Erroll Garner
Erroll Louis Garner was an American jazz pianist and composer known for his swing playing and ballads. His best-known composition, the ballad "Misty", has become a jazz standard. Scott Yanow of Allmusic calls him "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" and a "brilliant virtuoso." He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6363 Hollywood Blvd. Garner was born with his twin brother Ernest in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on June 15, 1923, the youngest of six children in an African-American family, he attended George Westinghouse High School. Garner began playing piano at the age of three, his elder siblings were taught piano by Miss Bowman. From an early age, Erroll would sit down and play anything she had demonstrated, just like Miss Bowman, his eldest sister Martha said. Garner remained an "ear player" all his life, never learning to read music. At age seven, he began appearing on the radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh with a group called the Candy Kids. By age 11, he was playing on the Allegheny riverboats.
At 14 in 1937, he joined local saxophonist Leroy Brown. He played locally in the shadow of his older pianist brother Linton Garner. Garner moved to New York City in 1944, he worked with the bassist Slam Stewart, though not a bebop musician per se, in 1947 played with Charlie Parker on the "Cool Blues" session. Although his admission to the Pittsburgh music union was refused because of his inability to read music, it relented in 1956 and made him an honorary member. Garner is credited with a superb memory of music. After attending a concert by the Russian classical pianist Emil Gilels, Garner returned to his apartment and was able to play a large portion of the performed music by recall. Garner made many tours both at home and abroad, recorded, he was The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson's favorite jazz musician, appearing on Carson's show many times over the years. Garner was managed by Martha Glaser from 1950 until his death in 1977, for some of this time as her only client. Garner died of cardiac arrest related to emphysema on January 2, 1977.
He is buried in Pittsburgh's Homewood Cemetery. Short in stature, Garner performed sitting on multiple telephone directories, he was known for his vocalizations while playing, which can be heard on many of his recordings. He helped to bridge the gap for jazz musicians between the concert hall. Called "one of the most distinctive of all pianists" by jazz writer Scott Yanow, Garner showed that a "creative jazz musician can be popular without watering down his music" or changing his personal style, he has been described as a "brilliant virtuoso who sounded unlike anyone else", using an "orchestral approach straight from the swing era but... open to the innovations of bop." His distinctive style could swing like no other, but some of his best recordings are ballads, such as his best-known composition, "Misty", which became a jazz standard – and was featured in Clint Eastwood's film Play Misty for Me. Garner may have been inspired by the example of Earl Hines, a fellow Pittsburgh resident but 18 years his senior, there were resemblances in their elastic approach to timing and use of right-hand octaves.
Garner's early recordings display the influence of the stride piano style of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, he developed a signature style that involved his right hand playing behind the beat while his left strummed a steady rhythm and punctuation, creating insouciance and tension. The independence of his hands was evidenced by his masterful use of three-against-four and more complicated cross-rhythms between the hands. Garner would improvise whimsical introductions to pieces that left listeners in suspense as to what the tune would be, his melodic improvisations stayed close to the theme while employing novel chord voicings. Pianist Ross Tompkins described Garner's distinctiveness as due to'happiness'. Garner's first recordings were made in late 1944 at the apartment of Timme Rosenkrantz, his recording career advanced in the late 1940s when several sides such as "Fine and Dandy", "Skylark" and "Summertime" were cut. His 1955 live album Concert by the Sea was a best-selling jazz album in its day and features Eddie Calhoun on bass and Denzil Best on drums.
This recording of a performance at the Sunset Center, a former school in Carmel-by-the-Sea, was made using primitive sound equipment, but for George Avakian the decision to release the recording was easy. One World Concert was recorded at the 1962 Seattle World Fair and features Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums. Other works include 1951's Long Ago and Far Away, 1953's Erroll Garner at the Piano with Wyatt Ruther and Fats Heard, 1957's The Most Happy Piano, 1970's Feeling Is Believing and 1974's Magician, which see Garner perform a number of classic standards; the trio was expanded to add Latin percussion a conga. In 1964, Garner appeared in the UK on the music series Jazz 625 broadcast on the BBC's new second channel; the programme was hosted by Steve Race, who introduced Garner's trio with Eddie Calhoun on bass and Kelly Martin on drums. Because Garner could not write down his musical ideas, he used to record them on tape, to be transcribed by others; the Erroll Garner Club was founded in 1982 in Scotland.
