North Sea Jazz Festival. The Legends - Nina Simone

The first edition of the North Sea Jazz Festival took place in 1976 in the Nederlands Congresgebouw in The Hague. Some numbers in those early days: six venues, three hundred artists and about nine thousand visitors. In this very first festival year internationally renowned jazz legends performed, such as Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz, as well as most Dutch avant-garde artists. In 2006, the festival moved to its current, bigger, location in Rotterdam. 

Nowadays the North Sea Jazz Festival is staggering in size, touted as the world's largest indoor jazz festival and that's certainly a good bet. With 13 stages running from late afternoon until the early morning hours, it's far more than a smorgasbord. More like an avalanche, but one where the music fan happily stands at the bottom of the mountain. North Sea Jazz is known all over the world because of the many musical genres it has to offer, ranging from traditional New Orleans jazz, swing, bop, free jazz, fusion, avant-garde jazz and electronic jazz; to blues, gospel, funk, soul, R&B, hip hop, world beat and Latin.

I had an opportunity to attend on the North See Jazz Festival in 2010 and indeed it was very impressive.  It was the 35th edition of North Sea Jazz Festival, and I have enjoyed performances by Earth Wind and Fire, Diana Krall, Corinne Bailey Rae, Pat Metheny Group, Joss Stone, Sonny Rollins and Norah Jones, Stevie Wonder, Macy Gray and many others.

The Legends - Part Eleven

Nina Simone

Eunice Kathleen Waymon, better known by her stage name Nina Simone, was born in Tryon, North Carolina on February 21st, 1933. The child prodigy played piano at the age of four. With the help of her music teacher, who set up the "Eunice Waymon Fund", she could continue her general and musical education. She studied at the Julliard School of Music in New York.

To support her family financially, she started working as an accompanist. In the summer of 1954 she took a job in an Irish bar in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The bar owner told her she had to sing as well. Without having time to realize what was happening, Eunice Waymon, who was trained to become a classical pianist, stepped into show business. She changed her name into Nina ("little one") Simone ("from the French actress Simone Signoret").

In the late 50's Nina Simone recorded her first tracks for the Bethlehem label. These are still remarkable displays of her talents as a pianist, singer, arranger and composer. Songs as Plain Gold Ring, Don't Smoke In Bed and Little Girl Blue soon became standards in her repertoire.

One song, "I Loves You, Porgy", from the opera "Porgy and Bess", became a hit and the nightclub singer became a star, performing at Town Hall, Carnegie Hall and the Newport Jazz Festival. Even from the beginning of her career on, her repertoire included jazz standards, gospel and spirituals, classical music, folk songs of diverse origin, blues, pop, songs from musicals and opera, African chants as well as her own compositions.

Her gift to give new and deeper dimensions to songs resulted in remarkable versions of "Ain't Got No... I Got Life" (from the musical "Hair"), Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne", Bee Gees songs as "To Love Somebody", the classic "My Way" done in a tempo doubled on bongos, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and four other Bob Dylan songs. This gift culminated on her record "Emergency Ward": she set up an atmosphere that left no illusions and no escape, performing two long versions of George Harrison songs: "My Sweet Lord" (to which she added a David Nelson poem, Today is a Killer) and "Isn't it a Pity".

But Nina tried to escape anyway. She felt she had been manipulated. Disgusted with record companies, show business and racism, she left the USA in 1974 for Barbados. During the following years she lived in Liberia, Switzerland, Paris, The Netherlands and finally the South of France. In 1978 a long awaited new record was released, "Baltimore", containing the definite rendition of Judy Collins' My Father and an hypnotizing Everything Must Change.

Her next album, "Fodder On My Wings", was recorded in Paris in 1982 and is based on her self-imposed "exile" from the USA. More than ever determined to make her own music, Nina wrote, adapted and arranged the songs, played piano and harpsichord and sang in English and French. The 1988 CD re-release of this album included some bonus tracks, e.g. her extraordinary version of "Alone Again Naturally", reminiscing her father's death.

In 1984, one of her concerts at Ronnie Scott's in London was filmed, resulting in a captivating video, featuring Paul Robinson on drums. A song from her very first record, "My Baby Just Cares For Me", became a huge hit and "Nina's Back" was not only the title of a new album; her concerts would take her all over the world again.

In 1989 she contributed to Pete Townsend's musical "The Iron Man". In 1990 she recorded with Maria Bethania; in 1991 with Miriam Makeba. That same year, her autobiography, "I Put A Spell On You" was published. It was translated into French ("Ne Me Quittez Pas"), German ("Meine Schwarze Seele") and Dutch ("I Put A Spell On You, - Herinneringen").

