serving on the boards of Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Apollo Theatre Foundation, and Carnegie Hall. Wein has received numerous honors over the years, including honorary degrees from the Berklee College of Music and Rhode Island College of Music, a DownBeat Lifetime Achievement Award, the Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et Lettres from France, and invitations to he honored at the White House in 1978 and 1993. In addition, he is an author, whose autobiography Myself Among Others was recognized by the Jazz Journalists Association as 2004’s best book about jazz, and he continues to perform as a pianist with his group, the Newport All-Stars. In 2009, Wein again became involved with the jazz festivals in New York and Newport, finding a new sponsor (CareFusion) when the longtime festivals lost their sponsorship. As Wein said when started with the festivals again, “I never went into it as ‘a business’... I mean, the music was in my head, in my heart, in my soul. And it still is." Photo by Lee Tanner A.B. SPELLMAN NEA JAZZ MASTERS AWARD FOR JAZZ ADVOCACY 2005 GEORGE PRODUCER PIANIST BORN October 3, 1925 in Boston, MA ^ Dl sco G ^ Wein, Women & Song ATLANTIC, 1955 ll6 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 2007 FRANK WESS FLUTIST SAXOPHONIST COMPOSER BORN J;u hi ary 4, 1922 in Kansas City, MO && disco G/? count basie, Verve Jazz Masters I Hear Ya Tallcin’ Photo by Michael Wilderman SAVOY, 1959 ute Juice PROGRESSIVE, 1981 llplt. TOWN CRIER, 1993 Once is Not Enough LABETH, 2009 A MULTI INSTRUMENTALIST whose inspired solos have kept big- band jazz fresh and vital into the present, Frank Wess is revered as a smoothly swinging tenor saxophone player in the Lester Young tradition, as an expert alto saxophonist, and as one of the most influential, instantly recognizable flutists in jazz liistory. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Wess first studied classical music and played with the Kansas All-State High School Orchestra. After moving to Washington, DC as a teenager in 1935, he began to play jazz in lunchtime jam sessions with fellow students, including Billy Taylor. An early touring career was interrupted by military service — he played in a 17-piece hand during World War II — and then was resumed when Wess came out of the Army and joined an outstanding lineup in the Billy Eckstine Orchestra. It was at this time that he took up the llute, studying at the Modern School of Music in Washington. All this tune. Count Basie had been calling. Wess finally joined his big band in 1953, helping it to evolve during its so-called "New Testament” phase and remaining with it until 1964. W css’s llute playing, set off by Neal Hefti’s arrangements, contributed strongly to the Basie Orchestra’s new sound, while his tenor saxophone playing served as a counterpoint to the more fiery sound of Frank Foster. W ess has played since the 1960s in countless settings: with Clark Terry’s big band, the New York Quartet with Roland Hanna, Dameronia (1981-85), and Toshiko Akiyoshi’s Jazz Orchestra. During this period, he also bridged the worlds of jazz and popular show business. Wess performed as a staff musician for ABC Television, both for the Dick Cavett Show and for the David Frost Shore (with the Billy Taylor Orchestra). In Broadway pit bands, he played for shows such as Golden Boy (starring Sammy Davis), Irene (with Debbie Reynolds), and Sugar Babies (with Mickey Rooney). For ten years, he played first-chair tenor saxophonist in the Carnegie llall Jazz Band. He has also led his own big bands on world tours, and has played recently in the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni Big Band. Widely recorded on many labels, both as a leader and a sideman, Wess is a perennial favorite in DoumBeat polls and a now-legendary presence on the jazz scene. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 117 ■VED DIS COg/j. 2001 Blues to Africa RANDY WESTON Photo by Lee Tanner ROULETTE 1960 63 PIANIST COMPOSER BORN AprU 6, 1926 in Brooklyn, NY R ANDY WESTON lias spent most of his career combining the rich music of the African continent with the African-American tradition of jazz, mixing rhythms and melodies into a hybrid musical stew. Weston received his earliest training from private teaehers in a household that nurtured Iris budding musicianship. Growing up in Brooklyn, Weston was influenced by such peers as saxophonist Cecil Payne and trumpeter Ray Copeland as well as the steady influx of great jazz musicians who frequented Brooklyn clubs and jam sessions on a regular basis. Such