Stan Kenton
Stanley Newcomb Kenton was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer and band leader he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward looking. Kenton was a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University. Stan Kenton was born on December 1911, in Wichita, Kansas, his parents and Stella Kenton, had moved the family back to Colorado finally in 1924 to the Greater Los Angeles Area, settling in suburban Bell, California. Kenton attended Bell High School. Kenton started learning piano as a teen from a local organist; when he was around 15 and in high school and arranger Ralph Yaw introduced him to the music of Louis Armstong and Earl Hines. He graduated from high school in 1930. By the age of 16, Kenton was playing a regular solo piano gig at a local hamburger eatery for 50 cents a night plus tips, his first arrangement was written during this time for a local eight-piece band that played in nearby Long Beach.
In April 1936 Gus Arnheim was reorganizing his band into the style of Benny Goodman's groups and Kenton was to take the piano chair. This is where Kenton would make his first recordings when Arnheim made 14 sides for the Brunswick label in summer of 1937. Once he departed from Gus Arnheim's group, Kenton went back to study with private teachers on both the piano and in composition. In 1938 Kenton would join Vido Musso in a short-lived band but a educational experience for him. From the core of this group come the line up of the first Stan Kenton groups of the 1940s. Kenton would go on to working with the NBC House Band and in various Hollywood studios and clubs. Producer George Avakian took notice of Kenton during this time while he worked as the pianist and Assistant Musical Director at the Earl Carroll Theatre Restaurant in Hollywood. Kenton started to get the idea of running his own band from this experience. In June 1941, Kenton formed his first orchestra. Kenton worked in the early days with his own groups as much more of an arranger than a featured pianist.
Although there were no "name" musicians in his first band, Kenton spent the summer of 1941 playing before an audience at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa Beach, CA. Influenced by Benny Carter and Jimmie Lunceford, the Stan Kenton Orchestra struggled for a time after its initial success, its Decca recordings were not big sellers and a stint as Bob Hope's backup radio band during the 1943–44 season was an unhappy experience. Kenton's first appearance in New York was in February 1942 at the Roseland Ballroom, with the marquee featuring an endorsement by Fred Astaire. By late 1943, with a contract with the newly formed Capitol Records, a popular record in "Eager Beaver", growing recognition, the Stan Kenton Orchestra was catching on, its soloists during the war years included Art Pepper Stan Getz, altoist Boots Mussulli, singer Anita O'Day. By 1945, the band had evolved; the songwriter Joe Greene provided the lyrics for hit songs like "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine" and "Don't Let the Sun Catch You Cryin'".
Pete Rugolo became the chief arranger, Bob Cooper and Vido Musso offered different tenor styles, June Christy was Kenton's new singer. When composer/arranger Pete Rugolo joined the Stan Kenton Orchestra as staff arranger in late 1945 he brought with him his love of jazz and Bartók. Given free rein by Kenton, Rugolo experimented. Although Kenton himself was trying experimental scores prior to Rugolo's tenure, it was Rugolo who brought extra jazz and classical influences much needed to move the band forward artistically. During his first six months on the staff, Rugolo tried to copy Kenton's sound. By incorporating compositional techniques borrowed from the modern classical music he studied, Rugolo was a key part of one of Kenton's most fertile and creative periods. After a string of arrangements, Rugolo turned out three originals that Kenton featured on the band's first album in 1946:: "Artistry in Percussion", "Safranski" and "Artistry in Bolero". Added to this mix came "Machito", "Rhythm Incorporated", "Monotony" and "Interlude" in early 1947.
These compositions, along with June Christy's voice, came to define the Artistry in Rhythm band. Afro-Cuban writing was added to the Kenton book with compositions like Rugolo's "Machito." The Artistry in Rhythm ensemble was a formative band, with outstanding soloists. By early 1947, the Stan Kenton Orchestra had reached a high point of popular success, they played in the best ballrooms in America and numerous hit records. Dances at the many ballrooms were four hours a night and theater dates involved playing mini concerts between each showing of the movie; this was sometimes six a day, stretching from morning to late night. Most d
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, United States, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, developed from roots in blues and ragtime. Jazz is seen by many as "America's classical music". Since the 1920s Jazz Age, jazz has become recognized as a major form of musical expression, it emerged in the form of independent traditional and popular musical styles, all linked by the common bonds of African-American and European-American musical parentage with a performance orientation. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes and response vocals and improvisation. Jazz has roots in West African cultural and musical expression, in African-American music traditions including blues and ragtime, as well as European military band music. Intellectuals around the world have hailed jazz as "one of America's original art forms"; as jazz spread around the world, it drew on national and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass-band marches, French quadrilles, biguine and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation.