In 1993 a new studio album was released. "A Single Woman" includes several Rod McKuen songs, Nina's own "Marry Me", her version of the French standard "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux" and a very moving "Papa, Can You Hear Me?"

No less than five songs from her repertoire were used in the 1993 motion picture sound track of "Point Of No Return" (also called "The Assassin", code name: "Nina"). Many other films feature her songs (e.g. "Ghosts of Mississippi", 1996: "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free", "Stealing Beauty", 1996: "My Baby Just Cares For Me "and "One Night Stand", 1997: "Exactly Like You").

Her music continues to excite new and young listeners. "Ain't Got No... I Got Life" was a big hit in 1998 in The Netherlands, just as it had been there 30 years before...

Together with her regular accompanists Leopoldo Fleming (percussion), Tony Jones (bass), Paul Robinson (drums), Xavier Collados (keyboards) and her musical director Al Schackman (guitar), she still excites audiences all over the world. At the Barbican Theatre in London in 1997 she sang Every Time I Feel The Spirit as a tribute to one of America's first and foremost leaders in the cause of Civil Rights, peace and brotherhood, singer and actor Paul Robeson. More spirituals and "blood songs" would follow: Reached Down And Got My Soul, The Blood Done Change My Name and When I See The Blood.

Nina was the highlight of the Nice Jazz Festival in France in 1997, the Thessalonica Jazz Festival in Greece in 1998. At the Guinness Blues Festival in Dublin, Ireland in 1999 her daughter, Lisa Celeste, performing as "Simone", sang a few duets with her mother. Simone has toured the world, sung with Latin superstar Rafael, participated in two Disney theatre workshops, playing the title role in Aida and Nala in The Lion King.

On July 24, 1998 Nina Simone was a special guest at Nelson Mandela's 80th Birthday Party. On October 7, 1999 she received a Lifetime Achievement in Music Award in Dublin. In 2000 she received Honorary Citizenship to Atlanta (May 26), the Diamond Award for Excellence in Music from the Association of African American Music in Philadelphia (June 9) and the Honorable Musketeer Award from the Compagnie des Mousquetaires d'Armagnac in France (August 7).

Dr. Simone passed away after a long illness at her home in her villa in Carry-le-Rouet (South of France) on April 21, 2003. As she had wished, her ashes were spread in different African countries.

Here is my top 10 of her songs:

1.   "My Baby Just Cares For Me"
2.   "I Loves You Porgy"
3.   "Feeling Good"
4.   "Sinnerman"
5.   "Don't Smoke In Bed"
6.   "Mississippi Goddam"
7.   "My Way"
8.   "Here Comes The Sun"
9.   "Love Me Or Leave Me"
10. "I Put Spell On You"

Clarinet. The Legends - Benny Goodman

The modern orchestral clarinet is widely considered one of the most versatile of all modern instruments. Its ancestor is the chalumeau, from which it was developed somewhere around 1700. The creator was J.C. Denner, a German instrument-maker. The clarinet can be heard in many different types of musical groups from military bands to orchestras to jazz groups. In jazz groups, the very bright and sassy clarinet can provide a wonderful solo as well as enhance others.

For the 20th century history of the clarinet jazz has played a major part. Adopted by jazz musicians from the birth of the movement, the clarinet continues to play an important part of the modern jazz scene, and some of the most famous clarinet players in history have been jazz musicians. The clarinet was included in some of the earliest jazz ensembles, especially groups known as "Dixieland" bands. This commonly consisted of clarinet, cornet, baritone, tuba, drums, and piano. The clarinet was in its jazz heyday with the arrival of the Big Bands and "Swing Era", a sound synonymous with the Second World War period. This time in jazz is also associated with the most famous jazz clarinetist of all time, Benny Goodman. After a period in Chicago that involved some classic recordings, Goodman moved to New York, where he worked as a freelancer before putting together the first of his jazz bands. Since the big band era, that clarinet has been eclipsed as a jazz woodwind instrument by the saxophone, though there are some modern day clarinetists who are renowned jazz players.

