Results for "cornet"

Ray Nance

Born: December 10, 1913

Ray Nance was a multi-talented individual. He was a fine trumpeter who not only replaced Cootie Williams with Duke Ellington's Orchestra, but gave the "plunger" position in Duke's band his own personality. In addition, Nance was one of the finest jazz violinists of the 1940s, an excellent jazz singer, and even a dancer. He studied piano, took lessons on violin, and was self-taught on trumpet. After leading a small group in Chicago (1932-1937), spending periods with the orchestras of Earl Hines (1937-1938) and Horace Henderson (1939-1940), and a few months as a solo act, Nance joined Duke Ellington's orchestra

Lawrence "Butch" Morris

Born: February 10, 1947

Lawrence D. "Butch" Morris was an American jazz cornetist, composer and conductor.

Morris was born in Long Beach, California. Before beginning his musical career, he served in the US forces in the Vietnam War. Morris came to attention with saxophonist David Murray's groups in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Morris's brother, double bassist Wilber Morris, sometimes performed and recorded with Murray during this period. Morris led a group called Orchestra SLANG. The group features Drummer Kenny Wollesen, alto saxophonist Jonathon Haffner, trumpeter Kirk Knuffke and others. He performed and presented regularly as part of the Festival of New Trumpet Music, held annually in New York City. He also played with well-known artist and would be drummer A.R. Penck in 1990.

Jimmy McPartland

Born: March 15, 1907

Jimmy McPartland (James Dugald McPartland) was an American cornetist and one of the originators of Chicago Jazz. McPartland worked with Eddie Condon, Art Hodes, Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Tommy Dorsey and other jazz veterans, often leading his own bands.

McPartland's father was a music teacher and baseball player. Family problems caused Jimmy and his siblings to be partly raised in orphanages. After being kicked out of one orphanage for fighting, he got in further trouble with the law. Fortunately, he had started violin at age 5, then took up the cornet at age 15. He credited music with turning him around. He confessed that if it weren't for music, he probably would have been "a hoodlum."

Nick LaRocca

Born: April 11, 1889

Sillian-American born Dominick James "Nick" La Rocca claimed to have invented Jazz and often complained that African-American musicians have been given too much credit for the birth of Jazz. He was so obnoxious about this, that many people tend to try and overlook the important contributions he made to the music and the role that the Original Dixieland Jass Band played in popularizing Jazz around the world. La Rocca started playing with the Papa Laine's Reliance Brass Band in New Orleans. He formed the Original Dixieland Jass Band in New Orleans in 1914. The group referred to itself as America's first Jazz band

King Oliver

Born: December 19, 1881

If we were to take all the major trumpet players in jazz, line them up in chronological order, ask them who they listened to and were influenced by, then send them down the long dark chute of jazz history, they would run right smack dab into King Oliver. Joseph Oliver was rumored to have been born on a plantation in Abend, Louisiana in 1885. His first instrument was the trombone, which by 1904 he was playing in the Onward Brass Band. He would continue with several bands, and started also playing the cornet. Being that New Orleans was a trumpet playing town, he had to work hard and long on his chops, and spent a lot of time learning to read music, which he became very good at, even in spite of having lost one eye

Freddie Keppard

Born: February 27, 1890

Freddie Keppard - cornet One of the early jazz cornet legends to come out of New Orleans, Freddie Keppard was on the scene after Buddy Bolden but before King Oliver and Louis Armstrong, making him an essential in the evolution of the instrument for the period. Keppard was born in New Orleans Feb.27, 1890. Before choosing to play the cornet, Keppard experimented with various other instruments, none of which was especially suitable for performing jazz. In the years before World War I he played with the Olympia Orchestra in New Orleans and several other parade and concert bands. He was leader of the Original Creole Orchestra which toured California and the east coast, in the process helping in spreading the new young jazz sound around the country

Graham Haynes

Born: September 16, 1960

Regarded as an innovator on cornet and flugelhorn, an extraordinary composer, and an emerging force in contemporary electronic music and world music, Graham Haynes has redefined and deconstructed that genre we still call jazz. While his main instrument is the cornet, he is by no means making jazz music these days. Haynes uses technology to create imaginative, subtle sonic environments. Even amidst electronic processing, his horn stands out, providing a level of expression that humanizes and elevates the synthetic sounds. The son of legendary jazz drummer Roy Haynes, Graham was born in 1960 and raised in Hollis, Queens, where he was surrounded by innovators (his neighbors included Roy Eldridge, Milt Jackson, and Jaki Byard)

Wild Bill Davison

Born: January 5, 1906

Like a select group of other jazz instrumentalists, cornetist Wild Bill Davison had a talent that lives on long after his death. More than a decade after Davison died at the age of 83, record companies continue to reissue some of the more than 800 songs he recorded during his 70-year career. Jazz aficionados never tire of talking about some of the more memorable engagements played by the colorful Davison around the world. Davison did not come by his lifelong nickname accidentally. He was a heavy drinker beginning in his teens and was known as a womanizer. Davison went through four wives before he finally got the knack of married life, settling down to a relatively monogamous relationship with his fifth wife—and love of his life—Anne Stewart

Jim Cullum Jr.

Born: September 20, 1941

In the 1950s when everyone else his age was listening to Elvis Presley and Connie Francis, Jim Cullum locked onto the sounds of early jazz greats Louis Armstrong, Bix Beiderbecke, King Oliver and Jelly Roll Morton. At first he thought he might want to play trombone, but one day while helping his dad in the grocery business, Jim caught sight of an antique cornet in a store window and fell in love.

While attending Trinity University in San Antonio, Jim formed a seven-piece traditional jazz group, the Happy Jazz Band, with his father the late Jim Cullum, Sr., who had played professionally with Jack Teagarden and others in the 1940s

Oscar 'Papa' Celestin

Born: January 1, 1884

Oscar “Papa” Celestin - trumpet, bandleader (1884 - 1954) Papa Celestin was one of the most popular of New Orleans cornet players, and considered a major player in the development of jazz. Most of the great New Orleans players up to 1950 played for Papa one time or another. Celestin was born in Napoleonville, Louisiana, and was inspired at an early age to become a musician. He played guitar and trombone before deciding on cornet as his main instrument. He played with various small town bands before moving to New Orleans in 1906. Arriving in New Orleans, Celestin became a member of Henry Allen Sr.’s Excelsior band in 1908