1.
Yonkers, New York
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Yonkers is the fourth most populous city in the U. S. state of New York, and the most populous city in Westchester County, with a population of 195,976. It is an suburb of New York City, directly to the north of the Bronx. Yonkerss downtown is centered on a known as Getty Square. The area also houses significant local businesses and non-profits, and serves as a retail hub for Yonkers. This grant was purchased in July 1645 by Adriaen van der Donck, van der Donck was known locally as the Jonkheer or Jonker, a word from which the name Yonkers is directly derived. Van der Donck built a saw mill near where the Nepperhan Creek met the Hudson, van der Donck was killed in the Peach War. His wife, Mary Doughty, was taken captive and ransomed later, near the site of van der Doncks mill is Philipse Manor Hall, a Colonial-era manor house which today serves as a museum and archive, offering many glimpses into life before the American Revolution. The original structure was built around 1682 by Frederick Philipse and his wife Margaret Hardenbroeck, Frederick was a wealthy Dutchman who by the time of his death had amassed an enormous estate, which encompassed the entire modern City of Yonkers, as well as several other Hudson River towns. Philipses great-grandson, Frederick Philipse III, was a prominent Loyalist during the American Revolution, all the lands that belonged to the Philipse family were confiscated and sold. For its first two hundred years, Yonkers was a farming town with an active industrial waterfront. Yonkerss later growth rested largely on developing industry, in 1853, Elisha Otis invented the first safety elevator and the Otis Elevator Company, opened the first elevator factory in the world on the banks of the Hudson near what is now Vark Street. It relocated to larger quarters in the 1880s, the community was incorporated as a village in the northern part of the Town of Yonkers in 1854 and as a city in 1872. In 1874 the southern part of Yonkers, including Kingsbridge and Riverdale, was annexed by New York City as The Bronx, in 1898, Yonkers voted on a referendum to determine if they wanted to become part of New York City. Still, some call the city the Sixth Borough referring to its location on the New York City border, its urban character. The New York City and Northern Railway Company connected Yonkers to Manhattan, a three-mile spur to Getty Square existed until 1943. Aside from being a center, Yonkers also played a key role in the development of entertainment in the United States. In 1888, Scottish-born John Reid founded the first golf course in the United States, St. Andrews Golf Club, bakelite, the first completely synthetic plastic, was invented in Yonkers circa 1906 by Leo Baekeland, and manufactured there until the late 1920s. Early in the 20th century, Yonkers also hosted a brass era automobile maker, Colt Runabout Company, despite the cars seemingly glowing performance, Yonkers was also the headquarters of the Waring Hat Company, at the time the nations largest hat manufacturer
Yonkers, New York
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View of Yonkers from the
New Jersey Palisades
Yonkers, New York
Yonkers, New York
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Philipse Manor Hall
Yonkers, New York
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Yonkers Public Library
2.
Jazz
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Jazz is a music genre that originated amongst African Americans in New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and developed from roots in Blues and Ragtime. Since the 1920s jazz age, jazz has become recognized as a form of musical expression. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, call and response vocals, polyrhythms, Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, and in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Although the foundation of jazz is deeply rooted within the Black experience of the United States, different cultures have contributed their own experience, intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as one of Americas original art forms. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on different national, regional, and local musical cultures, New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. In the 1930s, heavily arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging musicians music which was played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed in the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, modal jazz developed in the late 1950s, using the mode, or musical scale, as the basis of musical structure and improvisation. Jazz-rock fusion appeared in the late 1960s and early 1970s, combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments. In the early 1980s, a form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful. Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Latin, the question of the origin of the word jazz has resulted in considerable research, and its history is well documented. It is believed to be related to jasm, a term dating back to 1860 meaning pep. The use of the word in a context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a context in New Orleans was in a November 14,1916 Times-Picayune article about jas bands. In an interview with NPR, musician Eubie Blake offered his recollections of the slang connotations of the term, saying, When Broadway picked it up. That was dirty, and if you knew what it was, the American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz has proved to be difficult to define, since it encompasses such a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, in the opinion of Robert Christgau, most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz. As Duke Ellington, one of jazzs most famous figures, said, although jazz is considered highly difficult to define, at least in part because it contains so many varied subgenres, improvisation is consistently regarded as being one of its key elements
Jazz
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Louis Armstrong (1901–1971) is considered one of the pivotal musicians in jazz for his contributions as a trumpet player, composer and singer.
Jazz
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Double bassist
Reggie Workman, saxophone player
Pharoah Sanders, and drummer
Idris Muhammad performing in 1978
Jazz
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Albert Gleizes, 1915, Composition pour Jazz, gouache on cardboard, mounted on Masonite, 73 x 73 cm,
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Jazz
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In the late 18th-century painting
The Old Plantation, African-Americans dance to banjo and percussion.
3.
Swing music
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Swing music, or simply swing, is a form of American music that dominated in the 1930s and 1940s. The name swing came from the swing feel where the emphasis is on the off–beat or weaker pulse in the music, Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, the verb to swing is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Notable musicians of the era include Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Woody Herman. Swing has roots in the late 1920s as larger ensembles began using written arrangements, a typical song played in swing style would feature a strong, anchoring rhythm section in support of more loosely tied wind and brass. The most common style consisted of having a soloist take center stage, Swing music began to decline in popularity during World War II because of several factors. By the late 1940s, swing had morphed into traditional pop music, or evolved into new styles such as jump blues, Swing music saw a revival in the late 1950s and 1960s with pop vocalists such as Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Ella Fitzgerald. Swing blended with other genres to create new styles, in country music, artists such as Jimmie Rodgers, Moon Mullican and Bob Wills introduced many elements of swing along with blues to create a genre called western swing. Gypsy swing is an outgrowth of Venuti and Langs jazz violin swing, in the 1970s, and 1980s, fans of big band music attended swing music performances at supper clubs. In the late-1980s a trendier, more urban-styled swing-beat emerged called new jack swing, in the late 1990s and into the 2000s there was a swing revival, led by Squirrel Nut Zippers, Brian Setzer, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, and Lavay Smith. In Canada, some of the early 2000s records by The JW-Jones Blues Band included swing revival elements, the 1920s saw parallel trends in jazz and popular music that would later converge into the swing style. New Orleans style jazz was based on a meter and contrapuntal improvisation led by a trumpet or cornet, typically followed by a clarinet. The rhythm section consisted of a tuba and drums, and sometimes a banjo, by the early 1920s guitars and pianos sometimes substituted for the banjo and a string bass sometimes substituted for the tuba. Further innovations in small ensemble playing led to development of the Chicago style identified with Louis Armstrong, a stint with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra familiarized him with arranged ensemble playing that differed from the New Orleans style, in which saxophones became the dominant sound among the reeds. Armstrong brought those back to his smaller ensembles, the soloist played over an ensemble relegated to a supporting role in the background. The string bass also lent itself to playing in a 4/4 rhythm rather than the 2/4 rhythm dictated by the tuba. The new format gave the soloist the opportunity to play with more rhythmic freedom, but playing with swing remained the province of the soloist, not the ensemble. The late 1920s saw increasingly sophisticated arrangements used by bigger ensembles, some arrangements used call-response between horn sections to build the melody
Swing music
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Benny Goodman, one of the first swing bandleaders to achieve widespread fame.
Swing music
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Frank Sinatra
Swing music
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Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli
4.
Dixieland
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Dixieland, sometimes referred to as hot jazz or traditional jazz, is a style of jazz based on the music that developed in New Orleans at the start of the 20th century. The first use of the term Dixieland with reference to music was in the name of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, at that time, there was no issue of subgenres of jazz, so Dixieland referred to the band and not the music. That reflected the fact that all of the recorded repertoire of New Orleans musicians was from the period when the format was already evolving beyond the traditional New Orleans format. Dixieland may in that sense be regarded as denoting the jazz movement of the 1940s and 1950s as much as any particular subgenre of jazz. The essential elements that were accepted as within the style were the front lines consisting of trumpets, trombones, and clarinets. The Jim Crow associations of the name Dixieland also did little to attract younger coloured musicians to the revival, well-known jazz standard tunes such as Basin Street Blues and When the Saints Go Marching In are known even to non-jazz fans thanks to the enduring popularity of traditional jazz. The Vietnam-era protest song Feel Like Im Fixin to Die Rag is based on tonal centers, Traditional jazz is a major tourist attraction for New Orleans to the present day. It has been an influence on the styles of modern players such as Charles Mingus. New Orleans music combined earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, the Dixieland sound is created when one instrument plays the melody or a variation on it, and the other instruments improvise around that melody. This creates a more sound than the heavily arranged big band sound of the 1930s or the straight melodies of bebop in the 1940s. The West Coast revival began in the late 1930s in San Francisco which used banjo, the Dutch old-style jazz was played with trumpets, trombones and saxophones accompanied by a single clarinet, sousaphone and a section of Marching percussion usually including a washboard. Dixieland is the given to early jazz by traditional jazz revivalists. The name is a reference to the Old South, specifically anything south of the Mason-Dixon line, the term encompasses earlier brass band marches, French Quadrilles, biguine, ragtime, and blues with collective, polyphonic improvisation. Louis Armstrongs All-Stars was the band most popularly identified with Dixieland during the 1940s and this creates a more polyphonic sound than the arranged ensemble playing of the big band sound or the straight head melodies of bebop. During the 1930s and 1940s, the earlier group-improvisation style fell out of favor with the majority of black players. Though younger musicians developed new forms, many beboppers revered Armstrong, many Dixieland groups of the revival era consciously imitated the recordings and bands of decades earlier. Other musicians continued to create innovative performances and new tunes, for example, in the 1950s a style called Progressive Dixieland sought to blend polyphonic improvisation with bebop-style rhythm. Spike Jones & His New Band and Steve Lacy played with such bands and this style is sometimes called Dixie-bop
Dixieland
–
A traditionalist jazz band plays at a party in New Orleans in 2005. Shown here are Chris Clifton, on
trumpet; Brian O'Connell, on
clarinet; Les Muscutt, on
banjo; Chuck Badie, on
string bass; and Tom Ebert, on
trombone.