The Legends - Part Ten

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David Goodman was born on May 30, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois. He was the eighth child of immigrants David Goodman and Dora Grisinsky Goodman, who left Russia to escape anti-Semitism. His father worked for a tailor to support his large family, which eventually grew to include a total of 12 children, and had trouble making ends meet. When Benny was 10 years old, his father sent him to study music at Kehelah Jacob Synagogue in Chicago. There, Benny learned the clarinet under the tutelage of Chicago Symphony member Franz Schoepp, while two of his brothers learned tuba and trumpet. He also played in the band at Jane Addams' famous social settlement, Hull-House.

Benny's aptitude on the clarinet was immediately apparent. While he was still very young, he became a professional musician and played in several bands in Chicago. He played with his first pit band at the age of 11, and became a member of the American Federation of Musicians when he was 14, when he quit school to pursue his career in music. When his father died, 15-year-old Benny used the money he made to help support his family. During these early years in Chicago, he played with many musicians who would later become nationally renowned, such as Frank Teschemacher and Dave Tough.

When Benny was 16, he was hired by the Ben Pollack band and moved to Los Angeles. He remained with the band for four years, and became a featured soloist. In 1929, the year that marked the onset of the Great Depression and a time of distress for America, Benny left the Ben Pollack band to participate in recording sessions and radio shows in New York City. Then, in 1933, Benny began to work with John Hammond, a jazz promoter who would later help to launch the recording careers of Billie Holiday and Count Basie, among many others. Hammond wanted Benny to record with drummer Gene Krupa and trombonist Jack Teagarden, and the result of this recording session was the onset of Benny's national popularity. Later, in 1942, Benny would marry Alice Hammond Duckworth, John Hammond's sister, and have two daughters: Rachel, who became a concert pianist, and Benji, who became a cellist.

Benny led his first band in 1934 and began a few-month stint at Billy Rose's Music Hall, playing Fletcher Henderson's arrangements along with band members Bunny Berigan, Gene Krupa and Jess Stacy. The music they played had its roots in the Southern jazz forms of ragtime and Dixieland, while its structure adhered more to arranged music than its more improvisational jazz counterparts. This gave it an accessibility that appealed to American audiences on a wide scale. America began to hear Benny's band when he secured a weekly engagement for his band on NBC's radio show "Let's Dance", which was taped with a live studio audience. The new swing music had the kids dancing when, on August 21, 1935, Benny's band played the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The gig was sensational and marked the beginning of the years that Benny would reign as King: the Swing Era. Teenagers and college students invented new dance steps to accompany the new music sensation. Benny's band, along with many others, became hugely successful among listeners from many different backgrounds all over the country.

During this period Benny also became famous for being colorblind when it came to racial segregation and prejudice. Pianist Teddy Wilson, an African-American, first appeared in the Ben ny Goodman Trio at the Congress Hotel in 1935. Benny added Lionel Hampton, who would later form his own band, to his Benny Goodman Quartet the next year. While these groups were not the first bands to feature both white and black musicians, Benny's national popularity helped to make racially mixed groups more accepted in the mainstream. Benny once said, "If a guy's got it, let him give it. I'm selling music, not prejudice".

Benny's success as an icon of the Swing Era prompted Time magazine in 1937 to call him the "King of Swing". The next year, at the pinnacle of the Swing Era, the Benny Goodman band, along with musicians from the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands, made history as the first jazz band ever to play in New York's prestigious Carnegie Hall. Following the concert at Carnegie Hall, the Benny Goodman band had many different lineup changes. Gene Krupa left the band, among others, and subsequent versions of the band included Cootie Williams and Charlie Christian, as well as Jimmy Maxwell and Mel Powell, among others.

The Swing Era began to come to a close, as America got more involved in World War II. Several factors contributed to its waning success, including the loss of musicians to the draft and the limits that gas-rationing put on touring bands. However, though the big band days were drawing to a close and new forms of music were emerging, Benny continued to play music in the swing style. He dabbled in the "bop" movement of the 1940s, but never succumbed, as the rest of the world did, to the allure of rock and roll influences in the 1950s and 1960s. Instead, Benny tried his hand at classical music, doing solos with major orchestras, and studying with internationally acclaimed classical clarinetist Reginald Kell. These appearances further demonstrated Benny's range as a musician. His talent was unquestionable from the time he was 10 years old, and in recording sessions throughout his career, he very rarely made mistakes. Krell had helped him to improve some of his techniques, making Benny's playing even stronger.

