Jazz & Blues

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(Vocals, guitar, 1899–1947) A resident of Brownsville, Tennessee, Willie Newbern had only one recording session, for OKeh in Atlanta in 1929. Although he was not widely known outside his area, he influenced quite a few musicians: he recorded the first known version of ‘Roll And Tumble Blues’ and is said to have taught it to Charley Patton, among others. Allegedly he was killed while serving time in prison. Styles & Forms | ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Vocals, composer, b. 1930) Lincoln caps her long, diversified singing and acting career as an iconic songwriter and performer. Her first record, in the 1950s, was with Benny Carter’s orchestra; in the 1960s she recorded politicized material with then-husband Max Roach. In the mid-1980s she re-emerged, paying tribute to Billie Holiday and embodying an African-American feminism. Employing top younger instrumentalists in her bands, she has also become a model for younger ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Piano, b. 1934) Born Adolphe Johannes ‘Dollar’ Brand in Capetown, South Africa, Abdullah Ibrahim successfully fused African rhythms and lilting melodic lines with the piano styles of Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. In 1960, with trumpeter Hugh Masekela and others as the Jazz Epistles, he released the first contemporary South African jazz album. The racial climate in his country forced him and his wife, singer Sathima Bea Benjamin, to seek exile ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Clarinet, b. 1929) Acker Bilk was born in Somerset, England. He took up clarinet in the Army and formed his first band in 1950. His Paramount Jazz Band adopted trademark uniforms of striped waistcoats and bowler hats and was very successful in the UK’s trad boom of the late 1950s. Bilk enjoyed a major pop hit with his own ‘Stranger On The Shore’ in 1961 and remained a popular draw on ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Piano, b. 1930) Ahmad Jamal made his name with his very successful trio of the late 1950s and had a hit with his version of ‘Poinciana’ in 1958. His light touch and use of space has led some to hear too much of the cocktail lounge in his playing, but he is an inventive and influential musician and composer. He experimented with more avant-garde approaches after a break from performing in ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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Albert Clifton Ammons was born in Chicago, Illinois in March 1907. As a young man he learned from Jimmy Yancey, who cast a long shadow over Chicago blues pianists through his work at rent parties, social functions and after-hours jobs. Ammons came to know other pianists and the blues specialists gathered together in Chicago to create a coterie, echoing what was happening with the stride pianists in Harlem. Among the ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Various saxophones, 1936–70) Albert Ayler was one of the most controversial free-jazz performers. Eccentric and tirelessly inventive, he shifted ensemble roles in his music so that drummers and bassists were on equal ground with the horns. Ayler influenced John Coltrane and many younger saxophonists, and his recordings gradually moved from free jazz towards rock and soul themes. Spiritual Unity (1964) remains one of his most acclaimed albums. Ayler died in mysterious ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Guitar, vocals, 1932–93) Collins’s highly original and bold, chiselled tone – achieved through an idiosyncratic tuning and high volume – earned the Texan his nickname ‘The Iceman’. The moniker was abetted by a string of chilly-themed, early 1960s instrumental hits that incorporated R&B rhythms, including the million-selling ‘Frosty’, ‘Sno Cone’ and ‘Thaw Out’. Although his cousin was Lightnin’ Hopkins, Collins’s agressive playing style was primarily influenced by T-Bone Walker and Gatemouth ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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Albert King’s late 1960s and early 1970s recordings for the Stax label remain cornerstones of modern blues. Tunes like ‘Born Under A Bad Sign’, ‘Crosscut Saw’ and ‘I’ll Play the Blues For You’ are also an antidote to the over-the-top playing indulged in by so many contemporary blues guitarists. For King, a six-foot-four, 250-pound man possessed of a big, mellow voice and an equally proportional guitar tone, each carefully chiselled note ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Trombone, 1928–2005) Although he played violin and guitar, Frankfurt native Albert Mangelsdorff did not take up the trombone until the age of 20. However, despite this relatively late start, he became a pioneer of multiphonics on the horn and a leader of the European avant-garde. Recordings with pianist John Lewis and sitarist Ravi Shankar in the 1960s helped to make his name, but it was as a member of the Globe ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Vocals, 1895–1984) Memphis-born Alberta Hunter ran away to Chicago as a young girl to seek her fortune as an entertainer. She survived the cutthroat world of early twentieth-century jazz long enough to establish herself as a front-line vocalist, albeit in a somewhat less-declamatory style than that favoured by some of her contemporaries. She recorded (sometimes using pseudonyms) for Black Swan, Paramount and other labels; she also appeared in several musical stage ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Vocal/instrumental group, 1962–67) Alexis Korner (guitar, piano, vocals), born in Paris, France in 1928, was considered to be the father of electric British blues. When he and Cyril Davies (harmonica, vocals) formed Blues Incorporated in 1962 with Dick Heckstall-Smith (saxophone), Andy Hoogenboom (bass), Ken Scott (piano) and Charlie Watts (drums), their amplified line-up met with resistance. So Korner and Davies opened their own venue, the Ealing Rhythm & Blues Club, beneath ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Guitar, gurkel, n’jarka, vocals, 1939–2006) Touré based his distinctive style on the music of his native Mali and on American blues and R&B – in particular John Lee Hooker, whose simple yet inimitable hypnotic drones are echoed in Touré’s songs. Five earlier albums had made Touré a cult favourite when his 1994 Grammy-winning collaboration with slide guitarist Ry Cooder, Talking Timbuktu, elevated him to éminence grise of the world music scene. Styles ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Piano, vocals, 1927–80) Joseph Amos Milburn Jr. was born in Houston, Texas, and he began recording in 1946 for Aladdin records. Milburn was an exceptionally popular performer between the late 1940s and mid-1950s, with number-one R&B hits such as ‘Chicken Shack Boogie’, ‘Bewildered’ and ‘Roomin’ House Boogie’ (all 1948–49). Beginning in 1949, he toured and recorded with his own band, the Aladdin Chickenshackers, and continued his string of hits with ‘Bad, ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
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(Vocals, b. 1945) This raw-edged songstress emerged from the same Austin, Texas scene that yielded Stevie Ray Vaughan, with her 1986 debut Stranger Blues. Strehli, who was born in Lubbock, perfected her slow phrasing and dynamic attack at the famed Antone’s nightclub, learning from visiting artists Muddy Waters, Otis Rush, Albert Collins and Albert King. She helped to start the influential Antone’s record label. In recent years Strehli has incorporated more ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel
100 Words Read More
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