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Al Hall (musician)
Alfred Wesley Hall (March 18, 1915 – January 18, 1988) was an American jazz bassist. Biography Hall grew up in Philadelphia, where he played cello and tuba early in life before settling on bass at the age of 17. He moved to New York in 1936, where he played with Billy Hicks (1936–37), Skeets Tolbert (1937–38), and Teddy Wilson in both big band and small ensemble format (1939–41). Following time with Ellis Larkins (1942–43) and Mary Lou Williams, Hall took a job as a staff musician at CBS, working in Paul Baron's orchestra on the '' Mildred Bailey Show''. He also worked on Broadway theater pit orchestras for the next several decades. In 1946, he founded his own label, Wax Records, which was bought by Atlantic Records in 1949. Hall had an extended partnership with Erroll Garner, playing with him intermittently from 1945 to 1963. He also played later in life with Benny Goodman (1966), Hazel Scott, Tiny Grimes, Alberta Hunter (1977–78), and Doc Cheatham. He led f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacksonville, Florida
Jacksonville ( ) is the most populous city proper in the U.S. state of Florida, located on the Atlantic coast of North Florida, northeastern Florida. It is the county seat of Duval County, Florida, Duval County, with which the City of Jacksonville Jacksonville Consolidation, consolidated in 1968. It was the List of United States cities by area, largest city by area in the contiguous United States as of 2020, and became the 10th List of United States cities by population, largest U.S. city by population in 2023. Jacksonville straddles the St. Johns River in the First Coast region of northeastern Florida, about south of the Georgia state line ( to the urban core/downtown) and north of Miami. The Jacksonville Beaches communities are along the adjacent Atlantic coast. The area was originally inhabited by the Timucua people, and in 1564 was the site of the French colony of Fort Caroline, one of the earliest European settlements in what is now the continental United States. Under B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alberta Hunter
Alberta Hunter (April 1, 1895 – October 17, 1984) was an American jazz and blues singer and songwriter from the early 1920s to the late 1950s. After twenty years of working as a nurse, Hunter resumed her singing career in 1977. Early life Hunter was born in Memphis, Tennessee, to Laura Peterson, who worked as a maid in a Memphis brothel, and Charles Hunter, a Pullman porter. Hunter said she never knew her father. She attended Grant Elementary School, off Auction Street, which she called Auction School, in Memphis. She attended school until around age 15. Hunter had a difficult childhood. Her father left when she was a child, and to support the family her mother worked as a servant in a brothel in Memphis, although she married again in 1906. Hunter was not happy with her new family and left for Chicago, Illinois, around the age of 11, in the hopes of becoming a paid singer; she had heard that it paid 10 dollars per week. Instead of finding a job as a singer she had to earn mon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ray Nance
Ray Willis Nance (December 10, 1913 – January 28, 1976) was an American jazz trumpeter, violinist and singer. He is best remembered for his long association with Duke Ellington and his orchestra. Early years Nance was born in Chicago on December 10, 1913. He started playing the violin at the age of 9 and was so proficient by the time he was 14 that he enrolled at the Chicago College of Music. In high school, he taught himself trumpet because “I wanted to hear myself on a louder instrument in way I couldn't do with a violin in an orchestra.” He was the leader of his own band in Chicago from 1932 to 1937. An ad in a June 1933 prom book at the Edgewater Beach Hotel for the Staples Cafe, 6344 N. Broadway, Chicago shows "Ray Nance and His Ebony Aces." Then, he worked with Earl Hines from 1937 to 1939; and from 1939 to 1940 he worked with Horace Henderson. Ellington tenure Ellington hired Nance to replace trumpeter Cootie Williams, who had joined Benny Goodman, in 1940 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Gonsalves
Paul Gonsalves ( – ) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist best known for his association with Duke Ellington. At the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, Gonsalves played a 27-chorus solo in the middle of Ellington's " Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue," a performance credited with revitalizing Ellington's waning career in the 1950s. Biography Born in Brockton, Massachusetts, to Portuguese Cape Verdean parents, Gonsalves' first instrument was the guitar, and as a child he was regularly asked to play Cape Verdean folk songs for his family. He grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and played as a member of the Sabby Lewis Orchestra. His first professional engagement in Boston was with the same group on tenor saxophone, in which he played before and after his military service during World War II. He also played with fellow Cape Verdean Americans in Phil Edmund's band in the 1940s. Before joining Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1950, he also played in big bands led by Count Basie (1947 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edmond Hall
Edmond Hall (May 15, 1901 – February 11, 1967) was an American jazz clarinetist and bandleader. Over his career, Hall worked extensively with many leading performers as both a sideman and bandleader and is possibly best known for the 1941 chamber jazz song "Profoundly Blue". Biography Early life Born in Reserve, Louisiana, United States, about 40 miles west of New Orleans on the Mississippi River, Hall and his siblings were born into a musical family. His father, Edward Blainey Hall, and mother, Caroline Duhe, had eight children, Priscilla (1893), Moretta (1895), Viola (1897), Robert (1899), Edmond (1901), Clarence (1903), Edward (1905) and Herb Hall (musician), Herbert (1907). His father, Edward, played the clarinet in the Onward Brass Band, joined by Edmond's maternal uncles, Jules Duhe on trombone, Lawrence Duhé, Lawrence Duhe on clarinet, and Edmond Duhe on guitar. The Hall brothers, Robert, Edmond, and Herbert, all became clarinetists, but Edmond was first taught guitar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bud Freeman