Benny Goodman and Nikita Khrushchev

In 1953, Benny's band planned to join Louis Armstrong and his All Stars in a tour together, but the two band leaders argued and the tour never opened at Carnegie Hall, as had been planned. It is not certain whether the tour was canceled due to Benny's illness or the conflict between the bandleaders. The rest of the decade marked the spread of Benny's music to new audiences around the world. The Benny Goodman Story, a film chronicling his life, was released in 1955, exposing new and younger audiences to his music. Benny also toured the world, bringing his music to Asia and Europe. When he traveled to the USSR, one writer observed "the swing music that had once set the jitterbugs dancing in the Paramount aisles almost blew down the Iron Curtain".

During the late 1960s and 1970s, Benny appeared in reunions with the other members of his quartet: Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa and Lionel Hampton. In 1978, the Benny Goodman band also appeared at Carnegie Hall again to mark the 30th Anniversary of when they appeared in the venue's first jazz concert. In 1982, Benny was honored by the Kennedy Center for his lifetime achievements in swing music. In 1986, he received both an honorary doctorate degree in music from Columbia University and the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement. He continued to play the music that defined his lifetime in occasional concert dates until his death in June 1986, of cardiac arrest. Through his amazing career, Benny Goodman did not change his style to conform to the latest trends, but retained the original sound that defined the Swing Era and made him the world renowned King of Swing.

Here is my top 10 of his compositions:

1.   "Sing, Sing, Sing"

2.   "Caprice Paganini XXIV"

3.   "Bugle Call Rag"

4.   "Saint Louis Blues"

5.   "Moonglow"

6.   "Sweet Georgia Brown"

7.   "I Got Rhythm"

8.   "Roll 'Em"

9.   "Flat Foot Floogie"

10. "Swingtime In The Rockies"

Bebop. The Legends - John Coltrane

Bebop, also called bop,  the first kind of modern jazz, which split jazz into two opposing camps in the last half of the 1940s. It was a style of jazz in great contrast to the music of the big bands.The word is an onomatopoeic rendering of a staccato two-tone phrase distinctive in this type of music. When it emerged, bebop was unacceptable not only to the general public but also to many musicians. The resulting breaches - first, between the older and younger schools of musicians and, second, between jazz musicians and their public - were deep, and the second never completely healed.

Whereas earlier jazz was essentially diatonic (i.e., basing melodies and harmonies on traditional Western major and minor 7-note scales comprising 5 whole and 2 half steps), much of the thinking that informed the new movement was chromatic (drawing on all 12 notes of the chromatic scale). Thus the harmonic territory open to the jazz soloist was vastly increased.

Bebop took the harmonies of the old jazz and superimposed on them additional "substituted" chords. It also broke up the metronomic regularity of the drummer’s rhythmic pulse and produced solos played in double time with several bars packed with 16th notes. The result was complicated improvisation.

The development of bebop is attributed in large part to Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. The unique styles of Gillespie and Parker contributed to and typified the bebop sound. They experimented with unconventional chromaticism, discordant sounds, and placement of accents in melodies. In contrast to the regular phrasing of big band music, Gillespie and Parker often created irregular phrases of odd length, and combined swing and straight eighth-note rhythms within the swing style. By the mid-1950s musicians (Miles Davis and John Coltrane among others) began to explore directions beyond the standard bebop vocabulary.

The Legends - Part Nine

John Coltrane

Born September 23, 1926 in Hamlet, North Carolina, John Coltrane (Trane) was always surrounded by music. His father played several instruments sparking Coltrane’s study of E-flat horn and clarinet. While in high school, Coltrane’s musical influences shifted to the likes of Lester Young and Johnny Hodges prompting him to switch to alto saxophone. He continued his musical training in Philadelphia at Granoff Studios and the Ornstein School of Music. He was called to military service during World War II, where he performed in the U.S. Navy Band in Hawaii.

After a yearlong stint in the Navy, Coltrane began playing gigs in and around Philadelphia. During this time he became involved in drug and alcohol use, vices that would follow him throughout his career and ultimately lead to his death. 

Prior to joining the Dizzy Gillespie band, Coltrane performed with Jimmy Heath where his passion for experimentation began to take shape. However, it was his work with the Miles Davis Quintet in 1958 that would lead to his own musical evolution. "Miles music gave me plenty of freedom," he once said. During that period, he became known for using the three-on-one chord approach, and what has been called the "sheets of sound," a method of playing multiple notes at one time.