Dixieland
–
The International Dixieland Festival in Dresden
5.
Eddie Condon
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Albert Edwin Condon, better known as Eddie Condon, was an American jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in Chicago jazz, he played piano. Condon was born in Goodland, Indiana, the son of John and he grew up in Momence, Illinois, and Chicago Heights, Illinois, where he attended St. Agnes and Bloom High School. After playing ukulele, he switched to banjo and was a musician by 1921. He was based in Chicago for most of the 1920s, and played with such notables as Bix Beiderbecke, Jack Teagarden. In 1928, Condon moved to New York City and he frequently arranged jazz sessions for various record labels, sometimes playing with the artists he brought to the recording studios, including Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller. He organised racially integrated recording sessions—when these were still rare—with Waller, Armstrong and he played with the band of Red Nichols for a time. Later, from 1938 he had an association with Milt Gablers Commodore Records. A handful of records were issued under his own name, a July 28,1928 two-song session was recorded for OKeh, on October 30,1928, an OKeh was issued as Eddie Condon and his Footwarmers, featuring Jack Teagarden. A further session on February 8,1929 yielded a record issued under the name Eddie Hot Shots, in 1933, a further two sessions were recorded for Brunswick consisting of 6 recordings, only 2 of which were released in the US. From 1938 on, Condon recorded for Commodore and one session for Decca, from the late 1930s on he was a regular at the Manhattan jazz club Nicks. The sophisticated variation on Dixieland music which Condon and his colleagues created there came to be nicknamed Nicksieland, by this time, his regular circle of musical associates included Wild Bill Davison, Bobby Hackett, George Brunies, Edmond Hall, and Pee Wee Russell. In 1939, he appeared with Bobby Hacket and Band in the Warner Brothers & Vitaphone film musical short-subject, Condon did a series of jazz radio broadcasts from New Yorks Town Hall during 1944–45 which were nationally popular. These recordings survive, and have issued on the Jazzology label. In the 1950s Condon recorded a sequence of albums for Columbia Records. Condon toured Britain in 1957 with a band including Wild Bill Davison, Cutty Cutshall, Gene Schroeder and his last tour was in 1964, when he took a band to Australia and Japan. Condons men, on tour, were top mainstream jazz musicians, Buck Clayton, Pee Wee Russell, Vic Dickenson, Bud Freeman, Dick Cary, Jack Lesberg, Cliff Leeman. In 1948, Condons autobiography We Called It Music was published, Eddie Condons Treasury of Jazz was a collection of articles co-edited by Condon and Richard Gehman
Eddie Condon
–
Contents
6.
Benny Goodman
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Benjamin David Benny Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader, known as the King of Swing. In the mid-1930s, Goodman led one of the most popular groups in America. Goodmans bands launched the careers of many jazz artists. During an era of segregation, he led one of the first well-known integrated jazz groups. Goodman performed nearly to the end of his life while exploring an interest in classical music, Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire. His father, David Goodman, came to America in 1892 from Warsaw in partitioned Poland and his mother, Dora, came from Kaunas, Lithuania. His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born, hundreds of houses are unconnected with the street sewer. Money was a constant problem in the family, Bennys father earned at most $20 per week. On Sundays, his father took the children to free concerts in Douglas Park. The following year Benny joined the club band at Jane Addamss Hull House. By joining the band, he was entitled to two weeks at a summer camp about fifty miles from Chicago. It was the time he was able to get away from the bleak environment of his urban neighborhood. He also received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp and his early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists working in Chicago, notably Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo and Jimmie Noone. Goodman learned quickly, becoming a player at an early age. Goodman made his debut in 1921 at the Central Park Theater on Chicagos West Side. He entered Harrison High School in Chicago in 1922 and he joined the musicians’ union in 1923 and by the age of 14 was in a band featuring Bix Beiderbecke. Goodman attended Lewis Institute in 1924 as a sophomore, while also playing the clarinet in a dance hall band. When Goodman was 16, he joined one of Chicagos top bands, when he was 17, his father was killed by a passing car after stepping off a streetcar
Benny Goodman
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Goodman in 1942
Benny Goodman
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Goodman c. 1970
Benny Goodman
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An eager crowd of Goodman fans in
Oakland
Benny Goodman
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Benny Goodman (third from left) in 1952 with some of his former musicians, seated around piano left to right:
Vernon Brown,
George Auld,
Gene Krupa, Clint Neagley,
Ziggy Elman,
Israel Crosby and
Teddy Wilson (at piano)
7.
Louie Bellson
–
Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni, known by the stage name Louie Bellson, was an American jazz drummer. He was a composer, arranger, bandleader, and jazz educator, Bellson was an internationally acclaimed artist who performed in most of the major capitals around the world. Bellson and his wife, actress and singer Pearl Bailey, had the second highest number of appearances at the White House and he was a vice president at Remo, a drum company. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1985, Bellson was born in Rock Falls, Illinois, in 1924 and started playing drums at three years of age. At 15, he pioneered using two bass drums at the same time, at age 17, he triumphed over 40,000 drummers to win the Slingerland National Gene Krupa contest. After graduating from school, he worked with big bands throughout the 1940s, with Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James. In 1952, he married jazz singer Pearl Bailey, during the 1950s, he played with the Dorsey Brothers, Jazz at the Philharmonic, acted as Baileys music director, and recorded as a leader for Norgran Records and Verve Records. In an interview in 2005 with Jazz Connection magazine, he cited as influences Jo Jones, Sid Catlett, I have to give just dues to two guys who really got me off on the drums – Big Sid Catlett and Jo Jones. All three of us realized what Jo Jones did and it influenced a lot of us and we all three looked to Jo as the Papa who really did it. Gene helped bring the drums to the foreground as a solo instrument, Buddy was a great natural player. But we also have to back at Chick Webbs contributions. Ellington called these concerts the most important thing I have ever done, bellsons album The Sacred Music of Louie Bellson and the Jazz Ballet appeared in 2006. She recalled how Ellington explained to Louie that in the beginning there was lightning and thunder, Ellington exclaimed, pointing out that Louies drums were the thunder. Both Ellington and Louie, says Mrs. Bellson, were deeply religious, on December 5,1971 he took part in a memorial concert at Londons Queen Elizabeth Hall for drummer Frank King. This tribute show also featured Buddy Rich and British drummer Kenny Clare, the orchestra was led by Irish trombonist Bobby Lamb and American trombonist Raymond Premru. A few years later, Rich paid Bellson a compliment by asking him to lead his band on tour while he was disabled by a back injury. As a prolific creator of music, both written and improvised, his compositions and arrangements embrace jazz, jazz/rock/fusion, romantic orchestral suites, symphonic works, Bellson was also a poet and a lyricist. His only Broadway venture, Portofino, was a flop that closed after three performances
Louie Bellson
–
From left: Louie Bellson,
Cat Anderson,
Clark Terry. At the Palomar Supper Club, April 19, 1952, with the
Duke Ellington Orchestra. Photo courtesy of the
Fraser MacPherson estate.
Louie Bellson
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Bellson playing in 1980
Louie Bellson
–
From left: Chris Gage, Louie Bellson, Stan "Cuddles" Johnson, Tony Gage,
Fraser MacPherson,
Harry Carney (Photo from the Fraser MacPherson estate)
8.
