1.
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.
2.
Montreux
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Montreux is a municipality in the district of Riviera-Pays-dEnhaut in the canton of Vaud in Switzerland. It is located on Lake Geneva shoreline at the foot of the Alps and has a population, as of December 2015, of 26,433, the earliest settlement was a Late Bronze Age village at Baugy. This made it an important settlement in the Roman era, a Roman villa from the 2nd-4th centuries and a 6th–7th century cemetery have been discovered. In the 12th century, viticulture was introduced to the region, Montreux is first mentioned in 1215 as Mustruel. In 1295, the Bishop of Sion sold the parish of Montreux to Girard of Oron, in 1317, it was split between the Lords of Oron and the Counts of Savoy. A Brotherhood of the Holy Spirit administered estates and a hospital in Montreux starting in about 1309, the region was subject to various princes, most notably the princes of Savoy from the south side of the lake. They unified the territory comprises the present canton of Vaud and were generally popular sovereigns. After the Burgundian Wars in the 15th century, the Swiss in Bern occupied the region without resistance, under Bernese rule it belonged to the bailiwick of Chillon. The Reformation made the region around Montreux and Vevey an attractive haven for Huguenots from Italy, the abbey of Les Echarpes blanches was founded in 1626. In 1798, Napoleon liberated the region from the Bernese, in the 19th century, the tourist industry became a major commercial outlet, with the grand hotels of Montreux attracting the rich and cultured from Europe and America. Starting in the 19th Century there were three independent municipalities that shared a central authority and this county council was made up of four deputies from Le Châtelard, two from Les Planches and one from Veytaux. The church, the hall of La Rouvenaz, the secondary school. Each municipality had its own taxes and a mayor, in 1962, the municipalities of Le Châtelard and Les Planches merged, while Veytaux remained independent. Montreux has an area, as of 2009, of 33.4 square kilometers, of this area,8.47 km2 or 25. 4% is used for agricultural purposes, while 16.93 km2 or 50. 7% is forested. Of the rest of the land,6.37 km2 or 19. 1% is settled,0.08 km2 or 0. 2% is either rivers or lakes and 1.59 km2 or 4. 8% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 10. 9%, out of the forested land,47. 0% of the total land area is heavily forested and 3. 1% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land,0. 4% is used for growing crops and 8. 8% is pastures, all the water in the municipality is flowing water. The municipality was part of the Vevey District until it was dissolved on 31 August 2006, the municipality stretches from Lake Geneva to the foothills of the Swiss Alps
Montreux
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Montreux
Montreux
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Lake Geneva from Montreux
Montreux
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Montreux and Lake Geneva
Montreux
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High rise in Montreux
3.
Switzerland
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Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a federal republic in Europe. It consists of 26 cantons, and the city of Bern is the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in western-Central Europe, and is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland is a country geographically divided between the Alps, the Swiss Plateau and the Jura, spanning an area of 41,285 km2. The establishment of the Old Swiss Confederacy dates to the medieval period, resulting from a series of military successes against Austria. Swiss independence from the Holy Roman Empire was formally recognized in the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The country has a history of armed neutrality going back to the Reformation, it has not been in a state of war internationally since 1815, nevertheless, it pursues an active foreign policy and is frequently involved in peace-building processes around the world. In addition to being the birthplace of the Red Cross, Switzerland is home to international organisations. On the European level, it is a member of the European Free Trade Association. However, it participates in the Schengen Area and the European Single Market through bilateral treaties, spanning the intersection of Germanic and Romance Europe, Switzerland comprises four main linguistic and cultural regions, German, French, Italian and Romansh. Due to its diversity, Switzerland is known by a variety of native names, Schweiz, Suisse, Svizzera. On coins and stamps, Latin is used instead of the four living languages, Switzerland is one of the most developed countries in the world, with the highest nominal wealth per adult and the eighth-highest per capita gross domestic product according to the IMF. Zürich and Geneva have each been ranked among the top cities in the world in terms of quality of life, with the former ranked second globally, according to Mercer. The English name Switzerland is a compound containing Switzer, a term for the Swiss. The English adjective Swiss is a loan from French Suisse, also in use since the 16th century. The name Switzer is from the Alemannic Schwiizer, in origin an inhabitant of Schwyz and its associated territory, the Swiss began to adopt the name for themselves after the Swabian War of 1499, used alongside the term for Confederates, Eidgenossen, used since the 14th century. The data code for Switzerland, CH, is derived from Latin Confoederatio Helvetica. The toponym Schwyz itself was first attested in 972, as Old High German Suittes, ultimately related to swedan ‘to burn’
Switzerland
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Founded in 44 BC by
Lucius Munatius Plancus,
Augusta Raurica was the first Roman settlement on the Rhine and is now among the most important archaeological sites in Switzerland.
Switzerland
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Flag
Switzerland
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The 1291 Bundesbrief (Federal charter)
Switzerland
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The Old Swiss Confederacy from 1291 (dark green) to the sixteenth century (light green) and its associates (blue). In the other colors are shown the subject territories.
4.
Music festival
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A music festival is a festival oriented towards music that is sometimes presented with a theme such as musical genre, nationality, or locality of musicians, or holiday. They are commonly held outdoors, and are inclusive of other attractions such as food and merchandise vending, performance art. Many festivals are annual, or repeat at some other interval, some, including many rock festivals, are held only once. Some festivals are organized as for-profit concerts and others are benefits for a specific cause, another type of music festival is the educative type, organized annually in local communities, regionally, or nationally, for the benefit of amateur musicians of all ages and grades of achievement. The Pythian Games at Delphi included musical performances, and may be one of the earliest festivals known, during the Middle Ages, festivals were often held as competitions. Entrants perform prepared pieces in front of an audience which includes competitors and they also usually receive a certificate, classified according to merit, and some may win trophies. The competitive element is played down, however, as the important aspect is that participants can learn from one another. Such festivals aim to provide a friendly and supportive platform for musicians to share in the excitement of making music, for many, they provide a bridge from lessons and examinations to performing confidently in public. Milwaukee, Wisconsins 11-day event, Summerfest, promotes itself as The Worlds Largest Music Festival, operating annually since 1968, the festival attracts between 800,000 and 1,000,000 people each year, and hosts over 800 musical acts. The Woodstock Festival in 1969 drew nearly 500,000 attendees, the largest annual greenfield music festival in the world is Roskilde Festival in Denmark, which attracts about 135,000 spectators each year. Glastonbury Festival has a capacity of about 175,000 spectators, for a more complete listing of active and defunct festivals by region, see Category, Music festivals by country. Some sections may also have links to related lists of music festivals by country, L. my.1 Festival, Biddinghuizen Dekmantel, Amsterdam Festival Mundial, Tilburg Incubate, Tilburg Le Guess Who. Born 1985 Salas Principales Auditorio Alfredo Kraus, Las Palmas y Auditorio Adán Martin, Tenerife. com – The most extensive music festival listings
Music festival
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Music festival
Music festival
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Leigo Järvemuusika 2007
Music festival
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Parkenfestivalen 2012 The Prodigy
5.
Lake Geneva
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Lake Geneva is a lake on the north side of the Alps, shared between Switzerland and France. It is one of the largest lakes in Western Europe and the largest on the course of the Rhône,59. 53% of it comes under the jurisdiction of Switzerland, and 40. 47% under France. Lake Geneva has been explored by four submarines, the Auguste Piccard, forel, both built by Jacques Piccard, and the two Mir submersibles. Following the rise of Geneva it became Lac de Genève, in the 18th century, Lac Léman was revived in French and is the customary name in that language. In contemporary English, the name Lake Geneva is predominant, a note on pronunciation, English, Lake Geneva /ˌleɪk dʒᵻˈniːvə/ French, le lac Léman, le Léman or le lac de Genève German, Genfersee or Genfer See Italian, Lago Lemano, Lago di Ginevra. The Chablais Alps border is its southern shore, the western Bernese Alps lie over its eastern side, the high summits of Grand Combin and Mont Blanc are visible from some places. Compagnie Générale de Navigation sur le lac Léman operates boats on the lake, the lake lies on the course of the Rhône. Other tributaries are La Dranse, LAubonne, La Morges, La Venoge, La Vuachère, Lake Geneva is the largest body of water in Switzerland, and greatly exceeds in size all others that are connected with the main valleys of the Alps. It is in the shape of a crescent, with the horns pointing south, the northern shore being 95 km, the crescent form was more regular in a recent geological period, when the lake extended to Bex, about 18 km south of Villeneuve. The lakes surface is the lowest point of the cantons of Valais, the culminating point of the lakes drainage basin is Monte Rosa at 4,634 metres above sea level. The beauty of the shores of the lake and of the sites of many of the places near its banks has long been celebrated, however, it is only from the eastern end of the lake, between Vevey and Villeneuve, that the scenery assumes an Alpine character. The shore between Nyon and Lausanne is called La Côte because it is flatter, between Lausanne and Vevey it is called Lavaux and is famous for its hilly vineyards. The average surface elevation of 372 m above sea level is controlled by the Seujet Dam in Geneva, simulations indicate that the Tauredunum event was most likely caused by a massive landslide near the Rhône delta, which caused a wave eight meters high to reach Geneva within 70 minutes. In 888 the town was part of the new Kingdom of Burgundy, in the late 1960s, pollution made it dangerous to swim at some beaches of the lake, indeed, visibility under water was near zero. By the 1980s, intense environmental pollution had almost wiped out all the fish, today, pollution levels have been dramatically cut back, and it is again considered safe to swim in the lake. Major leisure activities practiced include sailing, wind surfing, boating, rowing, on a scientific footnote, in 1827, Lake Geneva was the site for the first measurement of the speed of sound in water. The loud airborne sound coupled into the lake, establishing an underwater sound that could be measured at a distance. The flash of the exploding gunpowder provided the starting cue for the timepiece
Lake Geneva
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Satellite image
Lake Geneva
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View of Lake Geneva about between
Vevey in front,
Lausanne in the back behind
Mont Pèlerin (CH) on the right and
Évians-les-Bains (F) on the left, shot from a place between
Caux and
Glion above
Montreux
Lake Geneva
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View of the lake and the Chablais Alps from
Caux
Lake Geneva
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CGN paddle steamer in 1926 near Vevey with the Dents du Midi in background
6.
Montreal International Jazz Festival
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The Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is an annual jazz festival held in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Jazz Fest holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the worlds largest jazz festival, every year it features roughly 3,000 artists from 30-odd countries, more than 650 concerts, and welcomes close to 2.5 million visitors as well as 400 accredited journalists. The festival takes place at 10 free outdoor stages and 10 indoor concert halls. A major part of the downtown core is closed to traffic for ten days, as free outdoor shows are open to the public and held on many stages at the same time. Attendance at some shows is over 100,000 people, shows are held in a wide variety of venues, from relatively small jazz clubs to the large concert halls of Place des Arts. Some of the shows are held on the cordoned-off streets. It should not be confused with the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and they planned their first festival for the summer of 1979. Unable to secure sufficient funding, their plans were scuttled, the first Montreal jazz festival was in 1980, with funding from Alain de Grosbois of CBC Stereo and Radio-Québec. With Gary Burton, Ray Charles, Chick Corea, and Vic Vogel on the bill, and an attendance of 12,000, the event was deemed a success and has continued to grow since then. In 2000, the Festival teamed up with Distribution Select to release its 4-CD box set called Over 20 years of music – Plus de 20 ans de musique, the box includes a 13-page booklet with the artists biographies and complete liner notes about the music. The competition takes place between Canadian groups performing original music, and is part of the outdoor program. Throughout its history the prize has been awarded to many of Canadas most prominent jazz musicians
Montreal International Jazz Festival
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Festival International de Jazz de Montréal at night
Montreal International Jazz Festival
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Festival International de Jazz de Montréal
7.
Claude Nobs
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Claude Nobs was the founder and general manager of the Montreux Jazz Festival. Nobs was born in Montreux, Switzerland, after apprenticing as a cook, Nobs worked in the Tourism Office of Montreux. He later went to New York, where he met Nesuhi Ertegün and he also met Roberta Flack and invited her to the Rose d’Or de Montreux. Later, Aretha Franklin made her first visit to Europe thanks to him. At the age of 31, while he was director of the Tourism Office of Montreux, he organized the first jazz festival featuring artists such as Charles Lloyd, Keith Jarrett, Ron McLure and this new festival was an immediate success, and gained a reputation far beyond Switzerland. Nobs quickly transformed his festival into a gathering place for lovers of jazz. In 1971, Deep Purple decided to produce and record their album Machine Head in Montreux, the group was also scheduled to record at the Montreux Casino, shortly after Frank Zappa performed. During Zappas concert, the venue caught fire and reduced the Casino to ashes, Nobs saved several young people who had hidden in the casino, thinking they would be sheltered from the flames. Nobs, who had served as a fireman, knew that the casino was not actually a safe place. This act earned him a mention in the song Smoke on the Water, also, on the inner liner of the original album, Nobs picture was the only one labeled with a name other than those of the band members themselves. In 1973, Nobs became the director of the Swiss branch of Warner, Elektra, on the live Jethro Tull album Bursting Out, one can hear Nobs announcing Gueten Abig mitenand, und herzlich willkommen in der Festhalle Bern. During the 1990s, Nobs shared the directorship of the festival with Quincy Jones, the festival continued to diversify and was no longer exclusively devoted to jazz. In 2004, the festival attracted 200,000 visitors, on 25 September 2004, Nobs received the Tourism Prize of Salz & Pfeffer. The canton of Vaud gave him the Prix du Rayonnement for his contributions to music and he has also received an honorary doctorate. Nobs played harmonica on the track of the 1983 Chris Rea album Water Sign. In 2005, during the campaign on registered partnership in Switzerland for same-sex couples he came out publicly to support the new law. At the time, Claude Nobs had been in a relationship with his partner, Thierry Amsallem, on 24 December 2012, he had an accident while Nordic skiing in Switzerland and fell into a coma. Nobs died on 10 January 2013 at age 76, Quincy Jones Montreux Jazz Festival Claude Nobs Foundation Live at Montreux on YouTube Claude Nobs Revealed on CNN. com International
Claude Nobs
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Claude Nobs, founder and general manager of the famous
Montreux Jazz Festival, 2006
8.
