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whileiamdying · 11 months ago

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A SERENE JAZZ MASTERPIECE TURNS 65

The best-selling and arguably the best-loved jazz album ever, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue still has the power to awe.

MARCH 06, 2024

At a moment when jazz still loomed large in American culture, 1959 was an unusually monumental year. Those 12 months saw the release of four great and genre-altering albums: Charles Mingus’s Mingus Ah Um, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out (with its megahit “Take Five”), Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come, and Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue. Sixty-five years on, the genre, though still filled with brilliant talent, has receded to niche status from the culture at large. What remains of that earthshaking year in jazz? “Take Five” has stayed a standard, a tune you might hear on TV or on the radio, a signifier of smooth and nostalgic cool. Mingus, the genius troublemaker, and Coleman, the free-jazz pioneer, remain revered by Those Who Know; their names are still familiar, but most of the music they made has been forgotten by the broader public. Yet Kind of Blue, arguably the best-selling and best-loved jazz album ever, endures—a record that still has the power to awe, that seems to exist outside of time. In a world of ceaseless tumult, its matchless serenity is more powerful than ever.

On the afternoon of Monday, March 2, 1959, seven musicians walked into Columbia Records’ 30th Street Studio, a cavernous former church just off Third Avenue, to begin recording an album. The LP, not yet named, was initially known as Columbia Project B 43079. The session’s leader—its artistic director, the man whose name would appear on the album cover—was Miles Davis. The other players were the members of Davis’s sextet: the saxophonists John Coltrane and Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, the bassist Paul Chambers, the drummer Jimmy Cobb, and the pianist Wynton Kelly. To the confusion and dismay of Kelly, who had taken a cab all the way from Brooklyn because he hated the subway, another piano player was also there: the band’s recently departed keyboardist, Bill Evans.

Every man in the studio had recorded many times before; nobody was expecting this time to be anything special. “Professionals,” Evans once said, “have to go in at 10 o’clock on a Wednesday and make a record and hope to catch a really good day.” On the face of it, there was nothing remarkable about Project B 43079. For the first track laid down that afternoon, a straight-ahead blues-based number that would later be named “Freddie Freeloader,” Kelly was at the keyboard. He was a joyous, selfless, highly adaptable player, and Davis, a canny leader, figured a blues piece would be a good way for the band to limber up for the more demanding material ahead—material that Evans, despite having quit the previous November due to burnout and a sick father, had a large part in shaping.

A highly trained classical pianist, the New Jersey–born Evans fell in love with jazz as a teenager and, after majoring in music at Southeastern Louisiana University, moved to New York in 1955 with the aim of making it or going home. Like many an apprentice, he booked a lot of dances and weddings, but one night, at the Village Vanguard, where he’d been hired to play between the sets of the world-famous Modern Jazz Quartet, he looked down at the end of the grand piano and saw Davis’s penetrating gaze fixed on him. A few months later, having forgotten all about the encounter, Evans was astonished to receive a phone call from the trumpeter: Could he make a gig in Philadelphia?

He made the gig and, just like that, became the only white musician in what was then the top small jazz band in America. It was a controversial hire. Evans, who was really white—bespectacled, professorial—incurred instant and widespread resentment among Black musicians and Black audiences. But Davis, though he could never quite stop hazing the pianist (“We don’t want no white opinions!” was one of his favorite zingers), made it clear that when it came to musicians, he was color-blind. And what he wanted from Evans was something very particular.

One piece that Davis became almost obsessed with was Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli’s 1957 recording of Maurice Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G. The work, inspired by Ravel’s triumphant 1928 tour of the U.S., was clearly influenced by the fast pace and openness of America: It shimmers with sprightly piccolo and bold trumpet sounds, and dances with unexpected notes and chord changes.

Davis wanted to put wide-open space into his music the way Ravel did. He wanted to move away from the familiar chord structures of jazz and use different scales the way Aram Khachaturian, with his love for Asian music, did. And Evans, unlike any other pianist working in jazz, could put these things onto the keyboard. His harmonic intelligence was profound; his touch on the keys was exquisitely sensitive. “I planned that album around the piano playing of Bill Evans,” Davis said.

But Davis wanted even more. Ever restless, he had wearied of playing songs—American Songbook standards and jazz originals alike—that were full of chords, and sought to simplify. He’d recently been bowled over by a Les Ballets Africains performance—by the look and rhythms of the dances, and by the music that accompanied them, especially the kalimba (or “finger piano”). He wanted to get those sounds into his new album, and he also wanted to incorporate a memory from his boyhood: the ghostly voices of Black gospel singers he’d heard in the distance on a nighttime walk back from church to his grandparents’ Arkansas farm.

In the end, Davis felt that he’d failed to get all he’d wanted into Kind of Blue. Over the next three decades, his perpetual artistic antsiness propelled him through evolving styles, into the blend of jazz and rock called fusion, and beyond. What’s more, Coltrane, Adderley, and Evans were bursting to move on and out and lead their own bands. Just 12 days after Kind of Blue’s final session, Coltrane would record his groundbreaking album Giant Steps, a hurdle toward the cosmic distances he would probe in the eight short years remaining to him. Cannonball, as soulful as Trane was boundary-bursting, would bring a new warmth to jazz with hits such as “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” And for the rest of his career, one sadly truncated by his drug use, Evans would pursue the trio format with subtle lyrical passion.

Yet for all the bottled-up dynamism in the studio during Kind of Blue’s two recording sessions, a profound, Zenlike quiet prevailed throughout. The essence of it can be heard in Evans and Chambers’s hushed, enigmatic opening notes on the album’s opening track, “So What,” a tune built on just two chords and containing, in Davis’s towering solo, one of the greatest melodies in all of music.

The majestic tranquility of Kind of Blue marks a kind of fermata in jazz. America’s great indigenous art had evolved from the exuberant transgressions of the 1920s to the danceable rhythms of the swing era to the prickly cubism of bebop. The cool (and warmth) that followed would then accelerate into the ’60s ever freer of melody and harmony before being smacked head-on by rock and roll—a collision it wouldn’t quite survive.

That charmed moment in the spring of 1959 was brief: Of the seven musicians present on that long-ago afternoon, only Miles Davis and Jimmy Cobb would live past their early 50s. Yet 65 years on, the music they all made, as eager as Davis was to put it behind him, stays with us. The album’s powerful and abiding mystique has made it widely beloved among musicians and music lovers of every category: jazz, rock, classical, rap. For those who don’t know it, it awaits you patiently; for those who do, it welcomes you back, again and again.

James Kaplan, a 2012 Guggenheim fellow, is a novelist, journalist, and biographer. His next book will be an examination of the world-changing creative partnership and tangled friendship of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

#the atlantic #miles davis #james kaplan #kind of blue

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arnieabramspianistus · 13 days ago

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Make your wedding unforgettable with top-tier musicians in New Jersey! From soulful melodies to lively tunes, Arnie Abrams Pianist provides talented artists to set the perfect mood. Let us create the soundtrack to your special day. Book now at https://www.arnieabramspianist.com/hire-a-musician-new-jersey/

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somethinginrocknroll · 3 years ago

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He's not my favorite in a normal sense. His crazy fucking lifestyle and death are. He knew Elvis, The Rolling Stones, and many others too. Here's a mini bio on him:

Ingram Cecil Connor III better known professionally as Gram Parsons. He was a musician and frontman. Parsons worked with The Byrds in 1968, before quitting and joining his own band, The Flying Burrito Brothers from 1969 through 1970.

Gram was born in Winter Haven, Florida on November 5th, 1945 to Ingram Cecil Connor Parsons II and Avis Snively Connor. Avis returned to her hometown to give birth to her son. She was the daughter of citrus fruit magnate John A. Snively, who held extensive properties in Winter Haven and in Waycross. Gram's father, Ingram Connor II was a famous World War II flying ace, decorated with the Air Medal, who was present at the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

In 1956 when he was only nine-years-old, Gram saw Elvis Presley in concert and fell in love with music. That’s where his love of music came in. Two years later his father who went by “Coon Dog” took his own life two days before Christmas, Gram was only 11/12. Both him and his sister Avis (Jr) were both shattered after their father’s death.

