Paul Tillman Smith | |
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Genres | Jazz, blues, funk, soul, disco |
Occupation(s) | Musician, band leader, songwriter, composer, drummer, percussionist |
Website | http://chumpchangerecords.com/ |
Paul Tillman Smith is an American drummer, percussionists, songwriter, artistic director, band leader, and promoter. Smith is a native of Oakland, California, United States. He has written for Pharoah Sanders, LaToya London, and Phyllis Hyman. He is one of the co-founders of the Berkeley Junteenth Festival in Berkeley, California. Smith is the Director of the Bay Area Jazz Society. His record label is Chump Change Records, and his band is Park Place. He has written over 150 songs, and has worked with Levi Seacer Jr., and Norman Connors on many albums. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Smith got his first pair of drumsticks when he was four years old from his father George Smith. His father was a drummer and known as Kansas City Smitty. His father performed with Count Basie, Trumer Young, and the Harlem Aces. He got his first professional drumming gig with Lightnin' Hopkins when he was 15. It was at the Continental Club in West Oakland, California. He was encouraged to play the piano by his mother at the age of 15. After attending High School he played with Steve Miller in a hippy band called the Second Coming.
When Smith was 19 he left Oakland, California, with bassist/percussionist Juma Sultan. He lived in the basement of singer Richie Havens' house in the East Village of New York City. Smith started his music career as an avant-garde jazz drummer in New York City's Lower East Side in 1967. At the time he was friends with jazz drummer Norman Connors. He has performed or recorded with many musicians including John Handy Quarters, Abbey Lincoln, Dewey Redman, Faye Carol, Harold Land, Lorez Alexander, Odia Coates, The Head Hunters, Etta James, Jon Hendricks, Marlena Shaw, Gary Bartz, Reggie Lucas, Jimmy McCracklin, Richard Pryor, Bobby Lyle, Pharoah Sanders, Albert Ayler, Cecil McBee, Sonny Simmons, John Handy, Bobby Hutcherson, Merl Saunders, Ed Kelly, George Duke, Woody Shaw, Alice Coltrane, Bill Bell, Eddie Henderson, (jazz violinist) Michael White, Jackie McLean, Donnie Williams, Latoya London, Robert Stewart (saxophonist), Rosie Gaines, Levi Seacer Jr., Rodney Franklin, Kenneth Nash, and Khalil Shaheed. [6] [7]
In the 1970 and 1980s, Smith promoted free concerts in Berkeley, California's Provo Park, and in Oakland, California's Mosswood Park. When he was the music and concert Alameda County Neighborhood Arts Program.
Smith, along with Sam Dykes, and R.D. Bonds, are the co-founders of the annual Berkeley, California Juneteenth festival. Which is one of the oldest, largest, and longest running African American Arts and Music festival in Northern California. He has also been stage manager for the Richmond Juneteenth festival, and the Oakland California Port Festival. He has also organized the music program for the city of Emeryville's Appreciation Day Festival, and the Vallejo Fourth of July festival. He has managed the Berkeley's Artspark Festival.
In 1977, Smith recorded Sharing with the band "Vitamin E" along with Bianca Thornton, known as Lady Bianca, and David Gardner for Buddha Records. Sharing featured Sly Stone and Frank Zappa, with vocals from Lady Bianca, and David Gardener. The album was produced by Norman Connors.
In 2001, Smith's Crying for Love recording won that year's Blues and Soul magazine's award.
In 2002, Smith founded the Big Belly Blues Band. The name of the band originated from a blues song co-written by Paul Smith and Faye Carol in Oakland, California.
In 2013, Smith released Bed Ballads as band leader. The vocalists and musicians on the album were Paul Tillman Smith, Phyllis Hyman, Lenny Williams, Pharoah Sanders, the Brecker Brothers, Jon Faddis, James Gadson, Mtume, Bobby Lyle, Wah Wah Watson, and David T. Walker. The album was produced by Norman Connors. [8] [9]
John Mayall is an English blues and rock musician, songwriter and producer. In the 1960s, he formed John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, a band that has counted among its members some of the most famous blues and blues rock musicians.
Johnny Otis was a first generation Greek-American singer, musician, composer, bandleader, record producer, and talent scout. He was a seminal influence on American R&B and rock and roll. He discovered numerous artists early in their careers who went on to become highly successful in their own right, including Little Esther Phillips, Etta James, Alan O'Day, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Ace, Jackie Wilson, Little Willie John, Hank Ballard, and The Robins, among many others. Otis has been called the "Godfather of Rhythm and Blues".
Pharoah Sanders was an American jazz saxophonist. Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound", Sanders played a prominent role in the development of free jazz and spiritual jazz through his work as a member of John Coltrane's groups in the mid-1960s, and later through his solo work. He released over thirty albums as a leader and collaborated extensively with vocalist Leon Thomas and pianist Alice Coltrane, among many others. Fellow saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in the world".
