Miles Davis: A candid conversation with the jazz world's premier iconoclast September 1962.
"I don't pay no attention to what critics say about me, the good or the bad. The toughest critic I got is myself...and I'm too vain to play anything I think is bad." "In high school I was best in music class on the trumpet, but the prizes went to the boys with blue eyes. I made up my mind to outdo anybody white on my horn." "I don't dig people in clubs who don't pay the musicians respect. You ever see anybody bugging the classical musicians when they are on the job and trying to work?"
Miles Ahead: Radio and TV Tributes
A documentary comprising pieces of a 1986 interview with Davis; comments by George Benson, Bill Cosby, Gil Evans, Robben Ford, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Tony Williams, and others; excerpts from several TV broadcasts of Davis performances
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Kind of Blue is certainly the one jazz album which has made its way into everyone's collection. Drummer Jimmy Cobb said it was a recording that was made in heaven!
Dewey Redman (born Walter Redman in Fort Worth , Texas , United States , May 17 , 1931 ; d. Brooklyn , New York , September 2 , 2006 ) [1] was an American free jazz saxophonist.Redman played mainly tenor saxophone , though he occasionally doubled on alto saxophone , played the Chinese suona (which he called a musette ), [2] and on rare occasions played the clarinet . His son is saxophonist Joshua Redman . [3]
Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie was one of the principal developers of bop in the early 1940s, and his styles of improvising and trumpet playing were imitated widely in the 1940s and 1950s. Indeed, he is one of the most influential players in the history of jazz.
Clifford Brown
In his short life, Clifford Brown created a place for himself in jazz history by combining extraordinary technical ability with a love of melody and a highly developed sense of musical structure. Clean-living, studious, and extremely disciplined, he was loved as a person and admired as a musician by everyone who knew him.
Dinah Washington
The Definite Dinah Washington
Her outsize voice was easily matched by her ego. But Dinah Washington was one diva whose boasts could always be backed up - and were, every time she opened her mouth.
Ella Fitzgerald
Ella Fitzgerald
Dubbed "The First Lady of Song," Ella Fitzgerald was the most popular female jazz singer in the United States for more than half a century. In her lifetime, she won 13 Grammy awards and sold over 40 million albums.
Dave Brubeck
Dave Brubeck
As composer, Brubeck has written and, in some cases, recorded several large-scale works including two ballets, a musical, an oratorio, four cantatas, a mass, works for jazz combo and orchestra, and many solo piano pieces.
Wes Montgomery:Guitarist
Wes Montgomery was one of the great jazz guitarists, a natural extension of Charlie Christian whose appealing use of octaves became influential and his trademark. He achieved great commercial success during his last few years, only to die prematurely.
McCoy Tyner
McCoy Tyner: Verve Music Group
Born in Philadelphia on December 11, 1938, McCoy Tyner started playing piano at age 13 with Bud Powell, Art Tatum and Thelonious Monk as his primary influences. He began working locally with Calvin Massey and also landed a gig as house pianist at a Philly jazz club where he played behind visiting jazz artists
Stan Getz
Stan Getz: Jazz Files
For decades Stan Getz was one of America's top tenor saxophone players. His main early influence was Lester Young, but he grew up to become a major influence on future generations of sax players in his own right. His instantly recognisable tone and his polished playing earned him the nickname "The Sound". Getz was a remarkably consistent performer rarely lacking in inspiration, always delivering the goods when it mattered.
Stan Getz: The Verve Music Group
Getz recorded his most sublime creations during his long affiliation with first the Clef and Norgran labels and then Verve Records, from 1952 to 1971.
Fela Anikulapo-Kuti: Discography
The other major element of Fela's music was his uncompromised and strident politics. Over the decades, Fela repeatedly ran afoul of Nigeria's various authoritarian regimes, resulting in several arrests, beatings and political trials.
Charlie Parker
Charlie Parker: Ken Burns: PBS
Parker's name first appeared in the music press in 1940, and from this date his career is more fully documented. From 1940 to 1942 he played in Jay McShann's band, with which he toured the Southwest, Chicago, and New York, and took part in his first recording sessions in Dallas (1941). These recordings, and several made for broadcasting from the same period, document his early, swing-based style, and at the same time reveal his extraordinary gift for improvisation.
