João Gilberto (born João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira on June 10, 1931 in Juazeiro, Bahia) is a Grammy Award-winning Brazilian singer and guitarist. He is credited with having created the bossa nova beat and is known as the “Father of Bossa Nova.” His seminal recordings, including many songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, established the new musical genre in the late 1950s.
Bossa nova is a refined version of samba, de-emphasizing the percussive aspect of its rhythm and enriching the melodic and harmonic content. Rather than relying on the traditional Afro-Brazilian percussive instruments, João Gilberto often eschews all accompaniment except his guitar, which he uses as a percussive as well as a harmonic instrument, incorporating what would be the role of the Tamborim in a full Batucada band. The singing style he developed is almost whispering, economical, and without vibrato. He creates his tempo tensions by singing ahead or behind the beat.
In 1962 Gilberto came to the United States where he would remain until 1980 (with the exception of two years in Mexico). In 1963 Verve released Getz/Gilberto, an album that brought Gilberto to broader critical and popular attention. The album also included “The Girl from Ipanema,” sung by his wife Astrud, which became a hit. The album won two Grammys, one for best album and another for best song, beating out the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night. In 1966 Verve released Getz/Gilberto, Vol. II, an album of live performance from Carnegie Hall.
Astrud Gilberto (born March 29, 1940) is a Brazilian singer best known for her samba and bossa nova music, most famously as the vocalist on the Grammy Award-winning song “The Girl from Ipanema”. These videos are my favorite from her. She was a class act hard to follow!!
“Mack the Knife” or “The Ballad of Mack the Knife”, originally “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer”, is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928. The song has become a popular standard. Louis Armstrong generally gets credit for the first jazz version of this tune, recorded in 1955. But his old rival from New Orleans, clarinetist/soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, beat him to the punch a year earlier, recording the tune in France, sans vocal, as “La Complainte de Mackie” (LP: Le Double Disque D’Or De Sidney Bechet, LDA 16001, 1976.) (It’s possible Bechet first heard the tune in Berlin in 1929.)
A moritat (from mori meaning “deadly” and tat meaning “deed”) is a medieval version of the murder ballad performed by strolling minstrels. In The Threepenny Opera, the moritat singer with his street organ introduces and closes the drama with the tale of the deadly Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife, a character based on the dashing highwayman Macheath in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. The Brecht-Weill version of the character was far more cruel and sinister, and has been transformed into a modern anti-hero.
The opera opens with the moritat singer comparing Macheath (unfavorably) with a shark, and then telling tales of his robberies, murders, rapes, and arson.
Ella and Louis is a 1956 studio album by Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and the Oscar Peterson Quartet.
Norman Granz, the founder of the Verve label, selected eleven ballads for Fitzgerald and Armstrong, mainly played in a slow or moderate tempo.
The success of Ella and Louis was replicated by Ella and Louis Again and Porgy and Bess. All three were released as The Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong on Verve. Jasen and Jones called the set a “pinnacle of popular singing”.
Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed Lady Day by her loyal friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday was a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing. Her vocal style, strongly inspired by jazz instrumentalists, pioneered a new way of manipulating phrasing and tempo. Above all, she was admired for her deeply personal and intimate approach to singing. Critic John Bush wrote that she “changed the art of American pop vocals forever.” She co-wrote only a few songs, but several of them have become jazz standards, notably “God Bless the Child”, “Don’t Explain”, and “Lady Sings the Blues”. She also became famous for singing jazz standards written by others, including “Easy Living” and “Strange Fruit.” – Wikipedia
I ran across a couple of really good videos of Chet Baker & Paul Desmond and Chet again in solo. Some really good video and sound here. Chet really had great tonality to his trumpet which can be heard here.
Joe Albany… I used to play with Charlie Parker. Pioneer Bop pianist, Joseph Albani (Known as “Joe Albany”) (January 24, 1924 – January 12, 1988)
It is remarked on his being among the few white pianists to have played Bebop with Charlie Parker.
Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he had studied piano as a child and by 1943 he was working on the West Coast in Benny Carter’s orchestra. In 1946 he was playing with Parker and also Miles Davis. He continued for a few years afterward and was on an album by Warne Marsh album in 1958. Despite that most of the 1950s and 1960s saw him battling a heroin addiction or living in seclusion in Europe. He also had several unsuccessful marriages in the period. He returned to jazz in the 1970s and produced a few albums. He died in New York City
He was the focus of a documentary in 1980 titled Joe Albany … A Jazz Life and his daughter Amy Jo “AJ” wrote the memoir Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales From Childhood concerning him. The book received favorable reviews.
Legendary jazz concert; jazz immortals Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach play together for the only time in their lives. It was the only time that the five men recorded together as a unit, and it was the last recorded meeting of Parker and Gillespie. Parker played a Grafton saxophone on this date; he could not be listed on the original album cover for contractual reasons, so was billed as “Charlie Chan” (an allusion to the fictional detective and to Parker’s wife Chan). The record was originally issued on Mingus’s label Debut, from a recording made by the Toronto New Jazz Society. Mingus took the recording to New York where he and Max Roach dubbed in the bass lines, which were under-recorded on most of the tunes, and exchanged Mingus soloing on “All the Things You Are.”
The original plan was for the Jazz Society and the musicians to share the profits from the recording. However the audience was so small that the Society was unable to pay the musicians’ fees. The musicians were all given NSF checks, and only Parker was able to actually cash his; Gillespie complained that he did not receive his fee “for years and years”.
A 2004 re-issue contains the full concert, without the over-dubbing which was added by Charles Mingus on the original recording. The new version was titled “Complete Jazz at Massey Hall”.
Jazz at Massey Hall was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1995.It is included in National Public Radio’s “Basic Jazz Library”. The concert was issued in some territories under the tag “the greatest jazz concert ever”.
The one observation about the fantastic talent and legacy of Clifford Brown is that everyone wanted to record with him. Here are two ladies who did.
This is an absolute essential album for any serious jazz collector, haunting, beautiful melodies flavored with the right amount of Bop. This was one of Sarah’s Jazziest albums and one of her most successful, and Vaughan’s own favorite among her works through 1980. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
Merrill’s first album featuring trumpeter Clifford Brown on these sessions made 18 months before his June 1956 death. This album is a great way to discover the much overlooked Merrill.
Helen Merrill decades later recorded a tribute album in 1995 entitled Brownie: Homage to Clifford Brown. The album features solos and ensemble work by trumpeters Lew Soloff, Tom Harrell, Wallace Roney, and Roy Hargrove.
The first in a 3 disc set that represent the complete recordings from this Quintet. These 1957 recordings are pure classic jazz, long tracks give each soloist ample time to really perform. This combo reminds me of the Jazztet group with Art Farmer/ Benny Golson, and The Curtis Counce Group from the same period. The late 50’s and early 60’s were a time where dozens of young players were coming out of the bigband era and naturally got together and formed bands of their own. The talent level was amazing from this period which can be heard here.
João Gilberto (born João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira on June 10, 1931 in Juazeiro, Bahia) is a Grammy Award-winning Brazilian singer and guitarist. He is credited with having created the bossa nova beat and is known as the “Father of Bossa Nova.” His seminal recordings, including many songs by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, established the new musical genre in the late 1950s.
This is an absolute essential album for any serious jazz collector, haunting, beautiful melodies flavored with the right amount of Bop. This was one of Sarah’s Jazziest albums and one of her most successful, and Vaughan’s own favorite among her works through 1980. The album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999.
The first in a 3 disc set that represent the complete recordings from this Quintet. These 1957 recordings are pure classic jazz, long tracks give each soloist ample time to really perform. This combo reminds me of the Jazztet group with Art Farmer/ Benny Golson, and The Curtis Counce Group from the same period. The late 50’s and early 60’s were a time where dozens of young players were coming out of the bigband era and naturally got together and formed bands of their own. The talent level was amazing from this period which can be heard here.