In the 1930s arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz, a hard-swinging, improvisational style and Gypsy jazz were the prominent styles. Bebop emerged in the 1940s, shifting jazz from danceable popular music toward a more challenging "musician's music", played at faster tempos and used more chord-based improvisation. Cool jazz developed near the end of the 1940s, introducing calmer, smoother sounds and long, linear melodic lines; the 1950s saw the emergence of free jazz, which explored playing without regular meter and formal structures, in the mid-1950s, hard bop emerged, which introduced influences from rhythm and blues and blues in the saxophone and piano playing. 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 music's rhythms, electric instruments, amplified stage sound. In the early 1980s, a commercial form of jazz fusion called smooth jazz became successful, garnering significant radio airplay.
Other styles and genres abound in the 2000s, such as Afro-Cuban jazz. The origin of the word "jazz" has resulted in considerable research, its history is well documented, it is believed to be related to "jasm", a slang term dating back to 1860 meaning "pep, energy". The earliest written record of the word is in a 1912 article in the Los Angeles Times in which a minor league baseball pitcher described a pitch which he called a "jazz ball" "because it wobbles and you can't do anything with it"; the use of the word in a musical context was documented as early as 1915 in the Chicago Daily Tribune. Its first documented use in a musical 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, they called it'J-A-Z-Z', it wasn't called that. It was spelled'J-A-S-S'; that was dirty, if you knew what it was, you wouldn't say it in front of ladies."
The American Dialect Society named it the Word of the Twentieth Century. Jazz is difficult to define because it encompasses a wide range of music spanning a period of over 100 years, from ragtime to the rock-infused fusion. Attempts have been made to define jazz from the perspective of other musical traditions, such as European music history or African music, but critic Joachim-Ernst Berendt argues that its terms of reference and its definition should be broader, defining jazz as a "form of art music which originated in the United States through the confrontation of the Negro with European music" and arguing that it differs from European music in that jazz has a "special relationship to time defined as'swing'". Jazz involves "a spontaneity and vitality of musical production in which improvisation plays a role" and contains a "sonority and manner of phrasing which mirror the individuality of the performing jazz musician". In the opinion of Robert Christgau, "most of us would say that inventing meaning while letting loose is the essence and promise of jazz".
A broader definition that encompasses different eras of jazz has been proposed by Travis Jackson: "it is music that includes qualities such as swing, group interaction, developing an'individual voice', being open to different musical possibilities". Krin Gibbard argued that "jazz is a construct" which designates "a number of musics with enough in common to be understood as part of a coherent tradition". In contrast to commentators who have argued for excluding types of jazz, musicians are sometimes reluctant to define the music they play. Duke Ellington, one of jazz's most famous figures, said, "It's all music." Although jazz is considered difficult to define, in part because it contains many subgenres, improvisation is one of its defining elements. The centrality of improvisation is attributed to the influence of earlier forms of music such as blues, a form of folk music which arose in part from the work songs and field hollers of African-American slaves on plantations; these work songs were structured around a repetitive call-and-response pattern, but early blues was improvisational.
Classical music performance is evaluated more by its fidelity to the musical score, with less attention given to interpretation and accompaniment. The classical performer's goal is to play the composition. In contrast, jazz is characterized by the product of i
The Jazz Compositions of Dee Barton
The Jazz Compositions of Dee Barton is an album by bandleader Stan Kenton recorded in 1967 by Capitol Records. The Allmusic review by Scott Yanow says " This LP consists of seven Dee Barton charts of his originals. Barton was the band's drummer and, along with tenor-saxophonist Kim Richmond, is about the graduate of this particular group to have a significant jazz career; the music is well-played but not overly memorable, sort of like this edition of the Stan Kenton Orchestra". The album has become the most important artistic achievement by the Kenton organization from that late 1960's era of otherwise desperate attempts at achieving commercial success; the album was different and was not cast in the typical Kenton style most of his fans were familiar with. When the album is heard with broader ears there are "intriguing colors and attractive themes interacting with typical Kentonian sounds and dissonance." Trombonist Jim Amlotte sums up this album well, "This is. He didn't want a copy-cat of. Stan didn't like to look back - he was always moving forward to the next thing."
