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Jackie McLean
John Lenwood "Jackie" McLean (May 17, 1931 – March 31, 2006) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, composer, bandleader, and educator, and is one of the few musicians to be elected to the ''DownBeat'' Hall of Fame in the year of their death. Biography McLean was born in New York City. His father, John Sr., played guitar in Tiny Bradshaw's orchestra. After his father's death in 1939, Jackie's musical education was continued by his godfather, his record-store-owning stepfather, and several noted teachers. He also received informal tutoring from neighbors Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, and Charlie Parker. During high school McLean played in a band with Kenny Drew, Sonny Rollins, and Andy Kirk, Jr. (the saxophonist son of Andy Kirk). Along with Rollins, McLean played on Miles Davis' ''Dig'' album, when he was 20 years old. As a young man he also recorded with Gene Ammons, Charles Mingus (for ''Pithecanthropus Erectus''), George Wallington, and as a member of Art Blake ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keystone Korner
Keystone Korner was a jazz club in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco, which opened in 1972 and continued operation until 1983. Many live recordings were made at the club. Jessica Williams was the house pianist for a number of years. History In 1969, Freddie Herrera bought Dino and Carlo's Bar in the North Beach section of San Francisco. He changed the name to Keystone Korner, a reference to Keystone Cops, because of its proximity to the Central Police Station on the opposite corner of Emery Lane. Keystone Korner began as a topless bar, but quickly changed direction when songwriter Nick Gravenites convinced Herrera that live music would bring in more customers. The strength of the music scene in San Francisco allowed Herrera to book young musicians who would go on to stellar careers. Patrons filled the club to hear new talents such as Saunders and Garcia, Elvin Bishop, Neal Schon, Boz Scaggs, and The Pointer Sisters. Herrera's success made it possible to move ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Parker
Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Parker was an extremely brilliant virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Parker's tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career on the road with Jay McShann. This, and the shortened form "Bird", continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise". Parker was an icon for the hipster ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Pitch
Pitch is a perceptual property of sounds that allows their ordering on a frequency-related scale, or more commonly, pitch is the quality that makes it possible to judge sounds as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies. Pitch is a major auditory attribute of musical tones, along with duration, loudness, and timbre. Pitch may be quantified as a frequency, but pitch is not a purely objective physical property; it is a subjective psychoacoustical attribute of sound. Historically, the study of pitch and pitch perception has been a central problem in psychoacoustics, and has been instrumental in forming and testing theories of sound representation, processing, and perception in the auditory system. Perception Pitch and frequency Pitch is an auditory sensation in which a listener assigns musical tones to relative positions on a musical scale based primarily on their perception of the frequency of vibration. Pitch is closely related to frequency, bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Modal Jazz
Modal jazz is jazz that makes use of musical modes, often modulating among them to accompany the chords instead of relying on one tonal center used across the piece. Although precedents exist, modal jazz was crystallized as a theory by composer George Russell in his 1953 book '' Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization''. Though exerting influence to the present, modal jazz was most popular in the 1950s and 1960s, as evidenced by the success of Miles Davis's 1958 composition " Milestones" and 1959 album '' Kind of Blue'', and John Coltrane's quartet from 1960 to 1965;Henry Martin, Keith Waters (2008). ''Essential Jazz: The First 100 Years'', pp. 178-79. . both artists were directly inspired by Russell. Other performers of modal jazz include Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Joe Henderson, Bobby Hutcherson, Pharoah Sanders, Woody Shaw, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, and Larry Young. History In bebop as well as in hard bop, musicians use chords to provide the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Art Blakey
Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s. Blakey made a name for himself in the 1940s in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He then worked with bebop musicians Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-1950s, Horace Silver and Blakey formed the Jazz Messengers, a group that the drummer was associated with for the next 35 years. The group was formed as a collective of contemporaries, but over the years the band became known as an incubator for young talent, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Curtis Fuller, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard, and Wynton Marsalis. ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz'' cal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Wallington