In 1960 he formed his own group - The John Coltrane quartet - with Coltrane playing tenor saxophone, McCoy Tyler on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Harrison on bass. It was during the first years of this group that Coltrane graduated from an above-average tenor saxophonist to an elite bandleader, composer, and improviser. "My Favorite Things", the epic album featuring "Every Time We Say Goodbye", "Summertime", "But Not For Me", and the title track, was recorded in 1960. This was undoubtedly Coltrane's most successful and popular album, and granted him the commercial success that had eluded him thus far in his career. Perhaps due to this success, Coltrane's approach to his music began to shift during 1961-62, moving towards a more experimental, improvisational style. This "free-jazz" alienated many of the fans Coltrane had collected after "My Favorite Things", but at the same time expanded the horizons and definition of jazz.  Coltrane's continuing desire to break new boundaries with his music, though, led to the end of the group in January 1966.

In 1967, liver disease took Coltrane’s life leaving many to wonder what might have been. He died of liver cancer, entering the hospital on a Sunday and expiring in the early morning hours of the next day.

In 1965, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. In 1972, "A Love Supreme" was certified gold by the RIAA for selling over half a million copies in Japan. This album, as well as My Favorite Things, was certified gold in the United States in 2001. In 1982, the RIAA posthumously awarded John Coltrane a Grammy Award of " Best Jazz Solo Performance" for the work on his album, "Bye Bye Blackbird". 

In 1997 he received the organizations highest honor, the Lifetime Achievement Award. On June 18, 1993 Mrs. Alice Coltrane received an invitation to The White House from former President and Mrs. Clinton, in appreciation of John Coltrane’s historical appearance at the Newport Jazz Festival. In 1995, John Coltrane was honored by the United States Postal Service with a commemorative postage stamp. Issued as part of the musicians and composers series, this collectors item remains in circulation. In 1999, Universal Studios and its recording division MCA Records recognized John Coltrane’s influence on cinema by naming a street on the Universal Studios lot in his honor. In 2001, The NEA and the RIAA released 360 songs of the Century. Among them was John Coltrane’s "My Favorite Things."

Here is my top 10 of his compositions:

1.   "My Favorite Things"

2.   "Kind of Blue" (with Miles Davis)

3.   "Equinox"

4.   "Spiritual" 

5.   "In A Sentimental Mood" (with Duke Ellington)

6.   "Every Time We Say Goodbye"

7.   "Ruby, My Dear" (with Thelonious Monk)

8.   "My One And Only Love" (with Johnny Hartman)

9.   "But Not For me"

10. "Impressions"

Newport Jazz Festival. The Legends - Billie Holiday

Founded in 1954, the Newport Jazz Festival was the first annual jazz festival in America. It has been host to numerous legendary performances by some of the world's leading established and emerging artists. Historic moments since its inception include performances by Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane and Miles Davis. Referred to as the grandfather of all jazz festivals, the event draws thousands of people from all over the world to Newport, Rhode Island, a city, which is famed for its spectacular coastal scenery and awe-inspiring architecture.

Most of the early festivals were broadcast on Voice of America radio and many performances were recorded and have been issued by various record labels.

The Newport Jazz Festival moved to New York City in 1972 and became a two-site festival in 1981 when it returned to Newport and also continued in New York. The festival was known as the JVC Jazz Festival from 1984 to 2008.

Two of the most famous performances in the festival's history are Miles Davis’s 1955 solo on “Round Midnight” and the Duke Ellington Orchestra's lengthy 1956 performance of "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue".

The 1957 performances of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Carmen McRea were released in 1958 on the album Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday at Newport.

The Legends - Part Eight

Billie Holiday

Billie Holiday ("Lady Day") is considered by many to be the greatest of all jazz singers. In a tragically abbreviated singing career that lasted less than three decades, her evocative phrasing and poignant delivery profoundly influenced vocalists who followed her. Although her warm, feathery voice inhabited a limited range, she used it like an accomplished jazz instrumentalist, stretching and condensing phrases in an ever-shifting dialogue with accompanying musicians. Famous for delivering lyrics a bit behind the beat, she alternately endowed them with sadness, sensuality, languor, and irony. Rarely singing blues, Holiday performed mostly popular material, communicating deep emotion by stripping down rather than dressing up words and lines. "If you find a tune that's got something to do with you, you just feel it, and when you sing it, other people feel it, too," Holiday once explained. White gardenias, worn in her hair, became her trademark.

Born Eleanora Fagan on April 7, 1915, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her life was a study in hardship. Her parents married when she was three, but her musician father was seldom present and the couple soon divorced. Receiving little schooling as a child, Holiday scrubbed floors and ran errands for a nearby brothel so she could listen to idols Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith on the Victrola in its parlor. Brutally raped at ten, she was sent to a reformatory for "seducing" her adult attacker; at fourteen she was jailed for prostitution.