On September 26, 1992 Garnerphiles from England, Scotland and the US met in London for a unique and historic get-together. The guests of honour were Eddie Calhoun and Kelly Martin, Erroll'
Detroit Free Press
The Detroit Free Press is the largest daily newspaper in Detroit, Michigan, US. The Sunday edition is titled the Sunday Free Press, it is sometimes referred to as the "Freep". It serves Wayne, Macomb, Livingston and Monroe counties; the Free Press is the largest city newspaper owned by Gannett, which publishes USA Today. The Free Press has received four Emmy Awards, its motto is "On Guard for 188 Years". In 2018, the Detroit Free Press received two Salute to Excellence awards from the National Association of Black Journalists; the newspaper was launched by John R. Williams and his uncle, Joseph Campau, was first published as the Democratic Free Press and Michigan Intelligencer on May 5, 1831, it was renamed to Detroit Daily Free Press in 1835. Williams printed the first issues on a Washington press he purchased from the discontinued Oakland Chronicle of Pontiac, it was hauled from Pontiac in a wagon over rough roads to a building at Bates and Woodbridge streets in Detroit. The hand-operated press could produce 250 pages per hour.
The first issues were 14 with five columns of type. Sheldon McKnight became the first publisher with John Pitts Sheldon as editor. In the 1850s, the paper was developed into a leading Democratic publication under the ownership of Wilbur F. Storey. Storey left for the Chicago Times in 1861. In the 1870s ownership passed to William E. Quinby, who continued its Democratic leanings and established a London, England edition. In 1940, the Knight Newspapers purchased the Free Press. During the following 47 years the Free Press competed with The Detroit News in the southeastern Michigan market; the Free Press was delivered and sold as a morning paper while the News was sold and delivered as an evening newspaper. In 1987, the paper entered into a one hundred-year joint operating agreement with its rival, combining business operations while maintaining separate editorial staffs; the combined company is called the Detroit Media Partnership. The two papers began to publish joint Saturday and Sunday editions, though the editorial content of each remained separate.
At the time, the Detroit Free Press was the tenth highest circulation paper in the United States, the combined Detroit News and Free Press was the country's fourth largest Sunday paper. On July 13, 1995, Newspaper Guild-represented employees of the Free Press and News and the pressmen and Teamsters working for the "Detroit Newspapers" distribution arm went on strike. By October, about 40% of the editorial staffers had crossed the picket line, many trickled back over the next months while others stayed out for the two and a half years of the strike; the strike was resolved in court three years and the unions remain active at the paper, representing a majority of the employees under their jurisdiction. In 1998, the Free Press vacated its former headquarters in downtown Detroit and moved to offices into the News building. On August 3, 2005, Knight Ridder sold the Free Press to the Gannett Company, which had owned and operated The Detroit News. Gannett, in turn sold The News, to MediaNews Group.
The Free Press resumed publication of its own Sunday edition, May 7, 2006, without any content from The News. A quirk in the operating agreement, allows The News to continue printing its editorial page in the Sunday Free Press. On December 16, 2008, Detroit Media Partnership announced a plan to limit weekday home delivery for both dailies to Thursday and Friday only. On other weekdays the paper sold at newsstands would be smaller, about 32 pages, redesigned; this arrangement went into effect March 30, 2009. The Free Press entered a news partnership with CBS owned-and-operated station WWJ-TV channel 62 in March 2009 to produce a morning news show called First Forecast Mornings. Prior to the partnership, WWJ aired no local newscast at all. In February 2014, the DMP announced its offices along with those of the Free Press and The Detroit News would occupy six floors in both the old and new sections of the former Federal Reserve building at 160 West Fort Street; the partnership expected to place signs on the exterior similar to those on the former offices.
The move took place October 24–27, 2014. The Detroit Almanac: 300 Years of Life in the Motor City. Peter Gavrilovich and Bill McGraw, editors. ISBN 0-937247-34-0 Media in Detroit Official website Official mobile website Gannett subsidiary profile of the Detroit Free Press The Detroit Free Press Building Detroit Newspaper Partnership
Art Tatum
Arthur Tatum Jr. was an American jazz pianist. Tatum is considered one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, his performances were hailed for their technical proficiency and creativity, which set a new standard for jazz piano virtuosity. Critic Scott Yanow wrote, "Tatum's quick reflexes and boundless imagination kept his improvisations filled with fresh ideas that put him way ahead of his contemporaries." Tatum's mother, Mildred Hoskins, was born in Martinsville, around 1890, in Toledo was a domestic worker. His father, Arthur Tatum Sr. was born in Statesville, North Carolina, had steady employment as "a mechanic of some sort". In 1909, they made their way from North Carolina to begin a new life in Ohio; the couple had four children. He was followed by Arline nine years and by Karl after another two years. Karl became a social worker; the Tatum family was regarded as church-going. From infancy, Tatum had impaired vision. Several explanations for this have been posited, he had eye operations, which meant that at the age of eleven he could see things that were close to him, could distinguish colors.