George Wallington (October 27, 1924 – February 15, 1993) was an American jazz pianist and composer. Early life Wallington was born Giacinto Figlia (some sources give "Giorgio") in Sicily, and then moved to the United States (New York) with his family in 1925. His father sang opera and introduced his son to classical music, but Wallington listened to jazz after hearing the music of saxophonist Lester Young. He said that he acquired the name Wallington in high school: "I like to wear flashy clothes ..and the kids in the neighborhood would say, 'Hey, look at Wallington!'" He left school at the age of 15 to play piano in New York. Later life and career From 1943 to 1953, Wallington played with Dizzy Gillespie, Joe Marsala, Charlie Parker, Serge Chaloff, Allen Eager, Kai Winding, Terry Gibbs, Brew Moore, Al Cohn, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims, and Red Rodney, and recorded as a leader for Savoy and Blue Note (1950). Wallington toured Europe in 1953 with Lionel Hampton's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pithecanthropus Erectus (album)
''Pithecanthropus Erectus'' is a 1956 album by jazz composer and bassist Charles Mingus. Mingus noted that this was the first album where he taught arrangements to his musicians by ear in lieu of putting the chords and arrangements in writing. Music According to Mingus' liner notes, the title song is a ten-minute tone poem, depicting the rise of man from his hominid roots ('' Pithecanthropus erectus'') to an eventual downfall due to "his own failure to realize the inevitable emancipation of those he sought to enslave, and his greed in attempting to stand on a false security." The song's title refers to the Java Man fossil, which at the time of its discovery was the oldest human fossil ever found. Reception ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz'' gave it a maximum four-star rating and included it in its “core collection” of essential recordings, describing it as "One of the truly great modern jazz albums".Cook, Richard & Morton, Brian (2008) ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Mingus
Charles Mingus Jr. (April 22, 1922 – January 5, 1979) was an American jazz upright bassist, pianist, composer, bandleader, and author. A major proponent of collective improvisation, he is considered to be one of the greatest jazz musicians and composers in history,See the 1998 documentary ''Triumph of the Underdog'' with a career spanning three decades and collaborations with other jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Herbie Hancock. Mingus' compositions continue to be played by contemporary musicians ranging from the repertory bands Mingus Big Band, Mingus Dynasty, and Mingus Orchestra, to the high school students who play the charts and compete in the Charles Mingus High School Competition. In 1993, the Library of Congress acquired Mingus' collected papers—including scores, sound recordings, correspondence and photos—in what they described as "the most important acquisition of a manuscript collection relating t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gene Ammons
Eugene "Jug" Ammons (April 14, 1925 – August 6, 1974), also known as "The Boss", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. The son of boogie-woogie pianist Albert Ammons, Gene Ammons is remembered for his accessible music, steeped in soul and R&B. Biography Born in Chicago, Illinois, Ammons studied music with instructor Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. Ammons began to gain recognition while still at high school when in 1943, at the age of 18, he went on the road with trumpeter King Kolax's band. In 1944, he joined the band of Billy Eckstine (who bestowed on him the nickname "Jug" when straw hats ordered for the band did not fit), playing alongside Charlie Parker and later Dexter Gordon. Performances from this period include "Blowin' the Blues Away," featuring a saxophone duel between Ammons and Gordon. After 1947, when Eckstine became a solo performer, Ammons then led a group, including Miles Davis and Sonny Stitt, that performed at Chicago's Jumptown Club. In 1949, Ammo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dig (Miles Davis Album)
''Dig'' is an album by Miles Davis on Prestige Records, catalogue number 7012. It features tracks from a 1951 session at Apex Studios. First released in the 12-inch LP format in 1956, The original album was later released as ''Diggin'' with the catalogue number PR 7281 and a different cover. ''Dig'' was reissued as a compact disc with additional tracks. After inaugurating the school of cool jazz with the ''Birth of the Cool'' recording sessions in 1949 and 1950, Davis almost immediately turned away from that sound in the early 1950s, instead exploring hard bop. ''Dig'' was also the jazz recording debut of saxophonist Jackie McLean, and was one of Sonny Rollins's earliest recordings; both men would go on to become major voices in jazz. Release history The material was originally released on two 10-inch LPs, except for "Denial", released on a 1954 7" (Prestige PREP 1361). "Dig" and "It's Only a Paper Moon" first appeared on '' The New Sounds'' (PRLP 124), as did "Conception" and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the '' Birth of the Cool'' sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
