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Obituary

John Williams Has Died

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
December 21, 2018

It can be discouraging, but we are resigned to keeping you up to date on the deaths of prominent musicians. The latest bad news is about the pianist John Williams, who died On December 14 in Wilmington, North Carolina. Williams achieved substantial renown in the 1950s for his work with several prominent leaders and for leading his own trio. Inevitably, he was occasionally misidentified as another John Williams who was once a jazz pianist but became known primarily as a ...

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Obituary

John Thms. Williams (1929-2018)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
December 18, 2018

John Thomas Williams, a spritied jazz pianist strongly influenced by Bud Powell and Horace Silver who recorded with the Stan Getz Quintet in the early 1950s before recording his two sole leadership albums for EmArcy in 1954 and '55, died on December 15. He was 89. Born in Windsor, Vt., Williams began as a church organist and played baritone horn in the Army before spending a semester at the Manhattan School of Music. In the 1940s, he joined Mal Hallett's ...

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Obituary

Nancy Wilson: 1937-2018

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
December 15, 2018

Nancy Wilson, a sassy and sultry jazz-pop singer with extraordinary vocal and visual performing talents who emerged in 1959 just as the pop charts were starting to be dominated by soft Brazilian voices, vocal harmonies by beach bands, British invaders and back-beat soul from Detroit and Memphis, died yesterday. She was 81. Nancy was first and foremost a superb story-singer who let songs run through her and whose face and voice perfectly expressed the elation or pained determination detailed in ...

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Obituary

Nancy Wilson Is Gone

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
December 15, 2018

Sorry to hear of the passing of Nancy Wilson. She was 81 and died yesterday at her home north of Los Angeles in the California desert community of Pioneertown. The singer achieved fame in the 1960s after Cannonball Adderley heard her in a Columbus, Ohio, club and recommended her to Capitol Records. An album she made with Adderley and his quintet became one of her most popular and has remained so for decades. Nearly as successful was her album with ...

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Obituary

Roy Hargrove (1969-2018)

Source: JazzWax by Marc Myers
November 5, 2018

Roy Hargrove, a jazz trumpeter whose chance encounter with Wynton Marsalis in the 11th grade catapulted him from Fort Worth, Texas, to stardom at age 20 in 1990 after tours with Marsalis and a year at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, died November 2. He was 49. Here are five clips that illustrate his measured tone and pretty taste: Here's Hargrove soloing in 1988 on I Remember Clifford with Don Sickler (tp,arr), Frank “Ku-umba" Lacy (tb), Bobby Watson ...

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Obituary

Roy Hargrove, 1969-2018

Source: Rifftides by Doug Ramsey
November 4, 2018

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove died of a heart attack in New York yesterday at the age of 49. Hargrove was one of a coterie of young musicians who came to prominence following the sudden superstardom of fellow trumpeter Wynton Marsalis in the 1990s. Record companies scrambled to find their own Marsalises. Hargrove became famous not long after he was graduated from the Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing Arts in Dallas, Texas. His technical accomplishments, youth, personality and attractiveness ...

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Obituary

Is Japan Finally Ready For The Streaming Revolution?

Source: HypeBot
October 28, 2018

A new report by indie music rights agency Merlin highlights the slow but now steady shift towards music streaming in Japan, one of the world's last bastions of physical product. As the second largest music market in the world, Japan has been historically slow to take up streaming music despite the presence of advanced broadband capabilities in much of the country. As of 2017, 80% of music sold in the country comes via physical product, according to the Recording Industry Association ...

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Obituary

Rest In Peace Paul Allen: Friend Of Music and Much More

Source: HypeBot
October 23, 2018

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen recently passed away, and is remembered as a tech billionaire and noted philanthropist. The Seattle music industry was among the beneficiaries of his generosity, with Allen helping to foster the creative sector. Guest post by Chris Castle of Music Technology Policy Paul Allen was a co-founder of Microsoft and hence a “tech billionaire.” But he used that wealth to make a contribution to music in smart and lasting ways through supporting music in Seattle and by ...

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