Big band
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A big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with playing jazz music and which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1940s. Big Bands evolved with the times and continue to this day, a big band typically consists of approximately 12 to 25 musicians and contains saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. The terms jazz band, jazz ensemble, stage band, jazz orchestra and this does not, however, mean that each one of these names is technically correct for naming a big band specifically. The music is traditionally called charts, improvised solos may be played only when called for by the arranger. There are two periods in the history of popular bands. Beginning in the mid-1920s, big bands, then consisting of 10–25 pieces. At that time they played a form of jazz that involved very little improvisation, which included a string section with violins. A few bands also had violas and cellos, usually one or two along with them, the dance form of jazz was characterized by a sweet and romantic melody. Orchestras tended to stick to the melody as it was written and vocals would be sung, many of these artists changed styles or retired after the introduction of swing music. Although unashamedly commercial, these bands often featured front-rank jazz musicians - for example Paul Whiteman employed Bix Beiderbecke, there were also all-girl bands such as Helen Lewis and Her All-Girl Jazz Syncopators. Towards the end of the 1920s, a new form of Big Band emerged which was more authentically jazz and this form of music never gained the popularity of the sweet dance form of jazz. The few recordings made in form of jazz were labelled race records and were intended for a limited urban audience. Few white musicians were familiar with music, Johnny Mercer. The three major centres in this development were New York City, Chicago and Kansas City, some big ensembles, like the Joe King Oliver outfit played a kind of half arranged, half improvised jazz, often relying on head arrangements. Other great bands, like the one of Luis Russell became a vehicle for star instrumentalists, there the whole arrangement had to promote all the possibilities of the star, although they often contained very good musicians, like Henry Red Allen, J. C. Earl Hines became the star of Chicago with his Grand Terrace Cafe band, meanwhile, in Kansas City and across the Southwest, an earthier, bluesier style was developed by such bandleaders as Benny Moten and, later, by Jay McShann and Jesse Stone. Radio was a factor in gaining notice and fame for Benny Goodman. Soon, others challenged him, and the battles of the bands became a staple at theater performances featuring many groups on one bill
Big band
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Paul Whiteman and his orchestra in 1921
Big band
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Benny Goodman and
Peggy Lee
Big band
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Glenn Miller
Big band
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Ockbrook Big Band at
Pride Park Stadium
9.
Sing, Sing, Sing
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It is strongly identified with the Big Band and Swing eras. Though it has lyrics, which Prima wrote, it was performed as an instrumental by Fletcher Henderson and, most famously, the song was arranged by Jimmy Mundy. The 1937 recording lasted 8 min 43 seconds, and it took up both sides of a 12-inch 78, at its longest, a live recording was recorded and took 12 min 30 sec. Mundys arrangement incorporated Christopher Columbus, a written by Chu Berry for the Fletcher Henderson band. The 1937 recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1982, goodmans 1938 Carnegie Hall jazz concert was different from the commercial release and from subsequent performances with the Goodman band. Goodmans solo evolves to a driving four feel before quietly giving way to Stacys famous solo, stacy was quoted as saying he was glad he did not know Goodman was going to let him solo, because then he would have gotten nervous and screwed it up. List of 1930s jazz standards Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics
Sing, Sing, Sing
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"Sing, Sing, Sing (With a Swing)"
10.
Drum kit
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A drum kit consists of a mix of drums and idiophones most significantly cymbals but also including the woodblock and cowbell. In the 2000s, some also include electronic instruments and both hybrid and entirely electronic kits are used. If some or all of them are replaced by electronic drums, the drum kit is usually played while seated on a drum stool or throne. The drum kit differs from instruments that can be used to produce pitched melodies or chords, even though drums are often placed musically alongside others that do, such as the piano or guitar. The drum kit is part of the rhythm section used in many types of popular and traditional music styles ranging from rock and pop to blues. Other standard instruments used in the section include the electric bass, electric guitar. Many drummers extend their kits from this pattern, adding more drums, more cymbals. Some performers, such as some rockabilly drummers, use small kits that omit elements from the basic setup, some drum kit players may have other roles in the band, such as providing backup vocals, or less commonly, lead vocals. Thus, in an early 1800s orchestra piece, if the called for bass drum, triangle and cymbals. In the 1840s, percussionists began to experiment with foot pedals as a way to them to play more than one instrument. In the 1860s, percussionists started combining multiple drums into a set, the bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, and other percussion instruments were all played using hand-held drum sticks. Double-drumming was developed to one person to play the bass and snare with sticks. With this approach, the drum was usually played on beats one. This resulted in a swing and dance feel. The drum set was referred to as a trap set. By the 1870s, drummers were using an overhang pedal, most drummers in the 1870s preferred to do double drumming without any pedal to play multiple drums, rather than use an overhang pedal. Companies patented their pedal systems such as Dee Dee Chandler of New Orleans 1904–05, liberating the hands for the first time, this evolution saw the bass drum played with the foot of a standing percussionist. The bass drum became the central piece around which every other percussion instrument would later revolve and it was the golden age of drum building for many famous drum companies, with Ludwig introducing
Drum kit
Drum kit
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South-African jazz drummer
Louis Moholo playing a four-piece kit
Drum kit
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Dance band drummer Stan Farmer at Mark Foy's Empress Ballroom, Sydney, New South Wales, using a kit with bass drum pedal and low sock. Tom Lennon, 23 October 1935
Drum kit
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Drummer in a Memphis "juke joint" orchestra playing a kit with four non-tunable
toms. Marion Post Wolcott, October 1939
11.
Slingerland
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Slingerland is an American drum kits brand, currently owned by Gibson. The brand is strongly related to jazz drummers, such as Gene Krupa or Buddy Rich, Slingerland also produced electric and acoustic guitars, mandolins and banjos during the 1930s. The Slingerland Drum Company was founded by Henry Heanon H. H. Slingerland in 1912, Slingerland had won a correspondence school of music in a card game aboard one of the gaming boats that once cruised Lake Michigan. He then opened a school in Chicago, and soon turned to manufacturing instruments as well. The company started out importing ukuleles from Germany, but set up its own production because it could not meet demand, soon, they produced their own banjos and ukuleles and eventually, also guitars. Production of drums was started in 1927 in answer to the entry of the Ludwig & Ludwig drum company into the banjo market, the first Slingerland drum kits came out in 1928. A resourceful and energetic businessman, H. H. established a dealer network throughout the U. S. the then-territory of Hawaii. After H. H. s death from a stroke, the company was run by his wife, Nona, the companys manufacturing plant was later moved from Chicago proper to the outer suburbs. As the Slingerland company, best known as a manufacturer, also made guitars. The Songster electric guitar, featured in a 1939 company catalog, the guitars pickup includes individual string magnets as well as a large horseshoe magnet. Slingerland ceased making electric instruments in 1940 in order to focus on producing percussion instruments. The company remained in the Slingerland family until 1970, after introducing the Magnum series in the late 1970s, Slingerland lost its footing, and the company folded. In the 1970s and 1980s, Slingerland changed ownership multiple times until it was acquired from Gretsch by the Gibson musical instruments company in 1994, in 1998, Slingerland released a model based on its Gene Krupa signature drum kit. Slingerlands most famous line is the Radio King series of drums. These drums were introduced in 1936-37, and remained Slingerlands flagship snare drums and drum sets until 1957, between 1960 and 1962, Radio Kings were reintroduced and remain the premier product for the Slingerland Drum Company. Older Radio Kings are obsessively collected by vintage drum enthusiasts, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich were both Radio King endorsers. Single-ply wood drums are known for their resonance and bright tone, Radio King bass drums and tom-toms were made from mahogany, with maple reinforcement hoops. These drums are known for their sound, very warm
Slingerland
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A Slingerland drum kit.
Slingerland
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Slingerland Drum Company
Slingerland
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Louie Bellson in 1980.
12.
