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Fine And Mellow
"Fine and Mellow" is a jazz standard written by Billie Holiday, who first recorded it on April 20, 1939 on the Commodore label. It is a blues lamenting the bad treatment of a woman at the hands of "my man". Notable performances and recordings The song was famously performed by Billie Holiday in 1957 in a television special, ''The Sound of Jazz''. The line-up included several jazz legends (the first six are listed in the order of their solos): * Ben Webster – tenor saxophone * Lester Young – tenor saxophone * Vic Dickenson – trombone * Gerry Mulligan – baritone saxophone * Coleman Hawkins – tenor saxophone * Roy Eldridge – trumpet * Doc Cheatham – trumpet * Danny Barker – guitar * Milt Hinton – double bass * Mal Waldron – piano * Osie Johnson – drums It has been covered several times, sometimes with a change in lyrics or emphasis. For example, Lou Rawls switched the gender to a girlfriend and Eva Cassidy sang it in a defiant tone. Notable cover versions were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made significant contributions to jazz music and pop music, pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, inspired a new way of manipulating Phrase (music), phrasing and tempo. Holiday was known for her vocal delivery and Jazz improvisation, improvisational skills. After a turbulent childhood, Holiday began singing in nightclubs in Harlem where she was heard by producer John Hammond (record producer), John Hammond, who liked her voice. Holiday signed a recording contract with Brunswick Records, Brunswick in 1935. Her collaboration with Teddy Wilson produced the hit "What a Little Moonlight Can Do", which became a jazz standard. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Holiday had mainstream success on labels such as Columbia Records, Columbia and Decca Records, Decca. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roy Eldridge
David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), nicknamed "Little Jazz", was an American jazz trumpeter. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the dominant style of jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop. Biography Early life Eldridge was born on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on January 30, 1911, to parents Alexander, a wagon teamster, and Blanche, a gifted pianist with a talent for reproducing music by ear, a trait that Eldridge claimed to have inherited from her. Eldridge began playing the piano at the age of five; he claimed to have been able to play coherent blues licks at even this young age. The young Eldridge looked up to his older brother, Joe Eldridge (born Joseph Eldridge, 1908, North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nina Simone
Nina Simone ( ; born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was an American singer, pianist, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop. Her piano playing was strongly influenced by baroque and classical music, especially Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice.. The sixth of eight children born into a respected family in North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of a local fund set up in her hometown, she enrolled at Allen High School for Girls, then spent a summer at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City, preparing to apply for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She failed to gain admission to Curtis,Liz Garbus, 2015 documentary film, '' What Happened, Miss Simone?'' which she attributed to racism, though staff have pointed out th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eva Cassidy
Eva Marie Cassidy (February 2, 1963 – November 2, 1996) was an American singer and musician known for her interpretations of jazz, Folk music, folk, and blues music, sung with a powerful, emotive soprano voice. In 1992, she released her first album, ''The Other Side (Eva Cassidy album), The Other Side'', a set of duets with go-go musician Chuck Brown, followed by the 1996 live solo album titled ''Live at Blues Alley (Eva Cassidy album), Live at Blues Alley''. Although she had been honored by the Washington Area Music Association, she was virtually unknown outside her native Washington, D.C., at the time of her death from melanoma at the age of 33 in 1996. Two years after her death, Cassidy's music was brought to the attention of British audiences, when her versions of "Fields of Gold" and "Over the Rainbow" were played by Mike Harding and Terry Wogan on BBC Radio 2. Following the overwhelming response, a camcorder recording of "Over the Rainbow", taken at Blues Alley in Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lou Rawls
Louis Allen Rawls (December 1, 1933 – January 6, 2006) was an American baritone singer. He released 61 albums, sold more than 40 million records, and had numerous charting singles, most notably the song " You'll Never Find Another Love like Mine". He also worked as a film, television, and voice actor. He was a three-time winner of the Best Male R&B Vocal Performance Grammy Award. Early life Rawls was born in Chicago on December 1, 1933, and raised by his grandmother in the Ida B. Wells projects on the city's South Side. He began singing in the Greater Mount Olive Baptist Church choir at the age of seven and later sang with local groups through which he met Sam Cooke, who was nearly three years older, and Curtis Mayfield. Career After graduating from Dunbar Vocational High School, he sang briefly with Cooke in the Teenage Kings of Harmony, a gospel group, and then with the Holy Wonders. In 1951, he replaced Cooke in the Highway QC's after Cooke departed to join The Soul Sti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drums
The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a percussion mallet, to produce sound. There is usually a resonant head on the underside of the drum. Other techniques have been used to cause drums to make sound, such as the thumb roll. Drums are the world's oldest and most ubiquitous musical instruments, and the basic design has remained virtually unchanged for thousands of years. Drums may be played individually, with the player using a single drum, and some drums such as the djembe are almost always played in this way. Others are normally played in a set of two or more, all played by one player, such as bongo drums and timpani. A number of different drums together ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Osie Johnson