American Masters: PBS: Sarah Vaughan
Jazz critic Leonard Feather called her "the most important singer to emerge from the bop era." Ella Fitzgerald called her the world’s "greatest singing talent." During the course of a career that spanned nearly fifty years, she was the singer’s singer, influencing everyone from Mel Torme to Anita Baker. She was among the musical elite identified by their first names. She was Sarah, Sassy -- the incomparable Sarah Vaughan.
KCET: Sarah Vaughan
In public performances Vaughan is accompanied by a trio of piano, double bass, and drums, either alone or as the nucleus of a big band or symphony orchestra. Among the distinguished members of her group have been Jimmy Jones (1947-52; 1954-8), Roy Haynes (1953-4), Richard Davis (late 1950s-early 1960s), Roland Hanna (early 1960s), Bob James (1965-8), Jan Hammer(1970-71), Jimmy Cobb(1970-78), Andy Simpkins (from 1979), and Harold Jones (from 1980). From 1978 to 1980 the trio became a quartet under the leadership of Vaughan's then manager, conductor, and husband, Waymon Reed. In 1987, Vaughan recorded an album of Latin-jazz songs
Charles Mingus
Mingus: Verve Music
'Early compositions, recorded while he was still on the West Coast, presented a variety of separate approaches, but Mingus also had ambitions to be a successful songwriter like Ellington; hence his ballads such as "Bemoanable Lady" and the famous "Weird Nightmare". Moving to New York in the early 1950s, he played for a while with Charlie Parker, got to know Thelonious Monk and Lester Young, and wrote tributes to all three of them. He also ran his own record label for a while and became much more actively involved in the growing civil rights movement, inspiring his collaboration with poet Langston Hughes.' Impulse!
On Point: Remembering Nina Simone
Born Eunice Waymon in North Carolina, Simone grew up in a family with eight children. She started out as a classical pianist, but in 1954 the financial necessity of her family led her to take a job in an Atlantic City nightclub. After auditioning for the gig, the owner told her that she could have it, but only if she agreed to sing as well. Thus, Nina ("little one") Simone (French actress Simone Signoret), was born.
The Official Site of Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was the daughter of Clarence Holiday. Her early life is obscure, as the account given in her autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, is inaccurate. Her father abandoned the family early and refused to acknowledge his daughter until after her first success.
Billie Holiday: Fine and Mellow
'According to her own story, she was recruited for a brothel and was eventually jailed briefly for prostitution. At some point after 1930, she began singing at a small club in Brooklyn, and in a year or so moved to Pods' and Jerry's, a Harlem club well known to jazz enthusiasts. In 1933, she was working in another Harlem club, Monette's, where she was discovered by the producer and talent scout John Hammond'. PBS
John Coltrane
John Coltrane
'John Coltrane was born in Hamlet, North Carolina in September, 1926. John played both clarinet and alto saxophone as a child, and in the early forties would serve as a clarinetist in the U.S. Navy marching band. In 1945, Coltrane moved to Philadelphia, where he would begin his professional music career. Over the next decade Coltrane would play with such artists as Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Earl Bostic, Johnny Hodges, and even Charlie Parker. In 1955, Coltrane had switched to tenor sax and would join the legendary rhythm section in the Miles Davis Quintet. His stint with Miles Davis would characterize his career to come. Coltrane was misunderstood, seen as eccentric or weird.'Atlantic Unbound 1987.
This is a real rarity. Miles was actually prepared to be interviewed live on television....for which all credit must go to the programmes presenter Jools Holland for even attempting it ...or was it that someone just had the good sense to invite him while he was in the UK ? On this occasion however, not on tour with his group but doing promotion for his latest video ' TuTu ' and showing some of his recent sketches and paintings which had been previously exhibited by a German art gallery . Listen out for his reaction when Jools asked him about "..straight playing...." a phrase he was obviously not familier with in a musical context, and then his rather terse views on some contemporary singers. The conversation lasted just a few minutes before they cut to the video. It was possibly the only time he had ever been seen and heard live on UK television.