The Jeff Beck Group was a British rock band formed in London in January 1967 by former Yardbirds guitarist Jeff Beck. Their innovative approach to heavy-sounding blues, rhythm and blues and rock was a major influence on popular music.
Howard Lewis Johnson was an American jazz musician, known mainly for his work on tuba and baritone saxophone, although he also played the bass clarinet, trumpet, and other reed instruments. He is known to have expanded the tuba’s known capacities in jazz.
Richard Malden "Dick" Heckstall-Smith was an English jazz and blues saxophonist. He played with some of the most influential English blues rock and jazz fusion bands of the 1960s and 1970s. He is known for primarily playing tenor, soprano, and baritone saxophones, as well as piano, clarinet and alto saxophone.
Aynsley Thomas Dunbar is an English drummer. He has worked with John Mayall, Frank Zappa, Jeff Beck, Journey, Jefferson Starship, Nils Lofgren, Eric Burdon, Shuggie Otis, Ian Hunter, Lou Reed, David Bowie, Mick Ronson, Whitesnake, Pat Travers, Sammy Hagar, Michael Schenker, UFO, Michael Chapman, Jake E. Lee, Leslie West, Kathi McDonald, Keith Emerson, Mike Onesko, Herbie Mann and Flo & Eddie. Dunbar was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Journey in 2017.
Central Avenue is a major north–south thoroughfare in the central portion of the Los Angeles, California metropolitan area. Located just to the west of the Alameda Corridor, it runs south from the eastern end of the Los Angeles Civic Center down to the east side of California State University, Dominguez Hills and terminating at East Del Amo Boulevard in Carson.
Michael Walter White was an American jazz violinist.
Little Charlie & the Nightcats was an American electric blues and swing revival combo, active from 1976-2008. Several members reformed as Rick Estrin & The Nightcats.
Ambrose Akinmusire is an American avant-garde jazz composer and trumpeter.
This is a timeline documenting events of Jazz in the year 1969.
Paul Peress is an American drummer, composer, and record producer.
The University of California Jazz Ensembles, also known as the UC Jazz Ensembles, UC Jazz, or UCJE, is the student jazz organization founded in 1967 on the University of California, Berkeley, campus. Founded in 1967, it comprises one or more big bands, numerous jazz combos, a vocal jazz ensemble, an alumni big band, and instructional classes. With a mission statement to foster a community for the performance, study, and promotion of jazz at U.C. Berkeley, its Wednesday Night big band provides free concerts every Thursday noon on Lower Sproul Plaza, its various units perform throughout the San Francisco Bay Area including area high schools, travel to collegiate jazz festivals, and perform overseas, and for many years it sponsored the annual Pacific Coast Jazz Festival. It also provides master classes by its instructors and clinics by prominent guest artists. It has nurtured numerous musicians who have become professional jazz musicians and educators. UC Jazz Ensembles is one of three groups, with the Cal (marching) Band and UC Choral Ensembles, forming Student Musical Activities (SMA), a department within Cal Performances on the U.C. Berkeley campus. Its members are primarily U.C. Berkeley undergraduate and graduate students, representing many academic disciplines.
Lady Bianca is an American electric blues singer, songwriter and arranger. Lady Bianca has worked as a session singer, depicted Billie Holiday on stage, and since 1995 released six solo albums, three of which were nominated for a Grammy Award.
John William Heard was an American bass player and artist. His recording credits include albums with Pharoah Sanders, George Duke, Oscar Peterson, Count Basie, Zoot Sims, Ahmad Jamal, Frank Morgan, George Cables. His professional jazz performance career lasted from the 1960s to the early 2010s, during which he also worked as a visual artist, producing drawings, paintings, and sculptures.
Robert Darrin Stewart is an American saxophonist. He recorded several albums under his own name during the period 1994–2006. He has also recorded as a sideman, including on trumpeter Wynton Marsalis' Blood on the Fields. Stewart went on multiple national and world tours during his 30-year career as a performer, both under his own name and with the Marsalis band.
The Little Village Foundation was founded in 2014 by Jim Pugh as a 501(c)(3) organization based in Solvang, California. Pugh is a veteran keyboard player who has toured the world with Robert Cray and Etta James. Little Village Foundation (LVF) is non-profit company in the music industry that produces and distributes what it considers to be culturally significant recordings made by individuals and groups that might otherwise not be heard beyond the artists' community or family. The label serves an access point for previously overlooked artists who retain their intellectual property and album sales through their work with the organization. The artists come from widely varied and sometimes non-traditional backgrounds. Pugh and his find and secure talent to sign and record, and several of the musicians have roots that extend to other nations, including Mexico, India, Russia and the Philippines.
In the Beginning 1963–1964 is a 4-CD compilation album by American free jazz saxophonist Pharoah Sanders recorded in 1963-1964 and released in 2012 on the ESP-Disk label. It features previously unreleased recordings of Sanders performing with groups led by Don Cherry and Paul Bley, complete concert recordings of Sanders' appearances with Sun Ra, a re-release of Sanders' first album, and various interviews.