Zildjian
–
The Avedis Zildjian Company, simply known as Zildjian /ˈzɪldʒiən/, is an American cymbal manufacturer based in Norwell, Massachusetts. The company was founded in Constantinople by Armenian Avedis Zildjian in the 17th century, being nearly 400 years old, Zildjian is one of the oldest companies in the world. Zildjian also sells drum-related accessories, such as sticks and cymbal carriers. It is the largest cymbal manufacturer in the world, on December 20,2010, it was announced that Avedis Zildjian Company had merged with Vic Firth, Inc. According to the announcement, both companies will continue to run autonomously, Avedis was given the name of Zildjian by the Sultan Osman II and began an industry in 1623, the details of whose main product remained secret for generations. It became family tradition that only the heirs would know the manufacturing process. The Zildjian Company moved from manufacturing noisemakers that frightened the enemies of the Ottoman Empire to manufacturing its cymbals as instruments in the 19th century. Avedis made many innovations in cymbals that are still today, he was the first to develop drum-set cymbals and gave cymbals names such as ride, crash, splash. Avedis IIIs son Armand Zildjian, also known as the Father of Artist Relations, in 1968, the K. Zildjian Co. and all European trademarks were bought back on behalf of the Avedis Zildjian Co. Also in 1968, Avedis split production into two operations, opening the Azco factory in Meductic, New Brunswick, Canada. From 1968 to 1970, the Azco factory produced Zilco cymbals, there were two types of Zilco, one was a thin rolling produced without any hammering, which cut costs. At about this time in the Azco factory, the process for pressing cymbals into shape came about. Before this it was done by bumping with the Quincy drop hammer, in 1970, Zildjian needed all their production capabilities at Azco for their regular Zildjian line, so the factory in Quincy would send up castings to be finished into cymbals at Azco. In 1975, Zildjian began making K. Zildjian cymbals at the Azco plant, within four years, all K Cymbals were being made in the Norwell USA plant, because the Ks demanded far more oversight. Armand worked with friends, the great Elvin Jones and Tony Williams to relaunch the K Series, in early 1977, Armand Zildjian was appointed President of the Avedis Zildjian Company by his father. Soon after, Robert Zildjian split from the company amidst conflict with his brother, shortly thereafter, in 1981, Robert started making Sabian cymbals in the Meductic Azco factory. Other than cymbals, the Avedis Zildjian Company produces products such as drum sticks, the Artist Series drum sticks allow these endorsers to personalize their drum sticks, and these sticks are sold to the public. Zildjians sheet bronze cymbals are made out of identical bronze discs, which are shaped, hammered and these cymbals have a higher pitch than their cast bronze counterparts and produce a more consistent sound
Zildjian
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Avedis Zildjian III in front of Zildjian Quincy Factory
Zildjian
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Avedis Zildjian Company
Zildjian
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Gravestone of Puzant and Arpine Zildjians, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Watertown, MA
Zildjian
–
Armand Zildjian "Beautiful Baby" Ride Cymbal
13.
Poland
–
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
Poland
–
Reconstruction of a
Bronze Age,
Lusatian culture settlement in
Biskupin, c. 700 BC
Poland
–
Flag
Poland
–
Earliest known contemporary depiction of a Polish ruler; King
Mieszko II Lambert of Poland being presented with a
Liturgical book by
Matilda of Swabia, 1025–1031
Poland
–
Drawing of the
Battle of Grunwald, which was fought against the
German Order of Teutonic Knights, 15 July 1410
14.
Shamokin, Pennsylvania
–
Shamokin is a city in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania, surrounded by Coal Township at the western edge of the Anthracite Coal Region. It was named after a Saponi village, Schahamokink, at the 2010 census the population was 7,374 residents. The city of Shamokin is bordered by Coal Township, Pennsylvania, the first human settlement of Shamokin was probably Shawnee migrants. A large population of Delaware Indians was also resettled there in the early 18th century after they lost rights to their land in the Walking Purchase. From 1727 to 1756, Sunbury was one of the largest and most influential Indian settlements in Pennsylvania, at that time, it was known as Shamokin, not to be confused with the present-day city of Shamokin, Pennsylvania, which is located to the east. In 1745, Presbyterian missionary David Brainerd described the city as being located on both the east and west sides of the river, and on an island, as well. Brainerd reported that the city housed 300 Indians, half of which were Delawares, in 1754, much of the land west of the Susquehanna was transferred from the Six Nations to Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress. However, Shamokin was not sold and was reserved by the Six Nations, the French and Indian War brought fighting to much of the region. The Delaware Indian residents of Shamokin remained neutral for much of the part of the war, in part because a drought. However, the Delaware Indians at Shamokin joined the war against Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania Fort Augusta was built in 1756 at Shamokin. Read more about history of Sunbury in Shamokin. On March 21,1772, Northumberland County was incorporated and subdivided, the settlement of Shamokin was renamed Sunbury that same year, The city of present-day Shamokin was founded by as a village by colonists in 1773, but did not develop much until the 19th century. The discovery of coal resources in the region, known as hard coal. Railroad companies, such as Reading Railroad, bought interests in coal and became major employers of the area, building railroads to coal to market. Workers gradually organized into unions to develop means of bargaining with these powerful companies, during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, workers in Shamokin marched and demonstrated during the summer period of labor unrest. Shamokin was incorporated as a borough on November 9,1864, in addition to anthracite coal-mining, it became an industrial center in the 19th century, with silk and knitting mills, stocking and shirt factories, wagon shops, ironworks, and brickyards. The Eagle Silk Mill became the largest textile manufacturing building under one roof in the United States, Thomas Edison, briefly a resident of Sunbury, established the Edison Illuminating Company of Shamokin in the fall of 1882. When the Shamokin station started on September 22,1883, St. Edwards Catholic Church became the first church in the world to be lit by electricity, mayor William Douty commissioned a citizen militia to help during the unrest
Shamokin, Pennsylvania
–
Streets in Shamokin, Pennsylvania
Shamokin, Pennsylvania
–
Keystone Marker
Shamokin, Pennsylvania
–
A coal pile near Shamokin, Pennsylvania from Shamokin
15.
Poles
–
The Poles are a nation and West Slavic ethnic group native to Poland who share a common ancestry, culture, history and are native speakers of the Polish language. The population of Poles in Poland is estimated at 37,394,000 out of a population of 38,538,000. Polands population inhabits several historic regions, including Greater Poland, Lesser Poland, Mazovia, Silesia, Pomerania, Kuyavia, Warmia, Masuria, a wide-ranging Polish diaspora exists throughout Europe, the Americas and in Australasia. Today the largest urban concentration of Poles is the Katowice urban agglomeration of 2.7 million inhabitants, Poland was also for centuries a refuge for many Jews from all over Europe, a large number emigrated in the twentieth century to Israel. Several prominent Israeli statesmen were born in Poland, including Israels founder David Ben-Gurion, former President of Israel Shimon Peres, the Slavic people have been in the territory of modern Poland for over 1500 years. In the 9th and 10th centuries the tribes gave rise to developed regions along the upper Vistula, the last tribal undertaking resulted in the 10th century in a lasting political structure and state, Poland, one of the West Slavic nations. After 1945 the so-called autochthonous or aboriginal school of Polish prehistory received official backing in Poland, Polish people are the sixth largest national group in the European Union. Estimates vary depending on source, though available data suggest a number of around 60 million people worldwide. There are almost 38 million Poles in Poland alone, there are also Polish minorities in the surrounding countries including Germany, and indigenous minorities in the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Belarus. There are some smaller indigenous minorities in nearby countries such as Moldova, the term Polonia is usually used in Poland to refer to people of Polish origin who live outside Polish borders, officially estimated at around 10 to 20 million. There is a notable Polish diaspora in the United States, Brazil, France has a historic relationship with Poland and has a relatively large Polish-descendant population. Poles have lived in France since the 18th century, in the early 20th century, over a million Polish people settled in France, mostly during world wars, among them Polish émigrés fleeing either Nazi occupation or later Soviet rule. In the United States, a significant number of Polish immigrants settled in Chicago, Ohio, Detroit, New York City, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, the highest concentration of Polish Americans in a single New England municipality is in New Britain, Connecticut. The majority of Polish Canadians have arrived in Canada since World War II, the number of Polish immigrants increased between 1945 and 1970, and again after the end of Communism in Poland in 1989. In Brazil the majority of Polish immigrants settled in Paraná State, smaller, but significant numbers settled in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Espírito Santo and São Paulo. The city of Curitiba has the second largest Polish diaspora in the world and Polish music, dishes and it is estimated that over half a million Polish people have come to work in the United Kingdom from Poland. Since 2011, Poles have been able to work throughout the EU and not just in the United Kingdom, Ireland. The Polish community in Norway has increased substantially and has grown to a number of 120,000
Poles
–
Stańczyk at a Ball at Queen Bona's Court, by
Matejko, 1862
Poles
–
Nicolaus Copernicus
Poles
–
Marie Skłodowska Curie
Poles
–
Rudolf Stefan Weigl
16.