Avis Sr remarried to Robert Parsons and the children took his name and were adopted by him once he married their mother.

Gram Parsons did briefly attend the prestigious Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida. That was before transferring to the public Winter Haven High School. Which he did after failing his junior year. Gram returned to Bolles which had converted from a military to a liberal arts curriculum amid the incipient Vietnam War.

For a time, the family found a stability of sorts. They were torn apart in early 1965, when Robert had an extramarital affair and Avis' heavy drinking led to her death from cirrhosis on June 5, 1965, the day of Gram's graduation from Bolles.

Barely in his teens, he played in rock and roll cover bands such as the Pacers and the Legends, headlining in clubs owned by his stepfather in the Winter Haven/Polk County area. By the age of 16, he graduated to folk music, and in 1963 he teamed up with his first professional outfit, the Shilohs, in Greenville, South Carolina.

Gram was heavily influenced by The Kingston Trio and The Journeymen. The band played hootenannies, coffee houses and high school auditoriums. Parsons was still enrolled in prep school, he only performed with the group in select engagements. Forays into New York City (where Parsons briefly lived with a female folk singer in a loft on Houston Street)included a performance at Florida's exhibition in the 1964 New York World's Fair and regular appearances at the Café Rafio on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village in the summer of 1964.

Although John Phillips who is an acquaintance of Shiloh George Wrigley arranged an exploratory meeting with Albert Grossman, the impresario balked at booking the group for a Christmas engagement at The Bitter End when he discovered that the Shilohs were still high school students. Following a recording session at the radio station of Bob Jones University, the group reached a creative impasse amid the emergence of folk rock and dissolved in the spring of 1965 around the time of Gram’s mother’s passing.

Shockingly despite being poor in school and having bad test grades, Gram went to Harvard University in 1966 with the help of a strong essay he wrote. He only did one semester and that’s where he became more serious about country music. He heard Merle Haggard for the first time.

In 1966, he and other musicians from the Boston folk scene formed a group called the “International Submarine Band”. After briefly residing in the Kingsbridge section of the Bronx, they relocated to Los Angeles the following year. Following several lineup changes, the band signed to Lee Hazlewood's LHI Records, where they spent late 1967 recording Safe at Home. The album contains one of Parsons' best-known songs, "Luxury Liner", and an early version of "Do You Know How It Feels", which he revised later in his career. Safe at Home would remain unreleased until mid-1968, by which time the International Submarine Band had broken up.

In that same year Gram got the attention of The Byrds’ guitarist Chris Hillman thanks to business manager Larry Spector as a possible replacement member since David Crosby and Micheal Clarke left in late 1967. Parsons had already met Hillman at a bank in 1967. Gram had his only child, Polly, with Nancy Ross the girlfriend of David Crosby.

Gram passed the audition in February 1968. He was at first a jazz pianist but was switched to rhyme guitar and vocals. Gram left the band when asked why Gram responded with,

"Being with The Byrds confused me a little. I couldn't find my place. I didn't have enough say-so. I really wasn't one of The Byrds. I was originally hired because they wanted a keyboard player. But I had experience being a frontman and that came out immediately. And [Roger McGuinn] being a very perceptive fellow saw that it would help the act, and he started sticking me out front."

He was also friends with The Rolling Stones members Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. And they stayed close to each other until a fall out in the 70s. Before Parsons' departure from The Byrds, he had accompanied the two Rolling Stones to Stonehenge along with McGuinn and Hillman in the English county of Wiltshire.

Immediately after leaving the band, Parsons stayed at Richards' house and the pair developed a close friendship over the next few years, with Parsons reintroducing the guitarist to country music. According to Stones' confidant and close friend of Parsons, Phil Kaufman, the two would sit around for hours playing obscure country records and trading off on various songs with their guitars.

Returning to Los Angeles in 1969, Parsons sought out Hillman, and the two formed The Flying Burrito Brothers with bassist Chris Ethridge and pedal steel player “Sneaky” Pete Kleinow. They did every genre of music possible from hard rock all the way to country and jazz gospel. Around this time of The Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram started dabbling more and more into drugs.

Then Gram started a solo career in 1970 and toured with Emmylou Harris for a bit ; he may have been romantically involved with her as well. He then accompanied the Rolling Stones on their 1971 U.K. tour in the hope of being signed to the newly formed Rolling Stones Records.

Parsons and Keith Richards had mulled the possibility of recording a duo album. Moving into Villa Nellcôte with the guitarist during the sessions for Exile on Main Street that commenced thereafter, Parsons remained in a consistently incapacitated state and frequently quarreled with his girlfriend, aspiring actress Gretchen Burrell who later become his wife.

Eventually, Parsons was asked to leave by Anita Pallenberg, Richards' longtime domestic partner. Decades later, Richards suggested in his memoir that Jagger may have been the impetus for Parsons' departure because Richards was spending so much time playing music with Parsons. Rumors have persisted that he appears somewhere on the legendary album, and while Richards concedes that it is very likely he is among the chorus of singers on "Sweet Virginia", this has never been substantiated. Parsons attempted to rekindle his relationship with the band on their 1972 American tour to no avail.

After leaving the Stones' camp, Parsons married Burrell in 1971 at his stepfather's New Orleans estate. Allegedly, the relationship was far from stable, with Burrell cutting a needy and jealous figure while Parsons quashed her burgeoning film career. Many of the singer's closest associates and friends claim that Parsons was preparing to commence divorce proceedings at the time of his death; the couple had already separated by this point.

In the summer of 1973, Parsons' Topanga Canyon home burned to the ground, the result of a stray cigarette. Nearly all of his possessions were destroyed with the exception of a guitar and a prized Jaguar automobile. The fire proved to be the last straw in the relationship between Burrell and Parsons, who moved into a spare room in Kaufman's house. While not recording, he frequently hung out and jammed with members of New Jersey–based country rockers Quacky Duck and His Barnyard Friends and the proto-punk Jonathan Richman & the Modern Lovers, who were represented by former Byrds manager Eddie Tickner.

Before formally breaking up with Burrell, Parsons already had a woman waiting in the wings. While recording, he saw a photo of a beautiful woman at a friend's home and was instantly smitten. The woman turned out to be Margaret Fisher, a high school sweetheart of the singer from his Waycross, Georgia, days. Like Parsons, Fisher had drifted west and became established in the Bay Area rock scene. A meeting was arranged and the two instantly rekindled their relationship, with Fisher dividing her weeks between Los Angeles and San Francisco at Parsons' expense.

Gram loved to visit Joshua Tree National Park. He would visit it often. Gram would frequently do psychedelic drugs and try to spot UFOs there. He told Phil Kauffman that he wanted his ashes spread there in Joshua National Tree Park since he loved that place and practically lived there when not in LA.

So he, Dale, Micheal, Phil, Gram's girlfriend Margaret, and Dale's unnamed girlfriend all went to stay at JNTP Inn. Where Gram got morphine from an unknown woman.

He injected himself and OD. Margaret shoved ice cubes up his ass and put him in a cold shower which worked. He was up and talking. Dale was left in charge to watch over Gram and then Gram stopped breathing. Dale tried CPR but failed. Margaret and Dale both watched Gram die. Finally they call a fucking ambulance and he's pronounced dead on arrival.

Now Gram’s stepfather is a POS okay. He wanted Gram buried in Louisiana so he could take Gram's little wealth and the family estate which didn't belong to the stepfather since he wasn't blood.

Phil and Micheal couldn't allow this. Gram wanted to be cremated and his ashes spread. So with a shit ton of booze to make an elephant drunk they take a loaned hearse, because you know everyone has a hearse on loan. They were dressed as cowboys. For as suits were “too itchy” to wear. The duo take his body back from the airport where he's meant to fly back to Louisiana back to Joshua National Tree Park.

So the duo crash in JNTP and they pour five gallons of gasoline on Gram and his coffin. Causing a fireball. But cremation and gasoline are different. So instead of having Gram's ashes they had a cooked charred Gram instead. Police were of course called. The duo was fined $750 each and made to do community service.Gram was sadly buried in Louisiana against his wishes but his stepfather didn't get anything.

