Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties.
Dinah Washington was an American singer and pianist, one of the most popular black female recording artists of the 1950s. Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, and gave herself the title of "Queen of the Blues". She was a 1986 inductee of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Kenneth Sidney "Kenny" Drew was an American-Danish jazz pianist.
Jørgen Ingmann was a Danish jazz and pop guitarist from Copenhagen. He was popular in Europe and had a wider international hit in 1961 with his version of "Apache". He and his wife Grethe Ingmann won the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Dansevise".
Dinah Shore was an American singer, actress, and television personality, and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1940s. She rose to prominence as a recording artist during the Big Band era. She achieved even greater success a decade later in television, mainly as the host of a series of variety programs for the Chevrolet automobile company.
Edmund Leonard Thigpen was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with the Oscar Peterson trio from 1959 to 1965. Thigpen also performed with the Billy Taylor trio from 1956 to 1959.
Jean-Luc Ponty is a French jazz and jazz fusion violinist and composer.
Jan Johansson was a Swedish jazz pianist. His album Jazz på svenska is the best selling jazz release ever in Sweden; it has sold over a quarter of a million copies and has been streamed more than 50 million times on Spotify. He was the father of former HammerFall drummer Anders Johansson and Stratovarius keyboardist Jens Johansson, who run Heptagon Records which keeps their father's recordings available.
Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith, better known as Stuff Smith, was an American jazz violinist. He is well known for the song "If You're a Viper".
Svend Asmussen was a Danish jazz violinist, known as "The Fiddling Viking". A Swing-style virtuoso, he played and recorded with many other notable jazz musicians, including Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Stephane Grappelli. He played publicly until 2010 when he had a blood clot, his career having spanned eight decades.
Hildur Alice Nilson, known by her stage name Alice Babs, was a Swedish singer. She worked in a wide number of genres – Swedish folklore, Elizabethan songs and opera. While she was best known internationally as a jazz singer, Babs also competed as Sweden's first annual competition entrant in the Eurovision Song Contest 1958. In 1972 she was named Sweden's Royal Court Singer, the first non-opera singer as such.
Putte Wickman was a Swedish jazz clarinetist.
Ulrik Neumann was a Danish film actor and musician. He appeared in 19 films between 1940 and 1966. Ulrik Neumann was an accomplished guitar player. From 1959 to 1961 he was a member of the trio Swe-Danes with the Swedish singer Alice Babs and the Danish jazz violinist Svend Asmussen. He was born in Copenhagen, Denmark and died in Malmö, Sweden. He was the younger brother of actress Gerda Neumann as well as the father of guitarist Mikael Neumann and singer Ulla Neumann.
Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise solo lines. Early jazz violinists included: Eddie South, who played violin with Jimmy Wade's Dixielanders in Chicago; Stuff Smith; and Claude "Fiddler" Williams. Joe Venuti was popular for his work with guitarist Eddie Lang during the 1920s. Improvising violinists include Stéphane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty. In jazz fusion, violinists may use an electric violin plugged into an instrument amplifier with electronic effects.
Svingin' with Svend is an album by American musician David Grisman and Danish musician Svend Asmussen, released in 1987. It is attributed to the David Grisman Quintet featuring Svend Asmussen.
Danish jazz dates back to 1923 when Valdemar Eiberg formed a jazz orchestra and recorded what are thought to be the first Danish jazz records in August 1924. However, jazz in Denmark is typically first dated to 1925, when bandleader Sam Wooding toured in Copenhagen with an orchestra. This was the first time most Danes had heard jazz music. Some prominent early Danish jazz musicians include Erik Tuxen who formed a jazz band and was later named conductor of the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra; Bernhard Christensen, an art music composer who incorporated jazz elements into his pieces, and Sven Møller Kristensen, who was the lyricist for many of Bernhard Christensen's pieces and who wrote a book on jazz theory in Danish.
Duke Ellington's Jazz Violin Session is an album by American pianist, composer and bandleader Duke Ellington recorded in 1963 but not released on the Atlantic label until 1976. The album features members of Ellington's orchestra performing with Stephane Grappelli and Svend Asmussen. Trumpeter Ray Nance, who was also featured in the Ellington Orchestra as a singer and a violinist, plays violin throughout the session alongside Grappelli. Asmussen, whose primary instrument was violin, plays viola throughout the session. Each of the string players is given a solo feature: Grappelli plays "In a Sentimental Mood," Asmussen plays "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," and Nance plays "Day Dream." For the remainder of the session, all three string players are featured soloing in turn.
Peter Almqvist was a Swedish jazz guitarist who started the duo Guitars Unlimited with Ulf Wakenius.
The Chevy Mystery Show, aka Sunday Mystery Hour, is an American television anthology series featuring a different mystery each week. It was produced by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and Dinah Shore's production company {Sewanee}.
Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen was a Danish jazz double bassist.
