Results for "Philadelphia"

Richard "Groove" Holmes

Born: May 2, 1931

Richard Arnold "Groove" Holmes, Born Richard Arnold Jackson (Camden, New Jersey) was a jazz organist who performed in the hard bop and soul jazz genre. He is best known for his 1965 recording of "Misty," and is considered a precursor of acid jazz. Holmes burst onto the music scene in the early 1960s (his first album, on Pacific Jazz with guest {{Ben Webster = 11235}} was recorded in March 1961). An African-American, literally a heavyweight (approximately 300 pounds) and physically rotund in stature, he gained immediate respect with an inimitable style of his own. His sound was immediately recognizable in the upper register, but even more so because of his virtuosity in creating, undoubtedly, the most rapid, punctuating, and pulsating basslines of all the jazz organists

Billie Holiday

Born: April 7, 1915

Billie Holiday ("Lady Day") is considered by many to be the greatest of all jazz singers. In a tragically abbreviated singing career that lasted less than three decades, her evocative phrasing and poignant delivery profoundly influenced vocalists who followed her. Although her warm, feathery voice inhabited a limited range, she used it like an accomplished jazz instrumentalist, stretching and condensing phrases in an ever-shifting dialogue with accompanying musicians. Famous for delivering lyrics a bit behind the beat, she alternately endowed them with sadness, sensuality, languor, and irony

Jimmy Heath

Born: October 25, 1926

Jimmy Heath has long been recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist and a magnificent composer and arranger. Jimmy is the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers (Percy Heath/bass and Tootie Heath/drums), and is the father of James 'Mtume', Roslyn and Jeffery. He has performed with nearly all the jazz greats of the last 50 years, from Howard McGhee, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis to Wynton Marsalis. In 1948 at the age of 21, he performed in the First International Jazz Festival in Paris with McGhee, sharing the stage with Coleman Hawkins, Slam Stewart, and Erroll Garner. One of Heath’s earliest big bands (1947-1948) in Philadelphia included John Coltrane, Benny Golson, Specs Wright, Cal Massey, Johnny Coles, Ray Bryant, and Nelson Boyd

Percy Heath

Born: April 30, 1923

The American jazz musician and bassist with the Modern Jazz Quartet, Percy Heath, began his musical apprenticeship in 1946, after Air Force service. It was just the right time. Though the double bass had always been used sporadically in jazz, performers capable of advancing both its rhythmic and harmonic role into a distinctive jazz-bass language were arriving on the scene more slowly than trumpeters, saxophonists or pianists. But by the 1940s, the place of the bass had significantly changed. Swing specialists like Pops Foster, John Kirby and Walter Page had brought animation, drive and swing - as well as harmonic breadth - to bass technique, and Duke Ellington's young star, Jimmy Blanton, had added a soloistic agility that rewrote the book on the instrument

Albert Tootie Heath

Born: May 31, 1935

The younger brother of Percy and Jimmy Heath, Albert "Tootie" Heath has long been a top hard bop-based drummer with an open mind toward more commercial styles of jazz. After moving to New York (1957), he debuted on record with John Coltrane.

Albert Heath was with J.J. Johnson's group (1958-1960) and the Jazztet (1960-1961), worked with the trios of Cedar Walton and Bobby Timmons in 1961, and recorded many records as a sideman for Riverside during that era. He lived in Europe in 1965- 1968 (working frequently with Kenny Drew, Dexter Gordon, and backing touring Americans), and, after returning to the U.S., he played regularly with Herbie Hancock's sextet (1968-1969) and Yusef Lateef (1970-1974)

Rufus Harley

Born: May 20, 1936

Rufus Harley, “the world’s first jazz bagpiper”, was born on May 20, 1936 near Raleigh, N.C. but grew up in a working class neighborhood in Philadelphia where his family moved when he was two years of age. He started playing the C melody saxophone and trumpet at age 12. In his later teens he worked as a paper boy to raise enough money to buy a tenor saxophone so that he can play in the high school band but at age 16 he dropped out of school and worked odd jobs to help support his family. He continued, however, to take music lessons on the saxophone, oboe, clarinet and flute from Dennis Sandole, a Philadelphia area guitarist and music teacher

Buddy Greco

Born: August 14, 1926

Since his first performance at the age of four to his most recent appearance at the age of eighty-seven, Buddy Greco, legendary pianist and singer has the longest professional career of any living musical artist. And since the release of his first recording in 1946, to his latest release in 2013 he has the distinction of having the longest recording history of any living recording artist. He is written about in countless books and articles about music including Who’s Who in Jazz and Great American Singers. But more than that, he is a witness, participant and contributor to the popular culture of one of the most exciting centuries in modern history

Benny Golson

Born: January 25, 1929

Multitalented and internationally famous jazz legend, - a composer, arranger, lyricist, producer - and tenor saxophonist of world note, Benny Golson was born in Philadelphia, PA on January 25, 1929.

Raised with an impeccable musical pedigree, Golson has played in the bands of world famous Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Lionel Hampton, Earl Bostic and Art Blakey.

Few jazz musicians can claim to be true innovators and even fewer can boast of a performing and recording career that literally redefines the term "jazz". Benny Golson has made major contributions to the world of jazz with such jazz standards as: Killer Joe, I Remember Clifford, Along Came Betty, Stablemates, Whisper Not, Blues March, Five Spot After Dark, Are you Real?

John Gilmore

Born: September 28, 1931

Gilmore grew up in Chicago and played clarinet from the age of 14. [1] He took up the tenor saxophone while serving in the United States Air Force from 1948-1952, then pursued a musical career, playing briefly with pianist Earl Hines before encountering Sun Ra in 1953. For the next four decades, Gilmore recorded and performed almost exclusively with Sun Ra. This was puzzling to some, who noted Gilmore's talent, and thought he could be a major star like John Coltrane or Sonny Rollins. Coltrane, in fact, was impressed with Gilmore's playing, and took informal lessons from him in the late 1950's

Dizzy Gillespie

Born: October 21, 1917

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, along with Charlie Parker, ushered in the era of Be-Bop in the American jazz tradition. He was born Cheraw, South Carolina, and was the youngest of nine children. He began playing piano at the age of four and received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina. Most noted for his trademark "swollen cheeks", Gillespie admitted to copying the style of trumpeter Roy Eldridge early in his career.

He replaced Eldridge in the 'Teddy Hill' Band after Eldridge's departure. He eventually began experimenting and creating his own style which would eventually come to the attention of Mario Bauza, the Godfather of Afro-Cuban jazz who was then a member of the Cap Calloway Orchestra, joining Calloway in 1939, Gillespie was fired after two years when he cut a portion of the Calloway's buttocks with a knife after Calloway accused him of throwing spitballs (the two men later became lifelong friends and often retold this story with great relish until both of their deaths).