Any benefits from these procedures were reversed, when he was assaulted in his early twenties. As a result, he was blind in his left eye and had limited vision in his right. Despite this, there are multiple accounts of him enjoying playing cards and pool. Accounts vary on whether Tatum's parents played any musical instruments, but it is that he was exposed at an early age to church music, including through the Grace Presbyterian Church that his parents attended, he began playing the piano from a young age, playing by ear and aided by an excellent memory and sense of pitch. Other musicians reported, he learned tunes from the radio, by copying piano roll recordings. In an interview as an adult, Tatum rejected the story that his playing style had developed because he had found ways to reproduce piano roll recordings made by two pianists; as a child he was very sensitive to the piano's intonation and insisted it be tuned often. Although piano was the most obvious application of his mental and physical skills, he had an encyclopedic memory for Major League Baseball statistics.
Tatum first attended Jefferson School in Toledo moved to the School for the Blind in Columbus, Ohio late in 1924. He was there for less than a year before transferring to the Toledo School of Music, he had formal piano lessons with Overton G. Rainey at either the Jefferson School or the Toledo School of Music. Rainey, visually impaired taught the classical tradition, as he did not improvise and discouraged his students from playing jazz. Based on this history, it is reasonable to assume that Tatum was self-taught as a pianist. By the time he was a teenager, Tatum was asked to play at various social events. Tatum drew inspiration from the pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, who exemplified the stride piano style, from the more modern Earl Hines, six years Tatum's senior. Tatum identified Waller as his biggest influence, while pianist Teddy Wilson and saxophonist Eddie Barefield suggested that one of his favorite jazz pianists was Hines. Another influence was pianist Lee Sims, who did not play jazz, but did use chord voicings and an orchestral approach that appeared in Tatum's playing.
In 1927, Tatum began playing on Toledo radio station WSPD as'Arthur Tatum, Toledo's Blind Pianist', during interludes in Ellen Kay's shopping chat program and soon had his own program. During 1928–29, his radio program was re-broadcast nationwide. After regular club dates, Tatum would decamp to after-hours clubs to hang out with other musicians, he played for hours on end into the dawn. From near the start of the pianist's career, "his accomplishment was of a different order from what most people, from what musicians, had heard, it made musicians reconsider their definitions of excellence, of what was possible." As word of Tatum spread, national performers passing through Toledo, including Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Joe Turner, Fletcher Henderson dropped in to hear him play. In 1932, vocalist Adelaide Hall was touring the United States with two pianists. After arriving in Toledo, she heard Tatum play, recruited him; this provided him with the opportunity to go to New York, which many other musicians had encouraged him to do, as it was the centre of the jazz world at that time.
On August 5 that year and her band recorded two sides. Two more sides with Hall followed five days as did a solo piano test-pressing of "Tea for Two", not released for several decades. Tatum's only known child, was born when Tatum was twenty-four; the mother was a waitress in Toledo. It is that neither had a major role in raising their son, who pursued a military career and died in the 1980s. Tatum and Jackson were not married. After his arrival in New York, Tatum participated in a cutting contest at Morgan's bar in Harlem, with the established stride piano masters – Johnson and Willie "The Lion" Smith. Standard contest pieces included Johnson's "Harlem Strut" and "Carolina Shout" and Waller's "Handful of Keys". Tatum played his arrangements of "Tea for Two" and "Tiger Rag". Reminiscing about Tatum's debut, Jo
Dayton, Ohio
Dayton is the sixth-largest city in the state of Ohio and the county seat of Montgomery County. A small part of the city extends into Greene County; the 2017 U. S. census estimate put the city population at 140,371, while Greater Dayton was estimated to be at 803,416 residents. This makes Dayton the fourth-largest metropolitan area in 63rd in the United States. Dayton is within Ohio's Miami Valley region, just north of Greater Cincinnati. Ohio's borders are within 500 miles of 60 percent of the country's population and manufacturing infrastructure, making the Dayton area a logistical centroid for manufacturers and shippers. Dayton hosts significant research and development in fields like industrial and astronautical engineering that have led to many technological innovations. Much of this innovation is due in part to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and its place in the community. With the decline of heavy manufacturing, Dayton's businesses have diversified into a service economy that includes insurance and legal sectors as well as healthcare and government sectors.
