Results for "Tadd Dameron"

Tadd Dameron

Tadd Dameron as a composer and arranger was the man who in the 1940s and ‘50s was among the first to use the sometimes raw and undisciplined devices of the then- new style of jazz called bebop in well-developed arrangements for big bands and small groups. Perhaps more than any other musician, Dameron added form to the then-emerging style of bop. Born in Cleveland in 1917, Dameron grew up with music all around him, his mother first taught him to play piano, "not to read, but by memory." But, it was Dameron’s older brother, Caesar, a saxophonist, who got his brother interested in jazz by listening to the records of the big bands of the 1930’s like Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and the Casa Loma band that was playing unique arrangements at the time. Cleveland jazz musician Andy Anderson said he first heard Dameron in the 1930s when Caesar brought his kid brother to a nightclub, and asked if the boy could sit in with the Snake White Band

Gigi Gryce

By AAJ STAFF

From the 1995-2003 archive: This article first appeared at All About Jazz in 2002. Gigi Gryce was a special kind of musician—the kind often overlooked by the mainstream jazz world today, but widely respected by those familiar with his all too brief time under the jazz spotlight of the 1950s. More often rated as ...

Charlie Parker: Ten High Flying Albums Of Paradigm Shifting Genius

By CHRIS MAY

Born in Kansas City, Kansas in 1920, and brought up across the state line in anything-goes, jazz-friendly Kansas City, Missouri, controlled from the mid 1920s to the late 1930s by the spectacularly corrupt politician Tom Prendergast, alto saxophonist Charlie Parker lived fast and hard and passed in 1955, aged only 34 years. A founding father of ...

Festival International de Jazz de Montréal 2020

By MARK SULLIVAN

2020 Festival International de Jazz de Montréal Various Venues Montréal, Canada June 27-30, 2020 Above all else the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal is a spectacular ten-day event: with around 2 million visitors and 500 concerts on 20 stages, it is ranked as the world's largest jazz ...

Prestige Records: An Alternative Top 20 Albums

By CHRIS MAY

Along with Alfred Lion's Blue Note and Orrin Keepnews' Riverside, Bob Weinstock's Prestige was at the top table of independent New York City-based jazz labels from the early 1950s until the mid 1960s. Like those other two labels, Prestige built up a profuse catalogue packed with enduring treasures. Originally a record retailer, Weinstock ...

Sonny's Crib

By C. MICHAEL BAILEY

From the outset, pianist Sonny Clark's sophomore effort as a leader is crisp, white-hot hard bop. Leading a standard bop trumpet-tenor saxophone quintet (Donald Byrd, John Coltrane), supplemented with trombone (Curtis Fuller), Clark and his most reliable rhythm section of bassist Paul Chambers and drummer Art Taylor carve five dictionary examples (with alternate takes on the ...

Lolly Allen: Coming Home

By JACK BOWERS

There was a time, and it wasn't that long ago, when women in jazz—apart from singers and the occasional pianist—were seen by many observers as unsolicited interlopers whose impact in what was essentially a male bastion could be no more than minimal at best. Needless to say that is no longer the case, as women's voices ...

C. Michael Bailey's Best Releases of 2019

By C. MICHAEL BAILEY

The number of critics writing for All About Jazz is such that there is little content overlap from one scrib to the next. This provides the reader a rich and compelling collection of opinion from which to derive guidance regarding a broad variety of music. Also contributing to All About Jazz as a resource are the ...

Jamile: If You Could See Me Now

By MARTIN MCFIE

Jamile grew up in Cachoeira do Sul (South Falls), a small town in Brazil towards the border with Uruguay. Her supportive family had no particular interest in music. Imagine her surprise, then, at finding her twenty-something self launching this debut album at Gianni Valenti's Birdland Theater in New York City. After completing her studies ...