Wisconsin
–
Wisconsin is a U. S. state located in the north-central United States, in the Midwest and Great Lakes regions. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake Michigan to the east, Michigan to the northeast, Wisconsin is the 23rd largest state by total area and the 20th most populous. The state capital is Madison, and its largest city is Milwaukee, the state is divided into 72 counties. Wisconsin is second to Michigan in the length of its Great Lakes coastline, Wisconsin is known as Americas Dairyland because it is one of the nations leading dairy producers, particularly famous for its cheese. Manufacturing, especially paper products, information technology, and tourism are major contributors to the states economy. The word Wisconsin originates from the given to the Wisconsin River by one of the Algonquian-speaking Native American groups living in the region at the time of European contact. French explorer Jacques Marquette was the first European to reach the Wisconsin River, arriving in 1673, subsequent French writers changed the spelling from Meskousing to Ouisconsin, and over time this became the name for both the Wisconsin River and the surrounding lands. English speakers anglicized the spelling from Ouisconsin to Wisconsin when they began to arrive in numbers during the early 19th century. The legislature of Wisconsin Territory made the current spelling official in 1845, the Algonquin word for Wisconsin and its original meaning have both grown obscure. Interpretations vary, but most implicate the river and the red sandstone that lines its banks, other theories include claims that the name originated from one of a variety of Ojibwa words meaning red stone place, where the waters gather, or great rock. Wisconsin has been home to a variety of cultures over the past 12,000 years. The first people arrived around 10,000 BCE during the Wisconsin Glaciation and these early inhabitants, called Paleo-Indians, hunted now-extinct ice age animals such as the Boaz mastodon, a prehistoric mastodon skeleton unearthed along with spear points in southwest Wisconsin. After the ice age ended around 8000 BCE, people in the subsequent Archaic period lived by hunting, fishing, agricultural societies emerged gradually over the Woodland period between 1000 BCE to 1000 CE. Toward the end of period, Wisconsin was the heartland of the Effigy Mound culture. Later, between 1000 and 1500 CE, the Mississippian and Oneota cultures built substantial settlements including the village at Aztalan in southeast Wisconsin. The Oneota may be the ancestors of the modern Ioway and Ho-Chunk tribes who shared the Wisconsin region with the Menominee at the time of European contact, the first European to visit what became Wisconsin was probably the French explorer Jean Nicolet. He canoed west from Georgian Bay through the Great Lakes in 1634, pierre Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers visited Green Bay again in 1654–1666 and Chequamegon Bay in 1659–1660, where they traded for fur with local Native Americans. In 1673, Jacques Marquette and Louis Jolliet became the first to record a journey on the Fox-Wisconsin Waterway all the way to the Mississippi River near Prairie du Chien
Wisconsin
–
Wisconsin in 1718,
Guillaume de L'Isle map, approximate state area highlighted.
Wisconsin
–
Flag
Wisconsin
–
Jean Nicolet, depicted in a 1910 painting by Frank Rohrbeck, was probably the first European to explore Wisconsin. The mural is located in the
Brown County Courthouse in Green Bay.
Wisconsin
–
The
Little White Schoolhouse in
Ripon, Wisconsin, held the nation's first meeting of the
Republican Party
17.
Music Corporation of America
–
MCA, Inc. was an American media company. Initially starting in the business, the company next became a dominant force in the film business. MCA, Inc. is the predecessor of NBCUniversal, which since March 2013 is a wholly owned subsidiary of Comcast. MCA was formed in 1924 by Jules Stein and William R. Goodheart, Jr. as Music Corporation of America, MCA helped pioneer modern practices of touring bands and name acts. Early on, MCA booked such prominent artists as King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton for clubs and speakeasies run by legendary notorious Chicago mobsters such as Al Capone and others. Lew Wasserman joined MCA in 1936 at the age of 23 and rose through the ranks of MCA for more than four decades, Wasserman helped create MCAs radio show, Kay Kyser and His Kollege of Musical Knowledge, which debuted on NBC Radio that same year. Following that success, Stein installed Wasserman in New York City in 1937, the company was guided by a codification of Steins pet policies known as The Rules of The Road. The Rules were passed down from the Prohibition era, Chicago–area MCA to the 1940s Los Angeles–area firm, which focused on representing movie actors. The Rules were next passed to the 1950s generation of MCA talent agents, including Jerry Perenchio, Perenchio is well known for his version of the Rules, which vary from year to year and have some internal contradictions. Its aggressive acquisition of its clientele in all entertainment sectors earned MCA the nickname of The Octopus and this behavior led U. S. Department of Justice agents to investigate not only whether MCA was a monopoly breaking anti-trust laws, but also its suspected connections to underworld criminal activities. This investigation continued for the few decades. In 1948, Jules Stein moved up as MCAs first chairman and that year, Stein and Wasserman decided to get into a new medium that would, decades later, change the entertainment landscape forever, television. Although many motion picture studios would not touch this new medium, thinking it was just a fad and would fade away, MCA decided to embrace it. First, however, the company needed to get a waiver from the Screen Actors Guild, thanks to the newly elected SAG president, Ronald Reagan, MCA was granted a waiver to start producing TV shows. After the waiver was granted, the company formed MCA Television Limited for syndication, prior to 1958, all Revues shows were filmed at the old Republic Pictures studio lot in Studio City, California. In February 1958, MCA acquired Paramount Pictures pre-1950 sound feature film library through a newly created MCA subsidiary, EMKA, Ltd. Also in 1958, MCA bought the 423-acre Universal Studios lot from Universal Pictures for $11 million and renamed it, as well as the television unit. Stein, who by this time was the owner of MCA, decided to take the company public by giving 51% of his ownership of MCA to his employees
Music Corporation of America
–
MCA Inc.
18.
Red McKenzie
–
Red McKenzie was an American jazz musician. He was the best-known, and one of the only, comb players in jazz history, McKenzie played the comb by placing paper over the tines and blowing on it, which produced a sound similar to a kazoo. McKenzie also played a kazoo, and sang. He was a co-founder, with Jack Bland, of the Mound City Blue Blowers, at the same time, McKenzie also recorded solo as Red McKenzie & the Candy Kids. In 1928, he fronted a group called McKenzie and Condons Chicagoans for a few sides on Okeh Records and he returned to the Mound City name again in 1929,1931, and 1935-36. He sang again with the Spirits of Rhythm in 1934 and the Farley-Riley group in 1935 and he made two swinging vocal records for Variety in 1937. Between 1939 and 1943 McKenzie went into retirement, moving back to his birthplace of St. Louis and working in a brewery, known as heavy drinker, he died of liver cirrhosis in 1948. Scott Yanow, Red McKenzie at Allmusic Red McKenzie at Redhotjazz. com Roger D. Kinkle, The Complete Encyclopedia of Popular Music and Jazz, 1900-1950
Red McKenzie
–
Red McKenzie, ca. October 1946
19.
Bix Beiderbecke
–
Leon Bismark Bix Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer. With Louis Armstrong and Muggsy Spanier, Beiderbecke was one of the most influential jazz soloists of the 1920s and his turns on Singin the Blues and Im Coming, Virginia, in particular, demonstrated an unusual purity of tone and a gift for improvisation. With these two recordings, especially, he helped to invent the jazz style and hinted at what, in the 1950s. In a Mist, one of a handful of his piano compositions, a native of Davenport, Iowa, Beiderbecke taught himself to play cornet largely by ear, leading him to adopt a non-standard fingering some critics have connected to his original sound. Beiderbecke and Trumbauer joined Goldkette in 1926, the band toured widely and famously played a set opposite Fletcher Henderson at the Roseland Ballroom in New York City in October 1926. He made his greatest recordings in 1927, in 1928, Trumbauer and Beiderbecke left Detroit to join the best-known dance orchestra in the country, the New-York-based Paul Whiteman Orchestra. Beiderbeckes most influential recordings date from his time with Goldkette and Whiteman, a few stints in rehabilitation centers, as well as the support of Whiteman and the Beiderbecke family in Davenport, did not check Beiderbeckes decline in health. He left the Whiteman band in 1930 and the following summer died in his Queens apartment at the age of 28 and his death, in turn, gave rise to one of the original legends of jazz. In magazine articles, musicians memoirs, novels, and Hollywood films, Beiderbecke has been reincarnated as a Romantic hero, the Young Man with a Horn. His life has been portrayed as a battle against such common obstacles to art as family and commerce, the musician-critic Benny Green sarcastically called Beiderbecke jazzs Number One Saint, while Ralph Berton compared him to Jesus. Beiderbecke remains the subject of controversy regarding his true name, the cause of his death. Beiderbecke was born on March 10,1903, in Davenport, Iowa, there is disagreement over whether Beiderbecke was christened Leon Bismark or Leon Bix. His father was nicknamed Bix, as, for a time, was his older brother, Burnie Beiderbecke claimed that the boy was named Leon Bix and subsequent biographers have reproduced birth certificates to that effect. However, more recent research—which takes into account church and school records in addition to the will of a relative—has suggested that he was originally named Leon Bismark, regardless, his parents called him Bix, which seems to have been his preference. In a letter to his mother when he was nine years old, Beiderbecke signed off, Beiderbeckes father, the son of German immigrants, was a well-to-do coal and lumber merchant, named after the Iron Chancellor of his native Germany. Beiderbeckes mother was the daughter of a Mississippi riverboat captain and she played the organ at Davenports First Presbyterian Church, and encouraged young Bixs interest in the piano. Beiderbecke was the youngest of three children and his brother, Burnie, was born in 1895, and his sister, Mary Louise, in 1898. He began playing piano at age two or three and his sister recalls that he stood on the floor and played it with his hands over his head
Bix Beiderbecke
–
Beiderbecke in 1924
Bix Beiderbecke
–
Beiderbecke, age 8, poses with a neighbor, Nora Lasher, in 1911.
Bix Beiderbecke
–
The Wolverines with Beiderbecke at Doyle's Academy of Music in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1924
Bix Beiderbecke
–
Bix Beiderbecke's grave (left) is positioned near the Beiderbecke family marker (right) at Oakdale Cemetery in
Davenport, Iowa. Beiderbecke, who died on August 6, 1931, in New York, was buried in his hometown five days later, with only immediate family members present.