Gram's wealth and estate were split between his wife, girlfriend, sister, and his daughter. And the family denied the whole illegal cremation happening and won't talk about it.

The end.

Omg that is a really good summary, very sad life tho and how he died but wow

#anon #I’m amazed #his life sounded depressing ngl

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outoftowninac · 3 years ago

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THE SUMMER WIDOWERS

1910

The Summer Widowers was billed as a musical panorama in seven views. The music was by A. Baldwin Sloane, words by Glen MacDonough with some songs composed by Burt Green. It was directed by Ned Wayburn with scenic design by Arthur Voegtlin and Costume Design by Melville Ellis. The production was produced by Lew Fields, who also starred as Otto Ott.

The term “summer widowers” refers to husbands left alone when their wives went on vacation without them. In 1910, one Toledo husband made headlines by bringing his wife to court to prevent her leaving him behind! There was even a novelty song about the situation, the husband of the song very happy to be a summer widower.

The setting of the musical is in and around Atlantic City, New Jersey, and New York City. The show called each of its scenes ‘panoramas’.

The Seven “Panoramas”

The Boardwalk in front of the Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel, in Atlantic City

A Street in New York

Salve di Moia's delicatessen shop and fancy grocery

Beach at Atlantic City, and a scene in the surf

Third, fourth, and fifth floors of the St. Vitus Apartments

Lobby of the Folderol Gardens

The interior of the Folderol Gardens

Composer Alfred Baldwin Sloane was one of the most prolific writer of musical comedies around the turn of the 20th century. Sloane wrote the scores for no fewer than two dozen Broadway musicals between 1896 and 1912. His biggest hit was “Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl” (1910), but none of his songs found lasting fame. He died in Red Bank NJ in 1925.

Lew Fields (Otto Otts) was born Moses Schoenfeld in January 1867. He was an actor, comedian, vaudeville star, theatre manager, and producer. He was part of a comedy duo with Joe Weber. He also produced shows on his own and starred in comedy films.

In addition to Fields and a cast of nearly 200 (!), the ensemble included ten year old future first lady of the American Theatre, Helen Hayes, as Psyche Finnegan.

Irene Franklin (Clarabell Clews, Otto Ott’s prospective daughter-in-law and the perfect lady detective) began her stage career at the age of six months when her parents carried her on stage in a production. She appeared on Broadway at age six. She debuted in vaudeville in 1895 and was named Most Popular Woman Vaudeville Artist in 1908. She was married to Burton Green, who was also in the cast as a pianist, and had contributed songs to the score. Franklin died at the Actors Home in Englewood New Jersey in 1941.

Vernon Castle played Oxford Tighe, American Agent for Eyzzzsst, the new Hungarian cordial. He is probably most famous for his partnership with his wife, Irene (not Franklin, but Foote). The couple met in 1910 around the same time as The Summer Widowers was gearing up. Vernon arranged an audition for her with Lew Fields, who hired her as a dancer replacement for The Summer Widowers, her first professional appearance.

In addition to Irene Castle, after opening night, Margaret (aka Daisy) Dumont joined the cast as Fritizi Fluff, an absent-minded prima donna. Dumont would later find great success as a foil for the Marx Brothers.

In addition to Oxford Tighe (Oxford tie) and detective Claribel Clews (clues), other clever character names included Captain Kodak (a photographer), Winnie Wildwaves (a diver), Salve De Mora (an aria from “Faust”), Tom Noyes (a pianist), Virginia Ham (a performer), and Sandy Beach (lifeguard).

Vernon Castle opened the show singing “I Never Know How to Behave when I’m with Girls, Girls, Girls,” surrounded, of course, by a tantalizing bevy of girls, girls, girls. That song was not by A. Baldwin Sloane, but by Harry Carroll. Carroll was born in Rosenhayn, New Jersey in 1892 and began his career playing piano in movie houses on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City while still in his teens.

In 1914, Carroll wrote “By the Beautiful Sea” while in Brighton Beach NY, but it might easily have been inspired by his days in Atlantic City.

"Summer Widowers" Very Busy

"Summer Widowers" sets a fast pacemaker for itself in its title. The first setting is a section of the Boardwalk in Atlantic City in front of a mammoth hotel, with visitors and wheel-chairs (1). One of those vehicles has elliptical wheels to bounce and tumble the rider.

(1) Wheel-chairs are not to be confused with mobility devices of disabled people, but Atlantic City’s famous rolling chairs of the Boardwalk.

The spectacular set design also featured:

a moon that winked and cried

airplanes that flew out over the audience’s heads,

a three story building that features 9 apartments occupied by 100 people

a working elevator

a temperamental Murphy bed

tap shoes that emit sparks

animated cheese on a deli counter

sausage links that turn into a pet dog

The final spectacle is back at Atlantic City, on the beach alongside one of the big piers, from which bathers dive into what looks exactly like a real surf.

The Summer Widows premiered out-of-town at New Haven’s Hyperion Theatre on May 26, 1910. It moved on to play the Broadway Theatre, New York City, where it ran for 140 performances before launching a tour (above photo) with some cast changes.

ATLANTIC CITY

The shear size of The Summer Widowers likely cut down on the show’s options for out-of-town tryouts. However, in June 1909, a year before The Summer Widows opened, Lew Fields and Lee Shubert were asked to leave Nixon’s Apollo Theatre in Atlantic City by owner Erlanger and the producer of the show playing there, Florenz Ziegfeld. The curtain was held while police escorted Mr. and Mrs. Fields and Mr. Shubert from the premises. According to one newspaper, it caused quite a ruckus on the Boardwalk. Ziegfeld later claimed that it was in retaliation for Shubert (an associate of Fields’) doing the same to them at Shubert houses.

The first panorama of The Summer Widowers is set on the Boardwalk in front of the real-life Marlborough-Blenheim Hotel. It was built between 1902-1906, making it very new in 1910. "Blenheim" refers to Blenheim Palace in England, the ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill, a grandson of the 7th Duke of Marlborough. Churchill himself visited the hotel in 1916. It has been seen in several films and television shows set in Atlantic City. It was demolished in October 1978.

The fourth panorama of The Summer Widowers is set at the Beach and in the Surf of Atlantic City. As the 1910 photo above testifies, bathing costumes for both men and women were much less abbreviated than they are today. Guide ropes kept non-swimmers from being carried away by the undertow.

#The Summer Widowers #Atlantic City #NJ #Marlborough-Bleinheim Hotel #Boardwalk #Lew Fields #1910 #Broadway #Broadway Theatre #Vernon Castle #Irene Franklin #A. Baldwin Sloane #Harry Carroll #Musical #Broadway Musical #Shubert #Ziegfeld

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1962dude420-blog · 4 years ago

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Today we remember the passing of Eubie Blake who died February 12, 1983 in Brooklyn, New York

James Hubert "Eubie" Blake, was an American composer, lyricist, and pianist of ragtime, jazz, and popular music. In 1921, he and his long-time collaborator Noble Sissle wrote Shuffle Along, one of the first Broadway musicals to be written and directed by African Americans. Blake's compositions included such hits as "Bandana Days", "Charleston Rag", "Love Will Find a Way", "Memories of You" and "I'm Just Wild About Harry". The 1978 Broadway musical Eubie! showcased his works.

Eubie Blake was born February 7, 1887, at 319 Forrest Street, in Baltimore, Maryland. Of the many children born to former slaves Emily "Emma" Johnstone and John Sumner Blake, he was the only one to survive childhood. John Sumner Blake was a stevedore on the Baltimore Docks.

Blake claimed in later life to have been born in 1883, but records published beginning in 2003—U.S. Census, military, and Social Security records and Blake's passport application and passport—uniformly give his birth year as 1887.

Blake's musical training began when he was four or five years old. While out shopping with his mother, he wandered into a music store, climbed on the bench of an organ, and started "foolin’ around". When his mother found him, the store manager said to her, "The child is a genius! It would be criminal to deprive him of the chance to make use of such a sublime, God-given talent." The Blakes purchased a pump organ for US$75.00, making payments of 25 cents a week. When Blake was seven, he received music lessons from a neighbor, Margaret Marshall, an organist for the Methodist church. At age 15, without his parents' knowledge, he began playing piano at Aggie Shelton's Baltimore bordello. Blake got his first big break in the music business in 1907, when the world champion boxer Joe Gans hired him to play the piano at Gans's Goldfield Hotel, the first "black and tan club" in Baltimore. Blake played at the Goldfield during the winters from 1907–1914, spending his summers playing clubs in Atlantic City. During this period, he also studied composition in Baltimore with Llewellyn Wilson.