musicians as Thelonious Monk and Duke Ellington would have a lasting influence on Weston’s music, both in terms of Iris piano playing and composition. After a 1945 stint in the Army, Weston began playing piano with such rhythm-and-blues bands as Bull Moose Jackson and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson. At the Music Inn educational retreat in Lenox, Massachusetts, in 1954, he took work as a cook during the summer, while playing the piano at night. The head of Riverside Records, Orrin Keepnews, heard him and signed Weston to do a record of Cole Porter standards. Weston's recording sessions frequently included contributions from his Brooklyn neighborhood buddies Copeland, Payne, and bassist Ahmed Abdid-Malik. It was at this early juncture that ARISTA/FREEDOM, 1974 The Spirit of Our Ancestors VERVE, 1991 RANDOM CHANCE, 2005 MOTEMA MUSIC, 2009 he also began his long and fruitful musical partnership with trombonist-arranger Melba Liston (a listing of some of the albums on which they collaborated can be found in the Liston Selected Discography), a relationship that would continue until her death in 1999, forming some of Weston’s best recordings. Weston’s interest in the African continent was sparked at an early age, and he lectured and performed in Africa in the early 1960s. He toured 14 African countries with his ensemble in 1967 on a State Department tour, eventually settling in Rabat, Morocco. He later moved to Tangier, opening the African Rhythms Chd) in 1969. It was in Morocco that Weston first forged unique collaborations with Berber and Gnawan musicians, infusing his jazz with African music and rhythms. Since returning to the U.S. in 1972, he has lived in Brooklyn, traveling extensively overseas with hands that generally include trombonist Benny Powell and longtime musical director, saxophonist Talib kil twe (aka T.K. Blue). In recent years, a number of Weston s U.S. concert appearances have been true events, including 19915 and 1999 Brooklyn and Kennedy Center collaborations with the Master Musicians of Gnawa, and a triumphant 19915 recreation ol his masterwork suite “Uhuru Africa” in Brooklyn. Many of Weston’s compositions, such as “Hi Ely” and “Berkshire Blues,” have become jazz standards. In 2010, Weston’s autobiography, African Rhythms , was published. n8 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 DISCOg^ Photo by Tom Pich SAVOY. 1956 COLUMBIA, 1959 CONCORD, 1985 EVENING STAR, 1993 EVENING STAR, 2002 OE WILDER has played with a virtual Who’s Who of jazz — Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Cal) Calloway, Benny barter. Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Quincy Jones, John Lewis, Charles Mingus, George Russell, and Dinah Washington, to name just a few. Wilder was born in 1922 into a musical family led by bis father Curtis, a bassist and bandleader in Philadelphia. Wilder’s first performances took place on the radio program Parisian Tailor's Colored Kiddies of the Air. He and the other young musicians were backed up by such illustrious bands as Duke Ellington’s and Louis Armstrong’s that were also then playing at the Lincoln Theater. Wilder studied at the Mastbaum School of Music in Philadelphia but turned to jazz when he felt that there was little future for an African- American classical musician. Wilder joined his first touring big band, Les Hite’s band, in 1941. Wilder was one of the first thousand African Americans to serve in the Marines during World War II. He worked first in Special Weapons and eventually became assistant bandmaster at the headquarters’ band. Following the war during the 1940s and early ’50s, he played in the orchestras of Jimmie Lunceford, Herbie Fields, Sam Donahue, Lucky Millinder, Noble Sissle, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie, while also playing in the pit orchestras for Broadway musicals. Wilder returned to school in the 1900s, earning a bachelor's degree at the Manhattan School of Music where he was also principal trumpet with the school’s symphony orchestra under conductor Jonel Perlea. At that time, he performed on several occasions with the New York Philharmonic under Andre Kostolanitz and Pierre Boulez. From 1957 to 1974, Wilder did studio work for ABC-TV while building his reputation as a soloist with his albums for Savoy and Columbia. He was also a regular sideman with such musicians as Gil Evans, Benny Goodman, and Hank Jones, even accompanying Goodman on liis tour of Russia. He became a favorite with vocahsts and played for Harry Belafonte, Tony Bemiett, Eileen Farrell. Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Johnny Mathis, and many others. He is the only surviving member of the Count Basie All-Star Orchestra that appeared in the classic 1959 film The Sound of Jazz. NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 119 VERVE, 1955-56 count basie. Count Basie Swings/ Joe Williams Sings Every Day — The Best of the Verve Years BORN December 12, 1918 in Cordele, GA died March 29, 1999 by Lee Tanner J OE WILLIAMS’ versatile baritone voice made him one of the signature male vocalists in jazz annals, responsible for some of the Count Basic* band’s main liits in the 1950s. Though born in Georgia, Williams was raised in that great haven of the blues, Chicago, Illinois. His first professional job came with clarinetist Jimmie Noone in 1937. In the 1940s, in addition to singing Chicago area groups, he worked with the big bands of Coleman Hawkins, Lionel Hampton, and Andy kirk. Later he sang with two of Cafe Society’s renowned pianists, Albert Ammons and Pete Johnson. From 1950-53, he worked mostly with the Red Saunders band. What came after would be a job he would cherish and return to frequently throughout liis career: fronting the Count Basie band. Often referred to jokingly as “Count Basie’s #1 son,’’ he stepped right into the band upon the departure of Jimmy Rushing. Williams was the perfect replacement in that he did not just duplicate Rushing’s vocal style. count basie. Count on the Coast, Vol. 1 & 2 PHONTASTIC RCA 1963 TELARC 1993 I but offered a new range of opportunities for Basie to use. Williams' sound was smoother, strong on ballads and blues, while Rushing was a more aggressive singer, best on the up-tempo numbers. Williams’ hits with the Basie band included Alright, Okay, You Win,” “The Comeback,” and what woidd become one of his most requested tunes, “Every Day.” Starting in the 1960s, he was a vocal soloist, fronting trios led by such pianists as Norman Simmons and Junior Mance. Simmons would later become his longest tenured musical director-pianist. He also toured with fellow Basie alumnus Harry “Sweets” Edison. He continued to expand his range, becoming a superior crooner and exhibiting a real depth of feeling on ballads. Among his many awards and citations were a number of jazz poll commendations and honors. Late in life, he had a recurring role on the Cosby Show television program as the star's father-in-law. 1993 JOE WILLIAMS VOCALIST 120 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 1990 DISCOG/j. G ERALD WILSON’S use of multiple harmonies is a hallmark of his hig hands, earning him a reputation as a leading composer and arranger. His band was one of the greats in jazz, leaning heavily on the blues hut integrating other styles, arrangements influenced many musicians that came after him. including multi-instrumentalist Erie Dolphy, who dedicated the song “G. W.” to Wilson on his I960 release Outward Hound. Wilson started out on the piano, learning from his mother, then taking formal lessons and classes in high school in Memphis, Tennessee. The family moved to Detroit in 1934, enabling him to study in the noted music program at Cass Tech High School. As a professional trumpeter, his first jobs were with the Plantation Club Orchestra. He took Sy Oliver’s place in the Jimmie Lunceford band in 1939, remaining in the seat until 1942, when he moved to Los Angeles. In California, he worked in the hands of Benny Carter, Les Hite, and Phil Moore. When the Navy sent him to its Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Chicago, he found work in Willie Smith’s hand. He put together his own hand in late 1944, which included Mel ha Liston, and replaced the Duke Ellington band at the Apollo Theatre when they hit New York. Wilson’s work as a composer- arranger enabled him to work for the Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie hands. Wilson then accompanied Billie Holiday on her tour of the South in 1949. In the early 1960s, he again led His own hig bands. His series of Pacific Jazz recordings established his unique harmonic voice, and Mexican culture — especially the bullfight tradition — influenced his work. Mis appearance at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival increased his popularity. He has contributed his skill as an arranger and composer to artists ranging from Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, and Ella Fitzgerald to the Los Angeles Philharmonic to his guitarist-son Anthony. Additionally he has been a radio broadcaster at KBCA and a frequent jazz educator. Among his more noted commissions are one for the 40th