Billie Holiday was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made a significant contribution to jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly influenced by jazz instrumentalists, inspired a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. She was known for her vocal delivery and improvisational skills.
Charles Parker Jr., nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, bandleader, and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. He was a virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Parker was primarily a player of the alto saxophone.
Charles Henry Christian was an American swing and jazz guitarist. He was among the first electric guitarists and was a key figure in the development of bebop and cool jazz. He gained national exposure as a member of the Benny Goodman Sextet and Orchestra from August 1939 to June 1941. His single-string technique, combined with amplification, helped bring the guitar out of the rhythm section and into the forefront as a solo instrument. For this, he is often credited with leading to the development of the lead guitar role in musical ensembles and bands.
James Melvin Lunceford was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era.
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.
Cedar Anthony Walton Jr. was an American hard bop jazz pianist. He came to prominence as a member of drummer Art Blakey's band, The Jazz Messengers, before establishing a long career as a bandleader and composer. Several of his compositions have become jazz standards, including "Mosaic", "Bolivia", "Holy Land", "Mode for Joe" and "Ugetsu/Fantasy in D".
Verve Records is an active American record label owned by Universal Music Group (UMG). Founded in 1956 by Norman Granz, the label is home to the world's largest jazz catalogue, which includes recordings by artists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Cal Tjader, Nina Simone, Stan Getz, Bill Evans, Billie Holiday, Oscar Peterson, Jon Batiste, and Diana Krall among others as well as a diverse mix of other recordings that fall outside of jazz including albums from disparate artists like the Velvet Underground, Kurt Vile, Arooj Aftab, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention and many more. It absorbed the catalogues of Granz's earlier label, Clef Records, founded in 1946; Norgran Records, founded in 1953; and material which was previously licensed to Mercury Records.
The Newport Jazz Festival is an annual American multi-day jazz music festival held every summer in Newport, Rhode Island. Elaine Lorillard established the festival in 1954, and she and husband Louis Lorillard financed it for many years. They hired George Wein to organize the first festival and bring jazz to Rhode Island.
A Love Supreme is an album by the jazz saxophonist and composer John Coltrane. He recorded it in one session on December 9, 1964, at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, leading a quartet featuring pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison and drummer Elvin Jones.
Lester Willis Young, nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist.
Jonathan Michael Batiste is an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, composer, and television personality. He has recorded and performed with artists including Stevie Wonder, Prince, Willie Nelson, Lenny Kravitz, ASAP Rocky, Ed Sheeran, Lana Del Rey, Roy Hargrove, Juvenile, and Mavis Staples. Batiste appeared nightly with his band, Stay Human, as bandleader and musical director on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022.
Hank O’Neal is an American music producer, author and photographer.
Catherine Russell is an American jazz and blues singer. She is best known for her 2016 album Harlem on My Mind and for touring with David Bowie and Steely Dan.
The Carnival of Swing was a music festival that took place on 29 May 1938 on Randall's Island, New York. It is considered the first outdoor jazz festival. Performing at the concert were twenty-five swing bands, including the Duke Ellington and Count Basie orchestras, and Stuff Smith. Though newsreel footage of the event exists, no audio recordings were thought to have survived until radio recordings known as the Savory Collection were acquired by the National Jazz Museum in Harlem.
William Alcott Savory was an audio engineer known for his extensive private recordings of important jazz musicians in the 1930s, and for his contributions to recording technology. A musician who developed an interest in sound engineering, Savory began building his own recording devices in the mid-1930s. Savory was involved with the team led by Columbia Records engineer William S. Bachman that succeeded in bringing the first 33⅓ rpm long-playing record albums to market in 1948.
Women in jazz have contributed throughout the many eras of jazz history, both as performers and as composers, songwriters and bandleaders. While women such as Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald were famous for their jazz singing, women have achieved much less recognition for their contributions as composers, bandleaders and instrumental performers. Other notable jazz women include piano player Lil Hardin Armstrong and jazz songwriters Irene Higginbotham and Dorothy Fields.
J.C. Hopkins is an American bandleader, writer, record producer, and Grammy-nominated producer, and songwriter.
William Benton Overstreet was an American songwriter, bandleader and pianist in the early twentieth century.
This is the discography of Mosaic Records the American jazz record company and label established in 1982 by Michael Cuscuna and Charlie Lourie. Over three decades the jazz press and general publications have recognized Mosaic, with The New York Times naming it "the most distinctive reissue label in jazz", All About Jazz calling the company "arguably the premiere reissue label in jazz", and Esquire suggesting it is "America's most obsessive jazz label".
Louis Cato is the bandleader of the Late Show Band, the house band for The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Cato is a singer, songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist who plays bass, guitar, percussion, low brass, and others. He is also a solo recording artist with three albums to his credit.
at 125th Street 