Atlantic Records
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Atlantic Recording Corporation is an American major record label founded in October 1947 by Ahmet Ertegün and Herb Abramson. In 2004, Atlantic Records and its sister label Elektra Records merged into Atlantic Records Group, craig Kallman is currently the chairman of Atlantic Records. Ahmet Ertegün served as founding chairman until his death on December 14,2006, the brothers had become ardent fans of jazz and rhythm & blues music, amassing a collection of over 15,00078 RPM records. He convinced the family dentist, Dr Vahdi Sabit, to invest $10,000 and recruited Herb Abramson, Abramson had worked as a part-time A&R manager/producer for the jazz label National Records, signing Big Joe Turner and Billy Eckstine. He founded Jubilee Records in 1946, but had no interest in its most successful artists, so, in September 1947, he sold his share in Jubilee to his partner, Jerry Blaine, and invested $2500 in the new Atlantic label. When interviewed in 2009 she attributed her reputation to the companys chronic cash-flow shortage, most of the problems we had with artists were that they wanted advances, and that was very difficult for us. We were undercapitalized for a long time, the labels original office in the Ritz Hotel, Manhattan proved too expensive so they relocated to an $85 per month room in the Hotel Jefferson. In its early years Atlantic focused principally on modern jazz although it released some country and western and spoken word recordings. The union action forced Atlantic to use almost all its capital to cut and stockpile enough recordings to last through the ban, Ertegun and Abramson spent much of the late 1940s and early 1950s scouring nightclubs in search of talent. Ertegun composed many songs under the alias A, in early 1949 a New Orleans distributor phoned Ertegun trying to obtain Stick McGhees Drinking Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee, which was unavailable due to the closure of McGhees previous label. Ertegun knew Sticks younger brother Brownie McGhee, with whom Stick happened to be staying, so he contacted the McGhee brothers, Ertegun asked about artists royalties, which he paid, which surprised Columbia executives, who did not, which scuttled the deal. On the recommendation of broadcaster Willis Conover, Ertegun and Abramson went to see Ruth Brown at the Crystal Caverns club in Washington and she was badly injured in a car accident en route to New York but Atlantic supported her for nine months and then signed her. Her first release for the label So Long, cut at her second Atlantic session on May 25,1949 with the Eddie Condon band, was a major hit, reaching #6 on the R&B chart. Brown went on to more than eighty songs for the label, becoming the most prolific. So significant was Browns success to Atlantics fortunes that the label became known colloquially as The House That Ruth Built. The Clovers Dont You Know I Love You became the labels first R&B #1 in September 1951 and she hit #1 again in March–April 1952 with 5-10-15 Hours. After she left the label in 1961 Browns fortunes declined rapidly - within a few years was reduced to working as a cleaner and bus-driver to support her children. Brown eventually received a payment of $20,000 and founded a charity
Atlantic Records
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"Weird Al" Yankovic edits the Atlantic Records' Wikipedia page to read "YOU SUCK!" in the music video for the song "
White & Nerdy "
Atlantic Records
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Atlantic Records logo as of 2015.
9.
Montreux Casino
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Montreux Casino is a casino located in Montreux, Switzerland, on the shoreline of Lake Geneva. It has served as the venue for the Montreux Jazz Festival and was following a 1971 fire memorialized in the Deep Purple song Smoke on the Water. It is a property of Groupe Lucien Barrière, Montreux Casino was built in 1881 and had modifications made to it in 1903. Throughout the twentieth century, the site played host to many symphony orchestras. By the late 1960s, jazz, blues and rock artists began to perform there, in 1967 the Casino became the venue for the Montreux Jazz Festival, which was the brainchild of music promoter Claude Nobs. The festival was held annually and lasted for three days. The highlights of this era were Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, Bill Evans, Nina Simone, Jan Garbarek, originally featuring almost exclusively jazz artists, in the 1970s the festival began broadening its scope, including blues, soul, and rock artists. Some notable rock acts which performed at Montreux Casino in these years include Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, on December 4,1971, Montreux Casino burned down during a concert by Frank Zappa after a fan had set the venue on fire with a flare gun. A recording of the outbreak and fire announcement can be found on a Frank Zappa Bootleg album titled Swiss Cheese/Fire, the Festival continued to be hosted there until 1993, when it moved to a larger Convention Centre located approximately one kilometre from the Casino. From 1995 through 2006, the Festival occupied both the Convention Centre and the Casino, beginning with the 41st Festival in 2007, nightly performances of headliners were again moved mainly to the Convention Centre, although the Casino still hosts the odd one-off show
Montreux Casino
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Closeup of the Montreux Casino, rebuilt in 1975
Montreux Casino
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Montreux Casino as seen on Lake Léman
10.
Miles Davis
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Miles Dewey Davis III was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz, with his ever-changing directions in music, Davis was at the forefront of a number of major stylistic developments in jazz over his five-decade career. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records, after a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955, he signed a long-term contract with Columbia Records and recorded the 1957 album Round About Midnight. It was his first work with saxophonist John Coltrane and bassist Paul Chambers and his million-selling 1970 record Bitches Brew helped spark a resurgence in the genres commercial popularity with jazz fusion as the decade progressed. In 2006, Davis was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Miles Dewey Davis III was born on May 26,1926 into an affluent middle class African-American family in Alton, Illinois,15 miles north of St. Louis. The second of three children, he had a sister, Dorothy Mae, and a younger brother. His father, Miles Dewey Davis II of Arkansas, was a dental surgeon who earned three college degrees, and his mother Cleota Mae Davis, also of Arkansas, was a music teacher. They owned a 200-acre estate near Pine Bluff, Arkansas that housed a profitable pig farm where Davis and his siblings would ride horses, fish, and hunt. In 1927, the moved to East St. Louis, Illinois. From 1932 to 1934, Davis attended John Robinson Elementary School, an institution, followed by Crispus Attucks School where he performed well in mathematics, music. As a youngster Davis developed his earliest appreciation for music, citing the the blues, big bands, and gospel music. In 1935, Davis received his first trumpet as a gift from John Eubanks, a friend of his father and his mother objected the choice of instrument as she preferred her son took up the violin. Davis would carry his signature tone throughout his career. He once remarked on its importance to him, saying, I prefer a round sound with no attitude in it, like a voice with not too much tremolo. If I cant get that sound I cant play anything, in 1939, the family moved to 1701 Kansas Avenue in East St. Louis. For his 13th birthday held that year, Davis father bought his son a new trumpet, around this time, Davis took additional trumpet lessons from Joseph Gustat, principal trumpeter of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. In 1941, the 15-year-old Davis began at East St. Louis Lincoln High School where he joined the marching band directed by Buchanan. Davis claimed the contests he did not win was largely down to prejudice over his race, I went and got everything, every book I could get to learn about theory
Miles Davis
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Davis in 1955, photo by
Tom Palumbo
Miles Davis
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Miles Davis Youth House on 17th st. and Kansas Av.,
East St. Louis, IL in oct. 2014
Miles Davis
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Tommy Potter,
Charlie Parker, Miles Davis,
Duke Jordan,
Max Roach, August 1947
Miles Davis
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Coleman Hawkins and Miles Davis, c. September 1947
11.
Keith Jarrett
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Keith Jarrett is an American jazz and classical music pianist. Jarrett started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd, since the early 1970s he has enjoyed a great deal of success as a group leader and a solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion, and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues, and ethnic folk music. In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first recipient not to share the prize with a co-recipient, in 2008, he was inducted into the Down Beat Hall of Fame in the magazines 73rd Annual Readers Poll. Keith Jarrett was born on May 8,1945, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, to a mother of Hungarian descent and he grew up in suburban Allentown with significant early exposure to music. Jarrett possesses absolute pitch, and he displayed musical talents as a young child. He began piano lessons just before his birthday, and at age five he appeared on a TV talent program hosted by the swing bandleader Paul Whiteman. Jarrett gave his first formal piano recital at the age of seven, playing works by composers including Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Saint-Saëns, encouraged especially by his mother, Jarrett took intensive classical piano lessons with a series of teachers, including Eleanor Sokoloff of the Curtis Institute. In his teens, as a student at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, Jarrett learned jazz, in his early teens, he developed a strong interest in the contemporary jazz scene, a Dave Brubeck performance was an early inspiration. Following his graduation from Emmaus High School in 1963, Jarrett moved from Allentown to Boston where he attended the Berklee College of Music, after a year he moved to New York City where he played at the Village Vanguard. In New York, Art Blakey hired Jarrett to play with the Jazz Messengers, during a show with that group he was noticed by Jack DeJohnette who immediately recognized the unknown pianists talent and unstoppable flow of ideas. DeJohnette talked to Jarrett and soon recommended him to his own band leader, the Quartets tours across America and Europe, even to Moscow, made Jarrett a widely noticed musician in rock and jazz underground circles. It also laid the foundations of a musical bond with drummer Jack DeJohnette. The two would cooperate in many contexts during their later careers, in those years, Jarrett also began to record his own tracks as a leader of small informal groups, at first in a trio with Charlie Haden and Paul Motian. Not only does Jarrett barely touch the piano, but he plays all the instruments on what is essentially a folk-rock album. Another trio album with Haden and Motian, titled Somewhere Before, followed later in 1968, the Charles Lloyd Quartet with Jarrett, Ron McClure and DeJohnette came to an end in 1968, after the recording of Soundtrack, because of disputes over money as well as artistic differences. Jarrett was asked to join the Miles Davis group after the trumpeter heard him in a New York City club, after Corea left in 1970, Jarrett often played electric piano and organ simultaneously. Despite his growing dislike of amplified music and electric instruments within jazz, Jarrett continued with the out of respect for Davis
Keith Jarrett
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Jarrett, c. 1980
Keith Jarrett
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Keith Jarrett in
Antibes,
France, 2003
12.
Jack DeJohnette
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Jack DeJohnette is an American jazz drummer, pianist, and composer. He was inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2007, DeJohnette was born in Chicago, Illinois. He began his career as a pianist, studying from age four and first playing professionally at age fourteen. DeJohnette would later credit an uncle, Roy I, wood Sr. as the person in his life who inspired him to play music. Wood was a Chicago disc jockey who would become vice president of the National Network of Black Broadcasters. DeJohnette began his career on piano, then adding drums and eventually focussing on the latter, playing R&B, hard bop. He led his own groups in addition to playing with Richard Abrams, Roscoe Mitchell and he also occasionally performed with Sun Ra and his Arkestra. In the early 1960s, DeJohnette had the opportunity to sit in for three tunes with John Coltrane and his quintet, a foray into playing with big name jazz musicians. In 1966 DeJohnette moved to New York City, where he became a member of the Charles Lloyd Quartet, however, DeJohnette left the group in early 1968, citing Lloyds deteriorating, flat playing as his main reason for leaving. DeJohnette joined Evans trio in 1968, the year the group headlined the Montreux Jazz Festival. In November 1968 he worked briefly with Stan Getz and his quartet, in 1969, DeJohnette left the Evans trio and replaced Tony Williams in Miles Daviss live band. Davis had seen DeJohnette play many times, one of which was during a stint with Evans at Ronnie Scotts Jazz Club in London in 1968, Davis recognized DeJohnette’s ability to combine the driving grooves associated with rock and roll with improvisational aspects associated with jazz. DeJohnette is heard on the compilation album Directions, and was the drummer on the landmark album Bitches Brew. One thing was flowing into the next, and we were stopping and starting all the time and he played on the live albums that would follow the release of Bitches Brew, taken from concerts at the Fillmore East in New York and Fillmore West in San Francisco. These ventures were undertaken at the behest of Clive Davis, then president of Columbia Records and he contributed to such famous Davis albums as Live-Evil, Jack Johnson, and On the Corner. He left the Davis group in the middle of 1971, although he returned for concerts through the rest of that year. DeJohnettes first record, The DeJohnette Complex, was released in 1968, on the album, he played melodica as well as drums, preferring often to let his mentor, Roy Haynes, sit behind the set. He also recorded, in the early 1970s, the albums Have You Heard, Sorcery, the musical freedom he had while recording for ECM offered DeJohnette many dates as a sideman and opportunities to start his own groups
Jack DeJohnette
–
DeJohnette in 2006
13.
Bill Evans
–
William John Bill Evans was an American jazz pianist and composer who mostly worked in a trio setting. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he worked with bandleader, in 1958, Evans joined Miles Daviss sextet, where he was to have a profound influence. In 1959, the band, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded Kind of Blue, in late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio. In 1961, ten days recording the highly acclaimed Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby. After months of seclusion, Evans re-emerged with a new trio, in 1963, Evans recorded Conversations with Myself, an innovative solo album using the unconventional technique of overdubbing over himself. In 1966, he met bassist Eddie Gómez, with whom he would work for eleven years, several successful albums followed, such as Bill Evans at the Montreux Jazz Festival, Alone and The Bill Evans Album, among others. Many of his compositions, such as Waltz for Debby, have become standards and have played and recorded by many artists. Evans was honored with 31 Grammy nominations and seven awards, and was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame, Bill Evans was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, to Harry and Mary Evans. His father was of Welsh descent and ran a course, his mother was of Rusyn ancestry. The marriage was due to his fathers heavy drinking, gambling. He had a brother, Harry, two years his senior, with whom he shared a close relationship. Given Harry Evans Sr. s destructive character, Mary Evans would often leave home with her sons to nearby Somerville, to stay with her sister Justine, there, Harry began piano lessons somewhere between age 5 and 7 with local teacher Helen Leland. Even though Bill was thought to be too young to receive lessons, soon both brothers were taking piano lessons. Evans remembered Leland with affection for not insisting on a technical approach, with scales. He would soon develop a fluid sight-reading ability, though his teacher rated his brother as a better pianist, at age 7, Bill began violin lessons, and soon also flute and piccolo. Even though he soon dropped those instruments, it is believed they later influenced his keyboard style and he later cited Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert as frequently played composers. Around the same time came his first exposure to jazz. At the age of 13, Bill stood in for a sick pianist in Buddy Valentinos rehearsal band, soon, Bill began to perform for dances and weddings throughout New Jersey, playing music like boogie woogie and polkas for $1 per hour
Bill Evans
–
Evans in 1969
Bill Evans
–
Evans in 1936
Bill Evans
–
Programme of Bill Evans's graduation concert. April 24, 1950.
Bill Evans
–
Miles Davis in 1955, three years before meeting Evans
14.