anniversary of the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1998, which he revisited in 2007 with liis album Monterey Moods , and one for the 30th anniversary of the Detroit International Jazz Festival in 2009. The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings MOSAIC, 1961-69 Love You Madly DISCOVERY, 1982 Theme For Monterey MAMA, 1998 Detroit MACK AVENUE, 2009 Photo by Vance Jacobs BANDLEADER COMPOSER ARRANGER TRUMPETER BORN September 4, 1918 in Shelby, MS GERALD WILSON NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 121 2004 C^° DISC °G^ DISC °G^ CAPITOL, 1962 N ANCY WILSON first found her voice sinking in church choirs, but found her love of jazz in her father’s record collection. It included albums by Jimmy Scott, Nat ‘‘King” Cole, Billy Eckstine, Dinah Washington, and Ruth Brown; this generation of vocalists had a profound influence on Wilson’s singing style. She began performing on the ( folumbus, Ohio, club circuit while still in high school, and in 1956 she became a member of Rusty Bryant’s Carolyn Club Band. She also sat in with various performers, such as Cannonball Adderley, who suggested that she come to New York. When Wilson took his advice, her distinctive voice enchanted a representative from Capitol Records and she was signed in 1959. In the years that followed, Wilson recorded 37 original albums for the label. Her first hit, “Guess Who 1 Saw Today,” came in 1961. One year later, a collaborative album with Adderley solidified her standing in the jazz community and provided the foundation for her growing fame and career. During her years with Capitol, she was second in sales only Yesterday’s Love Songs — Today’s Blues CAPITOL, 1963 But Beautiful BLUE NOTE 1969 NARADA 2002 MCG JAZZ 2004 to the Beatles, surpassing Frank Sinatra, the Beach Boys, and even Nat “King” Cole. Wilson also has worked in television, where in 1968 she won an Emmy Award for her NBC series. The Nancy Wilson Shoiv. She has performed on The Andy Williams Show and The Carol Barnett Show and has appeared in series such as Hawaii Five-0 , The Cosby Show . Moesha , and The Parkers. Although she often has crossed over to pop and rhythm- and-blues recordings, she still is best known for her jazz performances. In the 1980s, she returned to jazz with a series of performances with such jazz greats as Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and Hank Jones. And to start the new century, Wilson teamed with pianist Ramsey Lewis for a pair of higlily regarded recordings. She has been the recipient of numerous awards and accolades, including two Grammy Awards and honorary degrees from Berklee School of Music and Central State University in Ohio. Wilson also hosted NPR’s Jazz Profiles , a weekly documentary series, from 1986 to 2005. Nancy Wilson and Cannonball Adderley VOCALIST BROADCASTER BORN February 20, 1937 in Chillicothe, OH Photo by Tom Pich NANCY WILSON 122 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 Photo by Rolf Ambor/CTSIMAGES T EDDY WILSON was one of the swing era’s finest pianists, a follower of Earl Hines’ distinctive “trumpet- style” piano playing. Wilson forged his own unique approach from Hines’ influence, as well as from the styles of Art Tatum and Fats Waller. He was a truly orchestral pianist who engaged the complete range of his instrument, and he did it all in a controlled and refined manner at the keyboard. Raised in Tuskegee, Alabama, Wilson studied piano at nearby Talladega College for a short time. Among his first professional experiences were Chicago stints in the bands of Jimmie Noone and Louis Armstrong. In 1933, he moved to New York to join Benny Carter’s hand known as the Chocolate Dandies, and made records with the Willie Bryant hand during 1934-35. In 1936, he became a member of Benny Goodman’s regular trio, which included drummer Gene Krupa, and remained until 1939, participating on a number of Goodman’s small group recordings. Wilson was the first African- American musician to work with Goodman, one of the first bandleaders to integrate a jazz band. Wilson later appeared as himsell in the cinematic treatment of The Benny Goodman Story. During his time with Goodman, Wilson made some of his first benny Goodman, The Complete Small Group Recordings Masters of Jazz, Vol. 11 STORYVILLE, 1968-80 With Billie in Mind CHIAROSCURO, 1972 BLACK LION, 1973 recordings as a leader. These records featured such greats as Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, and Ella Fitzgerald. Wilson’s arrangements with Hobday in particular constitute some of the singer’s finest