(Clarinet, bandleader, composer, 1910–2004) If the 1930s comes down to about half a dozen great brand names, Artie Shaw’s is surely one of them. After much freelancing in the early 1930s and several years of band-building, Shaw (née Arthur Arshawsky) hit his stride just as Benny Goodman peaked in 1938. But no one ever confused these ...
In use from the late Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, the shawm was a wooden instrument, often made out of boxwood, with a conical bore opening out from top to bottom. At the top, a cut and scraped reed was fitted over a small brass tube called a ‘staple’. The hollow reed was housed in a ...
(Trumpet, flugelhorn, composer, 1944–89) A lyrical soloist, composer and bandleader, Shaw’s career was cut tragically short by illnesses, including deteriorating vision, and a subway accident that cost him an arm. After early work with Willie Bobo and Eric Dolphy, Shaw played extensively in Europe with US expatriates Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke and ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1921–63) Harold Franklin Hawkins was born in Huntington, West Virginia, and is best remembered for the 1966 honky-tonk hit shuffle ‘Lonesome 7-7203’. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1955. His promising career was cut short when he was killed in the same 1963 plane crash that took the life of Patsy Cline and Cowboy ...
Unusually among musical instruments, a specific date has been posited for the invention of the clarinet. Johann Christoph Denner of Nuremberg has been claimed as the man who, in 1700, devised and built the first of these instruments. Like all the best stories, however, the history of the clarinet is shrouded in mystery. The instrument attributed ...
Bagpipe Somewhere, perhaps in Mesopotamia, about 7,000 years ago, a shepherd may well have looked at a goat skin and some hollow bones and had an idea for a new musical instrument: the bagpipe. In the early Christian era, the instrument spread from the Middle East eastward into India and westward to Europe. By the seventeenth ...
(Alto saxophone, arranger, trumpet, vocals, 1907–2003) One of the great arrangers and soloists in jazz history, Bennett Lester Carter wrote some of the first big-band music to fully realize the flowing, legato ensemble of the coming swing movement. His saxophone ensembles were smooth projections of his solo style. ‘Lonesome Nights’ and ‘Symphony In Riffs’ were ...
Billie Holiday was entirely untrained as a singer, but drew on the example of popular recording artists such as Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong in developing her musical approach. She was able to make much of poor songs as well as great ones. Her phrasing, intonation, attention to the weight and nuance of lyrics, and her lightly ...
(Drums, 1917–87) Bernard ‘Buddy’ Rich was a powerhouse drummer with a phenomenal technique, but he was also capable of great delicacy when required. He grew up in the family vaudeville act before joining Joe Marsala’s band in 1937. It was the beginning of a series of associations with major swing era bandleaders such as Harry James, Artie Shaw ...
Charlie Christian (1916–42) pushed guitar to the forefront of the big-band era, furthering the instrument’s evolution from a provider of acoustic accompaniment to an electrified foreground instrument that could pound out rhythm like a drum set or solo out front like a horn. His playing, in fact, was likened to jazz horn players who were leading the evolution ...
(Trumpet, vocals, 1908–54) Oran Thaddeus Page surfaced in the Bennie Moten Band as a powerful blues player, often using a plunger mute. He was with the as-yet unknown Count Basie in 1936 and might soon have left Kansas City as one of that fabled band of brothers had he not been approached by Joe Glaser. Glaser was Louis ...
(Clarinet, 1906–69) Great musicians are often judged by the reach of their influence on others, but Charles Ellsworth Russell’s clarinet was one of a kind, so personal and eccentric that it offered little to any would-be disciples. He arrived in New York in 1927 from the Midwest, where he had played with Bix Beiderbecke and other Chicago-area ...
While Louis Armstrong remained a pre-eminent jazz symbol in the public mind through the 1930s, and inspired many imitators (Taft Jordan, Hot Lips Page, Wingy Manone), younger and better-schooled musicians were coming up who could navigate the trumpet with great agility and dexterity. They would break through the perimeters that Armstrong had established in the 1920s and take ...
Jazz icon Tal Farlow (1921–98) wowed fans and other guitarists with his blazing speed and physical ability, facilitated by his large hands, to create unique, extended voicings. Farlow was equally well known for his semi-reclusiveness. Trained as a sign painter, he frequently dropped out of the music scene for long periods, living a quiet life on ...
The popularity of jazz hit a peak after the Depression years of 1929–33. By the end of 1934, huge numbers were tuning in to the NBC Radio series Let’s Dance, which broadcast performances by The Xavier Cugat, Kel Murray and Benny Goodman Orchestras. Goodman’s orchestra in particular caught on with the public and created a demand for live ...
AUTHORITATIVE
An extensive music information resource, bringing together the talents and expertise of a wide range of editors and musicologists, including Stanley Sadie, Charles Wilson, Paul Du Noyer, Tony Byworth, Bob Allen, Howard Mandel, Cliff Douse, William Schafer, John Wilson...
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Classical, Rock, Blues, Jazz, Country and more. Flame Tree has been making encyclopaedias and guides about music for over 20 years. Now Flame Tree Pro brings together a huge canon of carefully curated information on genres, styles, artists and instruments. It's a perfect tool for study, and entertaining too, a great companion to our music books.
David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.