Home » Search Center » Results: Jimmy Blanton
Results for "Jimmy Blanton"
Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Blanton
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Blanton's birthday today! In his short tenure with Duke Ellington, Jimmy Blanton became the first great double bass virtuoso in jazz. Blanton had both the technique and the fine tone to take this style of playing to higher levels. Blanton took the bass, which had previously been used only to ...
Terell Stafford: This Side of Strayhorn
by Kevin Davis
The preservation of traditional values in jazz has long been at the core of the art form's most bittersweet dichotomy, which is essentially a spin on the age-old idea that even moderate-level progressions in any given field require ideological breakdowns that generally make everyone mad. Miles Davis, for example, decried this preservation outright, and the jazz ...
Steve Brown: Atlas Slapped
by Andrew J. Sammut
The word bass means bottom. It means support. That's the prime requisite of a bassist, support. Architecturally, it has to be the lowest part of the building, and it has to be strong, or the building will not stand. Musically, it is the lowest human voice. It is the lowest musical voice in the orchestra. It's ...
Face of the Bass: The Atlas of Jazz
The great Milt Hinton often said that the bass is the “Atlas of jazz" because its role in the jazz band is to “carry the other instruments on its shoulders." “Bass" is often misspelled as “base" but the meaning is very similar in music, that of “foundation." In early jazz bands, bassists played the bass fiddle, ...
New Jazz Film Financing: They Died Before 40
New Jazz Film Financing: They Died Before 40 Many people may have heard of Charlie Parker, who died at 34. But others, such as Herschel Evans, who died before reaching 30, are very little known and their stories untold. For example, Jo Jones, drummer and an integral part of the Count Basie band for many years, ...
Storyville Records: A Treasure Trove of Swinging Jazz
by Chris May
Since its foundation during the European revivalist movement of the early 1950s, Copenhagen-based Storyville Records has grown into a major repository of New Orleans, big band and mainstream recordings. With something approaching 600 releases in its back catalogue, the label is a treasure trove of jazz that swings. Founded in 1952 by Danish jazz ...
Take Five With Andrew Read
by AAJ Staff
Meet Andrew Read: I studied double-bass at the Victorian college of the Arts in Melbourne, Australia. After leaving the college I worked with a number of prominent Australian pop and jazz artists including, among others, Vince Jones, Ricky May, Brave Men and Perfect Strangers. After the tragic death of Perfect Strangers' singer Andy Clayton Smith, ...
Linda Oh: Persevering Against the Odds
by Mark F. Turner
In an arena that is overwhelmingly dominated by her male counterparts, bassist Linda May-Han Oh is going to be a force with which to be reckoned. Her auspicious, self-produced debut, Entry (2009), was lauded by critics, and was one of pianist Vijay Iyer's top picks for 2009. Born in Malaysia and living in New York, Oh ...
Happy Birthday, Jimmy Blanton!
Bassist Jimmy Blanton was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, on this date in 1918. He was the first great innovative jazz double bassist, known mainly for his recordings with Duke Ellington from 1939 to 1941. Before Blanton, the bass was used primarily to lay down the beat and provide the harmonic underpinnings for a tune. Blanton played ...
Jazz Musician of the Day: Jimmy Blanton
All About Jazz is celebrating Jimmy Blanton's birthday today! Jimmy BlantonIn his short tenure with Duke Ellington, Jimmy Blanton became the first great double bass virtuoso in jazz. Blanton had both the technique and the fine tone to take this style of playing to higher levels. Blanton took the bass... more ...