According to Blake, he also worked the medicine show circuit and was employed by a Quaker doctor. He played a Melodeon strapped to the back of the medicine wagon. Blake stayed with the show only two weeks, however, because the doctor's religion didn't allow the serving of Sunday dinner.

Blake said he composed the melody of the "Charleston Rag" in 1899, when he would have been only 12 years old. It was not committed to paper, however, until 1915, when he learned to write musical notation.

In 1912, Blake began playing in vaudeville with James Reese Europe's Society Orchestra, which accompanied Vernon and Irene Castle's ballroom dance act. The band played ragtime music, which was still quite popular. Shortly after World War I, Blake joined forces with the performer Noble Sissle to form a vaudeville musical act, the Dixie Duo. After vaudeville, the pair began work on a musical revue, Shuffle Along, which incorporated songs they had written, and had a book written by F. E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles. When it premiered in June 1921, Shuffle Along became the first hit musical on Broadway written by and about African-Americans. The musical also introduced hit songs such as "I'm Just Wild About Harry" and "Love Will Find a Way." Rudolf Fisher insisted that Shuffle Along "had ruined his favorite places of African-American sociability in Harlem" due to the influx of white patrons. The reliance on "stereotypical black stage humor" and "the primitivist conventions of cabaret," in the words of Thomas Brothers, made the show a hit, running for 504 performances with 3 years of national tours.

Blake made his first recordings in 1917, for the Pathé record label and for Ampico piano rolls. In the 1920s he recorded for the Victor and Emerson labels among others.

In 1923, Blake made three films for Lee de Forest in de Forest's Phonofilm sound-on-film process: Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake, featuring their song "Affectionate Dan"; Sissle and Blake Sing Snappy Songs, featuring "Sons of Old Black Joe" and "My Swanee Home"; and Eubie Blake Plays His Fantasy on Swanee River, featuring Blake performing his "Fantasy on Swanee River". These films are preserved in the Maurice Zouary film collection in the Library of Congress collection. He also appeared in Warner Brothers' 1932 short film Pie, Pie Blackbird with the Nicholas Brothers, Nina Mae McKinney, and Noble Sissle. That same year he and his orchestra provided as well most of the music for the film Harlem Is Heaven.

In July 1910, Blake married Avis Elizabeth Cecelia Lee, proposing to her in a chauffeur-driven car he hired. Blake and Lee met around 1895, when both attended Primary School No. 2, at 200 East Street in Baltimore. In 1910, Blake brought his newlywed to Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he had already found employment at the Boathouse nightclub.

In 1938, Avis was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She died later that year, at the age of 58. Of his loss, Blake said, "In my life I never knew what it was to be alone. At first when Avis got sick, I thought she just had a cold, but when time passed and she didn’t get better, I made her go to a doctor and we found out she had TB … I suppose I knew from when we found out she had the TB, I understood that it was just a matter of time."

While serving as bandleader with the USO during World War II, he met Marion Grant Tyler, the widow of the violinist Willy Tyler. Blake and Tyler married in 1945. She was a performer and a businesswoman and became his valued business manager until her death in 1982. In 1946, Blake retired from performing and enrolled in New York University, where he studied the Schillinger System of music composition, graduating in two and a half years. He spent the next two decades using the Schillinger System to transcribe songs that he had memorized but had never written down.

In the 1970s and 1980s, public interest in Blake's music rekindled following the release of his 1969 retrospective album, The 86 Years of Eubie Blake.

Blake was a frequent guest of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and Merv Griffin. He was featured by leading conductors, such as Leonard Bernstein and Arthur Fiedler. In 1977 he played Will Williams in the Jeremy Kagan biographical film Scott Joplin. By 1975, he had been awarded honorary doctorates from Rutgers, the New England Conservatory, the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn College, and Dartmouth. On October 9, 1981, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President Ronald Reagan.

Eubie!, a revue featuring the music of Blake, with lyrics by Noble Sissle, Andy Razaf, Johnny Brandon, F. E. Miller, and Jim Europe, opened on Broadway in 1978. The show was a hit at the Ambassador Theatre, where it ran for 439 performances. The production received three nominations for Tony Awards, including one for Blake's score. The show was filmed in 1981 with the original cast members, including Lesley Dockery, Gregory Hines and Maurice Hines. Blake performed with Gregory Hines on the television program Saturday Night Live on March 10, 1979.

Blake continued to play and record until his death, on February 12, 1983, in Brooklyn, five days after events celebrating his purported 100th birthday(which was actually his 96th birthday).

He was interred in Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York. His headstone, engraved with the musical notation of "I'm Just Wild About Harry", was commissioned by the African Atlantic Genealogical Society. The bronze sculpture of Blake's bespectacled face was created by David Byer-Tyre, curator and director of the African American Museum and Center for Education and Applied Arts, in Hempstead, New York. The original inscription indicated his correct year of birth, but individuals close to him insisted that Blake be indulged and paid to have the inscription changed.

#february 12 #1983 #r.i.p.#eubie blake

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timeless-hollywood-classics · 4 years ago

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James Francis Durante (February 10, 1893 – January 29, 1980) was an American actor, comedian, singer, and pianist. His distinctive gravelly speech, Lower East Side accent, comic language-butchery, jazz-influenced songs, and prominent nose helped make him one of America's most familiar and popular personalities of the 1920s through the 1970s. He often referred to his nose as the schnozzola (Italianization of the American Yiddish slang word schnoz "big nose"), and the word became his nickname.

Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Rosa (Lentino) and Bartolomeo Durante, both of whom were immigrants from Salerno, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber. Young Jimmy served as an altar boy at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel.

Durante dropped out of school in seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also Jimmy Durante. It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname "ragtime Jimmy", before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark. In 1920 the group was renamed Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band.

By the mid-1920s, Durante had become a vaudeville star and radio personality in a trio named Clayton, Jackson and Durante. Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, Durante's closest friends, often reunited with Durante in subsequent years. Jackson and Durante appeared in the Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers, which opened on Broadway on December 8, 1930. Earlier the same year, the team appeared in the movie Roadhouse Nights, ostensibly based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest.

By 1934, Durante had a major record hit with his own novelty composition, "Inka Dinka Doo", with lyrics by Ben Ryan. It became his theme song for the rest of his life. A year later, Durante starred on Broadway in the Billy Rose stage musical Jumbo. A scene in which a police officer stopped Durante's character—who was leading a live elephant across the stage—to ask "what are you doing with that elephant?", followed by Durante's reply "what elfin!?" was a regular show-stopper. This comedy bit, also reprised in his role in Billy Rose's Jumbo, likely contributed to the popularity of the idiom "the elephant in the room". Durante also appeared on Broadway in Show Girl (1929), Strike Me Pink (1934) and Red, Hot and Blue (1936).

During the early 1930s, Durante alternated between Hollywood and Broadway. His early motion pictures included an original Rodgers & Hart musical The Phantom President (1932), which featured Durante singing the self-referential Schnozzola. He initially was paired with silent film legend Buster Keaton in a series of three popular comedies for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Speak Easily (1932), The Passionate Plumber (1932), and What! No Beer? (1933), which were financial hits and a career springboard for the distinctive newcomer. However, Keaton's vociferous dissatisfaction with constraints the studio had placed upon him, his perceived incompatibility with Durante's broad chatty humor, exacerbated by Keaton's alcoholism, led the studio to end the series. Durante went on to appear in The Wet Parade (1932), Broadway to Hollywood (1933), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942, playing Banjo, a character based on Harpo Marx), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962, based on the 1935 musical), and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). In 1934, he starred in Hollywood Party, where he dreams he is Schnarzan, a parody of Tarzan, who was popular at the time due to the Johnny Weissmuller films.

