Eric Allan Dolphy Jr. was an American jazz multi-instrumentalist and bandleader. Primarily an alto saxophonist, bass clarinetist, and flautist, Dolphy was one of several multi-instrumentalists to gain prominence during the same era. His use of the bass clarinet helped to establish the unconventional instrument within jazz. Dolphy extended the vocabulary and boundaries of the alto saxophone, and was among the earliest significant jazz flute soloists.
Jazz standards are musical compositions that are an important part of the musical repertoire of jazz musicians, in that they are widely known, performed, and recorded by jazz musicians, and widely known by listeners. There is no definitive list of jazz standards, and the list of songs deemed to be standards changes over time. Songs included in major fake book publications and jazz reference works offer a rough guide to which songs are considered standards.
Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron was an American jazz composer, arranger, and pianist.
Booker Telleferro Ervin II was an American tenor saxophone player. His tenor playing was characterised by a strong, tough sound and blues/gospel phrasing. He is remembered for his association with bassist Charles Mingus.
Miles Davis and Milt Jackson Quintet/Sextet, also known as Quintet/Sextet is a studio album by trumpeter Miles Davis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson released by Prestige Records in August 1956. It was recorded on August 5, 1955. Credited to "Miles Davis and Milt Jackson", this was an "all-star" session, and did not feature any of the members of Davis's working group of that time. Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean appears on his own compositions “Dr. Jackle” and “Minor Apprehension”.
"Yesterdays" is a 1933 song about nostalgia composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Otto Harbach. They wrote the song for Roberta, a musical based on the novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller. "Yesterdays" was overshadowed by the musical's more popular song, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", which was a number one hit for the Paul Whiteman orchestra.
"Spring is Here" is a 1938 popular song composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart for the musical I Married an Angel (1938), where it was introduced by Dennis King and Vivienne Segal.
This is a timeline documenting events of Jazz in the year 1959.
In the 1970s in jazz, jazz became increasingly influenced by Latin jazz, combining rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments. Artists such as Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola increasingly influenced the genre with jazz fusion, a hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion which was developed by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments, and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix. All Music Guide states that "..until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate." However, "...as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces." On June 16, 1972 the New York Jazz Museum opened in New York City at 125 West 55th Street in a one and one-half story building. It became the most important institution for jazz in the world with a 25,000 item archive, free concerts, exhibits, film programs, etc.
In the late 1960s, Latin jazz, combining rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments broke through. There are two main varieties: Afro-Cuban jazz was played in the US right after the bebop period, while Brazilian jazz became more popular in the 1960s. Afro-Cuban jazz began as a movement in the mid-1950s as bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands influenced by such Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians as Xavier Cugat, Tito Puente, and Arturo Sandoval. Brazilian jazz such as bossa nova is derived from samba, with influences from jazz and other 20th-century classical and popular music styles. Bossa is generally moderately paced, with melodies sung in Portuguese or English. The style was pioneered by Brazilians João Gilberto and Antônio Carlos Jobim. The related term jazz-samba describes an adaptation of bossa nova compositions to the jazz idiom by American performers such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.
In the early 1940s in jazz, bebop emerged, led by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk and others. It helped to shift jazz from danceable popular music towards a more challenging "musician's music." Differing greatly from swing, early bebop divorced itself from dance music, establishing itself more as an art form but lessening its potential popular and commercial value. Since bebop was meant to be listened to, not danced to, it used faster tempos. Beboppers introduced new forms of chromaticism and dissonance into jazz; the dissonant tritone interval became the "most important interval of bebop" and players engaged in a more abstracted form of chord-based improvisation which used "passing" chords, substitute chords, and altered chords. The style of drumming shifted as well to a more elusive and explosive style, in which the ride cymbal was used to keep time, while the snare and bass drum were used for accents. This appealed to a more specialized audiences than earlier forms of jazz, with sophisticated harmonies, fast tempos and often virtuoso musicianship. Bebop musicians often used 1930s standards, especially those from Broadway musicals, as part of their repertoire. Among standards written by bebop musicians are Gillespie's "Salt Peanuts" (1941) and "A Night in Tunisia" (1942), Parker's "Anthropology" (1946), "Yardbird Suite" (1946) and "Scrapple from the Apple" (1947), and Monk's "'Round Midnight" (1944), which is currently the most recorded jazz standard composed by a jazz musician. An early 1940s style known as "jumping the blues" or jump blues used small combos, uptempo music, and blues chord progressions. Jump blues drew on boogie-woogie from the 1930s. Kansas City Jazz in the 1930s as exemplified by tenor saxophonist Lester Young marked the transition from big bands to the bebop influence of the 1940s. These divergences from the jazz mainstream of the time initially met with a divided, sometimes hostile response among fans and fellow musicians, especially established swing players, who bristled at the new harmonic sounds. To hostile critics, bebop seemed to be filled with "racing, nervous phrases". Despite the initial friction, by the 1950s bebop had become an accepted part of the jazz vocabulary. The most influential bebop musicians included saxophonist Charlie Parker, pianists Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie and Clifford Brown, and drummer Max Roach.
Swing jazz emerged as a dominant form in American music, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the band leaders. Key figures in developing the "big" jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller, and Artie Shaw. Duke Ellington and his band members composed numerous swing era hits that have become standards: "It Don't Mean a Thing " (1932), "Sophisticated Lady" (1933) and "Caravan" (1936), among others. Other influential bandleaders of this period were Benny Goodman and Count Basie.
The period from the end of the First World War until the start of the Depression in 1929 is known as the "Jazz Age". Jazz had become popular music in America, although older generations considered the music immoral and threatening to cultural values. Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom were very popular during the period, and jazz bands typically consisted of seven to twelve musicians. Important orchestras in New York were led by Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Many New Orleans jazzmen had moved to Chicago during the late 1910s in search of employment; among others, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton recorded in the city. However, Chicago's importance as a center of jazz music started to diminish toward the end of the 1920s in favor of New York.
"Woody 'n' You", is a 1942 jazz standard written by Dizzy Gillespie as an homage to Woody Herman. It was one of three arrangements Gillespie made for Herman's big band, although it was not used at the time; the other two were "Swing Shift" and "Down Under". It was introduced on record in 1944 by Coleman Hawkins initiated by Budd Johnson, Hawkins' musical director of his 12-man orchestra that included the bebop pioneers Oscar Pettiford, Max Roach and Gillespie.
"Tune Up" or "Tune-Up" is a composition written by Eddie Vinson, but is traditionally credited to Miles Davis, who first recorded and popularized it. It has become a jazz standard.
