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Lionel Leo Hampton was an American jazz vibraphonist, percussionist, and bandleader. He worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996.
Vicenç Montoliu i Massana, better known as Tete Montoliu was a Spanish jazz pianist from Catalonia, Spain. Born blind, he learnt braille music at age seven. His styles varied from hard bop, through Afro-Cuban, world fusion, to post bop. He recorded with Lionel Hampton in 1956 and played with saxophonist Roland Kirk in 1963. He also worked with leading American jazz musicians who toured in, or relocated to Europe including Kenny Dorham, Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Lucky Thompson, and Anthony Braxton. Tete Montoliu recorded two albums in the US, and recorded for Enja, SteepleChase Records, and Soul Note in Europe.
Dexter Gordon was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and bandleader. He was among the most influential early bebop musicians. Gordon's height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as "Long Tall Dexter" and "Sophisticated Giant". His studio and performance career spanned more than 40 years.
Jean-Baptiste Illinois Jacquet was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, best remembered for his solo on "Flying Home", critically recognized as the first R&B saxophone solo. He is also known as one of the writers of the jazz standard "Don'cha Go 'Way Mad."
Benny Golson was an American bebop and hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launching his solo career. Golson was known for co-founding and co-leading The Jazztet with trumpeter Art Farmer in 1959. From the late 1960s through the 1970s Golson was in demand as an arranger for film and television and thus was less active as a performer, but he and Farmer re-formed the Jazztet in 1982.
Gerald Joseph Mulligan, also known as Jeru, was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and arranger. Though primarily known as one of the leading jazz baritone saxophonists—playing the instrument with a light and airy tone in the era of cool jazz—Mulligan was also a significant arranger working with Claude Thornhill, Miles Davis, Stan Kenton, and others. His piano-less quartet of the early 1950s with trumpeter Chet Baker is still regarded as one of the best cool jazz ensembles. Mulligan was also a skilled pianist and played several other reed instruments. Several of his compositions including "Walkin' Shoes" and "Five Brothers", have become standards.
Theodore "Fats" Navarro was an American jazz trumpet player and a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. A native of Key West, Florida, he toured with big bands before achieving fame as a bebop trumpeter in New York. Following a series of studio sessions with leading bebop figures including Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, and Kenny Clarke, he became ill with tuberculosis and died at the age of 26. Despite the short duration of his career, he had a strong stylistic influence on trumpet players who rose to fame in later decades, including Clifford Brown and Lee Morgan.
Bernard Joseph Baron is an American drummer best-known for working in avant-garde jazz with Bill Frisell and John Zorn.
Walter Davis Jr. was an American bebop and hard bop pianist.
Pete "La Roca" Sims was an American jazz drummer and attorney. Born and raised in Harlem by a pianist mother and a stepfather who played trumpet, he was introduced to jazz by his uncle Kenneth Bright, a major shareholder in Circle Records and the manager of rehearsal spaces above the Lafayette Theater. Sims studied percussion at the High School of Music and Art and at the City College of New York, where he played tympani in the CCNY Orchestra. He adopted the name La Roca early in his musical career, when he played timbales for six years in Latin bands. In the 1970s, during a hiatus from jazz performance, he resumed using his original surname. When he returned to jazz in the late 1970s, he usually inserted "La Roca" into his name in quotation marks to help audiences familiar with his early work identify him. He told The New York Times in 1982 that he did so only out of necessity:
I can't deny that I once played under the name La Roca, but I have to insist that my name is Peter Sims with La Roca in brackets or in quotes. For 16 or 17 years, when I have not been playing the music, people have known me as Sims....When I was 14 or 15, I thought ["La Roca"] was clever; right now, it's an embarrassment. I thought that it would be something that people would probably remember - boy, was I ever right on that one! I can't make my conversion.
John Arnold Griffin III was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. Nicknamed "the Little Giant" for his short stature and forceful playing, Griffin's career began in the mid-1940s and continued until the month of his death. A pioneering figure in hard bop, Griffin recorded prolifically as a bandleader in addition to stints with pianist Thelonious Monk, drummer Art Blakey, in partnership with fellow tenor Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and as a member of the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band after he moved to Europe in the 1960s. In 1995, Griffin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music.
Locksley Wellington Hampton was an American jazz trombonist, composer and arranger. As his nickname implies, Hampton's main instrument was slide trombone, but he also occasionally played tuba and flugelhorn.
Hampton Barnett Hawes Jr. was an American jazz pianist. He was the author of the memoir Raise Up Off Me, which won the Deems-Taylor Award for music writing in 1975.
Albert Aloysius Casey was an American jazz guitarist who was a member of Fats Waller's band during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Gigi Gryce, later in life changing his name to Basheer Qusim, was an American jazz saxophonist, flautist, clarinetist, composer, arranger, and educator.
William Alexander "Sonny" Greer was an American jazz drummer and vocalist, best known for his work with Duke Ellington.
William Howard "Monk" Montgomery was an American jazz bassist. He was a pioneer of the electric bass guitar and possibly the first to be recorded playing the instrument when he participated in a 1953 session released on The Art Farmer Septet. He was the brother of jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery and vibraphonist Buddy Montgomery.
Ricky Ford is an American jazz tenor saxophonist.
Benny Powell was an American jazz trombonist. He played both standard (tenor) trombone and bass trombone.
Andrés Boiarsky is an Argentine alto and tenor saxophonist. He is known for his work as a jazz musician and his contributions to the film Man Facing Southeast (1986).
References
- "Al Hayse", Grove Jazz online.
- Eugene Chadbourne, Al Hayse at Allmusic