On September 10, 1933, Durante appeared on Eddie Cantor's NBC radio show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour, continuing until November 12 of that year. When Cantor left the show, Durante took over as its star from April 22 to September 30, 1934. He then moved on to The Jumbo Fire Chief Program (1935–1936).

Durante teamed with Garry Moore for The Durante-Moore Show in 1943. Durante's comic chemistry with the young, brushcut Moore brought Durante an even larger audience. "Dat's my boy dat said dat!" became an instant catchphrase, which would later inspire the cartoon Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy. The duo was one of the nation's favorites for the rest of the decade. Their Armed Forces Radio Network Command Performance with Frank Sinatra remains a favorite of radio-show collectors today. Moore left the duo in mid-1947, and the program returned October 1, 1947 as The Jimmy Durante Show. Durante continued the show for three more years and featured a reunion of Clayton, Jackson and Durante on his April 21, 1948 broadcast.

Although Durante made his television debut on November 1, 1950 (on the Four Star Revue - see below) he continued to keep a presence in radio, as a frequent guest on Tallulah Bankhead's two-year NBC comedy-variety show The Big Show. Durante was one of the cast on the show's premiere November 5, 1950, along with humorist Fred Allen, singers Mindy Carson and Frankie Laine, stage musical performer Ethel Merman, actors Jose Ferrer and Paul Lukas, and comic-singer Danny Thomas (about to become a major television star in his own right). A highlight of the premiere was Durante and Thomas, whose own nose rivaled Durante's, in a routine in which Durante accused Thomas of stealing his nose. "Stay outta dis, no-nose!" Durante barked at Bankhead to a big laugh.

From 1950 to 1951, Durante was the host once a month (alternating with Ed Wynn, Danny Thomas and Jack Carson) on Wednesday evenings at 8 p.m, on NBC's comedy-variety series Four Star Revue. Jimmy continued with the show until 1954.

Durante then had a half-hour variety show - The Jimmy Durante Show - on NBC from October 2, 1954 to June 23, 1956.

Beginning in the early 1950s, Durante teamed with sidekick Sonny King, a collaboration that would continue until Durante's death. He often was seen regularly in Las Vegas after Sunday Mass outside of the Guardian Angel Cathedral standing next to the priest and greeting the people as they left Mass.

Several times in the 1960s, Durante served as host of ABC's Hollywood Palace variety show, which was taped live (and consequently included ad-libs by the seasoned vaudevillian).

His last regular television appearance was co-starring with the Lennon Sisters on Jimmy Durante Presents the Lennon Sisters Hour, which lasted for one season on ABC (1969–1970).

Durante's first wife was Jean "Jeanne" Olson, whom he married on June 19, 1921. She was born in Ohio on August 31, 1896. She was 46 years old when she died on Valentine's Day in 1943, after a lingering heart ailment of about two years, although different newspaper accounts of her death suggest she was 45 or perhaps 52.[9] As her death was not immediately expected, Durante was touring in New York at the time and returned to Los Angeles right away to complete the funeral arrangements.

Durante's radio show was bracketed with two trademarks: "Inka Dinka Doo" as his opening theme, and the invariable signoff that became another familiar national catchphrase: "Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." For years no one knew who Mrs. Calabash referred to and Durante preferred to keep the mystery alive until 1966. One theory was that it referred to the owner of a restaurant in Calabash, North Carolina, where Durante and his troupe had stopped to eat. He was so taken by the food, the service, and the chitchat he told the owner that he would make her famous. Since he did not know her name, he referred to her as "Mrs. Calabash". At a National Press Club meeting in 1966 (broadcast on NBC's Monitor program), Durante finally revealed that it was indeed a tribute to his wife. While driving across the country, they stopped in a small town called Calabash, North Carolina whose name Jean had loved. "Mrs. Calabash" became his pet name for her, and he signed off his radio program with "Good night, Mrs. Calabash." He added "wherever you are" after the first year.

Durante married his second wife, Margaret "Margie" Little, at St. Malachy Roman Catholic Church in New York City on December 14, 1960. As a teenager she had been crowned Queen of the New Jersey State Fair. She attended New York University before being hired by the legendary Copacabana in New York City. She and Durante met there 16 years before their marriage, when he performed there and she was a hatcheck girl. She was 41 and he 67 when they married. With help from their attorney, Mary G. Rogan, the couple were able to adopt a baby, Cecilia Alicia (nicknamed CeCe and now known as CeCe Durante-Bloum), on Christmas Day, 1961. CeCe became a champion horsewoman and then a horse trainer and horseriding instructor. Margie died on June 7, 2009, at the age of 89.

On August 15, 1958, for his charitable acts, Durante was awarded a three-foot-high brass loving cup by the Al Bahr Shriners Temple. The inscription reads: "JIMMY DURANTE THE WORLD'S MOST FAMOUS COMEDIAN. A loving cup to you Jimmy, it's larger than your nose, but smaller than your heart. Happiness always, Al Bahr Temple, August 15, 1958." Jimmy Durante started out his career with Clayton and Jackson and when he became a big star and they were left behind, he kept them on his payroll for the rest of their lives.

Durante's love for children continued through the Fraternal Order of Eagles, who among many causes raise money for handicapped and abused children. At Durante's first appearance at the Eagles International Convention in 1961, Judge Bob Hansen inquired about his fee for performing. Durante replied, "Do not even mention money judge or I'll have to mention a figure that'll make ya sorry ya brought it up." "What can we do then?" asked Hansen. "Help da kids," was Durante's reply. Durante performed for many years at Eagles conventions free of charge, even refusing travel money. The Fraternal Order of Eagles changed the name of their children's fund to the Jimmy Durante Children's Fund in his honor, and in his memory have raised over 20 million dollars to help children. A reporter once remarked of Durante after an interview: "You could warm your hands on this one." One of the projects built using money from the Durante Fund was a heated therapy swimming pool at the Hughen School in Port Arthur, Texas. Completed in 1968, Durante named the pool the "Inka Dinka Doo Pool".

Durante was an active member of the Democratic Party. In 1933, he appeared in an advertisement shown in theaters supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs and wrote a musical score titled Give a Man a Job to accompany it. He performed at both the inaugural gala for President John F. Kennedy in 1961 and a year later at the famous Madison Square Garden rally for the Democratic party that featured Marilyn Monroe singing "Happy Birthday" to JFK.

Durante continued his film appearances through It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and television appearances through the early 1970s. He narrated the Rankin-Bass animated Christmas special Frosty the Snowman (1969), re-run for many years since. The television work also included a series of commercial spots for Kellogg's Corn Flakes cereals in the mid-1960s, which introduced Durante's gravelly growl and narrow-eyed, large-nosed countenance to millions of children. "Dis is Jimmy Durante, in puy-son!" was his introduction to some of the Kellogg's spots. One of his last appearances was in a memorable television commercial for the 1973 Volkswagen Beetle, where he proclaimed that the new, roomier Beetle had "plenty of breathin' room... for de old schnozzola!"

In 1963, Durante recorded the album of pop standards September Song. The album became a best-seller and provided Durante's re-introduction to yet another generation, almost three decades later. From the Jimmy Durante's Way of Life album came the gravelly interpretation of the song "As Time Goes By", which accompanied the opening credits of the romantic comedy hit Sleepless in Seattle, while his version of "Make Someone Happy" launched the film's closing credits. Both are included on the film's best-selling soundtrack. Durante also recorded a cover of the well-known song I'll Be Seeing You, which became a trademark song on his 1960s TV show. This song was featured in the 2004 film The Notebook.

He wrote a foreword for a humorous book compiled by Dick Hyman titled Cockeyed Americana. In the first paragraph of the "Foreword!", as Durante called it, he describes meeting Hyman and discussing the book and the contribution that Hyman wanted Durante to make to it. Durante wrote "Before I can say gaziggadeegasackeegazobbath, we're at his luxurious office." After reading the material Hyman had compiled for the book, Durante commented on it: "COLOSSAL, GIGANTIC, MAGNANIMOUS, and last but not first, AURORA BOREALIS. [Capitalization Durante's] Four little words that make a sentence—and a sentence that will eventually get me six months."

