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lavender |color |nameBig Band |stylistic_originsJazzSwing (in 1930s) |cultural_origins1920s; United States |instruments Violins and other String instruments (1920–1934) • Saxophones • Brass instruments • Rhythm section (Guitar • Piano • Double bass • Vibes • Drums • Percussion) |popularityearly 1930s–late 1940sSporadic interest 50s-onward |derivativesJump blues • Philly soul • Disco (background) • Swing • Traditional pop |subgenrelist |subgenres |fusiongenres |regional_scenesUnited States and United Kingdom |other_topics }}

The big band is a type of musical ensemble associated with jazz, a style of music which became popular during the Swing Era from the early 1930s until the late 1950s. Big Bands evolved with the times and continues to today. A big band typically consists of approximately 12 to 25 musicians and contains saxophones, trumpets, trombones, vibraphone, singers (or vocalists), and a rhythm section. The terms jazz band, jazz ensemble, stage band, jazz orchestra, society band and dance band may be used to describe a specific type of big band.

In contrast to smaller jazz combos, in which most of the music is improvised, or created spontaneously, music played by big bands is highly "arranged", or prepared in advance and notated on sheet music. The music is traditionally called "charts". Improvised solos may be played only when called for by the arranger.

History and style

There are two distinct periods in the history of popular bands. Beginning in the mid-1920s, big bands, then typically consisting of 10–25 pieces, came to dominate popular music. At that time they usually played a form of jazz that involved very little improvisation, which included a string section with violins, which was dropped after the introduction of swing in 1935. The dance form of jazz was characterized by a sweet and romantic melody. Orchestras tended to stick to Typical of the genre were such popular artists as Paul Whiteman, Ted Lewis, Harry Reser, Leo Reisman, Abe Lyman, Nat Shilkret, George Olsen, Ben Bernie, Bob Haring, Ben Selvin, Earl Burnett, Gus Arnheim, Henry Halstead, Rudy Vallee, Jean Goldkette, Glen Gray, Isham Jones, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Sam Lanin, James Last, Vincent Lopez, Ben Pollack, Shep Fields and Fred Waring.

Many of these artists changed styles or retired after the introduction of swing music. Although unashamedly commercial, these bands often featured front-rank jazz musicians—for example Paul Whiteman employed Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer. There were also "all-girl" bands such as "Helen Lewis and Her All-Girl Jazz Syncopators". Lewis and her band, Ben Bernie's band "Ben Bernie and All the Lads", and Roger Wolfe Kahn's band were filmed by Lee De Forest in his Phonofilm sound-on-film process in 1925, in three short films which are now in the Library of Congress film collection.

Towards the end of the 1920s, a new form of Big Band emerged which was more authentically "jazz," in that more space was given to improvised soloing. This form of music never gained the popularity of the dance form of jazz. The few recordings made in this form of jazz were labelled race records and were intended for a limited urban audience. Few white musicians were familiar with this music, Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen and Hoagy Carmichael being notable exceptions. The three major centres in this development were New York City, Chicago and Kansas City. In the former, a sophisticated approach to arranging predominated, first in the work of Don Redman for the Fletcher Henderson band, later in the work of Duke Ellington for his Cotton Club orchestra, and Walter 'Foots' Thomas for Cab Calloway's, Charlie Spivak and His Orchestra, and Mel Tormé's Mel-Tones. Some big ensembles, like the Joe "King" Oliver outfit played a kind of half arranged, half improvised jazz, often relying on “head” arrangements. Other great bands, like the one of Luis Russell became a vehicle for star instrumentalists, in his case Louis Armstrong. There the whole arrangement had to promote all the possibilities of the star, although they often contained very good musicians, like Henry "Red" Allen, J. C. Higginbotham and Charlie Holmes. Others such as Alvino Rey grew popular with shows in New York City and then toured the country sharing their hit songs and new musical styles.

Radio and movies

Earl "Fatha" Hines became the star of Chicago with his Grand Terrace Cafe band and began to broadcast live from The Grand Terrace nightly coast-to-coast across America. Meanwhile in Kansas City and across the Southwest, an earthier, bluesier style was developed by such bandleaders as Benny Moten and, later, by Jay McShann and Jesse Stone. Big Band remotes on the major radio networks spread the music from ballrooms and clubs across the country during the 1930s and 1940s, with remote broadcasts from jazz clubs continuing into the 1950s on NBC's ''Monitor''. Radio was a major factor in gaining notice and fame for Benny Goodman, known as the “King of Swing”. Soon, others challenged him, and “the battles of the bands” became a staple at theater performances featuring many groups on one bill.

