Results for "piano"

Hank Jones

Born: July 31, 1918

The oldest of the three Jones brothers (Hank, Thad and Elvin), Henry "Hank" Jones was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi and grew up in Pontiac, Michigan, where he studied piano at an early age and came under the influence of Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. By the age of 13 Jones was performing locally in Michigan and Ohio. While playing with territory bands in Grand Rapids and Lansing he met Lucky Thompson, who invited him to New York City in 1944 to work at the Onyx Club with Hot Lips Page. In New York, Jones regularly listened to leading bop musicians, and was inspired to master the new style

Pete Jolly

Born: June 5, 1932

Pete Jolly lived a double life as studio ace by day and jazz cat by night for over 40 years. A member of the musicians union since his teens, he settled in Los Angeles in his early 20s and became a member of Shorty Rogers' Giants, one of the leading West Coast jazz groups. He also began working as a studio musician in the mid-1950s and decided to divide his energy between the security of studio work and the artistic satisfaction of playing jazz in local clubs in Los Angeles. Jolly's father, also named Peter, was a superb accordion player, and he started the boy on the instrument not long after weaning

Pete Johnson

Born: March 25, 1904

The history of jazz and blues piano is an interesting one, and it benefits from being told separately from the history of jazz in general. The best performers didn’t always fit into the prevailing styles of the time. Boogie-Woogie piano developed largely in the Midwest, particularly Chicago, with the result that its practitioners were sometimes referred to as “western” pianists in order to distinguish them from the New York piano professors. Some players in this style developed in St. Louis or Detroit, but this blues-based variation was centered in Chicago, for it was there that the great Jimmy Yancey developed this approach and influenced many other pianists.

Marcus Johnson

Born: December 1, 1981

With the commercial and Billboard chart success of his NAACP Image Award nominated CD, “Poetically Justified” (#4) in his rearview and having been included among the ranks of contemporary jazz greats such as Wynton Marsalis, Christian McBride, and Vanessa Williams, for that nomination, Marcus Johnson is set to release his 12th CD titled, “This is How I Rock”, on July 27th. This album boldly signifies an evolution: Johnson’s deliberate crossing into the pop/rock genre with a jazz spin, inspired by some of pop music’s most celebrated songs, songs that remained a significant influence in the life of the award-winning keyboardist, composer and producer and motivated his desire to pay tribute to some of the greatest pop hits. “This Is How I Rock” exemplifies Johnson’s versatility and brilliant interpretive skills

James P. Johnson

Born: February 1, 1894

Back during the heyday of ragtime piano (pre-1920), James P. had become a part of the famed "Harlem music scene," and was contributing to the distinctive Harlem piano style that differed melodically and harmonically from classic ragtime. Conventional ragtime had syncopation but lacked polyrhythm. James P. developed a strong and solid walking bass with his left hand and a rhythmic exciting treble with his right. His music flowed at an even tempo with considerable syncopation between the two hands. He superimposed conflicting rhythms in solos of symmetrical beauty. James Price Johnson was born in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1894

Johnnie Johnson

Born: July 8, 1924

Considered by Rolling Stone to be "the greatest sideman in rock & roll," pianist Johnnie Johnson spent most of his career in the shadow of his musical partner, Chuck Berry. Johnson played on most of Berry's hit records and co-wrote the music for several of Berry's songs, but did not begin to achieve particular recognition until he pursued a solo career in his seventies. After Johnson came out of retirement to appear in the Chuck Berry concert film Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll in 1986, interest in his music grew. The following year, he put out his first solo album, “Blue Hand Johnnie,” the first of several well-received recordings including “Johnnie B

Dink Johnson

Born: October 28, 1892

Dink Johnson - piano, clarinet, drums (1892 - 1954) Dink Johnson was a multi talented musician who played a swinging, stomping, Jelly Roll like piano, was in a seminal band on drums and piano, and also recorded on clarinet in early jazz history He had a repertoire of tunes as unique as his style, containing many tunes of his own and other tunes long forgotten. Dink had a rollicking, contagious sense of humor which comes through on his recordings. Ollie ‘Dink’ Johnson was born in Biloxi, Mississippi, younger brother of bass player/bandleader Bill Johnson, who was King Oliver's great bassist

Jan Johansson

Born: September 16, 1931

Jan Johansson was a Swedish jazz pianist. He is little known outside Scandinavia, and his records are not widely available, though Jazz pa svenska (Jazz in Swedish) has sold more than a quarter of a million copies, and is the best selling jazz release ever in Sweden. Johansson was a native of Soderhamn, in the Halsingland province of Sweden. Studying classical piano as a child, he would also go on to master the guitar, organ and accordion, before turning on to swing and bebop as a teenager. He met saxophonist Stan Getz while at university. He abandoned his studies to play jazz full time, and worked with many American jazz musicians, becoming the first European to be invited to join the Jazz at the Philharmonic package. The years 1961 to 1968 produced a string of classic albums, which would help define his style of re-imagining traditional European folk tunes via jazz and the avant garde

Antonio Carlos Jobim

Born: January 25, 1927

It has been said that Antonio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim was the George Gershwin of Brazil—and there is a solid ring of truth in that, for both contributed large bodies of songs to the jazz repertoire, both expanded their reach into the concert hall, and both tend to symbolize their countries in the eyes of the rest of the world. With their gracefully urbane, sensuously aching melodies and harmonies, Jobim's songs gave jazz musicians in the 1960s a quiet, strikingly original alternative to their traditional Tin Pan Alley source.

Jobim's roots were always planted firmly in jazz; the records of {{Gerry Mulligan = 9681}}, {{Chet Baker = 3578}}, {{Barney Kessel = 8339}} and other West Coast jazz musicians made an enormous impact upon him in the 1950s. But he also claimed that the French impressionist composer Claude Debussy had a decisive influence upon his harmonies, and the Brazilian samba gave his music a uniquely exotic rhythmic underpinning. As a pianist, he usually kept things simple and melodically to the point with a touch that reminds some of Claude Thornhill, but some of his records show that he could also stretch out when given room. His guitar was limited mostly to gentle strumming of the syncopated rhythms, and he sang in a modest, slightly hoarse yet often hauntingly emotional manner.

Lars Jansson

Born: February 25, 1951

Lars Jansson was born in 1951, and grew up in Orebro, Sweden, where he was bored by his lessons at the community music school. In his early teens, a relative lent him records with Miles Davis, Ben Webster, and Mose Allsion. During the 1960s, he followed the fashion and developed an interest in the organ. He listened to Kjell Ohman play with the Telstars, to Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff, and to Hammond organ music. Drummer Sjunne Ferger became an important figure in his life, and together they formed a duo: "Takt & Ton" (Beat & Pitch). In 1970, after graduation from upper secondary school, he took a semester off, planning to go on and study medicine