Soft Machine
–
Soft Machine are an English rock and jazz band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs. They were one of the bands in the Canterbury scene. Soft Machine were formed in mid-1966 by Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Daevid Allen and Mike Ratledge plus, for the first few gigs only, Allen, Wyatt and future bassist Hugh Hopper had first played together in the Daevid Allen Trio in 1963, occasionally accompanied by Ratledge. Wyatt, Ayers and Hopper had been founding members of The Wilde Flowers, later incarnations of which would include members of another Canterbury band. This first Soft Machine line-up became involved in the early UK underground, featuring prominently at the UFO Club and their first single, Love Makes Sweet Music, was released on Polydor Records in February, backed with Feelin Reelin Squeelin. In April 1967 they recorded seven songs with producer Giorgio Gomelsky in De Lane Lea Studios that remained unreleased until 1971 in a dispute over studio costs. They also played in the Netherlands, Germany and on the French Riviera, during July and August 1967, Gomelsky booked shows all along the Côte dAzur with the bands most famous early gig taking place in the village square of Saint-Tropez. This made them instant darlings of the Parisian in crowd, resulting in invitations to appear on leading television shows and at the Paris Biennale in October 1967. Upon their return from their sojourn in France, Allen was denied re-entry to the United Kingdom, so the group continued as a trio, while he returned to Paris to form Gong. Sharing the same management team as Jimi Hendrix, the band were rewarded with a slot on the Jimi Hendrix Experiences North America tour throughout 1968. Soft Machines first album – a psychedelic rock/proto-prog classic – was recorded in New York in April at the end of the first leg, back in London, guitarist Andy Summers, later of The Police, joined the group following the breakup of Dantalians Chariot. After a few weeks of rehearsals, the new quartet began a tour of the USA with some shows before reuniting with Hendrix for a final string of dates in August–September 1968. Wyatt stayed in the US to record demos, while Ratledge returned to London. One of Wyatts demos, Slow Walkin Talk, allowed Wyatt to make use of his multi-instrumentalist skills, in May 1969 this line-up acted as the uncredited backing band on two tracks of Syd Barretts solo debut album, The Madcap Laughs. Fourth was the first of their fully instrumental albums, and the last one featuring Wyatt, third was also unusual for remaining in print for more than ten years in the US, and is the best-selling Soft Machine recording. After differences over the musical direction, Wyatt left the band in August 1971. He was briefly replaced by Australian drummer Phil Howard, after they released Seven without additional musicians, the band switched record labels from Columbia to Harvest. On the last official studio album Softs, Holdsworth was replaced by John Etheridge, Ratledge, the last remaining original member of the band, had left during the early stages of recording
Soft Machine
–
Group photo circa 1970: l-r:
Elton Dean,
Mike Ratledge,
Robert Wyatt,
Hugh Hopper
15.
Weather Report
–
Weather Report was an American jazz fusion band of the 1970s and early 1980s. The band was initially co-led by the Austrian-born keyboard player Joe Zawinul, due to creative and financial disagreements Vitouš left the band after a few years. Zawinul took increasing control and steered the band towards a more funk, alongside Miles Daviss electric bands, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, and Headhunters, Weather Report is considered to be one of the pre-eminent early jazz fusion bands. As a continuous working unit, Weather Report outlasted all of its contemporaries despite frequent changes of personnel, however, the band was nearly always a quintet of keyboards, sax, bass, drums, and percussion. Over a 16-year career, Weather Report explored various areas of music, centered on jazz, but also including elements of art music, ethnic music, R&B, funk. While their work was categorized as jazz fusion, the band members themselves generally rejected the term. This position remained consistent throughout the life of the band, from the mid-1970s, individual solos became more prominent, but were never allowed to overwhelm the musics collective approach. Initially, the music featured a free, extended improvisational method, but by the mid-1970s. Joe Zawinuls playing style was often dominated by quirky melodic improvisations combined with sparse, having originally made his name as a pioneering electric piano player, he went on to consistently develop the role of the synthesizer in jazz during his time with Weather Report. Working with companies such as ARP and Oberheim, Zawinul developed new ways of voicing and patching electronic tones for textures, ensemble roles and soloing. In Weather Report, he employed a vocoder, as well as recorded sounds played through a synthesizer, creating a very distinctive, often beautiful, synthesis of jazz harmonics. On some Weather Report tunes, however, Zawinuls synthesized arrangements dominated the sound, Wayne Shorter came to the group with a reputation as a dominant role as an instrumentalist, drawn from both his solo work and his contributions to Miles Davis’ second great quintet during the 1960s. His choice not to follow the approach with Weather Report led to some criticism of the group. During his time with Weather Report, Shorter was noted for playing saxophone with an economical. Rather than continually taking the lead, he generally added subtle harmonic, melodic, as a composer, though, he chose a more abstract, sometimes atonal and free jazz style of music, opposed to the sometimes flamboyant tunes of Weather Report. Weather Report maintained a consistent interest in a sound and developments in music technology. Both Zawinul and original bassist Miroslav Vitouš experimented with effects pedals with Zawinul using them on electric piano and synthesizers. With the exception of a brief period between 1978 and 1979, Weather Reports instrumentation always included both a drummer alongside a percussionist
Weather Report
–
Weather Report live June 11, 1981
Weather Report
–
Weather Report in Argentina. L to R: Shorter, Erskine, Zawinul, and Pastorius
Weather Report
–
Pastorius, reaching to accentuate his bass guitar sound with harmonics
Weather Report
–
Jaco Pastorius, with bass guitar in Toronto, November 1977
16.
Nina Simone
–
Nina Simone was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Simone employed a range of musical styles including classical, jazz, blues, folk, R&B, gospel. Born in North Carolina, the child of a preacher. With the help of the few supporters in her hometown of Tryon, North Carolina, Waymon then applied for a scholarship to study at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where she was denied despite a well-received audition. Waymon became fully convinced this rejection had been due to her race. Years later, two days before her death, the Curtis Institute of Music bestowed on her an honorary degree, to make a living, Eunice Waymon changed her name to Nina Simone. The change related to her need to disguise herself from family members and she was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, and this effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist. Simone recorded more than forty albums, mostly between 1958, when she made her debut with Little Girl Blue, and 1974, and had a hit in the United States in 1958 with I Loves You, Porgy. Simones musical style fused gospel and pop with music, in particular Johann Sebastian Bach. Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon in North Carolina and raised in Tryon, the sixth of eight children in a poor family, she began playing piano at age three, the first song she learned was God Be With You, Till We Meet Again. Demonstrating a talent with the instrument, she performed at her local church, but her concert debut, a classical recital, was given when she was 12. Simone later said that during this performance, her parents, who had taken seats in the front row, were forced to move to the back of the hall to make way for white people. She said that she refused to play until her parents were moved back to the front, Simones mother, Mary Kate Waymon, was a Methodist minister and a housemaid. Simones father, John Divine Waymon, was a handyman who at one time owned a dry cleaning business, Simones music teacher helped establish a special fund to pay for her education. Subsequently, a fund was set up to assist her continued education. With the help of this scholarship money she was able to attend Allen High School for Girls in Asheville, North Carolina. After her graduation, Simone spent the summer of 1950 at the Juilliard School, as a student of Carl Friedberg, discouraged, she took private piano lessons with Vladimir Sokoloff, a professor at Curtis, but never re-applied to the institution. She took a job as an assistant, but also found work as an accompanist at Arlene Smiths vocal studio
Nina Simone
–
Simone in 1965
17.
Jan Garbarek
–
Jan Garbarek is a Norwegian jazz saxophonist who is also active in classical music and world music. Garbarek was born in Mysen, Norway, the child of a former Polish prisoner of war, Czesław Garbarek. He grew up in Oslo, stateless until the age of seven, when he was 21, he married Vigdis. He is the father of musician and composer Anja Garbarek, Garbareks sound is one of the hallmarks of the ECM Records label, which has released virtually all of his recordings. His style incorporates a sharp-edged tone, long, keening, sustained notes and he began his recording career in the late 1960s, notably featuring on recordings by the American jazz composer George Russell. Garbarek gained wider recognition through his work with pianist Keith Jarretts European Quartet which released the albums Belonging, My Song and the live recordings Personal Mountains and he was also a featured soloist on Jarretts orchestral works Luminessence and Arbour Zena. As a composer, Garbarek tends to draw heavily from Scandinavian folk melodies and he is also a pioneer of ambient jazz composition, most notably on his 1976 album Dis a collaboration with guitarist Ralph Towner that featured the distinctive sound of a wind harp on several tracks. Garbareks more meandering recordings are often labeled as new-age music, a style generally scorned by more orthodox jazz musicians and listeners, in the 1980s, Garbareks music began to incorporate synthesizers and elements of world music. He has collaborated with Indian and Pakistani musicians such as Trilok Gurtu, Zakir Hussain, Hariprasad Chaurasia, Garbarek is credited for composing original music for the 2000 film Kippur. Officium Novum, another album, was released in September 2010. In 2005, his album In Praise of Dreams was nominated for a Grammy, Garbareks first live album Dresden was released in 2009. 1999, Knight 1st Class of the Order of St
Jan Garbarek
–
Jan Garbarek live in Athens, 2007
Jan Garbarek
–
Jan Garbarek live in 2007.
18.
Ella Fitzgerald
–
Ella Jane Fitzgerald was an American jazz singer often referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, Fitzgeralds rendition of the nursery rhyme A-Tisket, A-Tasket helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. Taking over the band after Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start a career that would last effectively the rest of her life. With Verve she recorded some of her more noted works. These partnerships produced recognizable songs like Dream a Little Dream of Me, Cheek to Cheek, Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall, in 1993, Fitzgerald capped off her sixty-year career with her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79, Fitzgerald was born on April 25,1917, in Newport News, Virginia, the daughter of William Fitzgerald and Temperance Tempie Fitzgerald. Her parents were unmarried but lived together for at least two and a years after she was born. Initially living in a room, her mother and Da Silva soon found jobs. Her half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923, by 1925, Fitzgerald and her family had moved to nearby School Street, then a predominantly poor Italian area. She began her education at the age of six and proved to be an outstanding student. Fitzgerald had been passionate about dancing from third grade, being a fan of Earl Snakehips Tucker in particular, Fitzgerald and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church, and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday school. The church provided Fitzgerald with her earliest experiences in music making. During this period Fitzgerald listened to recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby. Fitzgerald idolized the Boswell Sisters lead singer Connee Boswell, later saying, My mother brought home one of her records, in 1932, her mother died from serious injuries she received in a car accident when Fitzgerald was 15 years of age. This left her at first in the care of her stepfather but before the end of April 1933, following these traumas, Fitzgerald began skipping school and letting her grades suffer. During this period she worked at times as a lookout at a bordello, Ella Fitzgerald never talked publicly about this time in her life. When the authorities caught up with her, she was first placed in the Colored Orphan Asylum in Riverdale, in the Bronx. However, when the orphanage proved too crowded, she was moved to the New York Training School for Girls in Hudson, New York, eventually she escaped and for a time she was homeless
Ella Fitzgerald
–
Fitzgerald in November 1946
Ella Fitzgerald
–
A young Fitzgerald, photographed by
Carl Van Vechten in 1940
Ella Fitzgerald
–
Fitzgerald performing with
Dizzy Gillespie,
Ray Brown,
Milt Jackson and
Timme Rosenkrantz in September 1947, New York
Ella Fitzgerald
–
Fitzgerald shakes hands with
President Ronald Reagan after performing in the
White House, 1981
19.
Quincy Jones
–
His career spans six decades in the entertainment industry and a record 79 Grammy Award nominations, and 28 Grammys, including a Grammy Legend Award in 1991. He is best known for the role of himself in Yakety Yak, Take it Back, Trash Talk, Jones came to prominence in the 1950s as a jazz arranger and conductor, before moving on to work prolifically in pop music and film scores. In 1971, Jones was the first African American to be named as the director and conductor of the Academy Awards ceremony. In 1995, he was the first African American to receive the Academys Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award and he is tied with sound designer Willie D. Burton as the African American who has been nominated for the most Oscars, each has received seven nominations. In 2013, Jones was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as the winner, alongside Lou Adler, among his awards, Jones was named by Time Magazine as one of the most influential jazz musicians of the 20th century. Jones was born in 1933, on the South Side of Chicago, to Sarah Frances and Quincy Delight Jones and his father was a semi-professional baseball player and carpenter from Kentucky, his paternal grandmother was an ex-slave in Louisville. They had gone to Chicago as part of the Great Migration out of the South, Sarah was a bank officer and apartment complex manager. Jones later discovered that his paternal grandfather Caesar Jones was the son of a white American man of Welsh descent, Quincy had a younger brother, Lloyd, later an engineer for the Seattle station, KOMO-TV, Lloyd died in 1998. Quincy was introduced to music by his mother, who sang religious songs. When Jones was five or six, Jackson played stride piano next door, Lucy Jackson recalled that after he heard her that one day, she could not get him off her piano if she tried. When the boys were young, their mother suffered from a breakdown and was committed to a mental institution. His father obtained a divorce and remarried, Joness stepmother, Elvera, had three children of her own, Waymond, who became a friend of the young Quincy, Theresa, and Katherine. In 1943, when Jones was ten, his family moved to Bremerton, Washington, after the war, the Jones family moved to Seattle, the major regional city, where Jones attended Garfield High School near his home. He had discovered music when he was 12 and became deeply involved in high school. Classmates included Charles Taylor, who played saxophone and whose mother, the youths began playing with a band. At the age of 14, they were playing with a National Reserve band, Jones has said he got much more experience with music growing up in a smaller city, otherwise, he would have faced too much competition. At the age of 14, Jones introduced himself to a 16-year-old musician from Florida, Ray Charles, Jones cites Ray Charles as an early inspiration for his own music career. He noted that Charles overcame a disability to achieve his musical goals and he has credited his fathers sturdy work ethic with giving him the means to proceed, and his loving strength with holding the family together
Quincy Jones
–
Jones in 2014
Quincy Jones
–
Jones during an annual meeting in 2004 of the World Economic Forum in
Davos,
Switzerland, January 21, 2004
Quincy Jones
–
Jones at a performance of The Hot Chocolate Nutcracker, December 2010
20.