Gloria Parker, ''Princess of the Marimba'', conducted the 21-piece ''Swingphony'' whose performances were broadcast nationally from the Kelly Lyceum Ballroom in Buffalo, New York. This was the largest big band ever led by a female bandleader.

Big Bands also began to appear in movies in the 1930s right on through to the 1960s. Shep Fields and his orchestra appeared in The Big Broadcast of 1938 for Paramount Pictures while accompanying the actor Bob Hope in the 1930s. Alvino Rey and His Orchestra were featured in films through RKO Pictures during their peak in the early 1940s, such as ''Sing Your Worries Away''. Fictionalized biographical films of Glenn Miller, Gene Krupa, Benny Goodman, and others were made in the 1950s, as nostalgic tributes to the glory years.

Rise and fall of swing

Swing music began in the 1920s, distinguished by a more supple feel than the more literal 4/4 of earlier jazz and a walking bass—Walter Page is often credited with developing this, though isolated earlier examples exist (e.g., by Wellman Braud on Ellington's ''Washington Wabble'' from 1927).

This type of music flourished through the early 1930s, although there was little mass audience for it until around 1936. Up until that time, it was viewed with ridicule and looked upon as a curiosity. After 1935, big bands rose to prominence playing swing music and held a major role in defining swing as a distinctive style. Western Swing musicians also formed very popular big bands during the same period..

There was a considerable range of styles among the hundreds of popular bands. Many of the better known bands reflected the individuality of the bandleader, the lead arranger, and the personnel. Count Basie played a relaxed propulsive swing, Bob Crosby more of a dixieland style, Benny Goodman a hard driving swing, and Duke Ellington’s compositions were varied and sophisticated. Many bands featured strong instrumentalists, whose sounds dominated, such as the clarinets of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Woody Herman, the trombone of Jack Teagarden, the trumpet of Harry James, the drums of Gene Krupa, and the vibes of Lionel Hampton. The popularity of many of the major bands was amplified by star vocalists, such as Frank Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey, Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberly with Jimmy Dorsey, Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb, Billie Holiday and Jimmy Rushing with Count Basie, Dick Haymes and Helen Forrest with Harry James, Doris Day with Les Brown, Toni Arden and Ken Curtis with Shep Fields and Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman. Some bands were society bands that relied on strong ensembles but little on soloists or vocalists, such as the bands of Guy Lombardo and Paul Whiteman.

By this time the big band was such a dominant force in jazz that the older generation found they either had to adapt to it or simply retire—with no market for small-group recordings (made worse by a depression-era industry reluctant to take risks), some musicians such as Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines fronted their own bands, while others, like Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver, lapsed into obscurity.

The major African American bands of the 1930s included, apart from the bands led by Ellington, Hines and Calloway, were those of Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb, and Count Basie. Incidentally, the "white" bands of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Shep Fields and, later, Glenn Miller far eclipsed their "black" inspirations in terms of popularity from the middle of the decade. Bridging the gap to white audiences in the mid-1930s was the Casa Loma Orchestra and Benny Goodman’s early band.

White teenagers and young adults were the principal fans of the Big Bands in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They danced to recordings and the radio, and attended live concerts whenever they could. They were knowledgeable and often biased toward their favorite bands and songs, and sometimes worshipful of the famous soloists and vocalists. Many bands toured the country in grueling one-night stands to reach out to their fans. Traveling conditions and lodging were often difficult, in part due to segregation in most parts of the United States, and the personnel often had to perform on little sleep and food. Apart from the star soloists, many personnel received low wages and would abandon the tour and go home if bookings fell through. Personal problems and intra-band discord could affect the playing of the group. Drinking and addictions were common. Turnover was frequent in many bands, and top soloists were often lured away to better contracts. Sometimes bandstands were too small, public address systems inadequate, pianos out of tune. Successful bandleaders dealt with all these hazards of touring to hold their bands together—some with rigid discipline (Glenn Miller), some with canny psychology (Duke Ellington).

Big Bands played a major role in lifting morale during World War II. Many band members served in the military and toured with USO troupes at the front, with Glenn Miller losing his life while traveling between troop shows. Many bands suffered from the loss of personnel and quality declined at home during the war years. An ill-timed recording strike in 1942 worsened the situation. Vocalists began to strike out on their own and by the end of the war, swing was giving way to less danceable music including bebop. Many of the great swing bands broke up as tastes changed.