Along with defense and aerospace, healthcare accounts for much of the Dayton area's economy. Hospitals in the Greater Dayton area have an estimated combined employment of nearly 32,000 and a yearly economic impact of $6.8 billion. It is estimated that Premier Health Partners, a hospital network, contributes more than $2 billion a year to the region through operating and capital expenditures. In 2011, Dayton was rated the #3 city in the nation by HealthGrades for excellence in healthcare. Many hospitals in the Dayton area are ranked by Forbes, U. S. News & World Report, HealthGrades for clinical excellence. Dayton is noted for its association with aviation. Other well-known individuals born in the city include poet Paul Laurence Dunbar and entrepreneur John H. Patterson. Dayton is known for its many patents and inventors, most notably the Wright brothers' invention of powered flight. In 2008, 2009, 2010, Site Selection magazine ranked Dayton the #1 mid-sized metropolitan area in the nation for economic development.
In 2010, Dayton was named one of the best places in the United States for college graduates to find a job. Dayton was founded on April 1796, by 12 settlers known as the Thompson Party, they traveled in March from Cincinnati up the Great Miami River by pirogue and landed at what is now St. Clair Street, where they found two small camps of Native Americans. Among the Thompson Party was Benjamin Van Cleve, whose memoirs provide insights into the Ohio Valley's history. Two other groups traveling overland arrived several days later. In 1797, Daniel C. Cooper laid out Mad River Road, the first overland connection between Cincinnati and Dayton, opening the "Mad River Country" to settlement. Ohio was admitted into the Union in 1803, the village of Dayton was incorporated in 1805, chartered as a city in 1841; the city was named after Jonathan Dayton, a captain in the American Revolutionary War who signed the U. S. Constitution and owned a significant amount of land in the area. In 1827, construction on the Dayton-Cincinnati canal began, which would provide a better way to transport goods from Dayton to Cincinnati and contribute to Dayton's economic growth during the 1800s.
Innovation led to business growth in the region. In 1884, John Henry Patterson acquired James Ritty's National Manufacturing Company along with his cash register patents and formed the National Cash Register Company; the company manufactured the first mechanical cash registers and played a crucial role in the shaping of Dayton's reputation as an epicenter for manufacturing in the early 1900s. In 1906, Charles F. Kettering, a leading engineer at the company, helped develop the first electric cash register, which propelled NCR into the national spotlight. NCR helped develop the US Navy Bombe, a code-breaking machine that helped crack the Enigma machine cipher during World War II. Dayton has been the home for many inventions since the 1870s. According to the National Park Service, citing information from the U. S. Patent Office, Dayton had granted more patents per capita than any other U. S. city in 1890 and ranked fifth in the nation as early as 1870. The Wright brothers, inventors of the airplane, Charles F. Kettering, world-renowned for his numerous inventions, hailed from Dayton.
The city was home to James Ritty's Incorruptible Cashier, the first mechanical cash register, Arthur E. Morgan's hydraulic jump, a flood prevention mechanism that helped pioneer hydraulic engineering. Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African-American poet and novelist, penned his most famous works in the late 19th century and became an integral part of the city's history. Powered aviation began in Dayton. Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first to demonstrate powered flight. Although the first flight was in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, their Wright Flyer was built in Dayton, was returned to Dayton for improvements and further flights at Huffman Field, a cow pasture eight miles northeast of Dayton, near the current Wright Patterson Air Force Base; when the government tried to move development to Langley field in southern Virginia, six Dayton businessmen including Edward A. Deeds, formed the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company in Moraine and established a flying field. Deeds opened a field to the north in the flood plain of the Great Miami River between the confluences of that river, the Stillwater River, the Mad River, near downtown Dayton.