Blues
–
Blues is a genre and musical form originated by African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the end of the 19th century. The genre developed from roots in African musical traditions, African-American work songs, spirituals, Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads. Blue notes, usually thirds or fifths flattened in pitch, are also a part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove, Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times, Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the troubles experienced in African-American society. Many elements, such as the format and the use of blue notes. The origins of the blues are closely related to the religious music of the Afro-American community. The first appearance of the blues is often dated to after the ending of slavery and, later and it is associated with the newly acquired freedom of the former slaves. Chroniclers began to report about blues music at the dawn of the 20th century, the first publication of blues sheet music was in 1908. Blues has since evolved from unaccompanied vocal music and oral traditions of slaves into a variety of styles and subgenres. Blues subgenres include country blues, such as Delta blues and Piedmont blues, as well as urban blues styles such as Chicago blues, World War II marked the transition from acoustic to electric blues and the progressive opening of blues music to a wider audience, especially white listeners. In the 1960s and 1970s, a form called blues rock evolved. The term blues may have come from blue devils, meaning melancholy and sadness, the phrase blue devils may also have been derived from Britain in the 1600s, when the term referred to the intense visual hallucinations that can accompany severe alcohol withdrawal. As time went on, the phrase lost the reference to devils, by the 1800s in the United States, the term blues was associated with drinking alcohol, a meaning which survives in the phrase blue law, which prohibits the sale of alcohol on Sunday. Though the use of the phrase in African-American music may be older, it has been attested to in print since 1912, in lyrics the phrase is often used to describe a depressed mood. The lyrics of traditional blues verses probably often consisted of a single line repeated four times. Two of the first published songs, Dallas Blues and Saint Louis Blues, were 12-bar blues with the AAB lyric structure. Handy wrote that he adopted this convention to avoid the monotony of lines repeated three times, the lines are often sung following a pattern closer to rhythmic talk than to a melody
Blues
–
John Lomax (left) shaking hands with musician "Uncle" Rich Brown in Sumterville,
Alabama
Blues
–
Charley Patton, one of the originators of the Delta blues style, playing with a
pick or a
bottleneck slide.
Blues
–
Sheet music from "
Saint Louis Blues " (1914)
Blues
–
Bessie Smith, an early blues singer, was known for her powerful voice.
21.
Soul music
–
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It combines elements of African-American gospel music, rhythm and blues, Soul music became popular for dancing and listening in the United States, where record labels such as Motown, Atlantic and Stax were influential during the Civil Rights Movement. Soul also became popular around the world, directly influencing rock music, catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps and extemporaneous body moves, are an important feature of soul music. Other characteristics are a call and response between the lead vocalist and the chorus and a tense vocal sound. The style also occasionally uses improvisational additions, twirls and auxiliary sounds, Soul music reflected the African-American identity and it stressed the importance of an African-American culture. The new-found African-American consciousness led to new styles of music, which boasted pride in being black, Soul music dominated the U. S. R&B chart in the 1960s, and many recordings crossed over into the pop charts in the U. S. By 1968, the music genre had begun to splinter. Some soul artists developed funk music, while other singers and groups developed slicker, more sophisticated, by the early 1970s, soul music had been influenced by psychedelic rock and other genres, leading to psychedelic soul. The United States saw the development of neo soul around 1994, there are also several other subgenres and offshoots of soul music. The term soul had been used among African-American musicians to emphasize the feeling of being an African-American in the United States, according to another source, Soul music was the result of the urbanization and commercialization of rhythm and blues in the 60s. The phrase soul music itself, referring to music with secular lyrics, is first attested in 1961. The term soul in African-American parlance has connotations of African-American pride, gospel groups in the 1940s and 1950s occasionally used the term as part of their name. The jazz style that derived from gospel came to be called soul jazz, important innovators whose recordings in the 1950s contributed to the emergence of soul music included Clyde McPhatter, Hank Ballard, and Etta James. Ray Charles is often cited as popularizing the genre with his string of hits starting with 1954s I Got a Woman. Singer Bobby Womack said, Ray was the genius and he turned the world onto soul music. Charles was open in acknowledging the influence of Pilgrim Travelers vocalist Jesse Whitaker on his singing style, little Richard and James Brown were equally influential. Sam Cooke and Jackie Wilson are also acknowledged as soul forefathers. Cooke became popular as the singer of gospel group The Soul Stirrers
Soul music
–
James Brown
Soul music
–
Al Green, influential soul performer
Soul music
–
Levi Stubbs singing lead with the Four Tops in 1966
Soul music
–
Isaac Hayes performing in 1973
22.
Marianne Faithfull
–
Marianne Evelyn Gabriel Faithfull is an English singer, songwriter and actress. She achieved popularity in the 1960s with the release of her hit single As Tears Go By, born in Hampstead, London, Faithfull began her career in 1964 after attending The Rolling Stones party where she was discovered by Andrew Loog Oldham. After the release of her hit single As Tears Go By and her debut album Marianne Faithfull was a commercial success followed by a number of albums on Decca Records. From 1966 to 1970, she had a highly publicised relationship with Mick Jagger. Her popularity was enhanced by her film roles, such as Ill Never Forget Whatsisname, The Girl on a Motorcycle. However, her popularity was overshadowed by personal struggles in the 1970s, during that time she suffered from heroin addiction, alcoholism, and anorexia. After a long absence, Faithfull made a comeback with the 1979 release of her critically acclaimed album Broken English. The album was a success and marked a resurgence of her musical career. Broken English earned Faithfull a nomination for Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance and is regarded as her definitive recording. She followed with a series of albums, including Dangerous Acquaintances, A Childs Adventure, Faithfull also wrote three books about her life, Faithfull, An Autobiography, Memories, Dreams & Reflections, and Marianne Faithfull, A Life on Record. Faithfull is listed on VH1s 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll list and she received the World Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 Womens World Awards and was also awarded the Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Faithfull was born in Hampstead, London and her half-brother is artist Simon Faithfull. Her father, Major Robert Glynn Faithfull, was a British Army officer, Faithfulls mother, Eva, was the daughter of an Austro-Hungarian nobleman, Artur Wolfgang, Ritter von Sacher-Masoch. Eva chose to style herself as Eva von Sacher-Masoch, Baroness Erisso, Faithfulls mother had been born in Budapest and moved to Vienna in 1918. The family of Sacher-Masoch had secretly opposed the Nazi regime in Vienna, Glynn Faithfulls work as an Intelligence Officer for the British Army brought him into contact with the family, and he thus met Eva. Faithfulls maternal grandfather had aristocratic roots, in the Habsburg Dynasty, Erisso was a ballerina for the Max Reinhardt Company during her early years, and danced in productions of works by the German theatrical duo Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. Faithfulls maternal great uncle was Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the 19th century Austrian nobleman whose erotic novel, Venus in Furs. Ive inherited the Baroness Sacher-Masoch title -- it comes one of my great-great uncles who gave his name to masochism
Marianne Faithfull
–
Marianne Faithfull in 2007
Marianne Faithfull
–
Left to right:
Michael Cooper,
Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull,
Al Vandenberg &
Brian Jones; sitting:
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Concertgebouw Amsterdam, 1967)
Marianne Faithfull
–
Faithfull performing in 2008
Marianne Faithfull
–
Faithfull, Women's World Awards, Vienna 2009
23.
Led Zeppelin
–
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band formed in London in 1968. The group consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones, after changing their name from the New Yardbirds, Led Zeppelin signed a deal with Atlantic Records that afforded them considerable artistic freedom. Their fourth album, which features the track Stairway to Heaven, is among the most popular and influential works in rock music, Page wrote most of Led Zeppelins music, particularly early in their career, while Plant generally supplied the lyrics. Jones keyboard-based compositions later became central to the catalogue, which featured increasing experimentation. The latter half of their career saw a series of record-breaking tours that earned the group a reputation for excess, in the decades that followed, the surviving members sporadically collaborated and participated in one-off Led Zeppelin reunions. The most successful of these was the 2007 Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert in London, Led Zeppelin are widely considered one of the most successful, innovative, and influential rock groups in history. They are one of the music artists in the history of audio recording. With RIAA-certified sales of 111.5 million units, they are the band in the US. Each of their nine studio albums placed in the top 10 of the Billboard album chart and they achieved eight consecutive UK number-one albums. Rolling Stone magazine described them as the heaviest band of all time, the biggest band of the Seventies, and unquestionably one of the most enduring bands in rock history. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, in 1966, London-based session guitarist Jimmy Page joined the blues-influenced rock band the Yardbirds to replace bassist Paul Samwell-Smith. Page soon switched from bass to guitar, creating a dual lead guitar line-up with Jeff Beck. Following Becks departure in October 1966, the Yardbirds, tired from constant touring and recording, Page wanted to form a supergroup with him and Beck on guitars, and the Whos Keith Moon and John Entwistle on drums and bass, respectively. Vocalists Steve Winwood and Steve Marriott were also considered for the project, the group never formed, although Page, Beck, and Moon did record a song together in 1966, Becks Bolero, in a session that also included bassist-keyboardist John Paul Jones. The Yardbirds played their final gig in July 1968 at Luton College of Technology in Bedfordshire, Page and Dreja began putting a new line-up together. Pages first choice for the singer was Terry Reid, but Reid declined the offer and suggested Robert Plant. Plant eventually accepted the position, recommending former Band of Joy drummer John Bonham, Jones inquired about the vacant position at the suggestion of his wife after Dreja dropped out of the project to become a photographer. Page had known Jones since they were both musicians and agreed to let him join as the final member
Led Zeppelin
–
Clockwise, from top left:
Jimmy Page,
John Bonham,
Robert Plant,
John Paul Jones
Led Zeppelin
–
A 1937 photograph of the burning
LZ 129 Hindenburg, similar to that used on the cover of the band's debut album and extensively on later merchandise
Led Zeppelin
–
Bron-Yr-Aur, the Welsh cottage to which Page and Plant retired in 1970 to write many of the tracks that appeared on the band's third and fourth albums
Led Zeppelin
–
Plant and Page perform acoustically in Hamburg in March 1973, just before the release of the band's fifth album,
Houses of the Holy
24.
Pink Floyd
–
Pink Floyd were an English rock band formed in London. They achieved international acclaim with their progressive and psychedelic music, Pink Floyd were founded in 1965 by students Syd Barrett on guitar and lead vocals, Nick Mason on drums, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, and Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals. Guitarist David Gilmour joined in December 1967, Barrett left in April 1968 due to deteriorating mental health. Waters became the primary lyricist and conceptual leader, devising the concepts behind their albums The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals, The Wall. The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall became two of the albums of all time. Following creative tensions, Wright left Pink Floyd in 1979, followed by Waters in 1985, Gilmour and Mason continued as Pink Floyd, Wright rejoined them as a session musician and, later, a band member. The three produced two more albums—A Momentary Lapse of Reason and The Division Bell —and toured through 1994, Barrett died in 2006, and Wright in 2008. The final Pink Floyd studio album, The Endless River, was recorded without Waters, Pink Floyd were inducted into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005. By 2013, the band had more than 250 million records worldwide. Roger Waters met Nick Mason while they were both studying architecture at the London Polytechnic at Regent Street and they first played music together in a group formed by Keith Noble and Clive Metcalfe with Nobles sister Sheilagh. Richard Wright, an architecture student, joined later that year. Waters played lead guitar, Mason drums, and Wright rhythm guitar, the band performed at private functions and rehearsed in a tearoom in the basement of the Regent Street Polytechnic. They performed songs by the Searchers and material written by their manager and songwriter, Mason moved out after the 1964 academic year, and guitarist Bob Klose moved in during September 1964, prompting Waters switch to bass. Sigma 6 went through several names, including the Meggadeaths, the Abdabs and the Screaming Abdabs, Leonards Lodgers, in 1964, as Metcalfe and Noble left to form their own band, guitarist Syd Barrett joined Klose and Waters at Stanhope Gardens. Barrett, two younger, had moved to London in 1962 to study at the Camberwell College of Arts. Waters and Barrett were childhood friends, Waters had often visited Barrett, Noble and Metcalfe left the Tea Set in late 1963, and Klose introduced the band to singer Chris Dennis, a technician with the Royal Air Force. In December 1964, they secured their first recording time, at a studio in West Hampstead, through one of Wrights friends, Wright, who was taking a break from his studies, did not participate in the session. When the RAF assigned Dennis a post in Bahrain in early 1965, later that year, they became the resident band at the Countdown Club near Kensington High Street in London, where from late night until early morning they played three sets of 90 minutes each
Pink Floyd
–
Pink Floyd in January 1968, from the only known photo-shoot of all five members. Clockwise from bottom: Gilmour, Mason, Barrett, Waters, Wright
Pink Floyd
–
The psychedelic artwork for
A Saucerful of Secrets was the first of many Pink Floyd covers designed by
Hipgnosis
Pink Floyd
–
Waters performing with Pink Floyd at
Leeds University in 1970
Pink Floyd
–
Pink Floyd in 1973
25.
Frank Zappa
–
Zappa also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. He is considered one of the most innovative and stylistically diverse rock musicians of his generation, as a self-taught composer and performer, Zappas diverse musical influences led him to create music that was sometimes difficult to categorize. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical composers such as Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky and he began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands, later switching to electric guitar. His 1966 debut album with the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out, combined songs in conventional rock and roll format with collective improvisations and studio-generated sound collages. He continued this eclectic and experimental approach, irrespective of whether the format was rock. Zappas output is unified by a conceptual continuity he termed Project/Object, with musical phrases, ideas. His lyrics reflected his views of established social and political processes, structures and movements. Unlike many other musicians of his era, he personally disapproved of and seldom used drugs. During Zappas lifetime, he was a productive and prolific artist, earning widespread acclaim from critics. He had some success, particularly in Europe, and worked as an independent artist for most of his career. He remains an influence on musicians and composers. His honors include an induction into the 1995 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the 1997 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him at number 71 on its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, Zappa was born in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Rosemarie was of Italian and French ancestry, his father, whose name was Anglicized to Francis Vincent Zappa, was an immigrant from Partinico, Sicily, with Greek and Arab ancestry. Frank, the eldest of four children, was raised in an Italian-American household where Italian was often spoken by his grandparents, the family moved often because his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked in the defense industry. After a time in Florida in the 1940s, the returned to Maryland. Due to their homes proximity to the arsenal, which stored mustard gas, gas masks were kept in the home in case of an accident and this had a profound effect on Zappa, and references to germs, germ warfare and the defense industry occur throughout his work. Zappa was often sick as a child, suffering from asthma, earaches, a doctor treated his sinusitis by inserting a pellet of radium into each of Zappas nostrils
Frank Zappa
–
Zappa performing in
Ekeberghallen, Oslo, on January 16, 1977
Frank Zappa
–
Zappa's senior yearbook photo, 1958
Frank Zappa
–
Zappa with the Mothers of Invention,
Theatre de Clichy, Paris, 1971
Frank Zappa
–
Frank Zappa in Paris, early 1970s
26.