In her difficult early life, Holiday found solace in music, singing along to the records of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong. She followed her mother who had moved to New York City in the late 1920s and worked in a house of prostitution in Harlem for a time. Around 1930, Holiday began singing in local clubs and renamed herself "Billie" after the film star Billie Dove.

At the age of 18, Holiday was discovered by producer John Hammond while she was performing in a Harlem jazz club. Hammond was instrumental in getting Holiday recording work with an up-and-coming clarinetist and bandleader Benny Goodman. With Goodman, she sang vocals for several tracks, including her first commercial release "Your Mother's Son-In-Law" and the 1934 top ten hit "Riffin' the Scotch."

Around this time, Holiday met and befriended saxophonist Lester Young, who was part of Count Basie’s orchestra on and off for years. He even lived with Holiday and her mother Sadie for a while. Young gave Holiday the nickname "Lady Day" in 1937 - the same year she joined Basie's band.

By the mid-1940s Billie had been arrested many times for narcotics violations, and after one arrest in 1947, at her own request, was placed for a year and a day in a federal rehabilitation center. Just ten days after being released she gave a concert at Carnegie Hall, but thenceforth was barred by New York City police licensing laws from working in any place that served liquor. The absence of a cabaret card in effect meant that she could never again appear in a New York nightclub.

Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald

Billie made her final public appearance in a concert at the Phoenix Theatre, New York City, on May 25, 1959. In early 1959 she found out that she had cirrhosis of the liver. The doctor told her to stop drinking, which she did for a short time, but soon returned to heavy drinking. By May she had lost twenty pounds. On May 31, 1959, Holiday was taken to Metropolitan Hospital in New York suffering from liver and heart disease. She was arrested for drug possession as she lay dying, and her hospital room was raided by authorities. Police officers were stationed at the door to her room. Holiday remained under police guard at the hospital until she died on July 17, 1959. In the final years of her life, she had been progressively swindled out of her earnings, and she died with $0.70 in the bank and $750 (a tabloid fee) on her person.

Billie Holiday was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. Four of her albums were awarded to the Grammy Award for Best Historical Album.

Here is my top 10 of Lady Day's songs:

1.   "Body And Soul"

2.   "I Love You Porgy"

3.   "Blu Moon"

4.   "The Man I Love"

5.   "I'm A Fool To Want You"

6.   "My Man"

7.   "Georgia On My Mind"

8.   "Solitude"

9.   "The Blues Are Brewin" (with Louis Armstrong) 

10. "All Of Me"

"Bent" Trumpet. The Legends - Dizzy Gillespie

"Bent" trumpet was the trademark trumpet of Dizzy Gillespie. It  featured a bell which bent upward at a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight ahead as in the conventional design. According to Gillespie's autobiogra-phy, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by the dancers Stump and Stumpy falling onto it while it was on a trumpet stand on stage at Snookie's in Manhattan on January 6, 1953, during a birthday party for Gillespie's wife Lorraine. The constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. He had the trumpet straightened out the next day, but he could not forget the tone. Gillespie sent a request to Martin Committee to make him a "bent" trumpet from a sketch produced by Lorraine, and from that time forward Gillespie played a trumpet with an upturned bell.

Whatever the origins of Gillespie's upswept trumpet, by June 1954, he was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a visual trademark for him for the rest of his life. Such trumpets were made for him by Martin Committee (from 1954), King Musical Instruments (from 1972) and Renold Schilke (from 1982, a gift from Jon Faddis). Gillespie favored mouthpieces made by Al Cass. In December 1986 Gillespie gave the National Museum of American History his 1972 King "Silver Flair" trumpet with a Cass mouthpiece. In April 1995, Gillespie's Martin trumpet was auctioned at Christie’s in New York City, along with instruments used by other famous musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Jimi Hendrix and Elvis Presley. An image of Gillespie's trumpet was selected for the cover of the auction program. The battered instrument sold to Manhattan builder Jeffery Brown for $63,000, the proceeds benefiting jazz musicians suffering from cancer.

The Legends - Part Seven

Dizzy Gillespie

John Birks Gillespie, one of the greatest Jazz trumpeters of 20th century and one of the prime architects of the bebop movement in jazz, was born in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1917. Nicknamed "Dizzy" because of his zany on-stage antics, Gillespie, a brass virtuoso, set new standards for trumpet players with his innovative, "jolting rhythmic shifts and ceaseless harmonic explorations" on the instrument during the 1940's period, which ushered in a definitive change in American Jazz music from swing to bebop.