20.
Zutty Singleton
–
Arthur James Zutty Singleton was an American jazz drummer. Singleton was born in Bunkie, Louisiana, and raised in New Orleans and he was working professionally with Steve Lewis by 1915. He served with the United States Navy in World War I, after returning to New Orleans he worked with such bands as those of Papa Celestin, Big Eye Louis Nelson, John Robichaux, and Fate Marable. He left for St. Louis, Missouri, to play in Charlie Creaths band, in Chicago, Singleton played with Doc Cook, Dave Peyton, Jimmie Noone, and theater bands, then joined Louis Armstrongs band with Earl Hines. In 1928 and 1929, he performed on recordings with Louis Armstrong. In 1929 he moved with Armstrong to New York City, in addition to Armstrong, in New York Singleton played with Bubber Miley, Tommy Ladnier, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton and Otto Hardwick. He also played in the band backing Bill Robinson, in 1934, Singleton returned to Chicago. He returned to New York in 1937, working with Mezz Mezzrow, in 1943, he moved to Los Angeles, where he led his own band, played for motion pictures, and was featured on Orson Welless CBS radio series, The Orson Welles Almanac. Later he worked with jazz musicians as Slim Gaillard, Wingy Manone, Eddie Condon, Nappy Lamare, Art Hodes, Oran Hot Lips Page. Singleton appeared in the films, Stormy Weather New Orleans Young Man with a Horn Singleton retired after suffering a stroke in 1970. He died in New York City in 1975, aged 77 and his wife Margie died in 1982, aged 82
Zutty Singleton
–
Zutty Singleton (with
Adele Girard, harp), 1939 Photo:
William P. Gottlieb.
21.
Baby Dodds
–
Warren Baby Dodds was a jazz drummer born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is regarded as one of the best jazz drummers of the pre-big band era and he varied his drum patterns with accents and flourishes, and he generally kept the beat with the bass drum while playing buzz rolls on the snare. Some of his influences included Louis Cottrell, Sr. Harry Zeno, Henry Martin. Dodds was among the first drummers to be recorded who improvised while performing, Baby Dodds was the younger brother of clarinetist Johnny Dodds. He was born into a musical family. His father and uncle played violin and his sister played harmonica, in addition, his father was religious and the family regularly sang hymns together. Then I took some rounds out of my mothers chairs and made out of them. At age 16, Dodds saved up money to buy his own drum set. Although Dodds had several paid teachers during his years as a drummer. He started playing in parades around New Orleans with Bunk Johnson and his band and then got a job playing in Willie Hightowers band. The band played in venues around New Orleans, and Dodds recalls hearing many musicians along the way, including Buddy Bolden, John Robichaux. He played with different outfits including those of Frankie Duson and Sonny Celestin. Dodds describes this experience in his autobiography, The jazz played after New Orleans funerals didnt show any lack of respect for the person being buried and it rather showed their people that we wanted them to be happy. Dodds gained reputation as a top young drummer in New Orleans, in 1918, Dodds left Sonny Celestins outfit to play in Fate Marables riverboat band. A young Louis Armstrong also joined the band, and the two of them were on the boats for three years, the band played on four different boats, and usually left New Orleans in May and travel to St. Louis, though they also sometimes traveled further north. They played jazz, popular, and classical music while on the boats, Dodds and Armstrong left Fate Marables band in 1921 due to a disagreement about musical style, and Dodds soon joined King Olivers Creole Jazz Band. They moved to California in 1921 to work with Oliver there, in 1922, the band, excepting Garland, Palao, and Jones, followed Oliver to Chicago, which would be his base of operations for several years. They began playing at the Lincoln Gardens, and Louis Armstrong also joined this outfit, Dodds describes playing with this band as a beautiful experience
Baby Dodds
–
Baby Dodds, Ole South, New York, ca. December 1946, Image:
William P. Gottlieb
Baby Dodds
–
Drum set used by Baby Dodds,
Louisiana State Museum, Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
22.
Chick Webb
–
William Henry Webb, often known as Chick Webb was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader. Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland, to William H. from childhood, he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, leaving him with short stature and a badly deformed spine, which caused him to appear hunchbacked. The idea of playing an instrument was suggested by his doctor to loosen up his bones and he supported himself as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums, and first played professionally at age 11. Webb had three sisters, Bessie, Mabel and Ethel, Mabel married Wilbur Porter around 1928. At the age of 17 he moved to New York City, jazz drummer Tommy Benford said he gave Webb drum lessons when he first reached New York. He alternated between band tours and residencies at New York City clubs through the late 1920s, in 1931, his band became the house band at the Savoy Ballroom. He became one of the bandleaders and drummers of the new swing style. Drummer Buddy Rich cited Webbs powerful technique and virtuoso performances as heavily influential on his own drumming, Webb was unable to read music, and instead memorized the arrangements played by the band and conducted from a platform in the center. He used custom-made pedals, goose-neck cymbal holders, a 28-inch bass drum, although his band was not as influential and revered in the long term, it was feared in the battle of the bands. The Savoy often featured Battle of the Bands where Webbs band would compete with top bands from opposing bandstands. By the end of the battles the dancers seemed always to have voted Chicks band as the best. As a result, Webb was deemed the most worthy recipient to be crowned the first King of Swing, notably, Webb lost to Duke Ellington in 1937. Webb married Martha Loretta Ferguson, and in 1935 he began featuring a teenaged Ella Fitzgerald as vocalist, together Chick and Ella would electrify the Swing Era of jazz with hits such as A-Tisket a Tasket, which was composed by Van Alexander at Fitzgeralds request. Despite rumors to the contrary, Ella was not adopted by Webb, nor did she live with him and his wife, Sallye, according to Stuart Nicholson in his Fitzgerald biography. In November 1938, Webbs health began to decline, for a time, however, he continued to play and he disregarded his own discomfort and fatigue, which often found him passing out from physical exhaustion after finishing sets. Finally, he had an operation at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in 1939. William Henry Chick Webb died from tuberculosis on June 16,1939. Reportedly his last words were, Im sorry, Ive got to go and he was roughly 34 years old
Chick Webb
–
Chick Webb
23.
Frederick Delius
–
Frederick Theodore Albert Delius, CH was an English composer. Born in the north of England to a mercantile family. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation, there he soon neglected his managerial duties, and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his stay in Florida. Deliuss first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s, in Deliuss native Britain, it was 1907 before his music made regular appearances in concert programmes, after Thomas Beecham took it up. After 1918 Delius began to suffer the effects of syphilis, contracted during his years in Paris. He became paralysed and blind, but completed some late compositions between 1928 and 1932 with the aid of an amanuensis, Eric Fenby. The lyricism in Deliuss early compositions reflected the music he had heard in America, as his skills matured, he developed a style uniquely his own, characterised by his individual orchestration and his uses of chromatic harmony. Deliuss music has been intermittently popular, and often subject to critical attacks. Delius was born in Bradford in Yorkshire and he was baptised as Fritz Theodore Albert Delius, and used the forename Fritz until he was about 40. He was the second of four born to Julius Delius and his wife Elise Pauline. Deliuss parents were born in Bielefeld, Westphalia, of Dutch origin, Juliuss father, Ernst Friedrich Delius, had served under Blücher in the Napoleonic Wars. Julius moved to England to further his career as a wool merchant, the Delius household was musical, famous musicians such as Joseph Joachim and Carlo Alfredo Piatti were guests, and played for the family. Despite his German parentage, the young Fritz was drawn to the music of Chopin and Grieg rather than the Austro-German music of Mozart and Beethoven, a preference that endured all his life. The young Delius was first taught the violin by a Mr. Bauerkeller of the Hallé Orchestra, from 1874 to 1878, Delius was educated at Bradford Grammar School, where the singer John Coates was his slightly older contemporary. He then attended the International College at Isleworth between 1878 and 1880, as a pupil he was neither especially quick nor diligent, but the college was conveniently close to London for Delius to attend concerts and opera. Julius Delius assumed that his son would play a part in the wool business. Deliuss first job was as the representative in Stroud in Gloucestershire
Frederick Delius
–
Delius, aged 45, photographed in 1907
Frederick Delius
–
The Victorian
Town Hall in Bradford, Yorkshire, the city where Delius was born and grew up
Frederick Delius
–
Edvard Grieg, who was a strong influence on Delius's earlier music
Frederick Delius
–
Delius in 1897 by
Christian Krohg
24.