Durante retired from performing in 1972 after he became wheelchair-bound following a stroke. He died of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California on January 29, 1980, 12 days before he would have turned 87. He received Catholic funeral rites four days later, with fellow entertainers including Desi Arnaz, Ernest Borgnine, Marty Allen, and Jack Carter in attendance, and was interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Jimmy Durante among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Jimmy Durante is known to most modern audiences as the character who narrated and sang the 1969 animated special Frosty the Snowman. He also performed the Ron Goodwin title song to the 1968 comedy-adventure Monte Carlo or Bust (titled Those Daring Young Men in Their Jaunty Jalopies in the U.S.) sung over the film's animated opening credits.

While his own career in animation was limited, Durante's distinctive voice, looks and catchphrases earned him numerous depictions and allusions in animation: A character in M-G-M cartoons, a bulldog named Spike, whose puppy son was always getting caught by accident in the middle of Tom and Jerry's activities, referenced Durante with a raspy voice and an affectionate "Dat's my boy!" In another Tom and Jerry short, a starfish lands on Tom's head, giving him a big nose. He then proceeds with Durante's famous "Ha-cha-cha-cha" call. The 1943 Tex Avery cartoon "What's Buzzin' Buzzard" featured a vulture with a voice that sounded like Jimmy Durante. A Durante-like voice (originally by Doug Young) was also given to the father beagle, Doggie Daddy, in Hanna-Barbera's Augie Doggie and Doggie Daddy cartoons, Doggie Daddy invariably addressing the junior beagle with a Durante-like "Augie, my son, my son", and with frequent citations of, "That's my boy who said that!" The 1945 MGM cartoon Jerky Turkey featured a turkey which was a caricature of Durante.

Many Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons had characters based on Durante. One Harman-Ising short from 1933, Bosko's Picture Show, featured a caricature of Adolf Hitler chasing Durante with a meat cleaver. Two examples from the 1940s include A Gruesome Twosome, which features a cat based on Durante, and Baby Bottleneck, which in unedited versions opens with a Durante-like stork. Book Revue shows the well-known (at that time) 1924 Edna Ferber novel So Big featuring a Durante caricature on the cover. The "so big" refers to his nose, and as a runaway criminal turns the corner by the book, Durante turns sideways using his nose to trip the criminal, allowing his capture. In Hollywood Daffy, Durante is directly depicted as himself, pronouncing his catchphrase "Those are the conditions that prevail!" In The Mouse-Merized Cat, Catstello (a Lou Costello mouse) briefly is hypnotized to imitate Jimmy Durante singing Lullaby of Broadway. One of Durante's common catchphrases "I got a million of 'em!" was used as Bugs' final line in Stage Door Cartoon.

A Durante-like voice was also used for Marvel Comics superhero The Thing in the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Fred and Barney Meet the Thing. The voice and appearance of Crispy, the mascot for Crispy Critters cereal, was also based on Durante.[17] In Mickey Mouse Works, a character named Mortimer Mouse (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) was based on Durante, complete with the "ha-cha-cha!". One of the main characters in Terrytoons' Heckle and Jeckle cartoon series also takes to imitating Jimmy in 1948's "Taming The Cat" ("Get a couple of song birds today...").

Since Durante's death, his songs have featured in several films. Dan Aykroyd and Kim Basinger performed impressions of Durante from The Man Who Came to Dinner singing "Did You Ever Have the Feeling" in 1988's My Stepmother Is an Alien. His performance of "Young at Heart" was featured in City Slickers (1991) and his versions of "As Time Goes By" and "Make Someone Happy" played over the opening and closing credits of Sleepless in Seattle (1993). Michael J. Fox performed an impression of Durante singing "Inka Dinka Doo" in 1994's Greedy. His rendition of "Smile" featured in the film, and trailer for, Joker (2019).

#jimmy durante #classic hollywood #classic movie stars #golden age of hollywood #old hollywood #1930s hollywood #1940s hollywood #1950s hollywood #1960s hollywood #classic television #frosty the snowman #hollywood legend

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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Lionel Hampton

Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996.

Biography

Early life

Lionel Hampton was born in 1908 in Louisville, Kentucky, and was raised by his mother. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother moved to her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. He spent his early childhood in Kenosha, Wisconsin, before he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1916. As a youth, Hampton was a member of the Bud Billiken Club, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which was off-limits because of racial segregation. During the 1920s, while still a teenager, Hampton took xylophone lessons from Jimmy Bertrand and began to play drums. Hampton was raised Roman Catholic, and started out playing fife and drum at the Holy Rosary Academy near Chicago.

Early career

Lionel Hampton began his career playing drums for the Chicago Defender Newsboys' Band (led by Major N. Clark Smith) while still a teenager in Chicago. He moved to California in 1927 or 1928, playing drums for the Dixieland Blues-Blowers. He made his recording debut with The Quality Serenaders led by Paul Howard, then left for Culver City and drummed for the Les Hite band at Sebastian's Cotton Club. One of his trademarks as a drummer was his ability to do stunts with multiple pairs of sticks such as twirling and juggling without missing a beat. During this period he began practicing on the vibraphone. In 1930 Louis Armstrong came to California and hired the Les Hite band, asking Hampton if he would play vibes on two songs. So began his career as a vibraphonist, popularizing the use of the instrument in the process. Invented ten years earlier, the vibraphone is essentially a xylophone with metal bars, a sustain pedal, and resonators equipped with electric-powered fans that add tremolo.

While working with the Les Hite band, Hampton also occasionally did some performing with Nat Shilkret and his orchestra. During the early 1930s, he studied music at the University of Southern California. In 1934 he led his own orchestra, and then appeared in the Bing Crosby film Pennies From Heaven (1936) alongside Louis Armstrong (wearing a mask in a scene while playing drums).

With Benny Goodman

Also in November 1936, the Benny Goodman Orchestra came to Los Angeles to play the Palomar Ballroom. When John Hammond brought Goodman to see Hampton perform, Goodman invited him to join his trio, which soon became the Benny Goodman Quartet with Teddy Wilson and Gene Krupa completing the lineup. The Trio and Quartet were among the first racially integrated jazz groups to perform before audiences, and were a leading small-group of the day.

Lionel Hampton Orchestra

While Hampton worked for Goodman in New York, he recorded with several different small groups known as the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, as well as assorted small groups within the Goodman band. In 1940 Hampton left the Goodman organization under amicable circumstances to form his own big band.

Hampton's orchestra developed a high-profile during the 1940s and early 1950s. His third recording with them in 1942 produced the version of "Flying Home", featuring a solo by Illinois Jacquet that anticipated rhythm & blues. Although Hampton first recorded "Flying Home" under his own name with a small group in 1940 for Victor, the best known version is the big band version recorded for Decca on May 26, 1942, in a new arrangement by Hampton's pianist Milt Buckner. The 78pm disc became successful enough for Hampton to record "Flyin' Home #2" in 1944, this time a feature for Arnett Cobb. The song went on to become the theme song for all three men. Guitarist Billy Mackel first joined Hampton in 1944, and would perform and record with him almost continuously through to the late 1970s. In 1947, Hamp performed "Stardust" at a "Just Jazz" concert for producer Gene Norman, also featuring Charlie Shavers and Slam Stewart; the recording was issued by Decca. Later, Norman's GNP Crescendo label issued the remaining tracks from the concert.

Hampton was a featured artist at numerous Cavalcade of Jazz concerts held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles and produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. His first performance was at the second Cavalcade of Jazz concert held on October 12, 1946 and also featured Jack McVea, Slim Gaillard, T-Bone Walker, the Honeydrippers and Louis Armstrong. The fifth Cavalcade of Jazz concert was held in two locations, Wrigley Field in Los Angeles and Lane Field in San Diego, July 10, 1949 and September 3, 1949 respectively. Betty Carter, Jimmy Witherspoon, Buddy Banks, Smiley Turner and Big Jay McNeely also played with Hampton. It was at the sixth Cavalcade of Jazz, June 25, 1950 that precipitated the closest thing to a riot in the show’s eventful history. Lionel and his band paraded around the ball park’s infield playing ‘Flying High’. The huge crowd, around 14,000 went berserk, tossed cushions, coats, hats, programs, and just about anything else they could lay hands on and swarmed on the field. Dinah Washington, Roy Milton, PeeWee Crayton, Lillie Greenwood, Tiny Davis an Her Hell Divers were also featured. His final Cavalcade of Jazz concert held on July 24, 1955 (Eleventh) also featured Big Jay McNeely, The Medallions, The Penguins and James Moody and his Orchestra.

