Leo Wright was an American jazz musician who played alto saxophone, flute and clarinet. He played with Booker Ervin, Charles Mingus, John Hardee, Kenny Burrell, Johnny Coles, Blue Mitchell and Dizzy Gillespie in the late 1950s, early 1960s and in the late 1970s. Relocating to Europe in 1963, Wright settled in Berlin and later Vienna. During this time he performed and recorded primarily in Europe, using European musicians or fellow American expatriates, such as Kenny Clarke and Art Farmer. He died of a heart attack in 1991 at the age of 57.
Bennett Lester Carter was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career in the 1920s, he worked as an arranger including written charts for Fletcher Henderson's big band that shaped the swing style. He had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, which included receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.
James Minter Knepper was an American jazz trombonist. In addition to his own recordings as leader, Knepper performed and recorded with Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman, Claude Thornhill, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, Gil Evans, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Toshiko Akiyoshi and Lew Tabackin, and, most famously, Charles Mingus in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Knepper died in 2003 of complications of Parkinson's disease.
Attilio Joseph "Teo" Macero was an American jazz record producer, saxophonist, and composer. He was a producer at Columbia Records for twenty years. Macero produced Miles Davis' Bitches Brew and Dave Brubeck's Time Out, two of the best-selling and most influential jazz albums of all time. Macero was known for his innovative use of editing and tape manipulation unprecedented in jazz and proving influential on subsequent fusion, experimental rock, electronica, post-punk, no wave, and acid jazz.
Sir John Phillip William Dankworth, CBE, also known as Johnny Dankworth, was an English jazz composer, saxophonist, clarinettist and writer of film scores. With his wife, jazz singer Dame Cleo Laine, he was a music educator and also her music director.
Ronnie Scott OBE was a British jazz tenor saxophonist and jazz club owner. He co-founded Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London's Soho district, one of the world's most popular jazz clubs, in 1959.
Edward Brian "Tubby" Hayes was a British jazz multi-instrumentalist, best known for his virtuosic musicianship on tenor saxophone and for performing in jazz groups with fellow sax player Ronnie Scott and trumpeter Jimmy Deuchar. He is widely considered to be one of the finest jazz saxophonists to have emerged from Britain.
Digital III at Montreux is a 1979 live album featuring a compilation of performances by Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Joe Pass, and Ray Brown, recorded at the 1979 Montreux Jazz Festival. It was produced and has liner notes by Norman Granz. The cover photo is by Phil Stern.
"Laura" is a 1945 popular song. The music, composed by David Raksin for the 1944 movie Laura, which starred Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, is heard frequently in the movie. The film's director, Otto Preminger, had originally wanted to use Duke Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady" as the theme, but Raksin was not convinced that it was suitable. Angered, Preminger gave Raksin one weekend to compose an alternative melody. Raksin later said, and maintained for the rest of his days, that when, over that weekend, his wife sent him a "Dear John" letter, the haunting theme seemed to write itself.
Alan Branscombe was an English jazz pianist, vibraphonist, and alto saxophonist.
Brian John Heatley, better known as Spike Heatley, was a British jazz double bassist.
Simon Richard Spillett is a British jazz tenor saxophonist. He has won the BBC Jazz Awards Rising Star (2007), Jazz Journal's Critics' Choice album of the Year (2009), the British Jazz Awards Top Tenor Saxophonist (2011), and Services to British Jazz award (2016).
Jazz 625 is a BBC jazz programme featuring performances by British and American musicians, first broadcast between April 1964 and August 1966. It was created by Terry Henebery, a clarinetist recruited in 1963 as one of the new producers for BBC Two.
William George "Rams" Ramsay was an American jazz saxophonist and band leader based in Seattle. In 1997, he was inducted into the Seattle Jazz Hall of Fame, the top of eight Golden Ear Award categories presented annually since 1990 by the Earshot Jazz Society of Seattle. Ramsay performed on all the primary saxophones – soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone – as well as clarinet, and bass clarinet. Ramsay died on March 2, 2024, at the age of 95.
Columbia Jazz Masterpieces was a series of Jazz CD, LP and cassette reissues from Columbia Records which began in 1986. Written inside the blue box used on all the album covers "Digitally Remastered Directly from the Original Analog Tapes." In Europe, the series was known as CBS Jazz Masterpieces, with the reissues being released by CBS Records, until 1991, when the Columbia Jazz Masterpieces title was used on all subsequent releases and represses.
Paul Harris was an American actor. He had roles in films such as All Night Long, Across 110th Street, The Slams, and Truck Turner.
Marti Stevens is a retired American singer and actress. She appeared in television shows such as It Takes a Thief, The Love Boat and Stagecoach West. She appeared in an Australian production of the play Forty Carats and in High Spirits, the musical version of Blithe Spirit, in London's West End in 1964. She also had a starring role in the 1962 film, All Night Long.
Gregory Bowen is a Welsh trumpet player. His primary work was done in London before relocating to Berlin, Germany in 1976. Since 1961, Bowen has performed and recorded with jazz, pop artists and entertainers from Europe and North America on records, soundtracks and T.V. broadcasts. Most notable is his lead trumpet work on the James Bond film soundtracks Goldfinger, Thunderball and You Only Live Twice.
In 1989, Archie Bleyer's early-1960s Candid Records catalog was bought by Black Lion Productions based in London, which reissued the label's legacy vinyl records into the Compact Disc format, and further adapted its distribution towards music download technology in the succeeding decades. The revitalized Candid Records (UK) subsequently produced new, contemporary jazz recordings to further expand its line.