Named McCook Field for Alexander McDowell McCook, an American Civil War general, this became the Army Signal Corps' primary aviation
Classical music
Classical music is art music produced or rooted in the traditions of Western culture, including both liturgical and secular music. While a more precise term is used to refer to the period from 1750 to 1820, this article is about the broad span of time from before the 6th century AD to the present day, which includes the Classical period and various other periods; the central norms of this tradition became codified between 1550 and 1900, known as the common-practice period. The major time divisions of Western art music are as follows: the ancient music period, before 500 AD the early music period, which includes the Medieval including the ars antiqua the ars nova the ars subtilior the Renaissance eras. Baroque the galant music period the common-practice period, which includes Baroque the galant music period Classical Romantic eras the 20th and 21st centuries which includes: the modern that overlaps from the late-19th century, impressionism that overlaps from the late-19th century neoclassicism, predominantly in the inter-war period the high modern the postmodern eras the experimental contemporary European art music is distinguished from many other non-European classical and some popular musical forms by its system of staff notation, in use since about the 11th century.
Catholic monks developed the first forms of modern European musical notation in order to standardize liturgy throughout the worldwide Church. Western staff notation is used by composers to indicate to the performer the pitches, tempo and rhythms for a piece of music; this can leave less room for practices such as improvisation and ad libitum ornamentation, which are heard in non-European art music and in popular-music styles such as jazz and blues. Another difference is that whereas most popular styles adopt the song form or a derivation of this form, classical music has been noted for its development of sophisticated forms of instrumental music such as the symphony, fugue and mixed vocal and instrumental styles such as opera and mass; the term "classical music" did not appear until the early 19th century, in an attempt to distinctly canonize the period from Johann Sebastian Bach to Ludwig van Beethoven as a golden age. The earliest reference to "classical music" recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary is from about 1829.
Given the wide range of styles in European classical music, from Medieval plainchant sung by monks to Classical and Romantic symphonies for orchestra from the 1700s and 1800s to avant-garde atonal compositions for solo piano from the 1900s, it is difficult to list characteristics that can be attributed to all works of that type. However, there are characteristics that classical music contains that few or no other genres of music contain, such as the use of music notation and the performance of complex forms of solo instrumental works. Furthermore, while the symphony did not exist prior to the late 18th century, the symphony ensemble—and the works written for it—have become a defining feature of classical music; the key characteristic of European classical music that distinguishes it from popular music and folk music is that the repertoire tends to be written down in musical notation, creating a musical part or score. This score determines details of rhythm, and, where two or more musicians are involved, how the various parts are coordinated.
The written quality of the music has enabled a high level of complexity within them: fugues, for instance, achieve a remarkable marriage of boldly distinctive melodic lines weaving in counterpoint yet creating a coherent harmonic logic that would be difficult to achieve in the heat of live improvisation. The use of written notation preserves a record of the works and enables Classical musicians to perform music from many centuries ago. Musical notation enables 2000s-era performers to sing a choral work from the 1300s Renaissance era or a 1700s Baroque concerto with many of the features of the music being reproduced; that said, the score does allow the interpreter to make choices on. For example, if the tempo is written with an Italian instruction, it is not known how fast the piece should be played; as well, in the Baroque era, many works that were designed for basso continuo accompaniment do not specify which instruments should play the accompaniment or how the chordal instrument should play the chords, which are not notated in the part.
The performer and the conductor have a range of options for musical expression and interpretation of a scored piece, including the phrasing of melodies, the time taken during fermatas or pauses, the use of effects such as vibrato or glissando. Although Classical music in the 2000s has lost most of its tradition for musical improvisation, from the Baroque era to the Romantic era, there are examples of performers who could improvise in the style of their era. In the Baroque era, organ performers would improvise preludes, keyboard performers playing harpsichord would improvise chords from the figured bass symbols beneath the bass notes of the basso continuo part and b
Johnny Hodges
John Cornelius Hodges was an American alto saxophonist, best known for solo work with Duke Ellington's big band. He played lead alto in the saxophone section for many years. Hodges was featured on soprano saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1946, he is considered one of the definitive alto saxophone players of the big band era. Hodges started playing with Sidney Bechet, Luckey Roberts and Chick Webb; when Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellington's clarinet player Barney Bigard recommended Hodges. His playing became one of the identifying voices of the Ellington orchestra. From 1951 to 1955, Hodges left the Duke to lead his own band, but returned shortly before Ellington's triumphant return to prominence – the orchestra's performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival. Hodges was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to John H. Hodges and Katie Swan Hodges, both from Virginia. Soon afterwards, the family moved to Hammond Street in Boston, where he grew up with baritone saxophonist Harry Carney, saxophonists Charlie Holmes and Howard E. Johnson.