Deep Purple
–
Deep Purple are an English rock band formed in Hertford in 1968. The band is considered to be among the pioneers of metal and modern hard rock. Originally formed as a rock band, the band shifted to a heavier sound in 1970. Deep Purple, together with Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath, have referred to as the unholy trinity of British hard rock. They were listed in the 1975 Guinness Book of World Records as the globes loudest band for a 1972 concert at Londons Rainbow Theatre, Deep Purple have had several line-up changes and an eight-year hiatus. The 1968–1976 line-ups are commonly labelled Mark I, II, III and their second and most commercially successful line-up featured Ian Gillan, Jon Lord, Roger Glover, Ian Paice, and Ritchie Blackmore. This line-up was active from 1969 to 1973, and was revived from 1984 to 1989, and again from 1992 to 1993. The bands line-up has been more stable in recent years. Deep Purple were ranked number 22 on VH1s Greatest Artists of Hard Rock programme, the band received the Legend Award at the 2008 World Music Awards. Deep Purple were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, in 1967, former Searchers drummer Chris Curtis contacted London businessman Tony Edwards, in the hope that he would manage a new group he was putting together, to be called Roundabout. Curtis vision was a supergroup where the members would get on and off. Impressed with the plan, Edwards agreed to finance the venture with two partners, John Coletta and Ron Hire, all of Hire-Edwards-Coletta Enterprises. The first recruit to the band was the classically trained Hammond organ player Jon Lord, Lord was currently performing in a backing band for the vocal group The Flower Pot Men, along with bassist Nick Simper and drummer Carlo Little. Simper had previously been in Johnny Kidd and the Pirates and survived the 1966 car crash that killed Kidd, Lord put the two on alert that hed been recruited for the Roundabout project, after which Simper and Little suggested guitarist Ritchie Blackmore, whom Lord had never met. Simper had known Blackmore since the early 1960s when his first band, the Renegades, debuted around the time as one of Blackmores early bands. HEC persuaded Blackmore to return from Hamburg to audition for the new group, Blackmore was making a name for himself as a studio session guitarist, and had also been a member of the Outlaws, Screaming Lord Sutch, and Neil Christian. Curtis erratic behaviour and lifestyle, fueled by LSD use, caused a sudden disinterest in the project he had started, but HEC was now intrigued with the possibilities Lord and Blackmore brought, while Lord and Blackmore were also keen to continue. The two carried on with recruiting members, keeping Tony Edwards as their manager
Deep Purple
–
L–R:
Ian Paice,
Roger Glover,
Ian Gillan,
Steve Morse and
Don Airey performing live in 2013
Deep Purple
–
Organ player
Jon Lord
Deep Purple
–
Ritchie Blackmore in Hannover, Germany, 1970
Deep Purple
–
Vocalist
Ian Gillan on stage in Clemson, South Carolina, US, 1972
27.
Canned Heat
–
Canned Heat is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965. The group has been noted for its interpretations of blues material and for its efforts to promote interest in type of music. The music and attitude of Canned Heat afforded them a large following, Canned Heat appeared at most major musical events at the end of the 1960s, performing blues standards along with their own material and occasionally indulging in lengthy psychedelic solos. Two of their songs – Going Up the Country and On the Road Again – became international hits, Going Up the Country was a remake of the Henry Thomas song Bull Doze Blues, recorded in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1927. On the Road Again was a version of the 1953 Floyd Jones song of the same name. Since the early 1970s, numerous changes have occurred, although the current lineup includes all three surviving members of the classic lineup, de la Parra, Mandel, and Taylor. For much of the 1990s and 2000s, de la Parra was the member from the bands 1960s lineup. He wrote a book about the bands career, Larry Taylor, whose presence in the band has not been steady, is the other surviving member from the earliest lineups. Mandel, Walter Trout and Junior Watson are among the guitarists who gained fame for playing in later editions of the band, British blues pioneer John Mayall found several musicians for his band among former members of Canned Heat. Canned Heat was started within the community of blues collectors, Bob Hite had been trading blues records since his early teens and his house in Topanga Canyon was a meeting place for people interested in music. In 1965 some blues devotees there decided to form a jug band, the initial configuration comprised Bob Hite as vocalist, Alan Wilson on bottleneck guitar, Mike Perlowin on lead guitar, Stu Brotman on bass and Keith Sawyer on drums. Perlowin and Sawyer dropped out within a few days, so guitarist Kenny Edwards stepped in to replace Perlowin, another of Bobs friends, Vestine, asked if he could join the band and was accepted while keeping Edwards on temporarily. Soon Edwards departed and at the same time Frank Cook came in to replace Holmes as their permanent drummer. Otis ran the board for a dozen tracks, including two versions of Rollin and Tumblin, Spoonful by Willie Dixon, and Louise by John Lee Hooker all from his studio off of Vine Street in Los Angeles. Over a summer hiatus in 1966 Stuart Brotman effectively left Canned Heat after he had signed a contract for an engagement in Fresno with an Armenian belly-dance revue. Canned Heat had contacted Brotman, touting a recording contract which had to be signed the next day, Brotman would go on to join the world-music band Kaleidoscope with David Lindley, replacing Chris Darrow. After joining up with managers Skip Taylor and John Hartmann, Canned Heat finally found a permanent bassist in Larry Taylor and they recorded Rollin and Tumblin backed with Bullfrog Blues became Canned Heats first single. The first official album, Canned Heat, was released three months later in July 1967, all tracks were re-workings of older blues songs
Canned Heat
–
Performing on September 7, 1979, at the
Woodstock Reunion 1979,
Parr Meadows,
Ridge, New York
Canned Heat
–
1970 photo of the classic Canned Heat lineup.
Canned Heat
–
Future Blues album cover
Canned Heat
–
Canned Heat at the
Liri Blues Festival, Italy, in 2000.
28.
Brazilian music
–
The music of Brazil encompasses various regional music styles influenced by African, European and Amerindian forms. Instrumental music is largely practiced in Brazil, with styles ranging from classical to popular. Among the later, Pixinguinha, Hermeto Pascoal and Egberto Gismonti are significant figures, notable classical composers include Heitor Villa-Lobos, Carlos Gomes and Cláudio Santoro. The country also has a community of modern/experimental composition, including electroacoustic music. The first registration of musical activity in Brazil comes from the activities of two Jesuit priests in 1549, ten years later, they had already founded settlements for indigenous people, with a musical-educational structure. One century later, the Reduções of the southern Brazil, which were founded by Spaniard Jesuits, had a cultural development. Some of the reports of time show the fascination of the indigenous people for European music. The indigenous people took part in the music, with both the construction of musical instruments and practice of vocal and instrumental performance. In the 18th century, there was intense activity in all the more developed regions of Brazil. The previously few private orchestras became more common and the churches presented a variety of music. At this time, the first outstanding Brazilian composers were revealed, the musical pieces were mostly sacred music. Some of the composers of this period were Lobo de Mesquita, Manoel Dias de Oliveira, Francisco Gomes da Rocha, Marcos Coelho Neto. All of them were active, but in many cases few pieces have survived until the present day. Some of the most famous pieces of this period are the Magnificat by Manoel Dias de Oliveira, in the city of Arraial do Tejuco, nowadays Diamantina, there were ten conductors in activity. In Ouro Preto about 250 musicians were active, and in all of the territory of Minas Gerais almost a thousand musicians were active, a crucial factor for the changes in the musical life was the arrival of the Portuguese Royal family to Rio de Janeiro in 1808. Until then, Rio de Janeiro was musically similar to other centers of Brazil but was even less important than Minas Gerais. The presence of the Portuguese Royal family, in exile, radically changed this situation, later, John VI ordered the construction of a sumptuous theater, called the Royal Theater of São João. The works of these strongly influenced the Brazilian music of this time
Brazilian music
–
Jongo, a dance and musical genre of African origin, c. 1822
Brazilian music
–
Brazilian dance-song
lundu, c. 1835
Brazilian music
–
Ouro Preto, in
Minas Gerais: one of the most important musical centers in the Brazil during the 18th century
29.
Carlos Santana
–
Carlos Santana audio is a Mexican and American musician who first became famous in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his band, Santana, which pioneered a fusion of rock and Latin American music. The bands sound featured his melodic, blues-based guitar lines set against Latin and African rhythms featuring percussion instruments such as timbales, Santana continued to work in these forms over the following decades. He experienced a resurgence of popularity and critical acclaim in the late 1990s, in 2003 Rolling Stone magazine listed Santana at number 20 on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He has won 10 Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy Awards, Santana was born in Autlán de Navarro, Jalisco, Mexico. He learned to play the violin at age five and the guitar at age eight under the tutelage of his father and his younger brother, Jorge Santana, would also become a professional guitarist. Young Carlos was heavily influenced by Ritchie Valens at a time there were very few Mexicans in American rock. The family moved from Autlán de Navarro to Tijuana, the city on Mexicos border with California, Carlos stayed in Tijuana but later joined his family in San Francisco, graduating from James Lick Middle School, and in 1965 from Mission High School. Carlos was accepted at California State University, Northridge, and Humboldt State University, Santana was influenced by popular artists of the 1950s such as B. B. King, T-Bone Walker, and John Lee Hooker. Soon after he began playing guitar, he joined local bands along the Tijuana Strip where he was able to begin adding his own touch to 50s Rock n Roll. He was also introduced to a variety of new influences, including jazz and folk music. After several years spent working as a dishwasher in a diner and busking for spare change, in 1966 he gained prominence due to a series of accidental events, all happening on the same day. Santana was a frequent spectator at Bill Grahams Fillmore West, during a Sunday matinee show, Paul Butterfield was slated to perform there but was unable to do so as a result of being intoxicated. Santanas manager, Stan Marcum, immediately suggested to Graham that Santana join the impromptu band, during the jam session, Santanas guitar playing and solo gained the notice of both the audience and Graham. During the same year, Santana formed the Santana Blues Band, with street musicians David Brown, Marcus Malone. With their highly original blend of Latin-infused rock, jazz, blues, salsa and African rhythms, the bands early success, capped off by a memorable performance at Woodstock in 1969, led to him signing a recording contract with Columbia Records, then run by Clive Davis. Santana was signed by CBS Records and went into the studio to record their first album and they were not satisfied with the release and decided changes needed to be made. This resulted in the dismissal of drummer Bob Livingston, Santana replaced him with Mike Shrieve, who had a strong background in both jazz and rock. Percussionist Marcus Malone was forced to quit the band due to manslaughter charges
Carlos Santana
–
Santana in Indianapolis, 2010
Carlos Santana
–
New Year's Eve 1976 at the
Cow Palace in San Francisco
Carlos Santana
–
Santana during his "inner secrets" tour in the Netherlands in 1978
30.
Van Morrison
–
Sir George Ivan Morrison, OBE, known as Van Morrison, is a Northern Irish singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and producer. In 2016, Morrison was knighted for his achievements and his services to tourism. He rose to prominence in the mid-1960s as the singer of the Northern Irish R&B band Them. His solo career began under the pop-hit oriented guidance of Bert Berns with the release of the hit single Brown Eyed Girl in 1967, after Berns death, Warner Bros. Records bought out his contract and allowed him three sessions to record Astral Weeks. Much of Morrisons music is structured around the conventions of music and R&B, such as the popular singles Brown Eyed Girl, Jackie Wilson Said, Domino. The two strains together are referred to as Celtic soul. He has received six Grammy Awards, the 1994 Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music, Morrisons family roots descend from the Ulster Scots population that settled in Belfast. From 1950 to 1956, Morrison, who began to be known as Van during this time and those guys were the inspiration that got me going. If it wasnt for that kind of music, I couldnt do what Im doing now, Morrisons father bought him his first acoustic guitar when he was eleven, and he learned to play rudimentary chords from the song book The Carter Family Style, edited by Alan Lomax. A year later, when he was years old, Morrison formed his first band. In 1958, the played at some of the local cinemas. Other short-lived groups followed – at fourteen, he formed Midnight Special, another modified skiffle band and played at a school concert. Then, when he heard Jimmy Giuffre playing saxophone on The Train and The River, he talked his father buying him a saxophone. Now playing the saxophone, Morrison joined with local bands, including one called Deanie Sands. The line-up of the band was lead vocalist Deanie Sands, guitarist George Jones and drummer, later the four main musicians of the Javelins, with the addition of Wesley Black as pianist, became known as the Monarchs. Morrison attended Orangefield Boys Secondary School, leaving in July 1960 with no qualifications, however, he had been developing his musical interests from an early age and continued playing with the Monarchs part-time. Young Morrison also played with the Harry Mack Showband, the Great Eight, with his older friend, Geordie Sproule. At age 17, Morrison toured Europe for the first time with the Monarchs, while in Germany, the band recorded a single, Boozoo Hully Gully/Twingy Baby, under the name Georgie and the Monarchs
Van Morrison
–
Van Morrison performing in Newcastle, Northern Ireland on August 23, 2015
Van Morrison
–
Morrison performing at the Marin Civic Center, 2007.
Van Morrison
–
Morrison performs in 1976 at
The Band 's final concert filmed for
The Last Waltz.
Van Morrison
–
Morrison performs at the
Edmonton Folk Music Festival in 2010.
31.
