In the 1960s and early 1970s, trumpeter Freddie Hubbard was the primary alternative to Miles Davis’s domination of the field. Hubbard came up in the hard-bop era, blew free jazz with Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane, and established a body of exemplary compositions, recordings and improvisations with the best of the 1960s Blue Note artists: Art Blakey ...
Freddie (sometimes spelled Freddy) King (1934–76) revitalized the Chicago blues scene in the 1960s. His aggressive playing and piercing solos helped to set up the blues-rock movement, and he was a major influence on 1960s British guitarists like Eric Clapton, Peter Green and Mick Taylor. King’s mother taught him to play guitar as a child in Gilmer, Texas ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1934–76) Few bluesmen have possessed the bristling intensity of Freddie King, whose stinging vibrato and energetic, soaring vocal style influenced Eric Clapton. King was born in Gilmer, Texas and learned guitar from his mother at age six. He moved to Chicago in 1950, earning a reputation among peers like Buddy Guy and Otis ...
(Vocals, songwriter, b. 1926) A regular on the Town Hall Party, Alabama-born Freddie Hart arrived in Los Angeles following a troubled childhood, a couple of years in the Marines (enrolling when he was only 15), and travelling across the nation. His 1950s association with Capitol and Columbia resulted in some fine, though overlooked, country and ...
(Vocals, guitar, b. 1946) Hubbard made his reputation early on by writing the rousing, tongue-in-cheek sing-along, ‘Up Against The Wall, Redneck Mother’, which Jerry Jeff Walker turned into his theme song. Alcohol and record-company problems prevented Hubbard from building on that success until the 1990s when he sobered up and emerged as one of the finest ...
(Vocal group, 1961–2002) A debut single, 1963’s ‘If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody’, began a two-year British chart run for this Manchester outfit. Moreover, as their fortunes subsided at home, they caught on in North America, scoring a US No. 1 with 20-month-old ‘I’m Telling You Now’, and amassing advance orders of 142,000 ...
(Drums, 1919–90) Art Blakey (also later known as Buhaina or simply Bu after he converted to Islam) led the quintessential hard bop group the Jazz Messengers across four decades from the late 1940s, and was a fervent advocate of the music he loved. He formed his first band in his native Pittsburgh, but moved to New York and ...
(Alto saxophone, bass clarinet, flute, 1928–64) In the six years before his untimely death, Eric Dolphy became one of the most beloved and influential musicians in jazz. Brilliant on alto saxophone, he also helped to legitimize the flute and bass clarinet as viable jazz horns. Dolphy worked in relative obscurity until 1958, when he was ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1942–70) This left-handed Seattle, Washington native taught himself to play by flipping over a $5 acoustic guitar and copying licks from blues, R&B and rock’n’roll records. Hendrix apprenticed on the R&B circuit, backing up Little Richard among others, and mastered techniques from the stuttering ninth chords of James Brown sideman Jimmy Nolen to ...
By the time John Coltrane died in 1967 at the age of 40, he had experienced one of the most remarkable careers in music. ‘Trane’ was a compelling voice who contributed to some of jazz’s greatest innovations, from bebop to free jazz, resulting in both controversy and enduring success through critical and popular acclaim. Revered during his lifetime ...
Since his emergence in the mid-1950s, alto saxophonist and creative composer Ornette Coleman has risen above controversy to become a respected elder statesman of jazz. Born in 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas, Coleman taught himself the saxophone through trial and error. By avoiding chord structures and set rhythms in favour of melodic experimentation, he developed the new ...
(Tenor and soprano saxophones, b. 1933) Wayne Shorter’s most significant early position was in Maynard Ferguson’s orchestra in 1958, where he met pianist Joe Zawinul. In 1959 Shorter joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and soon thereafter made his debut as a leader. He gained prominence as a member of Miles Davis’s ambitious groups from 1964–70, in which his ...
Hard bop evolved out of bebop during the early 1950s but its rhythms were more driving and syncopated. Hard bop also tended to have a more full-bodied sound, a bluesy feel with darker textures and shorter improvised lines, and its chord progressions were usually composed rather than borrowed from popular tunes. Although Miles Davis made an early foray into ...
The cultural momentum of the 1950s spilled directly into the 1960s – arguably, the change of the decade (and century) in jazz was 1959, when Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Gil Evans, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Jackie McLean, Charles Mingus, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Sun ...
Of the entire century, the 1970s were the years of catching one’s breath. Superficially, the promise of the 1960s had faded or failed, the victim of wretched excess and just plain bad taste. America’s war in Vietnam sputtered to an end, international relations elsewhere seemed to stalemate in détente and economically the world suffered from stagflation: exhaustion ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.