work, mostly due to Wilson’s ability to find the right sound to complement Holiday’s voice and singing style. Following his Goodman days, Wilson led his own big band for a short time, but most of his work came with his own small groups, particularly a sextet that played regularly at the famous Cafe Society in New York. In 1946, he was a staff musician at CBS Radio, and also conducted his own music school. During the early 1950s, he taught at the Juilliard School, one of the first jazz musicians to do so. Wilson’s relationship with Goodman was his most noted, and was an ongoing factor in his work. He was part of Goodman’s storied Soviet tour in 1962, and continued to work occasional festival gigs with the clarinetist. PIANIST ARRANGER EDUCATOR BORN November 24, 1912 in Austin, TX died July 31, 1986 1986 TEDDY WILSON NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-201 1 123 c^ddisco G/?/ CANDID, 1960 MGMA/ERVE, 1969 Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival Photo by Michael Wilderman B ORN IN Springfield, Massachusetts, Philip Wells Woods has devoted himself to the alto saxophone since the age of 12. As a teenager, he briefly took private lessons in improvisation from Leimie Tristano and also studied for a summer at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1948, he enrolled in the ,1 Milliard School, where he remained through 1952, majoring in clarinet performance. While at Juilliard, he played for a brief period in Charlie Barnet’s dance band. Subsequently, he worked with leaders including George Wallington (replacing Jackie McLean), Kenny Dorham, and Friedrich Gulda and then, joining with one of his musical idols, traveled to the Near East and Smith America with Dizzy Gillespie. By now established as one of the most brilliant alto saxophonists in jazz. Woods went on to perform in Buddy Rich’s quintet and toured Europe with Quincy Jones (1959-60) and the U.S.S.R. with Benny Goodman (1962). From 1964 to 1967, Woods took a summer break from the bandstand, teaching at the Ramblerny performing arts camp in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, still much in demand, he performed in New York in 1967 both as the leader of liis own quartet (featuring Hal Galper, Richard Davis, and Dottie Dodgion) and as a member of Clark Terry’s big hand. I Remember Blues for New Orleans The Children’s Suite MEDIA, 2007 In 1968, Woods moved to France and formed the European Rhythm Machine quartet, with George Grimtz on keyboards, Henri Texier on bass, and Daniel Hiunair on drums. His talent as a composer blossomed during this period, when he wrote music for Danish and Belgian radio and composed a ballet for French television. After disbanding the quartet in 1972, Woods returned to the United States, settled in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and formed a jazz group with Mike Melillo, Steve Gilmore, and Bill Goodwin. With this ensemble, he staked his claim to being the finest alto saxophonist in mainstream jazz, a reputation confirmed by liis performances on Images (1975, with Michel Legrand), Live from the Showboat (1976), and Billy Joel’s 1977 hit recording, “Just the Way You Are,” all of which received Grammy Awards. In 1975, he received an NEA Music grant that he used to compose the work “The Sun Suite,” one of more than 200 songs Woods has composed. He has recorded several albums with new arrangements of famous composers — such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Tadd Dameron, Quincy Jones, anil Henry Mancini — and in 2006 released a well- received allium of standards, American Songbook. He remains active internationally as a bandleader, composer-arranger, and soloist. 124 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 JIMMIE LUNCEFORD, 1939-1940 CLASSICS, 1939-40 Photo by Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES K nown for his i jrowess with the plunger mute, Eugene Edward “Snooky” Young’s trumpet playing is most often heard in the context of the hig hand. For 30 years, he was heard every weeknight as a member of the Tonight Slum orchestra. Young began playing the trumpet at five and hy his early teens was working in various regional bands. From 1939-1942 he made a name for himself as lead trumpeter and soloist in the Jimmie Lunceford band. From 1942 to 1947 Young worked with Fes Hite, Benny Carter, and Gerald Wilson, as well as with the Count Basie band, where he replaced trumpet player Ed Lewis. Young led his own hand in his hometown of Dayton from 1947 to 1957 and continued to perform periodically with both Lionel Hampton and Basie