Baron Timme Rosenkrantz (July 6, 1911 – August 11, 1969) was a Danish aristocrat, author and jazz enthusiast.
Rosenkrantz was an early supporter of African American jazz musicians and promoted many concerts and recordings. He also produced a 1938 session for the Victor label, assembling Rex Stewart, Don Byas, Russell Procope, Tyree Glenn, Jo Jones and others as Timme Rosenkrantz and His Barrelhouse Barons. His private 1944 acetates of Erroll Garner, which subsequently saw release on Blue Note and other labels, were the pianist's first recordings. [1] Rosenkrantz organized the 1946 European tour of an all-star band led by Don Redman, the first American jazz group to visit Copenhagen and Stockholm after World War II. A man of great humor, Rosenkrantz wrote witty short stories and vignettes for a number of publications, including Esquire magazine. His collection of jazz music (concentrated on the Swing Era) is placed in the Jazz collections at the University Library of Southern Denmark, Odense.
Before Rosenkrantz died, he wrote down his memories in a Danish book and in several Danish and English articles. Fradley Garner, International Editor of Jersey Jazz and a friend of Rosenkrantz, translated and edited the Baron's memoirs for the English-speaking world. The resulting book, Harlem Jazz Adventures, is now available via the book's website at JazzBaron.com.
James Hubert "Eubie" Blake was an American pianist and composer of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical Eubie! showcased his works, and in 1981, President Ronald Reagan awarded Blake the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Carlos Wesley "Don" Byas was an American jazz tenor saxophonist, associated with swing and bebop. He played with Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Blakey, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others, and also led his own band. He lived in Europe for the last 26 years of his life.
James Price Johnson was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key figures in the evolution of ragtime into what was eventually called jazz. Johnson was a major influence on Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, and Fats Waller, who was his student.
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.
Erroll Louis Garner was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His instrumental ballad "Misty", his best-known composition, has become a jazz standard. It was first recorded in 1956 with Mitch Miller and his orchestra, and played a prominent part in the 1971 motion picture Play Misty for Me.
Benjamin Francis Webster was an American jazz tenor saxophonist.
Robert "Bob" Thiele was an American record producer who worked on numerous classic jazz albums and record labels.
Wilbur Dorsey "Buck" Clayton was an American jazz trumpeter who was a member of Count Basie's orchestra. His principal influence was Louis Armstrong, first hearing the record "Confessin' That I Love You" as he passed by a shop window.
Adelaide Louise Hall was an American-born UK-based jazz singer and entertainer. Her career spanned more than 70 years from 1921 until her death. Early in her career, she was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance; she became based in the UK after 1938. Hall entered the Guinness Book of World Records in 2003 as the world's most enduring recording artist, having released material over eight consecutive decades. She performed with major artists such as Art Tatum, Ethel Waters, Josephine Baker, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Cab Calloway, Fela Sowande, Rudy Vallee, and Jools Holland, and recorded as a jazz singer with Duke Ellington and with Fats Waller.
Rosenkranz is the German word for rosary.
Randal Edward Brecker is an American trumpeter, flugelhornist, and composer. His versatility has made him a popular studio musician who has recorded with acts in jazz, rock, and R&B.
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, donated the entire Folkways Records label to the Smithsonian. The donation was made on the condition that the Institution continue Asch's policy that each of the more than 2,000 albums of Folkways Records remain in print forever, regardless of sales. Since then, the label has expanded on Asch's vision of documenting the sounds of the world, adding six other record labels to the collection, as well as releasing over 300 new recordings. Some well-known artists have contributed to the Smithsonian Folkways collection, including Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly. Famous songs include "This Land Is Your Land", "Goodnight, Irene", and "Midnight Special". Due to the unique nature of its recordings, which include an extensive collection of traditional American music, children's music, and international music, Smithsonian Folkways has become an important collection to the musical community, especially to ethnomusicologists, who utilize the recordings of "people's music" from all over the world.
Stanley Frank Dance was a British jazz writer, business manager, record producer, and historian of the Swing era. He was personally close to Duke Ellington over a long period, as well as many other musicians; because of this friendship Dance was in a position to write "official" biographies. Over his career, his priority was advocating for the music of black ensembles performing sophisticated arrangements, based on Swing-era dance music.
The Music Department at the University Library of Southern Denmark in Odense has through donations and acquisitions since 1997 achieved the status of research archive of specialised jazz studies.
Concert by the Sea is a live album by pianist Erroll Garner that was released by Columbia in 1955. It sold over a million dollars' worth of retail copies by 1958, qualifying for gold record status by the definition of that time but has never been acknowledged as such by the RIAA.
The couesnophone, also known as the goofus or queenophone, is a free-reed musical instrument in a saxophone shape, patented by French instrument manufacturer Couesnon in 1924. Its reeds vibrate when the desired keys are activated and the player blows through a tube. "Best described as a mouth-blown accordion," "it sounded like a cross between a harmonica and an accordion."
Arild Rosenkrantz was a Danish nobleman painter, sculptor, stained glass artist and illustrator.
Uffe Baadh was a Danish jazz musician who emigrated to the United States in 1947 to play drums in the big bands of Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, and Claude Thornhill, recording with Elvis Presley, Henry Mancini, and others. He was the youngest of four siblings: Grethe [Baadh] Freese, Hans Baadh, Marie Baadh. He married Shirley Goldberg on October 1, 1951, in Virginia, USA: two daughters, Valerie and Lise Baadh, born in California in 1952 and 1957.
Theodore Samuel Reig was a self-described "jazz hustler" who worked as a record producer, A&R man, promoter, and artist manager from the 1940s through the 1970s. As a record producer, he captured the work of dozens of jazz innovators. He also influenced rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and Latin music.
Zodiac Suite is a series of 12 pieces of jazz music written by the American jazz pianist and composer Mary Lou Williams and first performed in 1945. The suite makes use of elements of classical music alongside jazz, and Williams was influenced by modernism when writing and arranging it. Each song in the suite is inspired by an astrological sign and musicians or performers who were born under it. Williams began writing music for Zodiac Suite in 1942 and finished the composition in 1945.