His first instruments were drums and piano. While his mother was a skilled piano player, Hodges was self-taught. Once he became good enough, he played the piano at dances in private homes for eight dollars an evening, he had taken up the soprano saxophone by his teens. It was around this time that Hodges developed the nickname "Rabbit", which some people believe arose from his ability to win 100-yard dashes and outrun truant officers. In fact, Carney called him Rabbit because of his rabbit-like nibbling on lettuce and tomato sandwiches; when Hodges was 14, he saw Sidney Bechet play in Jimmy Cooper's Black and White Revue in a Boston burlesque hall. Hodges' sister got to know Bechet, which gave him the inspiration to introduce himself and play "My Honey's Lovin Arms" for Bechet. Bechet was encouraged him to keep on playing. Hodges built a name for himself in the Boston area before moving to New York in 1924. Hodges joined Duke Ellington's orchestra in November 1928, he was one of the prominent Ellington Band members who featured in Benny Goodman's 1938 Carnegie Hall concert.
Goodman described Hodges as "by far the greatest man on alto sax that I heard." Charlie Parker called him "the Lily Pons of his instrument." Ellington's practice of writing tunes for members of his orchestra resulted in the Hodges specialties, "Confab with Rab", "Jeep's Blues", "Sultry Sunset", "Hodge Podge". Other songs recorded by the Ellington Orchestra which prominently feature Hodges' smooth alto saxophone sound are "Magenta Haze", "Prelude to a Kiss", "Haupe" – notable are the "seductive" and hip-swaying "Flirtibird", featuring the "irresistibly salacious tremor" by Hodges, "The Star-Crossed Lovers" from Ellington's Such Sweet Thunder suite, "I Got It Bad", "Blood Count" and "Passion Flower", he had a pure tone and economy of melody on both the blues and ballads that won him admiration from musicians of all eras and styles, from Ben Webster and John Coltrane, who both played with him when he had his own orchestra in the 1950s, to Lawrence Welk, who featured him in an album of standards.
His individualistic playing style, which featured the use of a wide vibrato and much sliding between slurred notes, was imitated. As evidenced by the Ellington compositions named after him, he earned the nicknames Jeep and Rabbit – according to Johnny Griffin because "he looked like a rabbit, no expression on his face while he's playing all this beautiful music." In the 1940s, Hodges played a Conn 6M and on a Buescher 400 alto saxophone. By the end of his career in the late 1960s, Hodges was playing a Vito LeBlanc Rationale alto, an instrument with unusual key-mechanisms and tone-hole placement, which gave superior intonation. Fewer than 2,000 were made. Hodges' Vito saxophone was silver-plated and extensively engraved on the bell, bow and key-cups of the instrument. Hodges' last performances were at the Imperial Room in Toronto, less than a week before his May 11, 1970 death from a heart attack, suffered during a visit to the office of a dental surgeon, his last recordings are featured on the New Orleans Suite, only half-finished when he died.
He had a wife, Edith Cue, two children: John Hodges Jr. and Lorna Majata. The loss of Hodges' sound prompted Ellington, upon learning of the musician's death from a heart attack, to lament to JET magazine: "The band will never sound the same without Johnny." In Ellington's eulogy of Hodges, he said: "Never the world's most animated showman or greatest stage personality, but a tone so beautiful it sometimes brought tears to the eyes—this was Johnny Hodges. This is Johnny Hodges." 1946: Passion Flower with Willie Cook, Roy Eldridge, Quentin Jackson, Russell Procope, Ben Webster, Sam Woodyard 1951: Caravan with Taft Jordan, Harold Baker, Juan Tizol, Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Oscar Pettiford, Sonny Greer 1951-52: Castle Rock 1952: In a Tender Mood 1952-54: The Blues 1951-54: More of Johnny Hodges 1951-54: Memories of Ellington released as In a Mellow Tone 1954: Used to Be Duke 1952–55: Dance Bash released as Perdido 1955: Creamy 1956: Ellingtonia'56 1956: Duke's in Bed 1957: The Big Sound 1958: Blues A-Plenty 1958: Not So Dukish 1959: Johnny Hodges and His Strings Play the Prettiest Gershwin 1959: Back to Back: Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues with Duke E
Mary Lou Williams
Mary Lou Williams was an American jazz pianist and composer. She recorded more than one hundred records. Williams wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, she was friend and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Tadd Dameron, Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie; the second of eleven children, Williams was born in Atlanta and grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A young musical prodigy, at the age of three, she taught herself to play the piano. At the age of six, she supported her ten sisters by playing at parties, she began performing publicly at the age of seven when she became known admiringly in Pittsburgh as "The Little Piano Girl." She became a professional musician in her teens. She married jazz saxophonist John Williams in November 1926. In 1922, at the age of 12, she went on the Orpheum Circuit. During the following year she played with Duke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. One morning at three o'clock, she was playing with McKinney's Cotton Pickers at Harlem's Rhythm Club.