through the early 1960s. Upon leaving Basie in 1962, Young began his longest engagement with a hand as a trumpeter for the Doc Severinsen band on the Tonight Show. In 1972, he moved to Los Angeles when the show relocated, and remained until Johnny Carson left in 1992. count basie, Kansas City Suite ROULETTE, 1960 THAD JONES-MEL LEWIS ORCHESTRA, Live at the Village Vanguard SOLID STATE, 1967 CONCORD JAZZ, 1979 MAMA FOUNDATION, 1994 Young continued to work on other projects as well. He was a founding member of the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra in 1966, and throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, he played with a variety of hig hands, including on recordings by such jazz greats as Louis Bellson, Gil Evans, Quincy Jones, Charles Mingus, and Jimmy Smith. Young has worked outside of jazz as well, playing with the rock group the Band on New Year’s Eve in 1971 and on the classic 1976 blues recording Bobby Bland and B.B. King Together Again... Live. Young has worked since with several Los Angeles big bands, and has issued three albums under his own name, including Horn of Plenty, which demonstrated his solo gifts as a strong lead trumpeter. Young has appeared as a soloist at jazz festivals in Montreux, Switzerland; The Hague, Holland; Antibes, France; and Concord, California. His work has appeared on numerous soundtracks as well, including The Color Purple. He continues to perform and tour with the Clayton- Hamilton Jazz Orchestra and the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. 2000 SNOOKY YOUNG TRUMPETER BORN February 3, 1919 in Dayton, OH d |S co G/? NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 125 NEA JAZZ MASTERS AWARD CEREMONY NEA Jazz Masters events include a luncheon for all attending NEA Jazz Masters (and a group photo), portraits of the new class of honorees, and a special concert and awards ceremony. Here are a few candid moments from the last few years. Frank Wess, Gerald Wilson, Jon Hendricks Photo by Tom Pich David Baker, Freddie Hubbard, James Moody Photo by Tom Pich Jimmy Smith, Kenny Burrell, Slide Hampton, Paquito D'Rivera Photo by Vance Jacobs Chick Corea, Roy Haynes, Ron Carter Photo by Tom Pich ■WJ »«• igPj vount Basie M *mpton, Billy Jayior Sarah Vaughan tylor, Gerald Wilson Andy Kirk, megan, cks, Joe Williams Jamal, Carmen McRae «, Horace Silver •ackson, Anita O’Day Hy, Wayne Shorter •ne Henderson rian McPartland ndy Weston ;oy Tyner )«y Lincoln Hancock son, Nat Hen toff a, Slide Hampton. >y Smith, jBrookmey*' artists wards. In I in 200S support that if with ptrformanc ing featuring NEA ,(0up,JinJ« <,uOt all ptograi". Ornette Coleman Photo by Katja von Schuttenbach George Wein, Louie Bellson Photo by Tom Pich 126 NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 i Liu rami Quincy Jones, Tom McIntosh, Joe Wilder Photo by Tom Pich Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath Photo by Tom Pich Photo by Tom Pich bP 11 wk - m 4 * ffi I |J|S wk mm W wi -1 ■ m\ I fi L ** «jM ■^1 ,,, ^ - B M % 1 B tnl * ^ Br» v-rm 1 iffifflHIt 1982-2011 1982 Roy Eldridge* Dizzy Gillespie* Sun Ra* 1983 Count Basie* Kenny Clarke* Sonny Rollins 1984 Ornette Coleman Miles Davis* Max Roach* 1985 Gil Evans* Ella Fitzgerald* Jo Jones* 1986 Benny Carter* Dexter Gordon* Teddy Wilson* 1987 Cleo Brown* Melba Liston* Jay McShann* 1988 Art Blakey* Lionel Hampton* Billy Taylor 1989 Barry Harris Hank Jones* Sarah Vaughan* * Deceased 1990 George Russell* Cecil Taylor Gerald Wilson 1991 Danny Barker* Buck Clayton* Andy Kirk* Clark Terry 1992 Betty Carter* Dorothy Donegan* Sweets Edison* 1993 Jon Hendricks Milt Hinton* Joe Williams* 1994 Louie Bellson* Ahmad Jamal Carmen McRae* 1995 Ray Brown* Roy Haynes Horace Silver 1996 Tommy Flanagan* Benny Colson J.J. Johnson* 1997 Billy Higgins* Milt Jackson* Anita O'Day* 1998 Ron Carter James Moody* Wayne Shorter 1999 Dave Brubeck Art Farmer* Joe Henderson* 2000 David Baker Donald Byrd Marian McPartland 2001 John Lewis* Jackie McLean* Randy Weston 2002 Frank Foster Percy Heath* McCoy Tyner 2003 Jimmy Heath Elvin Jones* Abbey Lincoln* 2004 Jim Hall Chico Hamilton Herbie Hancock Luther Henderson* Nat Hentoff Nancy Wilson 2005 Kenny Burrell Paquito D* Rivera Slide Hampton Shirley Horn* Jimmy Smith* Artie Shaw* George Wein 2006 Ray Barretto* Tony Bennett Boh Brookmeyer Chick Corea Buddy DeFranco Freddie Hubbard* John Levy 2007 Toshiko Akiyoshi Curtis Fuller Ramsey Lewis Dan Morgenstern Jimmy Scott Frank Wess Phil Woods 2008 Candido Camero Andrew Hill* Quincy Jones Tom McIntosh Gunther Schuller Joe Wilder 2009 George Benson Jimmy