Since 1945

As jazz evolved and expanded in new directions, major band performances of note did occur from the 1950s to the 1970s. Noteworthy performers included: Dizzy Gillespie, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich, Gil Evans, Stan Kenton, Johnny Richards, Sun Ra, Gary MacFarland, Charles Mingus, Oliver Nelson, Carla Bley, Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band, Sam Rivers, Don Ellis, Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra and Anthony Braxton.

Later bandleaders pioneered the performance of various Brazilian and Afro-Cuban styles with the traditional big band instrumentation, and big bands led by arranger Gil Evans, saxophonist John Coltrane (on the album ''Ascension'' from 1965) and electric bassist Jaco Pastorius introduced cool jazz, free jazz and jazz fusion, respectively, to the big band domain. Modern big bands can be found playing all styles of jazz music. Some large contemporary European jazz ensembles play mostly avant-garde jazz using the instrumentation of the big bands. Examples include the Vienna Art Orchestra, founded in 1977, and the Italian Instabile Orchestra, active in the 1990s. In the late 1990s, swing made a comeback in the US. The Lindy Hop has taken hold on both coasts, and many younger people took an interest in big band styles again. The Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis is the resident orchestra of Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC). The JALC Orchestra currently tours internationally, promoting the big band sound.

African "Afrobeat" big bands have existed from 1970 to the present when Fela Kuti of Nigeria, fused big band jazz with Yoruba tribal rhythms, highlife, and American James Brown soul music. there are over 40 working afrobeat big bands including Antibalas, Chicago Afrobeat Project, Chopteeth, Femi Kuti, and Seun Kuti.

Instrumentation

A standard 17-piece instrumentation evolved in the big-bands, for which many commercial arrangements are available. This instrumentation consists of five saxophones (most often two altos, two tenors, and one baritone), four trumpets, four trombones (often including one bass trombone) and a four-piece rhythm section (composed of drums, acoustic bass or electric bass, piano and guitar).

However, variants to this instrumentation are common. Composers, arrangers, and bandleaders have used sections with more or fewer players, and additional instruments, such as valve trombone, baritone horn/euphonium (both of which are usually used in place of or with trombones), vibes, bass clarinet, French horn, tuba, banjo, accordion and strings (violin, viola, cello). Male and female vocalists have also joined big bands to perform particular arrangements.

Some arrangements call for saxophone players to double on other woodwind instruments, such as flute, clarinet, soprano sax, or bass clarinet. Trumpet and trombone players are sometimes called upon to use various sound-changing mutes, and trumpet players sometimes need to play flugelhorn. In some rhythm sections, a guitar player is omitted. Players in the rhythm section may be called upon to play acoustic or electric instruments. Latin or other auxiliary percussion instruments may be added, such as cowbells, congas, tambourines, or triangles.

Big Band arrangements

Typical big band arrangements of the swing period are written in strophic form with the same phrase and chord structure repeated several times. Each iteration, or ''chorus'', most commonly follows Twelve bar blues form or Thirty-two-bar (AABA) song form. The first chorus of an arrangement typically introduces the melody, and is followed by subsequent choruses of development. This development may take the form of improvised solos, written ''soli'' sections, and ''shout choruses''.

An arrangement's first chorus is sometimes preceded by an introduction, which may be as short as a few measures or may extend to chorus of its own. Many arrangements contain an interlude, often similar in content to the introduction, inserted between some or all choruses. Other methods of embellishing the form include modulations and cadential extensions.

See also

List of big bands

List of experimental big bands

Swing (jazz performance style)

References

William Russo, ''Composing for the Jazz Orchestra'' University of Chicago Press, Library of Congress no. 61-8642

George T. Simon, ''The Big Bands'', The Macmillan Company, New York, 1967, Library of Congress no. 67-26643

Category:Jazz genres Category:Jazz ensembles

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name	Benny Goodman
landscape	Yes
background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
birth name	Benjamin David Goodman
alias	"King of Swing", "The Professor", "Patriarch of the Clarinet", "Swing's Senior Statesman"
birth date	May 30, 1909
death date	June 13, 1986
origin	Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
instrument	Clarinet
genre	Swing, big band
occupation	Musician, bandleader, songwriter
years active	1926–1986 }}

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman (May 30, 1909 – June 13, 1986) was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".