Lawrence "Bud" Freeman (April 13, 1906 – March 15, 1991) was an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer, known mainly for playing tenor saxophone, but also the clarinet. Biography In 1922, Freeman and some friends from high school formed the Austin High School Gang. Freeman played the C melody saxophone with band members such as Jimmy McPartland and Frank Teschemacher, before switching to tenor saxophone two years later. The band was influenced by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Louis Armstrong. While Armstrong was in King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, Freeman attended performances at Lincoln Gardens with McPartland. They were nicknamed "Alligators". In 1927, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a session musician and band member with Red Nichols, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Ben Pollack, and Joe Venuti. One of his most notable performances was a solo on Eddie Condon's 1933 recording, ''The Eel'', which became Freeman's nickname for his long snake-like improvis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Side By Side (Duke Ellington And Johnny Hodges Album)
Although it is billed as a Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges album, ''Side by Side'' is a 1959 album mostly under the leadership of Johnny Hodges, Duke Ellington's alto saxophonist for many years. Ellington only appears on three of this album's tracks. The album places Hodges at the fore, backing him with piano by Ellington or Billy Strayhorn and providing other accompaniment by jazz figures like Ben Webster, Roy Eldridge, Harry "Sweets" Edison and Jo Jones. The album, a follow-up to '' Back to Back: Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues'', has remained perpetually in print. Track listing #"Stompy Jones" (Duke Ellington) – 6:38 #" Squeeze Me" (Fats Waller, Clarence Williams) – 4:36 #"Big Shoe" (Jimmy Hamilton) – 5:37 #"Going Up" (D. Ellington) – 4:51 #"Just a Memory" (Ray Henderson, Lew Brown, Buddy DeSylva) – 5:53 #"Let's Fall in Love" (Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler) – 6:47 #"Ruint" (Mercer Ellington, Johnny Hodges) – 2:32 #"Bend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johnny Hodges
Johnny Hodges (July 25, 1907 – May 11, 1970) was an American alto saxophone, alto saxophonist, best known for solo work with Duke Ellington's big band. He played lead alto in the saxophone section for many years. Hodges was also featured on soprano saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1940. Along with Benny Carter, Hodges is considered to be one of the definitive alto saxophone players of the Big band, big band era. After beginning his career as a teenager in Boston, Hodges began to travel to New York and played with Lloyd Scott (musician), Lloyd Scott, Sidney Bechet, Luckey Roberts and Chick Webb. When Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellington's clarinet player Barney Bigard recommended Hodges. His playing became one of the identifying voices of the Ellington orchestra. From 1951 to 1955, Hodges left the Duke to lead his own band, but returned shortly before Ellington's triumphant return to prominence – the orchestra's performance at the 1956 Newport Jaz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American Jazz piano, jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous Big band, jazz orchestra from 1924 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. A master at writing miniatures for the three-minute 78 rpm recording format, Ellington wrote or collaborated on more than one thousand compositions; his extensive body of work is the largest recorded personal jazz legacy, and many of his pieces have become Standard (music), standards. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan (1937 song), Caravan", which brought a Spanish tinge to big band jazz. At the end of the 1930s, Ellington began a nearly thirty five-year collaboration with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his writ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eddie Condon
Albert Edwin Condon (November 16, 1905 – August 4, 1973) was an American jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in Chicago jazz, he also played piano and sang. He also owned a self-named night club in New York City. Early years Condon was born in Goodland, Indiana, the son of John and Margaret (née McGraw) Condon. He grew up in Momence, Illinois, and Chicago Heights, Illinois, where he attended St. Agnes and Bloom High School. After playing ukulele, he switched to banjo and was a professional musician by 1921. When he was 15 years old, he received his first union card in Waterloo, Iowa. Career He was based in Chicago for most of the 1920s, and played with such jazz notables as Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden, and Frank Teschemacher. He and Red McKenzie formed the Chicago Rhythm Kings in 1925. While in Chicago, Condon and other white musicians would go to Lincoln Gardens to watch and learn from King Oliver and his band. They later would frequent t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Ashby
Harold Ashby (March 27, 1925, in Kansas City, Missouri, United States – June 13, 2003, in New York City) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He worked with Duke Ellington's band, replacing Jimmy Hamilton in 1968. In 1959, he recorded backing Willie Dixon on the latter's first album, '' Willie's Blues''. After leaving the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1975, Ashby worked as a freelance musician and took part in various reunions of Ellington alumni, as well as recording and gigging with his own bands. Ashby suffered a heart attack in May 2003, and was hospitalized before dying at the age of 78, on June 13 that year. Discography As leader * ''Born to Swing: Introducing The Compulsive Tenor Saxophone of Harold Ashby'' (Columbia, 1960) * '' Tenor Stuff'' with Paul Gonsalves (Metronome, 1961) * ''Scufflin (Black and Blue, 1978) * ''Presenting Harold Ashby'' (Progressive, 1981) * ''I'm Old Fashioned'' (Stash, 1991) * ''What Am I Here For?'' with Mulgrew Miller, Rufus Reid, Ben Riley ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, largest, and average area per state and territory, smallest county by area in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. Located almost entirely on Manhattan Island near the southern tip of the state, Manhattan constitutes the center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area. Manhattan serves as New York City's Economy of New York City, economic and Government of New York City, administrative center and has been described as the cultural, financial, Media in New York City, media, and show business, entertainment capital of the world. Present-day Manhattan was originally part of Lenape territory. European settlement began with the establishment of a trading post by Dutch colonization of the Americas, D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