B.B. King
–
Riley Benjamin King, known professionally as B. B. King, was an American blues singer, electric guitarist, songwriter, and record producer. King introduced a style of soloing based on fluid string bending and shimmering vibrato that influenced many later electric blues guitarists. King was known for performing throughout his musical career, appearing at more than 200 concerts per year on average into his 70s. In 1956, he appeared at 342 shows. King was born on a plantation in Berclair, Mississippi. He was attracted to music and the guitar in church, and began his career in juke joints. He later lived in Memphis, Tennessee, and Chicago, King died at the age of 89 in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 14,2015, from congestive heart failure and diabetic complications. Riley Benjamin King was born on September 16,1925, on a plantation called Berclair, near the town of Itta Bena, Mississippi. He considered the city of Indianola, Mississippi to be his home. When Riley was four years old, his mother left his father for another man, so the boy was raised by his grandmother, Elnora Farr, in Kilmichael. While young, King sang in the choir at Elkhorn Baptist Church in Kilmichael. King was attracted to the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ because of its music, the local minister led worship with a Sears Roebuck Silvertone guitar. The minister taught King his first three chords and it seems that at the age of 12 he purchased his first guitar for $15.00, although another source indicates he was given his first guitar by Bukka White, his mothers first cousin. In November 1941 King Biscuit Time first aired, broadcasting on KFFA in Helena and it was a radio show featuring the Mississippi Delta blues. King listened to it while on break at a plantation, a self-taught guitarist, he then wanted to become a radio musician. In 1946, King followed Bukka White to Memphis, Tennessee, White took him in for the next ten months. However, King returned to Mississippi shortly afterward, where he decided to prepare himself better for the next visit and he performed on Sonny Boy Williamsons radio program on KWEM in West Memphis, where he began to develop an audience. Kings appearances led to engagements at the Sixteenth Avenue Grill in West Memphis
B.B. King
–
King at the 2009
North Sea Jazz Festival in
Rotterdam
B.B. King
–
Performing with his famous guitar,
Lucille
B.B. King
–
B.B. King performs in Germany in 1971
B.B. King
–
King performing in New York in the late 1980s
32.
Gary Moore
–
Robert William Gary Moore was a Northern Irish musician, most widely recognised as a singer, songwriter, and virtuoso rock and blues guitarist. He guested on a number of albums recorded by high-profile musicians, Moore grew up on Castleview Road opposite Stormont Parliament Buildings, off the Upper Newtownards Road in east Belfast, as one of five children of Bobby, a promoter, and Winnie, a housewife. He left the city as a teenager, because of troubles in his family – his parents parted a year later – just as The Troubles were starting in Northern Ireland. Moore started performing at an age, having picked up a battered acoustic guitar at the age of eight. He got his first quality guitar at the age of 14, aiming to become a musician, he moved to Dublin at the age of 16. Moores greatest influence in the days was guitarist Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac who was a mentor to Moore when performing in Dublin. Greens continued influence on Moore was later repaid as a tribute to Green on his 1995 album Blues for Greeny, on this tribute album, Moore played Greens 1959 Les Paul Standard guitar which Green had lent to Moore after leaving Fleetwood Mac. Moore ultimately purchased the guitar, at Greens request, so that it would have a good home, other early musical influences were artists such as Albert King, Elvis Presley, The Shadows, Buddy Guy, and The Beatles. In Dublin, Moore joined the group Skid Row with Noel Bridgeman and Brendan Brush Shiels and it was with this group that he earned a reputation in the music industry, and his association with Phil Lynott began. In 1970, Moore moved to England and remained there, apart from two periods in the United States. In 1973, under the name The Gary Moore Band, he released his first solo album, Grinding Stone was issued in North America on Neil Kempfer-Stockers fledgling record label imprint Cosmos and received Album of the Year accolades on KTAC-FM/Seattle-Tacoma, Washington, in 1974. In 1974 he re-joined Lynott, when he first joined Thin Lizzy after the departure of founding member Eric Bell, from 1975 to August 1978, he was a member of Colosseum II. With the band he also collaborated with Andrew Lloyd Webber on the composers Variations album in 1978, in 1977, Moore re-joined Thin Lizzy, first as a temporary replacement for Brian Robertson, and on a permanent basis a year later. In July 1979, he left the band permanently to focus on his solo career, Moore appears in the videos for Waiting for an Alibi, With Love and Do Anything You Want To. He experimented with musical genres, including rock, jazz, blues, country, electric blues, hard rock. In 1987, he performed a solo for a cover of the Beatles Let It Be which was released under the group-name of Ferry Aid. The record raised substantial funds for the survivors of the MS Herald of Free Enterprise disaster, in 1990, he played the lead guitar solo on Shes My Baby from Traveling Wilburys Vol.3. After a series of records, Moore returned to blues music with Still Got the Blues, with contributions from Albert King, Albert Collins
Gary Moore
–
Moore in 2008
Gary Moore
–
Moore performing at the Manchester Apollo, 1985
Gary Moore
–
Moore performing, 23 October 2010
33.
Buddy Guy
–
George Buddy Guy is an American blues guitarist and singer. He is an exponent of Chicago blues and has influenced guitarists including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, John Mayer and Stevie Ray Vaughan. In the 1960s, Guy played with Muddy Waters as a house guitarist at Chess Records, Guy was ranked 30th in Rolling Stone magazines 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. His song Stone Crazy was ranked 78th in Rolling Stones list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time, Clapton once described him as the best guitar player alive. In 1999 Guy wrote the book, Damn Right Ive Got the Blues, Guys autobiography, When I Left Home, My Story, was published in 2012. Guy was born and raised in Lettsworth, Louisiana and he began learning to play the guitar using a two-string diddley bow he made. Later he was given a Harmony acoustic guitar, which, decades later in Guys lengthy career, was donated to the Rock, in the early 1950s Guy began performing with bands in Baton Rouge. While living there, he worked as a custodian at Louisiana State University, soon after moving to Chicago on September 25,1957, Guy fell under the influence of Muddy Waters. In 1958, a competition with West Side guitarists Magic Sam, soon afterwards he recorded for Cobra Records. He recorded sessions with Junior Wells for Delmark Records under the pseudonym Friendly Chap in 1965 and 1966, leonard Chess, Chess Records founder, denounced Guy’s playing as noise. In the early 1960s, Chess tried recording Guy as a solo artist with R&B ballads, jazz instrumentals, soul and novelty dance tunes, Guy’s only Chess album, I Left My Blues in San Francisco, was released in 1967. Most of the songs belong stylistically to the eras soul boom, with orchestrations by Gene Barge, Chess used Guy mainly as a session guitarist to back Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Koko Taylor and others. In 1965, Guy participated in the European tour American Folk Blues Festival, in 1972, he established The Checkerboard Lounge, with partner L. C. Guys career took off during the revival of the late 1980s. It was sparked by Claptons request that Guy be part of the 24 Nights all-star blues guitar lineup at Londons Royal Albert Hall, Guy subsequently signed with Silvertone Records. Guy performs a month of shows each January at his Chicago blues club, in 2015, British blues fan Alan Harper published a book entitled Waiting for Buddy Guy, Chicago Blues at the Crossroads. While Guys music is often labelled Chicago blues, his style is unique and his music can vary from the most traditional, deepest blues to a creative, unpredictable and radical gumbo of the blues, avant rock, soul and free jazz that changes with each performance. As the New York Times music critic Jon Pareles noted in 2004, Mr. Guy,68, mingles anarchy, virtuosity, deep blues and hammy shtick in ways that keep all eyes on him
Buddy Guy
–
Buddy Guy performing and interacting with the crowd
Buddy Guy
–
Buddy Guy at Monterey Jazz Festival 1992. Photo: Brian McMillen
Buddy Guy
–
Buddy Guy at the
Liri Blues Festival, Italy, in 1989
34.
Chuck Berry
–
Charles Edward Anderson Chuck Berry was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as Maybellene, Roll Over Beethoven, Rock and Roll Music, Goode, Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive. Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a style that included guitar solos and showmanship. Born into a middle-class African-American family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age, while still a high school student he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker and his break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded Maybellene—Berrys adaptation of the country song Ida Red—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on Billboard magazines rhythm and blues chart. By the end of the 1950s, Berry was a star, with several hit records and film appearances. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berrys Club Bandstand, but in January 1962, he was sentenced to three years in prison for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines. After his release in 1963, Berry had several hits, including No Particular Place to Go, You Never Can Tell. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a jail sentence and community service. Berry is included in several of Rolling Stone magazines greatest of all time lists, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berrys, Johnny B. Goode, Maybellene, and Rock and Roll Music, Berrys Johnny B. Goode is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was the child in a family of six. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as the Ville and his father, Henry William Berry, was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church, his mother, Martha Bell, was a certified public school principal. His upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age, Berrys account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a nonfunctional pistol. He was convicted and sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, the singing group became competent enough that the authorities allowed it to perform outside the detention facility. Berry was released from the reformatory on his 21st birthday in 1947, on October 28,1948, Berry married Themetta Toddy Suggs, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on October 3,1950
Chuck Berry
–
Chuck Berry in 1957
35.
George Clinton (musician)
–
George Clinton is an American singer, songwriter, bandleader, and record producer. He was the architect of P-Funk and the mastermind of the bands Parliament and Funkadelic during the 1970s. He launched a career in 1981. He has been cited as one of the foremost innovators of funk music along with James Brown and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997, alongside 15 other members of Parliament-Funkadelic. Clinton was born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, during his teen years Clinton formed a doo wop group inspired by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers called The Parliaments, while straightening hair at a barber salon in Plainfield. For a period in the 1960s Clinton was a songwriter for Motown. These two bands combined the elements of such as Jimi Hendrix, Sly and the Family Stone, Cream, and James Brown while exploring various sounds, technology. Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic dominated diverse music during the 1970s with over 40 R&B hit singles, Clintons efforts as a solo artist began in 1982. He is also a music producer who works on almost all the albums he performs on. Beginning in the early 1980s, Clinton recorded several solo albums. In 1982, Clinton signed to Capitol Records under two names, his own and as the P-Funk All-Stars, releasing Computer Games under his own name that same year. The single Loopzilla hit the Top 20 on the R&B charts, followed by Atomic Dog, in 1985, he was recruited by the Red Hot Chili Peppers to produce their album Freaky Styley, because the band members were huge fans of George Clintons and of funk in general. Clinton, in fact, wrote the vocals and lyrics to the track which was originally intended by the band to be left as an instrumental piece. The album was not a success at the time, but has since sold 500,000 copies after the Red Hot Chili Peppers became popular years later. During the mid to late 1980s, many hip-hop and rap artists cited Clintons earlier music as an influence, along with James Brown, Clintons songs with Parliament-Funkadelic were often sampled by rap producers. Sure, sample my stuff… he remarked in 1996, Aint a better time to get paid than when youre my age. You know what to do with money and you dont buy as much pussy or drugs with it – you just buy some. In 1989, Clinton released The Cinderella Theory on Paisley Park and this was followed by Hey Man, Smell My Finger in 1993
George Clinton (musician)
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Clinton performing in Auckland, New Zealand, 2015
George Clinton (musician)
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George Clinton performing in The Netherlands.
George Clinton (musician)
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George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic performing at Waterfront Park, in Louisville, Kentucky, July 4, 2008
George Clinton (musician)
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George Clinton performing live in Texas.
36.
Parliament-Funkadelic
–
Parliament-Funkadelic is an American funk, soul and rock music collective headed by George Clinton. Their style has been dubbed P-Funk and they influenced numerous post-disco and post-punk music groups of the 1980s and 1990s. The collectives origins date back to the group the Parliaments, formed in the late 1950s in Plainfield. The name Parliament-Funkadelic became the term for the multiple bands in Clintons stable. By the late 1970s the collective had grown to dozens of musicians recording and touring under many different group names. Overall, the collective achieved thirteen top ten hits in the American R&B music charts between 1967 and 1983, including six number one hits. By the early 1980s, Clinton consolidated the collectives projects and continued touring under the names George Clinton. Some former members of Parliament perform under the name Original P, sixteen members of Parliament-Funkadelic were inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. The etymology of the term P-Funk is subject to multiple interpretations and it has been identified typically as an abbreviation of Parliament-Funkadelic. Another suggested definition is Plainfield Funk, referring to Plainfield, New Jersey, the liner notes of CD versions of the 1978 Parliament album Motor Booty Affair suggest that the P stands for Pure. It has also suggested that it is an abbreviation of Psychedelic Funk. The breakout popularity of Parliament-Funkadelic led to use of the term P-Funk to describe what is now considered to be a genre of music in its own right. The P-Funk story began in 1956 in Plainfield, New Jersey and this was The Parliaments, a name inspired by Parliament cigarettes. By the early 1960s, the group had solidified into the lineup of Clinton, Ray Stingray Davis, Clarence Fuzzy Haskins, Calvin Simon. Later, the group rehearsed in a partially owned by Clinton. The Parliaments finally achieved a hit single in 1967 with Testify while Clinton began commuting to Detroit as a songwriter and producer for Motown Records, after a contractual dispute in which Clinton temporarily lost the rights to the name The Parliaments, Clinton brought the backing musicians forward. When the band relocated to Detroit, their guitar-based, raw sound, with its heavy psychedelic rock influences, inspired Billy Bass Nelson. Clinton signed Funkadelic to Westbound Records, and the five Parliaments singers were credited as guests while the five musicians were listed as the group members
Parliament-Funkadelic
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George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic performing at the Granada Theater in Dallas, Texas, May 4, 2006
Parliament-Funkadelic
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Bootsy Collins
Parliament-Funkadelic
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George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic at the
Roskilde Festival, 2006.
Parliament-Funkadelic
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Umbria Jazz 2004
37.
Eric Clapton
–
Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE, is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the only inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important, Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone magazines list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time and fourth in Gibsons Top 50 Guitarists of All Time. He was also named number five in Time magazines list of The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players in 2009, in the mid-1960s Clapton left the Yardbirds to play with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Furthermore, he formed rock band Blind Faith with Baker, Steve Winwood. For most of the 1970s Claptons output bore the influence of the style of J. J. Cale. His version of Marleys I Shot the Sheriff helped reggae reach a mass market, two of his most popular recordings were Layla, recorded with Derek and the Dominos, and Robert Johnsons Crossroads, recorded with Cream. Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Claptons grief was expressed in the song Tears in Heaven, Clapton has been the recipient of 18 Grammy Awards, and the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004 he was awarded a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music, in 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers. Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, Fryer shipped off to war prior to Claptons birth and then returned to Canada. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the belief that Claptons real surname is Clapp. Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany, Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest. Two years later Clapton picked it up again and started playing consistently, Clapton was influenced by the blues from an early age, and practised long hours to learn the chords of blues music by playing along to the records. He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder and his guitar playing was so advanced that, by the age of 16, he was getting noticed. Around this time, Clapton began busking around Kingston, Richmond, in 1962, Clapton started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast David Brock in pubs around Surrey. When he was seventeen years old, Clapton joined his first band, an early British R&B group and he stayed with this band from January until August 1963. In October of that year, Clapton did a stint with Casey Jones & the Engineers. In October 1963, Clapton joined the Yardbirds, a rock and roll band
Eric Clapton
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Clapton performing at Hyde Park, London in June 2008
Eric Clapton
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Appearing at the
Royal Albert Hall in London for the first time in 1964, Clapton has since performed at the venue over 200 times.