All compositions by Dee Barton. "Man" - 4:27 "Lonely Boy" - 2:48 "The Singing Oyster" - 3:34 "Dilemma" - 5:54 "Three Thoughts" - 5:30 "A New Day" - 7:32 "Woman" - 6:16Recorded at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, CA on December 19, 1967 and December 20, 1967. Stan Kenton - piano, conductor Jay Daversa, Jim Kartchner, Carl Leach, John Madrid, Mike Price - trumpet Tom Senff, Dick Shearer, Tom Whittaker - trombone Jim Amlotte - bass trombone Graham Ellis - tuba Ray Reed - alto saxophone, flute Mike Altschul, Kim Richmond - tenor saxophone Mike Vaccaro - baritone saxophone Earle Dumler - baritone saxophone, bass saxophone Don Bagley - bass Dee Barton - drums, arranger
Finian's Rainbow (Stan Kenton album)
Finian's Rainbow is an album by bandleader Stan Kenton recorded in 1968 for Capitol Records. The Allmusic review by Lindsay Planer says "Stan Kenton lends his stylistic touch to an assortment of Broadway and silver screen selections on the appropriately-titled Finian's Rainbow, his proficiency as a jazz arranger and consummate musician provide unique interpretations on ten familiar melodies -- five taken from the score of Finian's Rainbow, five from films". All compositions by Yip Harburg except where noted. "Old Devil Moon" - 2:46 "If This Isn't Love" - 2:25 "When I'm Not Near The Girl I Love" - 2:21 "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" - 2:28 "That Great Come-and-Get-It Day" - 3:00 "Lullaby from Rosemary's Baby" - 3:01 "People" - 2:07 "Villa Rides" - 3:07 "Chastity Belt" - 2:56 "The Odd Couple" - 2:35Recorded at Capitol Studios in Hollywood, CA on July 16, 1968, July 17, 1968 and July 18, 1968. Stan Kenton - piano, conductor Jay Daversa, Darryl Eaton, Jim Kartchner, John Madrid, Mike Price - trumpet Shelly Denny, Dick Shearer, Tom Whittaker - trombone Joe Randazzo - bass trombone Bob Goodwin - bass trombone, tuba Ray Reed - alto saxophone, flute Mike Altschul, Bob Crosby - tenor saxophone, clarinet Earle Dumler - baritone saxophone, English horn John Mitchell - baritone saxophone Bill Fritz - bass saxophone, baritone saxophone Emil Richards - vibraphone, marimba Al Vescovo - guitar John Smith - bass Dee Barton - drums, arranger Efraim Logreira - percussion
Boz Scaggs
William Royce "Boz" Scaggs is an American singer and guitarist. He is known for his worldwide chart topping albums of the late 1970s as well as the songs "Lido Shuffle" and the Grammy award winning "Lowdown" from the critically acclaimed album Silk Degrees, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Scaggs continues to write, record music, tour. Scaggs was born in Canton, the eldest child of a traveling salesman, their family moved to McAlester, Oklahoma to Plano, just north of Dallas. He attended a Dallas private school, St. Mark's School of Texas, where schoolmate Mal Buckner gave him the nickname "Bosley" shortened to "Boz". After learning guitar at the age of 12, Scaggs met Steve Miller at St. Mark's School. In 1959, he became the vocalist for the Marksmen; the pair attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison together, playing in blues bands like the Ardells and the Fabulous Knight Trains. Leaving school, Scaggs joined the burgeoning rhythm and blues scene in London traveled on to Sweden as a solo performer, in 1965 recorded his solo debut album, which failed commercially.