James "Osie" Johnson (January 11, 1923, in Washington, D.C. – February 10, 1966, in New York City) was a jazz drummer, arranger and singer. Biography Johnson studied at Armstrong Highschool where he was classmates with Leo Parker and Frank Wess. He first worked with Sabby Lewis and then, after service in the United States Navy, freelanced for a time in Chicago. From 1951 to 1953, he was a member of Earl Hines's band. He spent some time in the 1950s in Tony Scott's orchestra, alongside musicians including Bill Evans, Milt Hinton, Thad Jones, Kai Winding, Sahib Shihab, Zoot Sims, and Wess, and laying down grooves for Harry Belafonte's breakout albums. Johnson has been recognized as a player whose breadth of performance and recordings during his lifetime seem out of proportion to his relatively low profile thereafter. He can be heard on albums by Paul Gonsalves, Sims, and Mose Allison and is the drummer on Bobby Darin's "Mack the Knife". (Some sources list Don Lamond as th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piano
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a chromatic scale in equal temperament. A musician who specializes in piano is called a pianist. There are two main types of piano: the #Grand, grand piano and the #Upupright piano. The grand piano offers better sound and more precise key control, making it the preferred choice when space and budget allow. The grand piano is also considered a necessity in venues hosting skilled pianists. The upright piano is more commonly used because of its smaller size and lower cost. When a key is depressed, the strings inside are struck by felt-coated wooden hammers. The vibrations are transmitted through a Bridge (instrument), bridge to a Soundboard (music), soundboard that amplifies the sound by Coupling (physics), coupling the Sound, acoustic energy t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mal Waldron
Malcolm Earl "Mal" Waldron (August 16, 1925 – December 2, 2002) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and arranger. He started playing professionally in New York in 1950, after graduating from college. In the following dozen years or so Waldron led his own bands and played for those led by Charles Mingus, Jackie McLean, John Coltrane, and Eric Dolphy, among others. During Waldron's period as house pianist for Prestige Records in the late 1950s, he appeared on dozens of albums and composed for many of them, including writing his most famous song, "Soul Eyes", for Coltrane. Waldron was often an accompanist for vocalists, and was Billie Holiday's regular accompanist from April 1957 until her death in July 1959. A breakdown caused by a drug overdose in 1963 left Waldron unable to play or remember any music; he regained his skills gradually, while redeveloping his speed of thought. He left the U.S. permanently in the mid-1960s, settled in Europe, and continued touring internatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Double Bass
The double bass (), also known as the upright bass, the acoustic bass, the bull fiddle, or simply the bass, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument, chordophone in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding rare additions such as the octobass). It has four or five strings, and its construction is in between that of the gamba and the violin family. The bass is a standard member of the orchestra's string section, along with violins, violas, and cellos,''The Orchestra: A User's Manual'' , Andrew Hugill with the Philharmonia Orchestra as well as the concert band, and is featured in Double bass concerto, concertos, solo, and chamber music in European classical music, Western classical music.Alfred Planyavsky [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milt Hinton
Milton John Hinton (June 23, 1910 – December 19, 2000) was an American double bassist and photographer. Regarded as the Dean of American jazz bass players, his nicknames included "Sporty" from his years in Chicago, "Fump" from his time on the road with Cab Calloway, and "The Judge" from the 1950s and beyond. Hinton's recording career lasted over 60 years, mostly in jazz but also with a variety of other genres as a prolific session musician. He was also a photographer of note, praised for documenting American jazz during the 20th Century. Biography Early life in Mississippi (1910–1919) Hinton was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, United States, the only child of Hilda Gertrude Robinson, whom he referred to as "Titter," and Milton Dixon Hinton. He was three-months-old when his father left the family. He grew up in a home with his mother, his maternal grandmother (a former slave of Joe Davis, the brother of Jefferson Davis), and two of his mother's sisters. His childhood in V ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guitar
The guitar is a stringed musical instrument that is usually fretted (with Fretless guitar, some exceptions) and typically has six or Twelve-string guitar, twelve strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or Plucked string instrument, plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected strings against frets with the fingers of the opposite hand. A guitar pick may also be used to strike the strings. The sound of the guitar is projected either Acoustics, acoustically, by means of a resonant hollow chamber on the guitar, or Amplified music, amplified by an electronic Pickup (music technology), pickup and an guitar amplifier, amplifier. The guitar is classified as a chordophone, meaning the sound is produced by a vibrating string stretched between two fixed points. Historically, a guitar was constructed from wood, with its strings made of catgut. Steel guitar strings were introduced near the end of the nineteen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