From the mid-1940s until the early 1950s, Hampton led a lively rhythm & blues band whose Decca Records recordings included numerous young performers who later had significant careers. They included bassist Charles Mingus, saxophonist Johnny Griffin, guitarist Wes Montgomery, and vocalist Dinah Washington. Other noteworthy band members were trumpeters Dizzy Gillespie, Cat Anderson, Kenny Dorham, and Snooky Young; trombonist Jimmy Cleveland, and saxophonists Jerome Richardson and Curtis Lowe.

The Hampton orchestra that toured Europe in 1953 included Clifford Brown, Gigi Gryce, Anthony Ortega, Monk Montgomery, George Wallington, Art Farmer, Quincy Jones, and singer Annie Ross. Hampton continued to record with small groups and jam sessions during the 1940s and 1950s, with Oscar Peterson, Buddy DeFranco, and others. In 1955, while in California working on The Benny Goodman Story he recorded with Stan Getz and made two albums with Art Tatum for Norman Granz as well as with his own big band.

Hampton performed with Louis Armstrong and Italian singer Lara Saint Paul at the 1968 Sanremo Music Festival in Italy. The performance created a sensation with Italian audiences, as it broke into a real jazz session. That same year, Hampton received a Papal Medal from Pope Paul VI.

Later career

During the 1960s, Hampton's groups were in decline; he was still performing what had succeeded for him earlier in his career. He did not fare much better in the 1970s, though he recorded actively for his Who's Who in Jazz record label, which he founded in 1977/1978.

Beginning in February 1984, Hampton and his band played at the University of Idaho's annual jazz festival, which was renamed the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival the following year. In 1987 the UI's school of music was renamed for Hampton, the first university music school named for a jazz musician.

Hampton remained active until a stroke in Paris in 1991 led to a collapse on stage. That incident, combined with years of chronic arthritis, forced him to cut back drastically on performances. However, he did play at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in 2001 shortly before his death.

Hampton died from congestive heart failure at Mount Sinai Hospital, New York City, on August 31, 2002. He was interred at the Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York. His funeral was held on September 7, 2002, and featured a performance by Wynton Marsalis and David Ostwald's Gully Low Jazz Band at Riverside Church in Manhattan; the procession began at The Cotton Club in Harlem.

Personal life

On November 11, 1936, in Yuma, Arizona, Lionel Hampton married Gladys Riddle (1913–1971). Gladys was Lionel's business manager throughout much of his career. Many musicians recall that Lionel ran the music and Gladys ran the business.

During the 1950s he had a strong interest in Judaism and raised money for Israel. In 1953 he composed a King David suite and performed it in Israel with the Boston Pops Orchestra. Later in life Hampton became a Christian Scientist. Hampton was also a Thirty-third degree Prince Hall freemason. In January 1997, his apartment caught fire and destroyed his awards and belongings; Hampton escaped uninjured.

On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Lionel Hampton among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.

Charity

Hampton was deeply involved in the construction of various public housing projects, and founded the Lionel Hampton Development Corporation. Construction began with the Lionel Hampton Houses in Harlem, New York in the 1960s, with the help of then Republican governor Nelson Rockefeller. Hampton's wife, Gladys Hampton, also was involved in construction of a housing project in her name, the Gladys Hampton Houses. Gladys died in 1971. In the 1980s, Hampton built another housing project called Hampton Hills in Newark, New Jersey.

Hampton was a staunch Republican and served as a delegate to several Republican National Conventions. He served as Vice-Chairman of the New York Republican County Committee for some years and also was a member of the New York City Human Rights Commission. Hampton donated almost $300,000 to Republican campaigns and committees throughout his lifetime.

Awards

2001 – Harlem Jazz and Music Festival's Legend Award

1996 – International Jazz Hall of Fame Induction and Award (performed "Flying Home" with Illinois Jacquet and the Count Basie Orchestra)

1996 – National Medal of Arts presented by President Bill Clinton

1995 – Honorary Commissioner of Civil Rights by George Pataki

1995 – Honorary Doctorate from the New England Conservatory of Music

1993 – Honorary Doctorate from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore

1992 – Inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame

1992 - "Contributions To The Cultural Life of the Nation" award from John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

1988 – The National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship

1988 – The National Association of Jazz Educators Hall of Fame Award

1987 – Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from the University of Idaho – UI's School of Music renamed "Lionel Hampton School of Music."

1987 – The Roy Wilkins Memorial Award from the NAACP

1986 – The "One of a Kind" Award from Broadcast Music, Inc.

1984 – Jazz Hall of Fame Award from the Institute of Jazz Studies

1984 – Honorary Doctorate of Music from USC

1983 – The International Film and Television Festival of New York City Award

1983 – Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the State University of New York

1982 – Hollywood Walk of Fame Star

1981 – Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Glassboro State College

1979 – Honorary Doctorate of Music from Howard University

1978 – Bronze Medallion from New York City

1976 – Honorary Doctorate of Humanities from Daniel Hale Williams University

1975 – Honorary Doctorate of Music from Xavier University of Louisiana

1974 – Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from Pepperdine University

1968 – Papal Medal from Pope Paul VI

1966 – Handel Medallion

1957 – American Goodwill Ambassador by President Dwight D. Eisenhower

1954 – Israel's Statehood Award

Discography

Compilations of noteThe Chronological ... Classics series

note: every recording by Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra is included in this 12 volume series from the CLASSICS reissue label ...

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1937–1938 (#524) - RCA Victor recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1938–1939 (#534) - RCA Victor recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1939–1940 (#562) - RCA Victor recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1940–1941 (#624) - RCA Victor recordings; first Decca session

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1942–1944 (#803) - Decca recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1945–1946 (#922) - Decca recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1946 (#946) - Decca recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1947 (#994) - Decca recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1949–1950 (#1161) - Decca recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1950 (#1193) - Decca recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1950–1951 (#1262) - last two Decca sessions; MGM recordings

The Chronological Lionel Hampton & His Orchestra 1951–1953 (#1429) - includes Hamp's first Norman Granz-produced quartet session (September 2, 1953) with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, and Buddy Rich.

Glad-Hamp Records

GHLP-1001 (1961) The Many Sides Of Hamp

GHLP-3050 (1962) All That Twist'n Jazz

GHLP-1003 (1962) The Exciting Hamp In Europe

GHLP-1004 (1963) Bossa Nova Jazz

GHLP-1005 (1963) Recorded Live On Tour

GHLP-1006 (1964) Hamp In Japan/Live

GHLP-1007 (1965) East Meets West (Introducing Miyoko Hoshino)

GHLP-1009 (1965) A Taste Of Hamp

GHS-1011 (1967) Hamp Stamps [includes "Greasy Greens"]

GHS-1012 (1966) Hamp's Portrait Of A Woman

GHS-1020 (1979) Hamp's Big Band Live!

GHS-1021 (1980) Chameleon

GHS-1022 (1982) Outrageous

GHS-1023 (1983) Live In Japan

GHS-1024 (1984) Ambassador At Large

GHS-1025 (1985) Sentimental Journey (Featuring Sylvia Bennett)

GHS-1026 (1988) One Of A Kind

GHS-1027 (1987) Midnight Blues - with Dexter Gordon

GHCD-1028 (1990) Cookin' In The Kitchen

As sidemanWith Frank Sinatra

L.A. Is My Lady (Qwest/Warner Bros., 1984)

Filmography

Hampton appeared as himself in the films listed below.

#04/20 #08/31

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jazzviewswithcjshearn · 6 years ago

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Somethin’ old, Somethin’ blue: Revisiting the Jimmy Smith Trio’s “The Master” (Blue Note/Somethin’ Else, 1994) and “The Master II” (Blue Note/Somethin’ Else, 1996)

Jimmy Smith: organ; Kenny Burrell: guitar; Jimmie Smith: drums.