He had a brief stint with the band the Other Side with Mac MacLeod and Jack Downing. Returning to the U. S. Scaggs promptly headed for the booming psychedelic music center of San Francisco in 1967. Linking up with Steve Miller again, he appeared on the Steve Miller Band's first two albums, Children of the Future and Sailor in 1968. Scaggs secured a solo contract with Atlantic Records in 1968, releasing his second album, Boz Scaggs, featuring the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and session guitarist Duane Allman, in 1969. Despite good reviews, this release achieved only moderate sales, he briefly hooked up with Bay Area band Mother Earth in a supporting role on their second album Make a Joyful Noise on guitar and backup vocals. Scaggs next signed with Columbia Records releasing the albums Moments in 1971 and My Time in 1972, his first two Columbia albums were modest sellers and seeking a new more soulful direction his record company brought in former Motown producer Johnny Bristol for 1974's Slow Dancer album.
Although the album only made # 81 on the US Billboard Album Chart, it subsequently attained gold status no doubt getting a boost from the huge success of Scaggs' next album Silk Degrees In 1976, using session musicians who formed Toto, he recorded Silk Degrees with Joe Wissert on producing duties. The album which received a Grammy nomination for album of the year and a further nomination for Wissert as Producer of The Year, reached #2 on the US Billboard 200, #1 in a number of other countries, spawning four hit singles: "It's Over", "Lowdown", "What Can I Say", "Lido Shuffle", as well as the poignant ballad "We're All Alone" recorded by Rita Coolidge and Frankie Valli. "Lowdown" sold over one million copies in the US and won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Song, shared by Scaggs and David Paich. A sellout world tour followed, but his follow-up album in 1977 Down Two Then Left did not sell as well as Silk Degrees and neither of its singles reached the Top 40; the 1980 album Middle Man spawned two top 20 hits, "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "Jojo".
Both were US No. 14 hits. Scaggs took a long break from recording and his next album, Other Roads, did not appear until 1988. "Heart of Mine", from Other Roads, is Scaggs' last top-40 hit as of 2018. In 1988, he opened the San Francisco nightclub Slim's, remained an owner of the venue as of 2011. From 1989 to 1992, Scaggs joined Donald Fagen, Phoebe Snow, Michael McDonald and others in The New York Rock and Soul Revue, his next solo release was the album Some Change in 1994. He issued Come On Home, an album of rhythm and blues, My Time: A Boz Scaggs Anthology, an anthology, in 1997, he garnered good reviews with Dig although the CD was released on September 11, 2001. In May 2003, Scaggs released But Beautiful, a collection of jazz standards that debuted at number one on the jazz chart. In 2008 he released Speak Low, which he described in the liner notes as "a sort of progressive, experimental effort... along the lines of some of the ideas that Gil Evans explored." During 2004, he released a DVD and a live 16-track CD Greatest Hits Live, recorded August 2003 at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco.
After a break in recording, he undertook a series of shows across the US in 2008. Two years he joined Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald for concerts entitled the Dukes of September Rhythm Revue. Scaggs's next album Memphis was released in March 2013, it was recorded in that Southern American city at the Royal Studios. The album included some of his favorite compositions from other artists. A tour of the United States and Japan followed the release. Before the year ended, he added live dates across North America and Australia for 2014. In 2015, he released A Fool to Care, a compilation of covers, including "Whispering Pines" with Lucinda Williams, one original blues composition, "Hell to Pay," performed with Bonnie Raitt; the album rose to number one on the Billboard Blues Album chart and number 54 on the Billboard 200. Scaggs' first marriage was to Carmella Storniola, they had two sons: Austin, a music journalist with a column called "The Smoking Section" in Rolling Stone, Oscar, who at age 21 died of a heroin overdose in 1998.
