Vincent Anthony Guaraldi was an American jazz pianist noted for his innovative compositions and arrangements, and for composing music for animated television adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip. His compositions for this series included their signature melody "Linus and Lucy" and the holiday standard "Christmas Time Is Here". He is also known for his performances on piano as a member of Cal Tjader's 1950s ensembles and for his own solo career. His 1962 composition "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" became a radio hit and won a Grammy Award in 1963 for Best Original Jazz Composition. He died of a sudden heart attack in February 1976 at age 47, moments after concluding a nightclub performance in Menlo Park, California.
Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumental virtuosity, and improvisation based on a combination of harmonic structure, the use of scales and occasional references to the melody.
Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Capitol Music Group. Established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis, it derived its name from the blue notes of jazz and the blues. Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz around 1947. From there, Blue Note grew to become one of the most prolific, influential and respected jazz labels of the mid-20th century, noted for its role in facilitating the development of hard bop, post-bop and avant-garde jazz, as well as for its iconic modernist art direction.
Callen Radcliffe Tjader Jr. was an American Latin jazz musician, known as the most successful non-Latino Latin musician. He explored other jazz idioms, even as he continued to perform the music of Cuba, the Caribbean, Mexico and Latin America.
Fantasy Records is an American independent record label company founded by brothers Max and Sol Stanley Weiss in 1949. The early years of the company were dedicated to issuing recordings by jazz pianist Dave Brubeck, who was also one of its investors, but in more recent years the label has been known for its recordings of comedian Lenny Bruce, jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi, the last recordings made on the Wurlitzer organ in the San Francisco Fox Theatre before the theatre was demolished, organist Korla Pandit, the 1960s rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival, bandleader Woody Herman, and Disco/R&B singer Sylvester.
Vanguard Recording Society is an American record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York City. It was a primarily classical label at its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, but also has a catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal jazz, folk, and blues musicians. The Bach Guild was a subsidiary label.
Milestone Records is an American jazz record company and label founded in 1966 by Orrin Keepnews and Dick Katz in New York City. The company was bought by Fantasy Records in 1972. Since then, it has produced LP reissues as well as new recordings. Sonny Rollins and McCoy Tyner are among the musicians who recorded for the label.
Riverside Records was an American jazz record company and label. Founded by Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, Jr, under his firm Bill Grauer Productions in 1953, the label played an important role in the jazz record industry for a decade. Riverside headquarters were located in New York City, at 553 West 51st Street.
Prestige Records is a jazz record company and label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock in New York City which issued recordings in the mainstream, bop, and cool jazz idioms. The company recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them on subsidiary labels. In 1971, the company was sold to Fantasy, which was later absorbed by Concord.
Contemporary Records was a jazz record company and label founded by Lester Koenig in Los Angeles in 1951. Contemporary produced music from a variety of jazz styles and players.
West Coast jazz refers to styles of jazz that developed in Los Angeles and San Francisco during the 1950s. West Coast jazz is often seen as a subgenre of cool jazz, which consisted of a calmer style than bebop or hard bop. The music relied relatively more on composition and arrangement than on the individually improvised playing of other jazz styles. Although this style dominated, it was not the only form of jazz heard on the American West Coast.
Bob Weinstock was an American record producer best known for his label Prestige Records, established in 1949, which was responsible for many significant jazz recordings during his more than two decades operating the firm.
Lucius Carl Watters was a trumpeter and bandleader of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band. Jazz critic Leonard Feather said, “The Yerba Buena band was perhaps the most vital factor in the reawakening of public interest in traditional jazz on the west coast.”
Lu Watters & the Yerba Buena Jazz Band is the name of an American traditional jazz revival band founded by Lu Watters in 1940. Yerba Buena was the original name of San Francisco, California. Notable members included singer and banjoist Clancy Hayes, clarinetist Bob Helm, trumpeter Bob Scobey, trombonist Turk Murphy, tubist/bassist Dick Lammi, and Watters himself.
Robert Alexander Scobey Jr. was an American jazz trumpet player of traditional or Dixieland music based originally in the San Francisco area and later in Chicago, Illinois. He was born in Tucumcari, New Mexico, and died in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Howard Rumsey was an American jazz double-bassist known for his leadership of the Lighthouse All-Stars in the 1950s.
Something Else!!!! is the debut album by jazz saxophonist Ornette Coleman. It was released by Contemporary Records in September 1958. According to AllMusic, the album "shook up the jazz world", revitalizing the union of blues and jazz and restoring "blues to their 'classic' beginnings in African music". It is unusual in Coleman's output in that it features a conventional bebop quintet instrumentation ; after this album, Coleman would omit the piano, creating a starker and more fluid sound.
Nesuhi Ertegun was a Turkish-American record producer and executive of Atlantic Records and WEA International.
Jazz Man Records was an American record company and independent record label devoted to traditional New Orleans-style jazz. David Stuart (né David Ashford Stuart; 1910–1984) founded the label in 1941 and sold it to Marili Morden and Nesuhi Ertegun. The label and its namesake – Jazz Man Record Shop, in Hollywood – were in the vanguard of an international revival of traditional jazz in the 1940s.
Lester Koenig was an American screenwriter, film producer, and founder of the jazz record label Contemporary Records.