The last of nine children, Gillespie was born into a family whose father, James, was a bricklayer, pianist and bandleader. Dizzy's father kept all the instruments from his band in the family home and so the future trumpet great was around trumpets, saxophones, guitars and his father's large upright piano most of his young life. James use to make all of his older children practice instruments but none of them cared for music. Dizzy's father died when he was ten and never heard his youngest son play trumpet, although he did get the chance to hear him banging around on the piano, because Dizzy started trying to play this instrument at a very early age.

Two years later young Gillespie began to teach himself trumpet and trombone. His musical ability enabled him to attend Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina in 1932 because the school needed a trumpet player for its band. During his years there, he practiced the trumpet and piano intensively, still largely without formal guidance. He stayed there for two years, studying harmony and theory until his family moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1935. In Philadelphia, Gillespie began playing trumpet with local bands, learning all of his idol Eldridge's solos from records and radio broadcasts: it was in Philadelphia that he picked up his nickname of "Dizzy". In 1937, Dizzy moved to New York and replaced Eldridge in Teddy Hill's Orchestra. After a couple of years Gillespie moved on to Cab Calloway's band in 1939.

Dizzy worked with many bands during the early 1940's (Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson, Benny Carter, "Fatha" Hines and Billy Eckstine's seminal band) before teaming up with Charlie "Bird" Parker in 1945. Their revolutionary band ushered in the bebop era and was one of the greatest small bands of the 20th century. An arranger and composer, Gillespie wrote some of the greatest jazz tunes of his era: songs such as "Groovin High", "A Night in Tunisia" and "Manteca" are considered jazz classics today.

The musical papers - and even the national press - began publishing photographs of a pouting, posturing, preening Gillespie, sporting a lavish goatee beard, and invariably garbed in beret, dark glasses and an extravagant zoot suit. He was the grimacing Grimaldi of jazz, and his exhibitionism and sartorial eccentricities earned him rancorous criticism from the "mouldy fyges". Gillespie basked in the attention. But he was quick to refute accusations that he had sold out - by producing a series of highly charged recordings, and setting up a brash, exciting big band, founded on his own idiosyncratic ideas.

With his trumpet and its upturned, golden bell, goatee, black horn rim glasses and beret, Gillespie became a symbol of both jazz and a rebellious, independent spirit during the 1940's and 50's. His interest in Cuban and African music helped to introduce those music's to a mainstream American audience. When he died he was famous and beloved everywhere and had influenced entire generations of trumpet players all over the world who loved and emulated his playing and his always positive, upbeat, optimistic attitude.

Gillespie's legacy is probably best summed up by Gillespie himself in a statement that would sound a bit arrogant if it weren't so probable: "The music of Charlie Parker and me laid a foundation for all the music that is being played now… Our music is going to be the classical music of the future".

Here is my top 10 of Dizzy's compositions:

1.   "The Night In Tunisia"

2.   "Manteca"

3.   "SummertimeAnd"

4.   "Groovin High" (with "Bird")

5.   "And Then She Stopped"

6.   "Blues For Bird" (with Oscar Peterson)

7.   "Tin Tin Deo"

8.   "Dark Eyes" ("Ochi Cheornie" with Stan Getz)

9.   "Salt Peanuts"

10. "Caravan" 

Double Bass. The Legends - Charles Mingus

Jazz bass is the use of the double bass to improvise accompaniment and solos in a jazz or jazz-fusion style. The double bass began being used in jazz in the 1890s, to supply the low-pitched walking bass, which outlined the harmony of the music. The sound and tone of the plucked double bass is distinct from that of the fretted bass guitar. The bass guitar produces a different sound than the double bass, because bass guitars usually have a solid wood body, which means that the sound is produced by electronic amplification of the vibration of the strings rather than from the resonance of the double bass' hollow body.

In jazz, the double bass is usually played with amplification and it is mostly played with the fingers, pizzicato style, except during some solos, where players may use the bow. The pizzicato style varies between different players and genres. Some players perform with the sides of one, two, or three fingers, especially for walking bass and slow tempo ballads, because this is purported to create a stronger and more solid tone. Some players use the more nimble tips of the fingers to play fast-moving solo passages or to pluck lightly for quiet tunes. The use of amplification allows the player to have more control over the tone of the instrument, because amplifiers have equalization controls which allow the bassist to accentuate certain frequencies (often the bass frequencies) while de-accentuating some frequencies (often the high frequencies, so that there is less finger noise).