Scaggs and Carmella divorced in 1980, after a child custody battle, they were awarded joint custody of their sons. Carmella died in February 2017. In 1992 Scaggs married Dominique Gioia. While the 1969 self-titled Atlantic album failed to chart upon initial release, it peak
Monterey Park, California
Monterey Park is a city located in the western San Gabriel Valley region of Los Angeles County, California in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, United States seven miles from the Downtown Los Angeles civic center. The city's motto is "Pride in the past, Faith in the future". Monterey Park is part of a cluster of cities with a growing Asian American population. According to the 2010 Census, the city had a total population of 60,269. Monterey Park has ranked as one of the country's best places to live due to its good schools, growing economy, central location. For at least seven thousand years the land was populated by the Tongva Native Americans; the Tongva lived in dome like structures with thatched exteriors, an open smoke hole for ventilation and light at the top. Both sexes tattooed their bodies. During warm weather the men wore little clothes but the women would wear minimal skirts made of animal hides. During the cold weather they would wear animal skin capes and wore sandals made from hide of yucca fiber.
With the arrival of the Spaniards, Old World diseases killed off many of the Tongva, by 1870 few Native-Americans had survived. In the early 19th century the area was part of the Mission San Gabriel Arcángel mission system and the Rancho San Antonio. Following the Civil War, an Italian, Alessandro Repetto, purchased 5,000 acres of the rancho and built his ranch house on the hill overlooking his land, about a half-mile north of where Garfield Avenue crosses the Pomona Freeway, not far from where the Edison substation is now located on Garfield Avenue, it was at this time, Richard Garvey, a mail rider for the U. S. Army whose route took him through Monterey Pass, a trail, now Garvey Avenue, settled down in the King's Hills. Garvey began developing the land by bringing in spring water from near the Hondo River and by constructing a 54-foot-high dam to form Garvey Lake located where Garvey Ranch Park is now. To pay for his development and past debts, Garvey began selling portions of his property.
In 1906, the first subdivision in the area, Ramona Acres, was developed north of Garvey and east of Garfield Avenues. In 1916, the new residents of the area initiated action to become a city when the cities of Pasadena, South Pasadena, Alhambra proposed to put a large sewage treatment facility in the area; the community voted itself into cityhood on May 29, 1916, by a vote of 455 to 33. The City's new Board of Directors outlawed sewage plants within city boundaries and named the new city Monterey Park; the name was taken from an old government map showing the oak-covered hills of the area as Monterey Hills. In 1920, a large area on the south edge of the city broke away and the separate city of Montebello was established. By 1920, the white and Spanish-surname settlers were joined by Asian residents who began farming potatoes and flowers and developing nurseries in the Monterey Highlands area, they improved the Monterey Pass Trail with a road to aid in shipping their produce to Los Angeles. The nameless pass, used as a location for western movies, was called Coyote Pass by Pioneer Masami Abe.
In 1926, near the corner of Atlantic and Garvey Avenue, Laura Scudder invented the first sealed bag of potato chips. In an effort to maintain quality and freshness, Laura's team would iron sheets of wax paper together to form a bag, they would fill these bags with potato chips. Real estate became a thriving industry during the late 1920s with investors attracted to the many subdivisions under development and increasing commercial opportunities; the Midwick View Estates by Peter N. Snyder, a proposed garden community, designed to rival Bel Air and Beverly Hills. Known as the "Father of the East Side", Mr. Snyder was a key player in the vast undertaking in the 1920s of developing the East Side as part of the industrial base of Los Angeles, his efforts to build Atlantic Boulevard, his work with the East Side organization to bring industry to the East Side, his residential and commercial development projects along Atlantic Boulevard were a major influence to the surrounding communities. The focal point of the Midwick View Estates was "Jardin del Encanto", otherwise known as "El Encanto," a Spanish style building, to serve as the administration building and community center for Midwick View Estates.
The development included an observation terrace above Jardin del Encanto and the fountain with cascading water going down the hillside in stepped pools to De La Fuente. Now known as Heritage Falls Park or "the Cascades." The Great Depression brought an abrupt end to the real estate boom, as well as the Midwick proposal. From the late 1920s, the City had little development for nearly two decades; the end of World War II resulted in a revived growth trend with explosive population gains during the late 1940s and 1950s. Until this time, the population was concentrated in the northern and southern portions of the city, with the Garvey and Monterey Hills forming a natural barrier. With the renewed growth, many new subdivisions were developed, utilizing the undeveloped central area to allow for maximum growth potential. A series of annexations of surrounding land occurred. Many veterans continued through the 1950s. Around this time, Japanese Americans from the West Side, Chinese Americans from Chinatown, Latinos from East Los Angeles began settling in the
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