Eric Clapton
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Clapton (right) with Cream
Eric Clapton
–
Clapton's
The Fool guitar (replica shown), with its bright artwork and famous "woman tone", was symbolic of the 1960s psychedelic rock era.
38.
Luther Allison
–
Luther Allison was an American blues guitarist. He was born in Widener, Arkansas, and moved with his family to Chicago in 1951 and he taught himself guitar and began listening to blues extensively. Three years later he began hanging around outside blues nightclubs with the hopes of being invited to perform and he played with Howlin Wolfs band and backed James Cotton. Allisons big break came in 1957, when Howlin Wolf invited him to the stage, freddie King took Allison under his wing, and after King got a record deal, Allison took over his gig in the house band of a club on Chicagos West Side. He worked the club circuit in the late 1950s and early 1960s and he signed a recording contract with Delmark Records in 1967 and released his debut album, Love Me Mama, the following year. He performed a set at the 1969 Ann Arbor Blues Festival. In 1972, he signed with Motown Records, one of the few artists on that label. In the mid-1970s he toured Europe and he moved to France in 1977. Allison was known for his concert performances, lengthy soulful guitar solos. Allison played the bar circuit in the United States during this period and spent eight months of the year in Europe at high-profile venues, in 1992, he performed with the French rock and roll star Johnny Hallyday in 18 shows in Paris, also playing during the intermission. Allisons manager and European agent, Thomas Ruf, founded Ruf Records in 1994, signing with Ruf Records, Allison launched a comeback in association with Alligator Records. Alligator founder Bruce Iglauer convinced Allison to return to the United States, the album Soul Fixin Man was recorded and released in 1994, and Allison toured the United States and Canada. With the James Solberg Band backing him, nonstop touring and the release of Blue Streak, Allison earned more Handy Awards and he won several Living Blues Awards and was featured on the covers of blues publications. During his tour in the summer of 1997, Allison checked into a hospital for dizziness and loss of coordination and it was discovered that he had a tumor on his lung that had metastasized to his brain. In and out of a coma, Allison died on August 12,1997, five days before his 58th birthday, in Madison and his album Reckless had just been released. His son Bernard Allison, at one time a member of his band, is now a recording artist. Bernard, the youngest of nine siblings, was exposed to all kinds of music by his father, the younger Allison made his first venture into the music business at age 13, when he appeared on a live album with his father. Allison was posthumously inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1998, in 2000, the Chicago Sun-Times called him the Bruce Springsteen of the blues
Luther Allison
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Allison performing at the 1996 Riverwalk Blues Festival
39.
Bo Diddley
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His use of African rhythms and a signature beat, a simple five-accent hambone rhythm, is a cornerstone of hip hop, rock, and pop. He is also recognized for his innovations, including his distinctive rectangular guitar. Born in McComb, Mississippi, as Ellas Otha Bates, he was adopted and raised by his mothers cousin, Gussie McDaniel, in 1934, the McDaniel family moved to the South Side of Chicago, where he dropped the Otha and became Ellas McDaniel. He performed until he was 18, however, he was more interested in the pulsating, rhythmic music he heard at a local Pentecostal church and took up the guitar. Green became a near-constant member of McDaniels backing band, the two often trading joking insults with each other during live shows, during the summers of 1943 and 1944, he played at the Maxwell Street market in a band with Earl Hooker. By 1951 he was playing on the street with backing from Roosevelt Jackson on washtub bass and Jody Williams, Williams later played lead guitar on Who Do You Love. In 1951 he landed a spot at the 708 Club, on Chicagos South Side, with a repertoire influenced by Louis Jordan, John Lee Hooker. In late 1954, he teamed up with harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold, drummer Clifton James and bass player Roosevelt Jackson and recorded demos of Im a Man and Bo Diddley. They re-recorded the songs at Chess Studios, with an ensemble comprising Otis Spann, Lester Davenport, Frank Kirkland. The record was released in March 1955, and the A-side, Bo Diddley, the origin of the stage name Bo Diddley is unclear. McDaniel claimed that his peers gave him the name, which he suspected was an insult and he also said that the name first belonged to a singer his adoptive mother knew. Harmonicist Billy Boy Arnold said that it was a local name, which Leonard Chess adopted as McDaniels stage name. McDaniel also stated that it was his nickname as a Golden Gloves boxer, a diddley bow is a homemade single-string instrument played mainly by farm workers in the South. It probably has influences from the West African coast, in the American slang term bo diddly, bo is an intensifier and diddly is a truncation of diddly squat, which means absolutely nothing. On November 20,1955, Bo Diddley appeared on the television program The Ed Sullivan Show. When someone on the shows staff overheard him casually singing Sixteen Tons in the dressing room, seeing Bo Diddley on the cue card, he thought he was to perform both his self-titled hit single and Sixteen Tons. Sullivan was furious and banned Bo Diddley from his show, reputedly saying that he wouldnt last six months, Chess Records included Bo Diddleys Sixteen Tons on the 1960 album Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger. Bo Diddleys hit singles continued in the 1950s and 1960s, Pretty Thing, Say Man and he also released numerous albums, including Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger and Have Guitar, Will Travel
Bo Diddley
–
Bo Diddley
Bo Diddley
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Bo Diddley touring Japan with Japanese band Bo Gumbos
40.
Stan Getz
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Stanley Stan Getz was an American jazz saxophonist. Playing primarily the tenor saxophone, Getz was known as The Sound because of his warm, lyrical tone, his influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol. Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Hermans big band, Getz was born on February 2,1927, at St. Vincents Hospital in Philadelphia. In 1913, Harris and Beckie emigrated to the United States with their three sons Al, Phil, and Ben after their son Louis Gayetski in 1912. The Getz family first settled in Philadelphia, but during the depression the family moved to New York City, Getz worked hard in school, receiving straight As, and finished sixth grade close to the top of his class. Getzs major interest was in musical instruments and he played a number of them before his father bought him his first saxophone at the age of 13. Even though his father also got him a clarinet, Getz instantly fell in love with the saxophone and he attended James Monroe High School in the Bronx. In 1941, he was accepted into the All City High School Orchestra of New York City and this gave him a chance to receive private, free tutoring from the New York Philharmonics Simon Kovar, a bassoon player. He also continued playing the saxophone and he eventually dropped out of school in order to pursue his musical career, but was later sent back to the classroom by the school systems truancy officers. In 1943 at the age of 16, he was accepted into Jack Teagardens band, Getz also played along with Nat King Cole and Lionel Hampton. With Herman, he had a hit with Early Autumn and after Getz left The Second Herd he was able to launch his solo career and he was the leader on almost all of his recording sessions after 1950. Getzs reputation was enhanced by his featured status on Johnny Smiths 1952 album Moonlight in Vermont. The single of the tune became a hit that stayed on the charts for months. In the mid to late 1950s working from Scandinavia, Getz became popular playing cool jazz with Horace Silver, Johnny Smith, Oscar Peterson, and many others. His first two quintets were notable for their personnel, including Charlie Parkers rhythm section of drummer Roy Haynes, pianist Al Haig, a 1953 line-up of the Dizzy Gillespie/Stan Getz Sextet featured Gillespie, Getz, Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Max Roach. Returning to the U. S. from Europe in 1961, teaming with guitarist Charlie Byrd, who had just returned from a U. S. State Department tour of Brazil, Getz recorded Jazz Samba in 1962 and it quickly became a hit. Getz won the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance of 1963 for Desafinado and it sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. His second bossa nova album, also recorded in 1962, was Big Band Bossa Nova with composer and arranger Gary McFarland, as a follow-up, Getz recorded the album, Jazz Samba Encore. with one of the originators of bossa nova, Brazilian guitarist Luiz Bonfá
Stan Getz
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Stan Getz in 1958
Stan Getz
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With his granddaughter Katie in 1987 at the
Lincoln Center
41.
Airto Moreira
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Airto Moreira is a Brazilian jazz drummer and percussionist. He is married to jazz singer Flora Purim, and their daughter Diana Moreira is also a singer and he currently resides in Los Angeles. Airto Moreira was born in Itaiópolis, Brazil, into a family of folk healers, shortly after, he followed his wife Flora Purim to the United States. After moving to the US, Moreira began playing regularly with musicians in New York. Through Booker, Moreira began playing with Joe Zawinul, who in turn introduced him to Miles Davis, at this time Davis was experimenting with electronic instruments and rock and funk rhythms, a form which would soon come to be called jazz fusion. Moreira was to participate in several of the most important projects of this musical form. He stayed with Davis for about two years, touring and participating in the creation of the seminal fusion recording Bitches Brew. Shortly after leaving Davis, Moreira joined other Davis alumni Zawinul, Wayne Shorter and Miroslav Vitous in their group Weather Report and he left Weather Report to join fellow Davis alumnus Chick Coreas new band Return to Forever. He played drums on Return to Forevers first two albums, Return to Forever and Light as a Feather in 1972 and he can be heard playing congas on Eumir Deodatos 1970s space-funk hit Also sprach Zarathustra on the album Prelude. He has also played with the Latin/fusion rock band Santana, with symphony orchestras, during live performances he often includes a samba solo, where he emulates the sound of an entire band using just a single pandeiro. In 1996, Moreira and his wife Flora Purim collaborated with P. M, dawn on the song Non-Fiction Burning for the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Rio, produced by the Red Hot Organization. Moreira was voted the number one percussionist in Down Beat Magazines Critics Poll for the years 1975 through 1982, in September 2002, Brazils President Fernando Henrique Cardoso added Moreira and Purim to the Order of Rio Branco, one of Brazils highest honors. 1970, Natural Feelings – Flora Purim, Hermeto Pascoal, Ron Carter,1971, Seeds on the Ground – Purim, Pascoal, Carter, Sivuca, Dom Um Romão, and Severino de Oliveira. LAvventura Brasiliana Di Flora Purim & Airto Moreira
Airto Moreira
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Moreira in concert in Taichung City, Taiwan, on October 20, 2007
42.
Joe Henderson
–
Joe Henderson was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. In a career spanning more than 40 years Henderson played with many of the leading American players of his day and recorded for several prominent labels, including Blue Note. From a family with five sisters and nine brothers, Henderson was born in Lima, Ohio and he dedicated his first album to them for being so understanding and tolerant during his formative years. Early musical interests included drums, piano, saxophone and composition, according to Kenny Dorham, two local piano teachers who went to school with Hendersons brothers and sisters, Richard Patterson and Don Hurless, gave him a knowledge of the piano. He was particularly enamored of his brothers record collection and it seems that a hometown drummer, John Jarette, advised Henderson to listen to musicians like Lester Young, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon and Charlie Parker. He also liked Flip Phillips, Lee Konitz and the Jazz at the Philharmonic recordings, however, Parker became his greatest inspiration. His first approach to the saxophone was under the tutelage of Herbert Murphy in high school, in this period of time, he wrote several scores for the school band and rock groups. By eighteen, Henderson was active on the Detroit jazz scene of the mid-1950s, in late 1959, he formed his first group. By the time he arrived at Wayne State University, he had transcribed and memorized so many Lester Young solos that his professors believed he had perfect pitch, classmates Yusef Lateef, Barry Harris and Donald Byrd undoubtedly provided additional inspiration. He also studied music at Kentucky State College, while in Paris, he met Kenny Drew and Kenny Clarke. Then he was sent to Maryland to conclude his draft, in 1962, he was finally discharged and promptly moved to New York. He first met trumpeter Kenny Dorham, a guidance for him. That very evening, they went see Dexter Gordon playing at Birdland, Henderson was asked by Gordon himself to play something with his rhythm section, needless to say, he happily accepted. Although Hendersons earliest recordings were marked by a strong influence, his playing encompassed not only the bebop tradition. He soon joined Horace Silvers band and provided a solo on the jukebox hit Song for My Father. After leaving Silvers band in 1966, Henderson resumed freelancing and also co-led a big band with Dorham and his arrangements for the band went unrecorded until the release of Joe Henderson Big Band in 1996. From 1963 to 1968, Henderson appeared on nearly 30 albums for Blue Note, the recordings ranged from relatively conservative hard-bop sessions to more explorative sessions. In 1967, there was an association with Miles Daviss quintet featuring Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams
Joe Henderson
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Joe Henderson with Neil Swainson
43.
Dizzy Gillespie
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John Birks Dizzy Gillespie was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, and singer. AllMusics Scott Yanow wrote, Dizzy Gillespies contributions to jazz were huge, Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks. In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a figure in the development of bebop. He taught and influenced other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione. Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children of James, James was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to the children. Gillespie started to play the piano at the age of four, Gillespies father died when he was only ten years old. Gillespie taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve, from the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. He received a scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina which he attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia. Teddy Hills band was where Gillespie made his first recording, King Porter Stomp, Willis was not immediately friendly but Gillespie was attracted anyway. The two finally married on May 9,1940 and they remained married until his death in 1993. Gillespie stayed with Teddy Hills band for a year, then left, in 1939, Gillespie joined Cab Calloways orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental Pickin the Cabbage, in 1940. After a notorious altercation between the two men, Calloway fired Gillespie in late 1941, the incident is recounted by Gillespie, along with fellow Calloway band members Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones, in Jean Bachs 1997 film, The Spitball Story. Calloway did not approve of Gillespies mischievous humor, nor of his approach to soloing, according to Jones. Finally, their grudge for each other erupted over a thrown spitball, Calloway never thought highly of Gillespie, because he didnt view Gillespie as a good musician. Once during a rehearsal, a member of the band threw a spitball, already in a foul mood, Calloway decided to blame this on Gillespie. In order to clear his name, Gillespie didn’t take the blame, Calloway had minor cuts on the thigh and wrist. After the two men were separated, Calloway fired Gillespie, a few days later, Gillespie tried to apologize to Calloway, but he was dismissed
Dizzy Gillespie
–
Gillespie in concert, Deauville,
Normandy, France
Dizzy Gillespie
–
Dizzy Gillespie,
Tadd Dameron,
Hank Jones,
Mary Lou Williams and Milt Orent in 1947
Dizzy Gillespie
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Tadd Dameron, Mary Lou Williams and Dizzy Gillespie in 1947
Dizzy Gillespie
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Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie,
Ray Brown,
Milt Jackson and
Timme Rosenkrantz in September 1947, New York
44.