The Legends - Part Six

Charles Mingus

One of the most important figures in twentieth century American music, Charles Mingus was a virtuoso bass player, accomplished pianist, bandleader and composer. Irascible, demanding, bullying, and probably a genius, Charles Mingus cut himself a uniquely iconoclastic path through jazz in the middle of the 20th century, creating a legacy that became universally lauded only after he was no longer around to bug people. As a bassist, he knew few peers, blessed with a powerful tone and pulsating sense of rhythm, capable of elevating the instrument into the front line of a band. But had he been just a string player, few would know his name today. Rather, he was the greatest bass-playing leader/composer jazz has ever known, one who always kept his ears and fingers on the pulse, spirit, spontaneity, and ferocious expressive power of jazz.

Born on a military base in Nogales, Arizona in 1922 and raised in Watts, California, his earliest musical influences came from the church - choir and group singing - and from "hearing Duke Ellington over the radio when [he] was eight years old." He studied double bass and composition in a formal way (five years with H. Rheinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, and compositional techniques with the legendary Lloyd Reese) while absorbing vernacular music from the great jazz masters, first-hand. His early professional experience, in the 40's, found him touring with bands like Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory and Lionel Hampton.

Eventually he settled in New York where he played and recorded with the leading musicians of the 1950's - Charlie Parker, MilesDavis, Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Duke Ellington himself. One of the few bassists to do so, Mingus quickly developed as a leader of musicians. He was also an accomplished pianist who could have made a career playing that instrument. By the mid-50's he had formed his own publishing and recording companies to protect and document his growing repertoire of original music. He also founded the "Jazz Workshop", a group that enabled young composers to have their new works performed in concert and on recordings.

Mingus soon found himself at the forefront of the avant-garde. His recordings bear witness to the extraordinarily creative body of work that followed. They include: Pithecanthropus Erectus, The Clown, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Dynasty, Mingus Ah Um, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, Cumbia & Jazz Fusion, Let My Children Hear Music. He recorded over a hundred albums and wrote over three hundred scores. Although he wrote his first concert piece, "Half-Mast Inhibition", when he was seventeen years old, it was not recorded until twenty years later by a 22-piece orchestra with Gunther Schuller conducting. It was the presentation of "Revelations" which combined jazz and classical idioms, at the 1955 Brandeis Festival of the Creative Arts that established him as one of the foremost jazz composers of his day.

In 1971 Mingus was awarded the Slee Chair of Music and spent a semester teaching composition at the State University of New York at Buffalo. In the same year his autobiography, Beneath the Underdog, was published by Knopf. In 1972 it appeared in a Bantam paperback and was reissued after his death, in 1980, by Viking/Penguin and again by Pantheon Books, in 1991. In 1972 he also re-signed with Columbia Records. His music was performed frequently by ballet companies, and Alvin Ailey choreographed an hour program called “The Mingus Dances” during a 1972 collaboration with the Robert Joffrey Ballet Company.

He toured extensively throughout Europe, Japan, Canada, South America and the United States until the end of 1977 when he was diagnosed as having a rare nerve disease, Amyotropic Lateral Sclerosis. He was confined to a wheelchair, and although he was no longer able to write music on paper or compose at the piano, his last works were sung into a tape recorder.

From the 1960's until his death in 1979 at age 56, Mingus remained in the forefront of American music. When asked to comment on his accomplishments, Mingus said that his abilities as a bassist were the result of hard work but that his talent for composition came from God.

Mingus received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Smithsonian Institute, and the Guggenheim Foundation (two grants). He also received an honorary degree from Brandeis and an award from Yale University. At a memorial following Mingus' death, Steve Schlesinger of the Guggenheim Foundation commented that Mingus was one of the few artists who received two grants and added: "I look forward to the day when we can transcend labels like jazz and acknowledge Charles Mingus as the major American composer that he is." The New Yorker wrote: "For sheer melodic and rhythmic and structural originality, his compositions may equal anything written in western music in the twentieth century."

He died in Mexico on January 5, 1979, and his ashes were scattered in the Ganges River in India. Both New York City and Washington, D.C. honored him posthumously with a "Charles Mingus Day." After his death, the National Endowment for the Arts provided grants for a Mingus foundation called "Let My Children Hear Music" which catalogued all of Mingus' works. The microfilms of these works were then given to the Music Division of the New York Public Library where they are currently available for study and scholarship - a first for jazz.