In the late 1980's and early 90's, Blue Note began to issue recordings from their Japanese sister label Somethin' Else. These recordings included those by trumpeter Terumasa Hino, the young lion group Superblue, albums from drummer Ralph Peterson, then hot shot pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba, and Japanese pianist Junko Onishi. Generally recordings made of American jazz stars for the Japanese market have a very specific focus, take for example the Great Jazz Trio's East Wind albums or Herbie Hancock's eight albums recorded expressly for CBS/Sony. The albums are usually filled with standards, or new versions of the artist's best known original tunes, and are usually audiophile grade recordings.

The decade of the 90's saw organist Jimmy Smith (1928-2005) make a slow return to the public at large. He had spent most of the 80's recording relatively few albums: the superb Off The Top (Elektra/Musician, 1982) Keep On Comin' (Elektra/Musician, 1983) the one off return to Blue Note Go For Whatcha Know (Blue Note, 1986) and Sum Serious Blues (Milestone, 1989). Off The Top was, by far, his best recording of the 80's with an all star cast including Stanley Turrentine, George Benson and Grady Tate, with the rest being spotty, Go For Whatcha Know being good, but with far too short tune lengths running between four and seven minutes. Easily the best performance is Grady Tate's vocal version of Michael Jackson's hit “She's Out of My Life” heard on Off The Wall (Epic, 1979). The 90's would begin with the excellent live Fourmost (Milestone, 1991) and then the bluesy Prime Time (Milestone, 1991). Smith's prowess at the organ remained nothing short of stunning, clearly deserving of the incredible moniker that graced his early albums, but he was being overshadowed by the young phenom Joey DeFrancesco who was hailed in the jazz media as bringing back the Hammond organ from the doldrums, and while Jack McDuff, Dr. Lonnie Smith and Jimmy McGriff had all made solid recent recordings returning to the B-3, Smith and DeFrancesco remained it's most visible players at the time. Smith's quartet of tenor and soprano saxophonist Herman Riley, guitarists Terry Evans, Phil Upchurch or Carl Lockett and drummers Frank Wilson or Jimmy “Junebug” Jackson helped keep the grease flowing in Smith's blues soaked brand of playing, but he was always best when playing with groups that included Stanley Turrentine, Kenny Burrell or Grady Tate because they'd truly inspire him. As fine as Smith's quartet was, he'd often go into autopilot heavily falling on heavily cliched phrases, trills and drone patterns-- with Turrentine or Burrell on board, he'd push just a little harder really enjoying the moment.

On Christmas eve and day of 1993 in Osaka, Japan at Kirin Plaza Osaka Smith would be taped in a trio with Kenny Burrell, and drummer Jimmie Smith (no relation). The newcomer to this trio was drummer Smith, a Newark, New Jersey native and cousin of Larry Young who had recorded with Young, Jimmy McGriff and Richard “Groove” Holmes, but never the modern innovator of the organ, Jimmy Smith. The drummer is perhaps best known for his role as house drummer for Norman Granz' roster of artists he taped for his Pablo label at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1977, and his tasteful playing serves as a buffer for the organist's red hot soloing and Burrell's calm guitar. Two albums were released in Japan and later licensed by Blue Note first, The Master (Blue Note/Somethin' Else, 1993) and The Master II (Blue Note/Somethin' Else) not hitting American shores until 1996. With 15 selections spread across two CD's, they demonstrate the beautiful empathy the organist and guitarist developed since their first meeting during three days of sessions in February, 1957. The track list serves as kind of Jimmy Smith's greatest hits with a number of tracks that he had not revisited since his Blue Note recordings some thirty years earlier. Smith is limber on Burrell's “Chitlins Con Carne” which he had never recorded, with the guitarist providing a few smooth choruses before Smith opens up with his trademark enthusiasm ripping blazing fast lines as if it's nothing. He squabbles on the set piece “It's Alright With Me” by Cole Porter, radically different from the arrangement found on At The Club Baby Grand, Volume 1 (Blue Note, 1956) with steady support from Burrell's quarter notes and drummer Smith's velvety brushes. The trio revisits Horace Silver's “The Preacher” which the organist cut on his very first album A New Sound, A New Star (Blue Note, 1956) and reprised in a barnstorming, definitive version on At The Club Baby Grand, Volume 1. Here things are at a much lower boil as Burrell is featured in an unhurried solo. Smith substitutes the grandiose congregation stirring full organ drone patterns of the Baby Grand take with a more measured funky lope. The most memorable track on the first installment is a 7 and a half minute slow burn on Burrell's “All Day Long” first heard on At The Organ, Volume 1 (Blue Note, 1957) Smith plays his 12 bar walking bass line faithfully from the original before guitar and drums. Compared to Art Blakey's shuffle that got Smith to really dig in with some heated choruses. Drummer Smith's feel is considerably more relaxed and behind the beat which makes the organist and guitarist make similarly more leisurely choices, even during the drummer's double time, chopped up during Smith's solo with rim shots. Heavy swinging takes on “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and “Back At the Chicken Shack” are highlights as well.

The Master II opens with a greasy, lazy music for a Sunday afternoon take on “Summertime”, but this volume is really all about how Jimmy Smith treats the ballads and blues. By far the best moments occur with full organ treatments of “Laura” and “My Romance”, where Smith displays total control of the organ with a wide range of tone colors and Leslie speaker settings, surrendering to the depth of melodies. Similarly, Thad Jones “A Child Is Born” is treated with the melody in mind. Burrell takes a lovely solo showcasing his strong lyrical affinity, and Smith's solo raises the temperature with rushed intensity: spirals of tumbling, sprawling double timed lines. He again squabbles on a sauntering “Mack The Knife” and brings things to a heated close with a rollicking “Stormy Monday” with organ at all stops out for a dramatic ending. Critical reception for these albums was mixed with Scott Yanow giving a typically shallow three star review for All Music Guide, and for the second volume, Sid Gribetz giving a bizarre lukewarm response for Jazz Times.

These albums are much, much better than that, they show Jimmy Smith's organ playing at it's peak, inspired by the invention of his choice guitarist and old friend Kenny Burrell. These would be unfortunately, the last trio albums of Smith's career, where less than a year later he'd be back at Verve, with the classic Angel Eyes being his last truly great album until Legacy (Concord Jazz, 2005) with Joey DeFrancesco, the final session before the organist's passing just weeks before it's release. It would have been very interesting had original Smith drummer Donald Bailey been a part of this trio; his off kilter comping and imaginative ideas would have truly added something very special to these clearly fun gigs. It could have been that since Jimmie Smith is a resident of Japan, he was hired for these gigs, and Jimmy Smith's recollections in an AllAboutJazz article indicate the drummer took some time to warm up to playing with the organist. Jimmy was always very specific on how drummers played with him, and it is very possible drummer Smith had never played with an organist as aggressive. Larry Young was pretty aggressive on albums like Of Love and Peace (Blue Note, 1969) but quite laid back on Testifying (New Jazz 1960) his first recording for Prestige subsidiary New Jazz that featured Jimmie Smith on drums.

Sound

Both Master sets are recorded beautifully. There is lots of room tone, and the B-3 is full bodied with warm mid range and window rattling bass from the the foot pedals. All details are heard, tone wheel leakage, and key click, with slightly shimmering highs, and the slow chorale setting of the Leslie filling the sound stage in stereo, behind it all is Smith's signature humming and grunting, omnipresent. Guitar is rich, with the clear attack of the pick on strings, drums, snare, and toms appropriately thwack, with beautiful smoky ring on cymbals, and a sharp sour ping of the swish cymbal in Jimmie Smith's drum set up really enhanced wonderfully on Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro headphones.

The original Blue Note issues can be found fairly inexpensively second hand on discogs or eBay and at dustygroove.com, though the recent Somethin' Else reissue of the first album from a few years back is slightly more pricy. I have had both Blue Note editions of the albums since their release more than 20 years ago and paid regular price.

Music: 9/10

Sound: 9.5/10

#jimmy smith #Blue Note records #kenny burrell #japan

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