Louis Armstrong paused to listen to her. Williams shyly told what happened: "Louis picked me up and kissed me."In 1926, Williams married saxophonist John Overton Williams. She met him at a performance in Cleveland where he was leading his group, the Syncopators, moved with him to Memphis, Tennessee, he assembled a band in Memphis. In 1929, 19-year-old Williams assumed leadership of the Memphis band when her husband accepted an invitation to join Andy Kirk's band in Oklahoma City. Williams did not play with the band; the group, Andy Kirk's Twelve Clouds of Joy, moved to Tulsa, where Williams, when she wasn't working as a musician, was employed transporting bodies for an undertaker. When the Clouds of Joy accepted a longstanding engagement in Kansas City, Williams joined her husband and began sitting in with the band, as well as serving as its arranger and composer, she provided Kirk with such songs as "Walkin' and Swingin'", "Twinklin'", "Cloudy'", "Little Joe from Chicago". Williams was the arranger and pianist for recordings in Kansas City Chicago, New York City.
During a trip to Chicago, she recorded "Drag'Em" and "Night Life" as piano solos. She used the name "Mary Lou" at the suggestion of Jack Kapp at Brunswick Records; the records sold briskly. Soon after the recording session she became Kirk's permanent second pianist, playing solo gigs and working as a freelance arranger for Earl Hines, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey. In 1937, she produced In the Groove, a collaboration with Dick Wilson, Benny Goodman asked her to write a blues song for his band; the result was "Roll'Em", a boogie-woogie piece based on the blues, which followed her successful "Camel Hop", named for Goodman's radio show sponsor, Camel cigarettes. Goodman tried to put Williams under contract to write for him but she refused, preferring to freelance instead. In 1942, who had divorced her husband, left the Twelve Clouds of Joy, returning again to Pittsburgh, she was joined there by bandmate Harold "Shorty" Baker, with whom she formed a six-piece ensemble that included Art Blakey on drums.
After an engagement in Cleveland, Baker left to join Duke Ellington's orchestra. Williams joined the band in New York City traveled to Baltimore, where she and Baker were married, she traveled with Ellington and arranged several tunes for him, including "Trumpet No End", her version of "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin. She sold Ellington on performing "Walkin' and Swingin'". Within a year she had returned to New York. Williams accepted a job at the Café Society Downtown, started a weekly radio show called Mary Lou Williams's Piano Workshop on WNEW and began mentoring and collaborating with younger bebop musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. In 1945, she composed the bebop hit "In the Land of Oo-Bla-Dee" for Gillespie. "During this period Monk and the kids would come to my apartment every morning around four or pick me up at the Café after I'd finished my last show, we'd play and swap ideas until noon or later", Williams recalled in Melody Maker. In 1945, she composed the classically-influenced "Zodiac Suite," in which each of the twelve parts corresponded to a sign of the zodiac, were accordingly dedicated to several of her musical colleagues, including Billie Holiday, Art Tatum.
She recorded the suite with Jack Parker and Al Lucas and performed it December 31, 1945 at Town Hall in New York City with an orchestra and tenor saxophonist Ben Webster. In 1952, Williams accepted an offer to perform in England and ended up staying in Europe for two years; when she returned to the United States she took a hiatus from performing, converting in 1956 to Roman Catholicism. Her energies were devoted to the Bel Canto Foundation, an effort she initiated to help addicted musicians return to performing. Two priests and Dizzy Gillespie convinced her to return to playing, which she did at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival with Dizzy's band. Father Peter O'Brien, a Catholic priest, became her close manager in the 1960s, they found new venues for jazz performance at a time when no more than two clubs in Manhattan offered jazz full-time. In addition to club work, she played colleges, formed her own record label and publishing companies, founded the Pittsburgh Jazz Festival, made television appearances.
Throughout the 1960s, her composing con
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