Tom-tom drum
–
A tom-tom drum is a cylindrical drum with no snares. The name came originally from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala, the tom-tom drum was added to the drum kit in the early part of the 20th century. Most toms range in size between 6 and 20 inches in diameter, though floor toms can go as large as 24 inches, the first drum kit tom-toms had no rims, the heads were tacked to the shell. As major drum manufacturers began to offer tunable tom-toms with hoops and tuning lugs, later a 16 in drum mounted on three legs was added. Finally, a drum was mounted on the right of the bass drum. Together with a 14 in snare drum and a drum of varying size. Later, the mounted tom-toms, known as hanging toms or rack toms, were deepened by one inch each, extra-deep hanging toms, known as cannon depth, never achieved popularity. A wide variety of configurations are available and in use at all levels from advanced student kits upwards. Most toms range in size between 6 and 20 inches in diameter, though floor toms can go as large as 24 inches. Note that these terms do not imply drum depths, so for example and these terms fusion and rock are really marketing terms invented by drum manufacturing companies, and there is not an absolute definition for them, more a case of an accepted norm. In the 50s and early 60s, it was common to have only a single hanging tom, Standard tom-tom depths The standard depth rack toms popular in the 1950-1980s were 12×8 and 13×9. This classic configuration is popular among many players. FAST sizes are 10×8, 12×9, 13×10, etc, DW use the marketing term FAST for these sizes, but they are not unique to DW, and are widely popular sizes with all drum manufacturers. New Standard - 10×9, 12×10, 13×11, etc. i. e, the New standard sizes are 2 deeper than what was considered standard in the 50s. However, despite the term, these are becoming standard in favour of FAST sizes. Power toms are one inch deeper than standard, so standard sizes are 10×9 or 10×10, 12×11 and this depth overtook the classic setup in popularity during the 1980s. Square - 10×10, 12×12, 13×13, etc, popular in the 80s and 90s but no longer popular. Hyperdrive - Shallow depths made popular initially by Tama, 10×6.5, 12×7, 13×7.5, single-headed tom-toms have also been used in drumkits, though their use has fallen off in popularity since the 1970s
Tom-tom drum
Tom-tom drum
–
12 in × 8 in (30 cm × 20 cm) rack tom mounted to a stand
Tom-tom drum
–
Tom-toms mounted on a
bass drum
Tom-tom drum
–
In the 1970s,
Alex Van Halen simply removed the bottom heads from his hanging toms to create concert toms
25.
Carnegie Hall
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Designed by architect William Burnet Tuthill and built by philanthropist Andrew Carnegie in 1891, it is one of the most prestigious venues in the world for both classical music and popular music. Carnegie Hall has its own programming, development, and marketing departments. It is also rented out to performing groups, the hall has not had a resident company since 1962, when the New York Philharmonic moved to Lincoln Centers Philharmonic Hall. Carnegie Hall has 3,671 seats, divided among its three auditoriums, Carnegie Hall presented about 200 concerts in the 2008–2009 season, up 3 percent from the previous year. Its stages were rented for an additional 600 events in the 2008–2009 season, Carnegie Hall contains three distinct, separate performance spaces. The Isaac Stern Auditorium seats 2,804 on five levels and was named after violinist Isaac Stern in 1997 to recognize his efforts to save the hall from demolition in the 1960s, the hall is enormously high, and visitors to the top balcony must climb 137 steps. All but the top level can be reached by elevator, the main hall was home to the performances of the New York Philharmonic from 1892 until 1962. Known as the most prestigious concert stage in the U. S. almost all of the classical music. After years of wear and tear, the hall was extensively renovated in 1986. The Ronald O. Perelman Stage is 42 feet deep, the First Tier and Second Tier consist of sixty-five boxes, the First Tier has 264 seats at eight seats per box and the Second Tier seats 238, with boxes ranging from six to eight seats each. Second from the top is the Dress Circle, seating 444 in six rows, at the top, the balcony seats 837. Although seats with obstructed views exist throughout the auditorium, only the Dress Circle level has structural columns, Zankel Hall, which seats 599, is named after Judy and Arthur Zankel. Originally called simply Recital Hall, this was the first auditorium to open to the public in April 1891, following renovations made in 1896, it was renamed Carnegie Lyceum. The completely reconstructed Zankel Hall is flexible in design and can be reconfigured in several different arrangements to suit the needs of the performers, the 599 seats in Zankel Hall are arranged in two levels. The Parterre level seats a total of 463 and the Mezzanine level seats 136, each level has a number of seats which are situated along the side walls, perpendicular to the stage. These seats are designated as boxes, there are 54 seats in six boxes on the Parterre level and 48 seats in four boxes on the Mezzanine level, the boxes on the Parterre level are raised above the level of the stage. Zankel Hall is accessible and its stage is 44 feet wide and 25 feet deep — the stage occupies approximately one fifth of the performance space, the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall seats 268 and is named after Sanford I. Weill, a chairman of the board, and his wife Joan
Carnegie Hall
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Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
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Isaac Stern Auditorium
Carnegie Hall
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A closeup view of Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
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Andrew Carnegie, 1913
26.
Ball of Fire
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Ball of Fire is a 1941 American screwball comedy film directed by Howard Hawks and starring Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck. This Samuel Goldwyn Productions film concerns a group of professors laboring to write an encyclopedia, the supporting cast includes Oskar Homolka, S. Z. Sakall, Henry Travers, Richard Haydn, Dana Andrews, and Dan Duryea. In 1948, the plot was recycled for a film, A Song Is Born. The film is known as The Professor and the Burlesque Queen. In 2016, the film was deemed culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant by the United States Library of Congress, a group of bachelor professors have lived together for some years in a New York City residence, compiling an encyclopedia of all human knowledge. The youngest, Professor Bertram Potts, is a grammarian who is researching modern American slang, the professors are accustomed to working in relative seclusion at a leisurely pace with a prim housekeeper named Miss Bragg keeping watch over them. Their impatient financial backer Miss Totten suddenly demands that they finish their work soon, venturing out to do some independent research, Bertram becomes interested in the slang vocabulary of saucy nightclub performer Sugarpuss OShea. She is reluctant to assist him in his research until she needs a place to hide from the police, Sugarpuss takes refuge in the house where the professors live and work, despite Bertrams objections and their housekeepers threat to leave because of her. In the meantime, Lilac decides to marry her, but only because as his wife she would not be able to testify against him, the professors soon become enamored of her femininity, and she begins to grow fond of them. She teaches them to conga and demonstrates to Bertram the meaning of the phrase yum yum and she becomes attracted to Bertram, who reciprocates with a vengeance by proposing marriage to her. She avoids giving an answer to the proposal, and agrees to Lilacs plan to have the professors drive her to New Jersey to marry Lilac. Bertram, meanwhile, unaware of Sugarpuss love for him, prepares to resume his research, sadder but wiser, the professors eventually outwit Lilac and his henchmen and rescue Sugarpuss. She decides she is not good enough for Bertram, but his application of yum yum convinces her to change her mind. Martha Tilton provided Barbara Stanwycks singing voice for the song Drum Boogie, drummer and bandleader Gene Krupa performed the song onscreen with his band. In an unusual twist, he played it on a matchbox with matches for drumsticks. Krupa band member and historically significant trumpeter Roy Eldridge received a brief on-camera spot during Drum Boogie, at one point the professors also perform an a cappella version of the 1869 song Sweet Genevieve. The script was written by Charles Brackett, Thomas Monroe, and Billy Wilder from a story written by Wilder while he was still in Europe. The professors themselves were based on the dwarfs from Walt Disneys animated film Snow White, Hawks was happy to let Wilder study his directing on the set and Wilder thereafter directed his own films
Ball of Fire
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Theatrical release poster
Ball of Fire
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Barbara Stanwyck and Gary Cooper
27.
Barbara Stanwyck
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Barbara Stanwyck was an American actress, model and dancer. She was a film and television star, known during her 60-year career as a consummate and versatile professional with a strong, realistic screen presence, deMille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. After a short but notable career as an actress in the late 1920s, she made 85 films in 38 years in Hollywood. Orphaned at the age of four and partially raised in foster homes and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress four times, for Stella Dallas, Ball of Fire, Double Indemnity and Sorry, Wrong Number. For her television work she won three Emmy Awards, for The Barbara Stanwyck Show, The Big Valley and The Thorn Birds, the Thorn Birds also won her a Golden Globe. She received an Honorary Oscar at the 1982 Academy Award ceremony and she was also the recipient of honorary lifetime awards from the American Film Institute, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the Screen Actors Guild. Stanwyck received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16,1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the child of Byron E. and Catherine Ann Stevens. Her father was a native of Massachusetts and her mother was an immigrant from Nova Scotia, Ruby was of English and Scottish ancestry, by her father and mother, respectively. When Ruby was four, her mother died of complications from a miscarriage after a drunken stranger accidentally knocked her off a moving streetcar, two weeks after the funeral, Byron Stevens joined a work crew digging the Panama Canal and was never seen again. Ruby and her brother, Byron, were raised by their elder sister Mildred, when Mildred got a job as a showgirl, Ruby and Byron were placed in a series of foster homes, from which young Ruby often ran away. Ruby toured with Mildred during the summers of 1916 and 1917, watching the movies of Pearl White, whom Ruby idolized, also influenced her drive to be a performer. At the age of 14 she dropped out of school, to take a job wrapping packages at a department store in Brooklyn, Ruby never attended high school, although early biographical thumbnail sketches had her attending Brooklyns famous Erasmus Hall High School. Soon afterward, she took a job filing cards at the Brooklyn telephone office for a wage of $14 a week and she disliked both jobs, her real goal was to enter show business, even as her sister Mildred discouraged the idea. She then took a job cutting dress patterns for Vogue magazine and her next job was as a typist for the Jerome H. Remick Music Company, a job she reportedly enjoyed. However, her ambition was to work in show business. In 1923, a few months before her 16th birthday, Ruby auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a night club over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months later, she obtained a job as a dancer in the 1922 and 1923 seasons of the Ziegfeld Follies, I just wanted to survive and eat and have a nice coat, Stanwyck said
Barbara Stanwyck
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Stanwyck in studio portrait, c. 1930s
Barbara Stanwyck
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Barbara Stanwyck as a Ziegfeld girl (c. 1924)
Barbara Stanwyck
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In
The Gay Sisters (1942)
Barbara Stanwyck
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With
Ralph Meeker in
Jeopardy (1953)
28.