Oscar Peterson
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Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, CC, CQ, OOnt was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the Maharaja of the keyboard by Duke Ellington and he released over 200 recordings, won eight Grammy Awards, and received numerous other awards and honours. He is considered one of the greatest jazz pianists, and played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years, Peterson was born to immigrants from the West Indies, his father worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway. Peterson grew up in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy in Montreal and it was in this predominantly black neighbourhood that he found himself surrounded by the jazz culture that flourished in the early 20th century. At the age of five, Peterson began honing his skills with the trumpet, however, a bout of tuberculosis when he was seven prevented him from playing the trumpet again, and so he directed all his attention to the piano. His father, Daniel Peterson, a trumpeter and pianist, was one of his first music teachers. Young Oscar was persistent at practicing scales and classical études daily, meanwhile, he was captivated by traditional jazz and learned several ragtime pieces and especially the boogie-woogie. At that time Peterson was called the Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie, at the age of nine Peterson played piano with control that impressed professional musicians. For many years his piano studies included four to six hours of practice daily, only in his later years did he decrease his daily practice to just one or two hours. In 1940, at fourteen years of age, Peterson won the music competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After that victory, he dropped out of school and became a professional pianist working for a radio show. In his own words, Tatum scared me to death, Tatum was a model for Petersons musicianship during the 1940s and 1950s. Tatum and Peterson eventually became friends, although Peterson was always shy about being compared with Tatum. Peterson also credited his sister—a piano teacher in Montreal who also taught several other Canadian jazz musicians—with being an important teacher, building on Tatums pianism and aesthetics, Peterson also absorbed Tatums musical influences, notably from piano concertos by Sergei Rachmaninoff. An important step in Petersons career was joining impresario Norman Granzs labels, Granz discovered Peterson in a peculiar manner. As the impresario was being taken to Montreal airport by cab, Granz was so smitten by what he heard that he ordered the driver to take him to the club so that he could meet the pianist. In 1949, Granz introduced Peterson at a Carnegie Hall Jazz at the Philharmonic show in New York City, so was born a lasting relationship and Granz remained Petersons manager for most of his career. This was more than a relationship, Peterson praised Granz for standing up for him
Oscar Peterson
–
In "
Jazz at the Philharmonic ", with
Norman Granz (1950s)
Oscar Peterson
–
Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson at Eastman Theatre Rochester in N.Y., in 1977
Oscar Peterson
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Tombstone of Oscar Peterson at St. Peter's Anglican Church in Mississauga
Oscar Peterson
–
The
Statue of Peterson at the
National Arts Centre in
Ottawa, unveiled in June 2010 by the reigning
sovereign of Canada, Queen
Elizabeth II
45.
Charles Mingus
–
Charles Mingus Jr. was an American jazz double bassist, composer and bandleader. His compositions retained the hot and soulful feel of hard bop, drawing heavily from black gospel music and blues, while containing elements of Third Stream, free jazz. He once cited Duke Ellington and church as his main influences, Mingus espoused collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz parades, paying particular attention to how each band member interacted with the group as a whole. In creating his bands, he looked not only at the skills of the available musicians, many musicians passed through his bands and later went on to impressive careers. He recruited talented and sometimes little-known artists, whom he utilized to assemble unconventional instrumental configurations, as a performer, Mingus was a pioneer in double bass technique, widely recognized as one of the instruments most proficient players. Nearly as well known as his ambitious music was Minguss often fearsome temperament and his refusal to compromise his musical integrity led to many onstage eruptions, exhortations to musicians, and dismissals. Indeed, Dizzy Gillespie had once claimed Mingus reminded him of a young Duke, Gunther Schuller has suggested that Mingus should be ranked among the most important American composers, jazz or otherwise. Charles Mingus was born in Nogales, Arizona and he was largely raised in the Watts area of Los Angeles. His maternal grandfather was a Chinese British subject from Hong Kong, Mingus was the third great-grandson of the familys founding partiarch who was, by most accounts, a German immigrant. His ancestors included German American, African American, British, Chinese, in Minguss autobiography Beneath the Underdog his mother was described as the daughter of an Englishman and a Chinese woman, and his father was the son of a black farm worker and a Swedish woman. The autobiography doesnt confirm whether Charles Mingus Sr. or Mingus himself believed this story was true and his mother allowed only church-related music in their home, but Mingus developed an early love for other music, especially Duke Ellington. Despite this, Mingus was still attached to the cello, as he studied bass with Red Callender in the late 1930s, Callender even commented that the cello was still Minguss main instrument. In Beneath the Underdog, Mingus states that he did not actually start learning bass until Buddy Collette accepted him into his band under the stipulation that he be the bands bass player. Due to an education, the young Mingus could not read musical notation quickly enough to join the local youth orchestra. This had a impact on his early musical experiences, leaving him feeling ostracized from the classical music world. These early experiences, in addition to his confrontations with racism, were reflected in his music. Much of the technique he learned was applicable to double bass when he took up the instrument in high school. He studied for five years with Herman Reinshagen, principal bassist of the New York Philharmonic, throughout much of his career, he played a bass made in 1927 by the German maker Ernst Heinrich Roth
Charles Mingus
–
Performance for the
U.S. Bicentennial, New York City, July 4, 1976 Photo by
Tom Marcello
46.
Etta James
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Etta James was an American singer who performed in various genres, including blues, R&B, soul, rock and roll, jazz and gospel. Starting her career in 1954, she gained fame with such as The Wallflower, At Last, Tell Mama, Somethings Got a Hold on Me. She faced a number of problems, including heroin addiction, severe physical abuse. James powerful, earthy voice bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll and she won six Grammy Awards and 17 Blues Music Awards. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993, the Blues Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in both 1999 and 2008. Rolling Stone magazine ranked James number 22 on its list of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time, Hawkins was born on January 25,1938, in Los Angeles, California, to Dorothy Hawkins, who was 14 at the time. Her father has never been identified, James speculated that he was the pool player Rudolf Minnesota Fats Wanderone, whom she met briefly in 1987. Her mother was absent from their apartment in Watts, conducting relationships with various men. James referred to her mother as the Mystery Lady, under his tutelage, she suffered physical abuse during her formative years, with her instructor often punching her in the chest while she sang to force her to voice to come from her gut. As a consequence, she developed a strong voice for a child her age. She became a popular singing attraction, and Sarge tried unsuccessfully to pressure the church into compensating their family for her singing, Sarge, like the musical director for the choir, was also abusive. During drunken poker games at home, he would awaken Jamesetta in the morning hours. She was a bed-wetter and often soaked with urine on these occasions, the trauma of her foster father forcing her to sing under these humiliating circumstances led to difficulties for her to sing on demand throughout her career. In 1950, Mama Lu died, and Jamesettas biological mother took her to the Fillmore district of San Francisco, within a couple of years, she began listening to doo-wop and was inspired to form a girl group, the Creolettes. At the age of 14, she met the musician Johnny Otis, stories on how they met vary. In Otiss version, she came to his hotel after one of his performances in the city, another story was that Otis spotted the Creolettes performing at a Los Angeles nightclub and sought for them to record his answer song to Hank Ballards Work with Me, Annie. Otis took the group under his wing, helping them sign to Modern Records and he also gave the singer her stage name, transposing Jamesetta into Etta James. James recorded the version, for which she was given credit as co-author, in 1954, the original the name of the song was Roll with Me, Henry, but it was changed to avoid censorship due to the off-color title
Etta James
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James in 2006
47.
Sonny Rollins
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Walter Theodore Sonny Rollins is an American jazz tenor saxophonist, widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded at least sixty albums as leader and a number of his compositions, including St. Thomas, Oleo, Doxy, Pent-Up House, Rollins was born in New York City to parents from the United States Virgin Islands. The youngest of three siblings, he grew up in central Harlem and on Sugar Hill, receiving his first alto saxophone at the age of seven or eight and he attended Edward W. Stitt Junior High School and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School in East Harlem. Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, during his high school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew, and Art Taylor. After graduating from school in 1947, Rollins began performing professionally. Between 1951 and 1953, he recorded with Miles Davis, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Charlie Parker, a breakthrough arrived in 1954 when he recorded his famous compositions Oleo, Airegin, and Doxy with a quintet led by Davis that also featured pianist Horace Silver. In 1955, Rollins entered the Federal Medical Center, Lexington, Rollins initially feared sobriety would impair his musicianship, but then went on to greater success. Rollins briefly joined the Miles Davis Quintet in the summer of 1955, later that year, he joined the Clifford Brown–Max Roach quintet, studio albums documenting his time in the band are Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street and Sonny Rollins Plus 4. A long blues solo on Saxophone Colossus, Blue 7, was analyzed in depth by the composer and critic Gunther Schuller in a 1958 article. In the solo for St. Thomas, Rollins uses repetition of a pattern, and variations of that pattern, covering only a few tones in a tight range. This is interrupted by a sudden flourish, utilizing a much wider range before returning to the former pattern, in his book The Jazz Style of Sonny Rollins, David N. Baker explains that Rollins very often uses rhythm for its own sake. He will sometimes improvise on a pattern instead of on the melody or changes. In 1956 he married the actress and model Dawn Finney, in 1956 he also recorded Tenor Madness, using Daviss group – pianist Red Garland, bassist Paul Chambers, and drummer Philly Joe Jones. The title track is the recording of Rollins with John Coltrane. In 1957, Rollins pioneered the use of bass and drums, without piano, as accompaniment for his saxophone solos, two early tenor/bass/drums trio recordings are Way Out West and A Night at the Village Vanguard. Way Out West was so named because it was recorded for California-based Contemporary Records, the Village Vanguard album consists of two sets, a matinee with bassist Donald Bailey and drummer Pete LaRoca and an evening set with bassist Wilbur Ware and drummer Elvin Jones. Rollins used the trio format intermittently throughout his career, sometimes taking the step of using his sax as a rhythm section instrument during bass. Lew Tabackin cited Rollinss pianoless trio as an inspiration to lead his own, Joe Henderson, David S. Ware, Joe Lovano, Branford Marsalis, and Joshua Redman have also led pianoless sax trios
Sonny Rollins
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Rollins performing in October 2011
Sonny Rollins
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Rollins at Newport in 2008
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Sonny Rollins at Stockholm Jazz Fest 2009
48.
Son House
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Eddie James Son House, Jr. was an American delta blues singer and guitarist, noted for his highly emotional style of singing and slide guitar playing. After years of hostility to secular music, as a preacher and for a few years also as a church pastor and he quickly developed a unique style by applying the rhythmic drive, vocal power and emotional intensity of his preaching to the newly learned idiom. Issued at the start of the Great Depression, the records did not sell, locally, House remained popular, and in the 1930s, together with Pattons associate Willie Brown, he was the leading musician of Coahoma County. There he was an influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters. In 1941 and 1942, House and the members of his band were recorded by Alan Lomax, work for the Library of Congress and Fisk University. The following year, he left the Delta for Rochester, New York, in 1964, a group of young record collectors discovered House, whom they knew of from his records issued by Paramount and by the Library of Congress. He recorded several albums, and some informally taped concerts have also issued as albums. In addition to his influence on Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters, he was an inspiration to John Hammond, Alan Wilson, Bonnie Raitt. His father, Eddie House, Sr. was a musician, playing the tuba in a band with his brothers and sometimes playing the guitar. He was a member but also a drinker, he left the church for a time, on account of his drinking. Young Eddie House adopted the family commitment to religion and churchgoing and he also absorbed the family love of music but confined himself to singing, showing no interest in the family instrumental band, and hostile to the blues on religious grounds. When Houses parents separated, his mother took him to Tallulah, Louisiana, across the Mississippi River from Vicksburg, when he was in his early teens, they moved to Algiers, New Orleans. Recalling these years, he would speak of his hatred of blues. At fifteen, probably living in Algiers, he began preaching sermons. At the age of nineteen, while living in the Delta, he married Carrie Martin and this was a significant step for House, he married in church and against family opposition. The couple moved to her hometown of Centerville, Louisiana, to run her fathers farm. After a couple of years, feeling used and disillusioned, House recalled, I left her hanging on the gatepost, around the same time, probably 1922, Houses mother died. In later years, he was angry about his marriage and said of Carrie, She wasnt nothin
Son House
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Son House
Son House
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Mississippi State Penitentiary, where Son House was confined
49.
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
50.
Chick Corea
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Armando Anthony Chick Corea is an American jazz and fusion pianist, keyboardist, and composer. Many of his compositions are considered jazz standards, as a member of Miles Daviss band in the late 1960s, he participated in the birth of the electric jazz fusion movement. In the 1970s he formed Return to Forever, along with Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, and Keith Jarrett, he has been described as one of the major jazz piano voices to emerge in the post-John Coltrane era. Corea continued to other collaborations and to explore various musical styles throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He is also known for promoting and fundraising for a number of social issues, armando Corea was born in Chesterfield, Massachusetts. He is of southern Italian and Spanish descent and his father, a jazz trumpet player who had led a Dixieland band in Boston in the 1930s and 1940s, introduced him to the piano at the age of four. Growing up surrounded by music, he was influenced at an early age by bebop and stars such as Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Horace Silver. At eight Corea also took up drums, which would influence his use of the piano as a percussion instrument. Corea developed his skills by exploring music on his own. He also spent several years as a performer and soloist for the St. Rose Scarlet Lancers, given a black tuxedo by his father, he started playing gigs when in high school. He enjoyed listening to Herb Pomeroys band at the time, and had a trio that played Horace Silvers music at a jazz club. He eventually decided to move to New York City, where he studied education for one month at Columbia University. He quit after finding both disappointing, but liked the atmosphere of New York, and the scene became the starting point for his professional career. Coreas first major gig was with Cab Calloway. Corea started his career in the 1960s playing with trumpeter Blue Mitchell and Latin musicians such as Herbie Mann, Willie Bobo. One of the earliest recordings of his playing is with Mitchells quintet on The Thing To Do. His first album as a leader was Tones for Joans Bones in 1966, two years before the release of his album Now He Sings, Now He Sobs, with Roy Haynes on drums and he made another sideman appearance with Stan Getz on 1967s Sweet Rain. From 1968 to 1971 Corea had associations with avant garde players, in September 1968 Corea replaced Herbie Hancock in the piano chair in Daviss band and appeared on landmark albums such as Filles de Kilimanjaro, In a Silent Way, and Bitches Brew
Chick Corea
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Chick Corea
Chick Corea
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Chick Corea, 2007
Chick Corea
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Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea,
New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2008
Chick Corea
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Corea performs with
Béla Fleck, March 1, 2008
