Mikell's was a jazz club on the corner of 97th Street and Columbus Avenue, in New York City.
Run by Mike Mikell [1] and Pat Mikell, from 1969 to 1991 it was a regular venue for New York's top studio and session musicians, who would turn up for jam sessions with major soul, funk and jazz artists visiting the city. [2] Paul Shaffer, bandleader for CBS's Late Show with David Letterman , called Mikell's "soul heaven". [2]
Among the performers and bands associated with Mikell’s are Stuff, the alliance of studio musicians that played almost weekly at Mikell's in the 1970s. [2]
Writer James Baldwin's brother David worked as a bartender at the club in the 1970s and 1980s, thereby attracting patronage from Baldwin as well as other authors, including Toni Morrison, Amiri Baraka and Maya Angelou, [1] and musician friends such as Art Blakey, Roy Ayres and Wynton Marsalis. [3]
Stephane Grappelli, French jazz violinist who co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, performed at Mikell's in the mid-1970s. Other performers included guitarist Joe Beck and reedman Joe Farrell.
The band Stuff, formed in 1974, was closely associated with Mikell's, playing there three nights a week until 1980, with jam sessions taking place with visiting soul, jazz and funk stars and singers such as Stevie Wonder and Joe Cocker. [1]
In early 1980, the club served for rehearsals for Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Big Band, which included Wynton Marsalis, and which would result in the live album Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers Big Band - Live at Montreux and North Sea (1980). Other artists appearing at the club in the 1980s included Milt Jackson, Ray Brown, Cedar Walton and Mickey Roker (June 1983), [4] Paquito D'Rivera (January 1984). [5]
Mikell's closed in 1991. [1]
The 27th Annual Grammy Awards were held on February 26, 1985, at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, and were broadcast live in the United States by CBS. They recognized accomplishments by musicians from the year 1984.
Wynton Learson Marsalis is an American trumpeter, composer, and music instructor, who is currently the artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has been active in promoting classical and jazz music, often to young audiences. Marsalis has won nine Grammy Awards, and his oratorio Blood on the Fields was the first jazz composition to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Marsalis is the only musician to have won a Grammy Award in both jazz and classical categories in the same year.
Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in saxophone and piano playing.
Arthur Blakey 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.
Henry "Hank" Mobley was an American tenor saxophonist and composer. Mobley was described by Leonard Feather as the "middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone", a metaphor used to describe his tone, that was neither as aggressive as John Coltrane nor as mellow as Lester Young, and his style that was laid-back, subtle and melodic, especially in contrast with players such as Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. The critic Stacia Proefrock claimed him "one of the most underrated musicians of the bop era." Mobley's compositions include "Double Exposure", "Soul Station", and "Dig Dis".
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.
Charles Fambrough was an American jazz bassist, composer and record producer from Philadelphia.
Jazz at Lincoln Center is part of Lincoln Center in New York City. The organization was founded in 1987 and opened at Time Warner Center in October 2004. Wynton Marsalis is the artistic director and the leader of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra.
Straight-ahead jazz is a genre of jazz that developed in the 1960s, with roots in the prior two decades. It omits the rock music and free jazz influences that began to appear in jazz during this period, instead preferring acoustic instruments, conventional piano comping, walking bass patterns, and swing- and bop-based drum rhythms.
Dennis Irwin was an American jazz double bassist. He toured and recorded with John Scofield and the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra among others, and played on over 500 albums.
Ronald Mathews was an American jazz pianist who worked with Max Roach from 1963 to 1968 and Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. He acted as lead in recording from 1963 and 1978–79. His most recent work was in 2008, as both a mentor and musician with Generations, a group of jazz musicians headed by veteran drummer Jimmy Cobb. He contributed two new compositions for the album that was released by San Francisco State University's International Center for the Arts on September 15, 2008.
Neo-bop refers to a style of jazz that gained popularity in the 1980s among musicians who found greater aesthetic affinity for acoustically based, swinging, melodic forms of jazz than for free jazz and jazz fusion that had gained prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. Neo-bop is distinct from previous bop music due to the influence of trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who popularized the genre as an artistic and academic endeavor opposed to the countercultural developments of the beat generation.
Clarence Seay is an American jazz bassist and composer.
Stuff was an American jazz fusion band during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The members were Gordon Edwards, Richard Tee (keyboards), Eric Gale (guitar), Cornell Dupree (guitar), Chris Parker (drums), and later Steve Gadd (drums).
This is the discography of jazz musician and composer Wynton Marsalis.
Who's Who in Jazz was a record label based in New York City, formed by Lionel Hampton in 1977 or 1978, and distributed by the Gillette Madison Company (GEMCON). It specialized in jazz albums and later CDs and released a half dozen recordings of Hampton entitled "Lionel Hampton Presents" followed by a musician's name. These recordings featured Hampton performing with the person named in the title The company operated from about 1977 to 2000. Among the records were early recordings of Wynton Marsalis playing with Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers from 1980.
Keystone 3 is a live album by drummer Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers recorded at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco in 1982 and released on the Concord Jazz label.
Live at Montreux and Northsea is an album by drummer Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers Big Band recorded in 1980 at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and released on the Dutch Timeless label.
The Jazz Messengers were a jazz combo that existed for over thirty-five years beginning in the early 1950s as a collective, and ending when long-time leader and founding drummer Art Blakey died in 1990. Blakey led or co-led the group from the outset. "Art Blakey" and "Jazz Messengers" became synonymous over the years, though Blakey did lead non-Messenger recording sessions and played as a sideman for other groups throughout his career.
"Yes sir, I'm gonna to stay with the youngsters. When these get too old, I'm gonna get some younger ones. Keeps the mind active."
The Jazz Messengers were a jazz band that existed with varying personnel for 35 years. Their discography consists of 47 studio albums, 21 live albums, 2 soundtracks, 6 compilations, and one boxed set.