Roy Eldridge
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David Roy Eldridge, commonly known as Roy Eldridge, and nicknamed Little Jazz, was an American jazz trumpet player. Eldridge began playing the piano at the age of five, he claims to have been able to play coherent blues licks at even this young age. The young Eldridge looked up to his brother, Joe Eldridge, particularly because of Joes diverse musical talents on the violin, alto saxophone. Roy took up the drums at the age of six, taking lessons, Joe recognized his brothers natural talent on the bugle, which Roy played in a local church band, and tried to convince Roy to play the valved trumpet. When Roy began to play drums in his brothers band, Joe soon convinced him to pick up the trumpet, but Roy made little effort to gain proficiency on the instrument at first. From an early age, Roy lacked proficiency at sight-reading, a gap in his education that would affect him for much of his early career. Eldridge led and played in a number of bands during his early years and he absorbed the influence of saxophonists Benny Carter and Coleman Hawkins, setting himself the task of learning Hawkinss 1926 solo on The Stampede in developing an equivalent trumpet style. Eldridge left home after being expelled from school in ninth grade, joining a traveling show at the age of sixteen, the show soon folded, however. He was then picked up by the Greater Sheesley Carnival, Eldridge continued playing with similar traveling groups until returning home to Pittsburgh at the age of 17. At the age of 20, Eldridge led a band in Pittsburgh, billed as Roy Elliott and his Palais Royal Orchestra, many of the members of Webbs band, annoyed by the leaders lack of dedication, left to form a practically identical group with Eldridge as bandleader. The ensemble was short-lived, and Eldridge soon moved to Milwaukee, Eldridge moved to New York in November 1930, playing in various bands in the early 1930s, including a number of Harlem dance bands with Cecil Scott, Elmer Snowden, Charlie Johnson, and Teddy Hill. At this time, Eldridge was also making records and radio broadcasts under his own name and he laid down his first recorded solos with Teddy Hill in 1935, which gained almost immediate popularity. For a brief time, he led his own band at the reputed Famous Door nightclub. In October 1935, Eldridge joined Fletcher Hendersons Orchestra, playing lead trumpet, until he left the group in early September 1936, Eldridge was Hendersons featured soloist, his talent highlighted by such numbers as Christopher Columbus and Blue Lou. His rhythmic power to swing a band was a trademark of the jazz of the time. It has been said that from the mid-Thirties onwards, he had superseded Louis Armstrong as the exemplar of modern hot trumpet playing, in the fall of 1936, Eldridge moved to Chicago to form an octet with older brother Joe Eldridge playing saxophone and arranging. The ensemble boasted nightly broadcasts and made recordings that featured his extended solos, including After Youve Gone, Eldridge, fed up with the racism he had encountered in the music industry, quit playing in 1938 to study radio engineering. He was back to playing in 1939, when he formed a band that gained a residency at New Yorks Arcadia Ballroom
Roy Eldridge
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Eldridge in New York, 1946.
Roy Eldridge
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(From left)
Thelonious Monk,
Howard McGhee, Roy Eldridge,
Teddy Hill,
Minton's Playhouse, New York, c. September 1947. Photograph by
William P. Gottlieb.
29.
Count Basie
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William James Count Basie was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother taught him to play the piano and he started performing in his teens, dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and to improvise accompaniment for silent films at a local movie theater in his home town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16 years old, he played jazz piano at parties, resorts. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his career expanded, he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis. In 1929 he joined Bennie Motens band in Kansas City, in 1935, Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. William Basie was born to Harvey Lee and Lillian Basie in Red Bank and his father worked as a coachman and caretaker for a wealthy judge. After automobiles replaced horses, his became an groundskeeper and handyman for several wealthy families in the area. Both of his parents had some type of musical background and his father played the mellophone, and his mother played the piano, in fact, she gave Basie his first piano lessons. She took in laundry and baked cakes for sale for a living and she paid 25 cents a lesson for piano instruction for him. Not much of a student in school, Basie dreamed of a traveling life and he finished junior high school but spent much of his time at the Palace Theater in Red Bank, where doing occasional chores gained him free admission to performances. He quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies, though a natural at the piano, Basie preferred drums. Discouraged by the talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellingtons drummer in 1919. Greer and Basie played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career, by then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, including Harry Richardsons Kings of Syncopation. When not playing a gig, he hung out at the pool hall with other musicians. He got some jobs in Asbury Park at the Jersey Shore, around 1920, Basie went to Harlem, a hotbed of jazz, where he lived down the block from the Alhambra Theater. Early after his arrival, he bumped into Sonny Greer, who was by then the drummer for the Washingtonians, soon, Basie met many of the Harlem musicians who were making the scene, including Willie the Lion Smith and James P. Johnson. His touring took him to Kansas City, St. Louis, New Orleans, throughout his tours, Basie met many jazz musicians, including Louis Armstrong. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers and this provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career
Count Basie
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From the 1955 film Rhythm and Blues Revue
Count Basie
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Basie and band, with vocalist
Ethel Waters, from the film
Stage Door Canteen (1943)
Count Basie
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Count Basie (left) in concert (Cologne 1975)
Count Basie
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Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey
30.
Woody Herman
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Woodrow Charles Woody Herman was an American jazz clarinetist, alto saxophonist, singer, and big band leader. Leading various groups called The Herd, Herman was one of the most popular of the 1930s and 1940s bandleaders and his bands often played music that was experimental for its time. He was a halftime performer for Super Bowl VII. Herman was born Woodrow Charles Thomas Herman in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His parents were Otto and Myrtle Herman and his father had a deep love for show business and this influenced Woody Herman at an early age. As a child he worked as a singer and tap-dancer in Vaudeville, then started to play the clarinet, in 1931, he met Charlotte Neste, an aspiring actress, they married on September 27,1936. Woody Herman joined the Tom Gerun band and his first recorded vocals were Lonesome Me, Herman also performed with the Harry Sosnick orchestra, Gus Arnheim and Isham Jones. Isham Jones wrote many songs, including It Had to Be You. Jones wanted to live off the residuals of his songs, Woody Herman saw the chance to lead his former band, Woody Hermans first band became known for its orchestrations of the blues, and was sometimes billed as The Band That Plays The Blues. This band recorded for the Decca label, at first serving as a cover band, the first song recorded was Wintertime Dreams on November 6,1936. After two and a half years on the label, the band had its first hit, Woodchoppers Ball recorded in 1939, Woody Herman remembered that Woodchoppers Ball started out slowly at first. But Decca kept re-releasing it, and over a period of three or four years it became a hit, eventually it sold more than five million copies—the biggest hit I ever had. Other hits for the band include The Golden Wedding and Blue Prelude, musicians and arrangers that stand out include Cappy Lewis on trumpet and Dean Kincaide, a big band arranger. In jazz, swing was gradually being replaced by bebop, Dizzy Gillespie, a trumpeter and one of the originators of bop, wrote three arrangements for Woody Herman, Woodyn You, Swing Shift and Down Under. Woodyn You was not used at the time, down Under was recorded November 8,1943. The fact that Herman commissioned Gillespie to write arrangements for the band, in February 1945, the band started a contract with Columbia Records. Herman liked what drew many artists to Columbia, Liederkranz Hall, the first side Herman recorded was Laura, the theme song of the 1944 movie of the same name. Hermans version was so successful that it made Columbia hold from release the arrangement that Harry James had recorded days earlier, the Columbia contract coincided with a change in the bands repertoire. The 1944 group, which he called the First Herd, was famous for its progressive jazz, the First Herds music was heavily influenced by Duke Ellington and Count Basie
Woody Herman