Cobb Lee Konitz Toots Thielemans Rudy Van Gelder Snooky Young 2010 Muhal Richard Abrams George Avakian Kenny Barron Bill Holman Bobby Hutcherson Yusef Lateef Annie Ross Cedar Walton 2011 Orrin Keepnews Hubert Laws David Liebman johnny Mandel The Marsalis Family 128 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-2011 Jazz Moments with NEA Jazz Masters Audio CD / ITH AN EYE — or ear — toward sharing the enriching power of jazz with the / public, the NEA is producing a series of Jazz Moments for radio broadcast. The short radio segments (running from 30 seconds to three minutes) are interviews with legendary and contemporary jazz artists about their own work and that of other artists. They include musical samples, historical information, and first-person anecdotes designed to give listeners added insight into NEA Jazz Masters and their art. From the more than 175 segments that were created, a compilation of 48 NEA Jazz Masters is included on the accompanying audio CD, produced by Molly Murphy exclusively for the NEA. The CD practically travels the entire history of jazz, from George Avakian discovering the joy of Duke Ellington, F ats Waller, and Louis Armstrong on the radio to Ron Carter and Jimmy Cobh sharing their different experiences with Miles Davis to Phil Woods talking about how he composes his current works. All the Jazz Moments can he found on, and downloaded from, the NEA website at arts.gov. Noted jazz bassist, composer, arranger, educator Christian McBride narrates the segments for the 2011 NEA Jazz Masters. McBride is one of the most widely requested session musicians around, having worked with everyone from Sonny Rollins and Roy Haynes to D'Angelo and James Brown to Sting and Don Henley. In addition he has been leading his own hand since 2000. He has been named artistic director of the Jazz Aspen Snowmass Summer Sessions and the co-director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, as well as the sec- ond creative chair for jazz of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. Newly minted NEA Jazz Master Delfeayo Marsalis narrates all the Jazz Moments with previous NEA Jazz Masters. NEA JAZZ MASTERS. 1982-2011 S' /vJ€y\ (a 3 ^ JAZZ MOMENTS WITH NEA JAZZ MASTERS Track Artist 1. INTRO BY CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE 2011 NEA JAZZ MASTERS: 2 . HUBERT LAWS ...on the freedom of improvisation 3. DAVID LIEBMAN . . .on jazz education 4 . JOHNNY MANDEL . ..harmonizing standards 5 . THE MARSALIS FAMILY ...on Ellis’ teaching style 6 . ORRIN KEEPNEWS ...on his first recording session with Thelonious Monk PREVIOUS NEA JAZZ MASTERS: 7. MUHAL RICHARD ABRAMS ( 2010 ) ...on the influence of blues in Chicago 8 . TOSHIKO AKIYOSHI (2007) ...forming a big band 9 . GEORGE AVAKIAN (2010) ...discovering jazz on the radio 10 . KENNY BARRON (2010) . . .working with Yusef Lateef 11 . GEORGE BENSON (2009) . . .on why he loves jazz 12 . ‘DAVE BRUBECK (1999) ...behind the Iron Curtain 13. RON CARTER (1998) ...working with Miles Davis 14. JIMMY COBB (2009) ...on his first gig with the Miles Davis Sextet 15. BUDDY DEFRANCO (2006) ...on the challenge of the clarinet 16. FRANK FOSTER (2002) ...writing “Shining Stockings” for Count Basie’s band 17. CURTIS FULLER (2007) ...on first seeing J.J. Johnson 18. JIM HALL (2004) . . .on technique versus ideas 19. CHICO HAMILTON (2004) ...on his first gig with Duke Ellington 20 . SLIDE HAMPTON (2005) . . .on improvisation 21. HERBIE HANCOCK (2004) ...becoming interested in jazz 22 . ROY HAYNES (1995) ...on first becoming a drummer 23. JIMMY HEATH (2003) ...on music and personality and John Coltrane 24. JON HENDRICKS (1993) ...on the writing process 25. NAT HENTOFF (2004) ...on Billie Holiday’s The Sound of Jazz performance 26 . BILL HOLMAN (2010) ...starting his own big band 27. ‘SHIRLEY HORN (2005) ...on Miles Davis 28 . BOBBY HUTCHERSON (2010) ...on a special performance with Milt Jackson 29 . AHMAD JAMAL (1994) . ..recording “Poinciana” 30 . QUINCY JONES (2008) ...on early musical mentors 31 . LEE KONITZ (2009) ...choosing the alto saxophone 32 . YUSEF LATEEF (2010) ...on the process of learning 33. JOHN LEVY (2006) ...on his pioneering jazz manager experience 34. RAMSEY LEWIS (2007) ...recording “The ‘In’ Crowd” 3 5 . ‘ABBEY LINCOLN (2003) . . .on the importance of music 36 . MARIAN MCPARTLAND ( 2000 ) ...getting advice from Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk 37. DAN MORGENSTERN (2007) ...listening to Symphony Sid 38 . ANNIE ROSS ( 2010 ) . . .writing “Twisted” 39. JIMMY SCOTT (2007) ...on what makes a great vocalist 40 . ‘ARTIE SHAW (2005) . . .hitting the top C 41 . BILLY TAYLOR (1988) ...playing ballads 42 . TOOTS THIELEMANS (2009) . . .on the portability of the harmonica 43. MCCOY TYNER (2002) ...sharing a piano with Bud Powell 44. RUDY VAN GELDER (2009) ...being hired by Alfred Lion 4 5 . CEDAR WALTON (2010) . . .joining Art Blakey’s Jazz Messenger 46 . FRANK WESS (2007) ...on Count Basie’s style as a bandleader 47. GERALD WILSON (1990) ...on the inspiration for “Viva Tirado” 48 . PHIL WOODS (2007) . . .on composing 49. ‘SNOOKY YOUNG (2009) ...finding his own style 50 . CLOSING CREDIT BY CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE * NEA Jazz Master interview from archival tapes, including material from the Smithsonian Jazz Oral History Program; all others from NEA-recorded interviews. 130 NEA JAZZ MASTERS, 1982-201 1 NEA Jazz Masters: 1982-2011 publication Track listing in< Produced by Molly Murphy for the National Endowment for the Arts Not for sale The Nation’s Highest Honor in Jazz HERE IS GENERAL AGREEMENT that the United States has produced three original art forms: movies, modern dance, and jazz. All speak to the genius of American culture. Film is indicative of our ability to convert new technology into a medium for mass consump- tion, frequently achieving the status of high art. Modern dance, an in- digenous kinesthetic art capable of an unbounded range of expression, from treatments of contemporary issues to pure abstraction. And then there is jazz. Jazz lives at the very center of the American vernacular. It is the gift of the generations of new urban African-American people whose capac- ity for the synthesis of diverse strains of musical forms brought schot- tisches, quadrilles, habaneras, and marches into the bases of the blues and ragtime to create a whole new way of making music. It was built on the discipline of collective improvisation, a remarkable skill when you think about it, which allowed for maximum expression of the individual within the context of the group. Jazz is democratic and virtually without hierarchy: the composer is one more collaborator in the group, and even bandleaders do not stand above the soloists. These qualities are entirely appropriate for what is best about Amer- ica. The old jazz principle that “you’ve got to make it new’’ is so Ameri- can that it could go on the dollar hill. These defining qualities have made jazz arguably the United States’ most welcomed cultural export. It has taken root wherever it has been planted, moving into and becoming a part of the cultures of other countries and then becoming an aspect of their national expression, in the way that Russian jazz is vastly different from Afro-Cuban jazz. Some years ago, just after apartheid had fallen, I heard a young South .African ensemble that comprised an Indian pia- nist, a tabla player, a white female flutist, and a black bassist. Distinct traces of each of these musicians’ heritages were audible in their solos, yet they performed with intimate ease. I thought, how marvelous that, as these young people are at a point in history when they can speak to each other as equals, jazz provides the vocabulary. It is no accident that jazz has been a favored medium of cultural diplomacy. For decades, Willis Conover’s jazz series on the Voice of CecilTaylor (left) with A. B. Spellman. PHOTO BY TOM PICH America kept ears open to the United States Information Agency (USIA) all over the world. Uncounted numbers of jazz musicians have traveled abroad under the auspices of the State Department. Many of the Na- tional Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters, such as Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, and Billy Taylor, have toured the globe as our cultural representatives. The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships program was created to say to jazz musicians that their government values the way that they keep our culture rich by continually producing such fabulous music. Mastery is a difficult status to achieve. No creative discipline has more than a few true masters, for it takes exceptional talent, dedication, hard work, and opportunity to become one. NEA Jazz Masters have demonstrated these qualities and more. The National Endoment for the Arts is honored to recognize these great artists for the outstanding contributions they have made to Ameri- can culture. — A.R. Spellman NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FORTHE ARTS • 1100 PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE, NW • WASHINGTON, DC 20506-0001 • 202.682.5400 • WWW.ARTS.GOV NOT FOR SALE