Gerry Mulligan was the leading exponent of the baritone saxophone in jazz, and one of the key instigators of the style that came to be known as cool jazz. Along with trumpeter Chet Baker, Mulligan came to exemplify the cool ethos in the 1950s; he returned to the roots of that style with his Re-Birth Of The Cool (1992). ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1959–present) In 1963, this Liverpool act’s first three singles – ‘How Do You Do It’, ‘I Like It’ and ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ – all reached the top in Britain, a hitherto unmatched feat. Self-composed ‘I’m The One’ almost made it four in a row but times got harder after ‘Don’t Let The Sun Catch You ...
The saxophone occupies an unusual position in that it is a bespoke instrument that has barely changed since its creation. Although it does not occupy the position in the orchestra its creator had envisaged, Adolphe Sax’s invention has played a central part in music ever since it burst on to the scene in the 1840s. Sax’s father, Charles, ...
(Trumpet, flugelhorn, 1928–99) Art Farmer was largely responsible for popularizing the mellow-toned flugelhorn as a solo jazz instrument. A wonderfully lyrical player, he came up in Los Angeles’ Central Avenue jazz clubs in the 1940s and worked with Lionel Hampton, Horace Silver, Gerry Mulligan and alto saxophonist Gigi Gryce. In 1959–62 he and tenor saxophonist Benny ...
(Piano, b. 1966) The son of Broadway composer Moose Charlap and singer Sandy Stewart, Bill Charlap was inducted into professional jazz by Gerry Mulligan and has been critically acclaimed for his deft playing, superb taste and unfailing swing feel. In 2004 he succeeded pianist Dick Hyman as director of the long-established, prestigious jazz series at New York’s ...
(Trumpet, 1929–88) Chet Baker was an icon of cool at the height of his fame in the 1950s. His recording of ‘My Funny Valentine’ with Gerry Mulligan in 1952 established him as a star of the emerging cool jazz genre; his boyish, film-star looks (later ravaged by drug abuse) and a light, seductively lyrical trumpet style assured his ...
Considered one of modern jazz guitar’s ‘big three’ guitarists – along with Pat Metheny and Bill Frisell – John Scofield (b. 1951) is also one of the most versatile players of his generation. Conversant in fusion and hard bop as well as in the heady grooves of the jam-band scene, his stew of blues and jazz mixed with post-bop and ...
The history of post-war jazz tracked the musical development of Miles Dewey Davis III so closely that it is tempting to see the trumpeter as the orchestrator of each of the most significant stylistic shifts of the era. With the notable exception of free jazz, Miles seemed to trigger a new seismic shift in the music with each passing decade. ...
Thelonious Monk was one of the most original and idiosyncratic figures in jazz history. Almost from the start of his long career, the pianist and composer pursued a singular but relentlessly focused path through jazz, playing his own music in his own instantly identifiable way, with a seeming disregard for popular acceptance that was extreme even by jazz ...
(Tenor, soprano and alto saxophones, 1925–85) John ‘Zoot’ Sims performed in the family vaudeville act as a child and was a professional musician at 15. His Lester Young-derived tenor sound and artful improvisations were heard to advantage in large and small bands. He worked with Benny Goodman intermittently over four decades, and was part of Woody Herman’s famous ...
In the mid-1950s, a cultural cross fertilization of Brazilian samba rhythms, American cool jazz and sophisticated harmonies led to the development of bossa nova. In the early 1960s the bossa nova movement swept through the United States and Europe producing a strain of Brazilian-influenced jazz that remains a vital part of the jazz scene. By the early 1950s, a ...
In the wake of the pyrotechnic manifesto that Charlie ‘Bird’ Parker and Dizzy Gillespie jointly issued on their first recording together in 1945, most musicians on the New York jazz scene began fanning the flames of bebop. Tempos picked up speed, intensity increased on the bandstand and blazing virtuosity became a means to an end, in a fiery ...
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 1940s encompassed a wide range of musical art, reflecting extremes of economic hardship and recovery, global war and rebuilding. Empowered by necessarily full-tilt production, US industry recovered from the Depression, though the cream of its youth was siphoned off to fight on distant fronts, and returned to a strange new world. Great Britain suffered air ...
The 1950s was a big decade for blues and jazz – arguably, the biggest. In the wake of international triumph and the stirrings of empire, the US enjoyed a boom of babies, cars, television, and urban and suburban development, that trickled down to embolden a stronger movement for civil rights for black people, inspired ...
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David Bowie
Fantastic new, unofficial biography covers
his life, music, art and movies, with a
sweep of incredible photographs.