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blewnotes · 9 years ago

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Jazziversaries June 23rd

Donald Harrison (sax alto) 1960 :: Jazziversary greetings to Donald Harrison. Donald is an American jazz saxophonist from New Orleans, Louisiana.

He played with Roy Haynes, Jack McDuff, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Terence Blanchard and Don Pullen in the 1980s. He also played with the re-formed Headhunters band in the 1990s. In 1991 he recorded “Indian Blues,” which captured the sound and culture of Congo Square in a jazz context. In 1994 Harrison created the “Nouveau Swing” style of jazz, which merges the swing beat with many of today’s popular dance styles of music, as well as styles that are prominent from his cultural experiences in his hometown.

Harrison also performs in the smooth jazz genre. His group Donald Harrison Electric Band has recorded popular radio hits and have charted in the top ten of Billboard magazine. He performs as a producer, singer and rapper in the traditional Afro-New Orleans culture and hiphop genres with his group, The New Sounds of Mardi Gras. The group, which has two recorded two cds, was started four years ago and has made appearances worldwide. Harrison is the Big Chief of the Congo Nation Afro-New Orleans Cultural Group which keeps alive the secret traditions of Congo Square.

Harrison also writes orchestral works for major orchestras.

Harrison was chosen as the “person of the year” by Jazziz magazine in January 2007. His latest CDs, 3D Vols. I, II, and III, feature him in three different musical genres. On Vol. I he writes, plays, and produces music in the smooth jazz, and R&B style. On Vol. II he writes, produces and plays in the classic jazz style. On Vol. III he writes plays and produces in the hiphop genre.

As of 2007, Harrison is working on a large orchestral work which investigates what it is like to be a participant in New Orleans culture. Harrison was forced to evacuate New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and proceeds from his album Nouveau Swing will go to victims of the hurricanes.

Harrison has nurtured a number of young musicians including the young Grammy-nominated trumpeter Christian Scott (Harrison’s nephew), as well as Mark Whitfield, Cyrus Chestnut, Christian McBride, and The Notorious B.I.G.

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George Russell (piano) 1923 -2009 :: was an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger and theorist. He is considered one of the first jazz musicians to contribute to general music theory with a theory of harmony based on jazz rather than European music, in his book The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization (1953).

Inspired by hearing Thelonious Monk’s “‘Round Midnight”, Russell moved to New York in the early 1940s, where he became a member of a coterie of young innovators who frequented the 55th Street apartment of Gil Evans, a clique which included Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, and John Lewis, later involved with the Modern Jazz Quartet.

In 1945–46, Russell was hospitalized for tuberculosis for 16 months. Forced to turn down work as Charlie Parker’s drummer, during that time he worked out the basic tenets of what was to become his Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, a theory encompassing all of equal-tempered music which has been influential well beyond the boundaries of jazz. The first edition of his book was published by Russell in 1953, while he worked as a salesclerk at Macy’s. At that time, Russell’s ideas were a crucial step into the modal music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis on his classic recording, Kind of Blue, and served as a beacon for other modernists such as Eric Dolphy and Art Farmer.

While working on the theory, Russell was also applying its principles to composition. His first famous composition was for the Dizzy Gillespie Orchestra, the two-part “Cubano Be, Cubano Bop” (1947) and part of that band’s pioneering experiments in fusing bebop and Cuban jazz elements; "A Bird in Igor’s Yard" (a tribute to both Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky) was recorded in a session led by Buddy DeFranco the next year. Also, a lesser known but pivotal work of Russell’s was recorded in January 1950 by Artie Shaw entitled “Similau” that employed techniques of both the works done for Gillespie and DeFranco.

Russell began playing piano, leading a series of groups which included Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Hal McKusick, Barry Galbraith, Milt Hinton, Paul Motian, and others. Jazz Workshop was his first album as leader, and one where he played relatively little, as opposed to masterminding the events (rather like his colleague Gil Evans). He was to record a number of impressive albums over the next several years, sometimes as primary pianist.

It was a remark made by Miles Davis in 1945 when Russell asked him his musical aim that led Russell on a quest which was to become his life’s work. Davis answered that his musical aim was “to learn all the changes.” Knowing that Davis already knew how to arpeggiate each chord, Russell reasoned that he really meant that he wanted to find a new and broader way to relate to chords.

Russell codified the modal approach to harmony…inspired by a casual remark the eighteen-year-old Miles Davis made to him in 1944: Miles said he wanted to learn all the changes and I reasoned he might try to find the closest scale for every chord…Davis popularised those liberating ideas in recordings like Kind of Blue, undermining the entire harmonic foundation of bop that had inspired him and Russell in the first place.

Miles reportedly summarized the LCC succinctly by saying, "F should be where middle C is on the piano" [white notes: F-F = lydian, rather than major = C-C].

Russell’s theory proposes the concept of playing jazz based on scales or a series of scales (modes) rather than chords or harmonies. The Lydian Chromatic Concept explored the vertical relationship between chords and scales, and was the first codified original theory to come from jazz.

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Helen Humes (vocal) 1913-1981 :: was an American jazz and blues singer. Humes was successively a teenage blues singer, band vocalist with Count Basie, saucy R&B diva and a mature interpreter of the classy popular song.

She moved to New York City in 1937 and became a recording vocalist with Harry James’ big band. Her swing recordings with James included “Jubilee”, “I Can Dream, Can’t I?”, Jimmy Dorsey’s composition “It’s The Dreamer In Me”, and “Song of the Wanderer”.

Humes became one of the vocalists with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1938, replacing Billie Holiday as lead female vocalist. Her vocals with Basie’s band included “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea” and “Moonlight Serenade”.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Humes became a solo performer and worked with different bands and other vocalists, among them Nat King Cole. She sounded very sprightly on the jump blues Be-Baba-Leba (Philo, 1945) and Million Dollar Secret (Modern, 1950).

In 1950 Humes recorded Benny Carter’s “Rock Me to Sleep”. She managed to bridge the gap between big band jazz swing and rhythm and blues. She appeared on the bill at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1960.

She moved to Hawaii and then to Australia in 1964, returning to the US in 1967 to take care of her ailing mother. Humes was out of the music industry for several years but made a full comeback in 1973 at the Newport Jazz Festival, and stayed busy up until her death.

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Milt Hinton (bass, acoustic) 1910-2000 :: “the dean of jazz bass players,” was an American jazz double bassist and photographer. He was nicknamed “The Judge”.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he worked as a freelance musician in Chicago. During this time, he worked with famous jazz musicians such as Jabbo Smith, Eddie South, and Art Tatum. In 1936, he joined a band led by Cab Calloway. Members of this band included Chu Berry, Cozy Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Jonah Jones, Ike Quebec, Ben Webster, and Danny Barker.

Hinton possessed a formidable technique and was equally adept at bowing, pizzicato, and “slapping,” a technique for which he became famous while playing with the big band of Cab Calloway from 1936 to 1951. Unusually for a double bass player, Hinton was frequently given the spotlight by Calloway, taking virtuose bass solos in tunes like “Pluckin’ the Bass.”

As well as being a famous Jazz musiciain, Hinton at the same time, worked as a studio musician. he was part of a large group of studio musicians who played on dozens of hit records written by songwriters who worked at the Brill Building. he was responsible for the opening bass line on the Drifters “Under the Boardwalk” as well as playing on dozens of hits recorded by Neil Sedaka and many others.

Hinton twice received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work as a jazz educator: a music fellowship in 1977 and an NEA Jazz Master award in 1993.

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Sahib Shihab (reeds) 1925-1989 :: was an American jazz saxophonist (baritone, alto, and soprano) and flautist. He was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

He first played alto saxophone professionally for Luther Henderson at age 13 and went on to study at the Boston Conservatory and to play with trumpeter Roy Eldridge. He played lead alto with Fletcher Henderson in the mid forties.

He was one of the first jazz musicians to convert to Islam and changed his name in 1947. During the late 1940s, Shihab played with Thelonious Monk. During this period, he also found time to appear on many recordings by artists including Art Blakey, Kenny Dorham and Benny Golson. The invitation to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band in the early fifties was of particular significance as it marked Sahib’s switch to baritone.

In 1958, Sahib was one of the musicians photographed by Art Kane in his A Great Day in Harlem picture.

In 1959, he toured Europe with Quincy Jones after getting fed up with racial politics in USA and ultimately settled in Scandinavia. He worked for Copenhagen Polytechnic and wrote scores for television, cinema and theatre.

In 1961, he joined The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band and remained a key figure in the band for the 12 years it ran.

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#jazz #funk #blues #soul #sahib shihab #milt hinton #helen humes #george russell #donald harrison

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