In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America. His January 16, 1938 concert at Carnegie Hall in New York City is described by critic Bruce Eder as "the single most important jazz or popular music concert in history: jazz's 'coming out' party to the world of 'respectable' music."

Goodman's bands launched the careers of many major names in jazz, and during an era of segregation, he also led one of the first racially-integrated musical groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, including exploring his interest in classical music.

Childhood and early years

Goodman was born in Chicago, the ninth of twelve children of poor Jewish immigrants from the Russian Empire, who lived in the Maxwell Street neighborhood. His father was David Goodman, a tailor from Warsaw; his mother was Dora Grisinsky (from Kaunas, Lithuania). His parents met in Baltimore, Maryland, and moved to Chicago before Benny was born.

When Benny was 10, his father enrolled him and two of his older brothers in music lessons at the Kehelah Jacob Synagogue. The next year he joined the boys club band at Jane Addams' Hull House, where he received lessons from director James Sylvester. He also received two years of instruction from the classically trained clarinetist Franz Schoepp. His early influences were New Orleans jazz clarinetists working in Chicago, notably Johnny Dodds, Leon Roppolo, and Jimmy Noone. Goodman learned quickly, becoming a strong player at an early age: he was soon playing professionally in various bands.

Goodman attended Lewis Institute (now Illinois Institute of Technology) in 1924 as a high school sophomore, while also playing the clarinet in a dance hall band. (He was awarded an honorary LL.D. from IIT in 1968. When Goodman was 16, he joined one of Chicago's top bands, the Ben Pollack Orchestra, with which he made his first recordings in 1926.

He made his first record on Vocalion under his own name two years later. Goodman recorded with the regular Pollack band and smaller groups drawn from the orchestra through 1929. The side sessions produced scores of sides recorded for the various dimestore record labels under an array of group names, including Mills' Musical Clowns, Goody's Good Timers, The Hotsy Totsy Gang, Jimmy Backen's Toe Ticklers, Dixie Daisies, and Kentucky Grasshoppers.

Goodman's father, David, was a working-class immigrant about whom Benny said (interview, ''Downbeat'', February 8, 1956); "...Pop worked in the stockyards, shoveling lard in its unrefined state. He had those boots, and he'd come home at the end of the day exhausted, stinking to high heaven, and when he walked in it made me sick. I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the idea of Pop every day standing in that stuff, shoveling it around".

On December 9, 1926, David Goodman was killed in a traffic accident. Benny had recently joined the Pollack band and was urging his father to retire, since he and his brother (Harry) were now doing well as professional musicians. According to James Lincoln Collier, "Pop looked Benny in the eye and said, 'Benny, you take care of yourself, I'll take care of myself.'" Collier continues: "It was an unhappy choice. Not long afterwards, as he was stepping down from a streetcar—according to one story—he was struck by a car. He never regained consciousness and died in the hospital the next day. It was a bitter blow to the family, and it haunted Benny to the end that his father had not lived to see the success he, and some of the others, made of themselves." "Benny described his father's death as 'the saddest thing that ever happened in our family.'"

Career

Goodman left for New York City and became a successful session musician during the late 1920s and early 1930s (mostly with Ben Pollack's band between 1926 and 1929). A notable March 21, 1928 Victor session found Goodman alongside Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Joe Venuti in the All-Star Orchestra, directed by Nat Shilkret. He played with the nationally known bands of Ben Selvin, Red Nichols, Isham Jones (although he is not on any of Jones's records), and Ted Lewis. He recorded sides for Brunswick under the name Bennie Goodman's Boys, a band that featured Glenn Miller. In 1928, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller wrote the instrumental "Room 1411", which was released as a Brunswick 78. He also recorded musical soundtracks for movie shorts; fans believe that Benny Goodman's clarinet can be heard on the soundtrack of ''One A. M.'', a Charlie Chaplin comedy re-released to theaters in 1934.

During this period as a successful session musician, John Hammond arranged for a series of jazz sides recorded for and issued on Columbia starting in 1933 and continuing until his signing with Victor in 1935, during his success on radio. There were also a number of commercial studio sides recorded for Melotone between late 1930 and mid-1931 under Goodman's name. The all-star Columbia sides featured Jack Teagarden, Joe Sullivan, Dick McDonough, Arthur Schutt, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Coleman Hawkins (for 1 session), and vocalists Jack Teagarden and Mildred Bailey, and the first two recorded vocals by a young Billie Holiday.

In 1934 Goodman auditioned for NBC's ''Let's Dance'', a well-regarded three-hour weekly radio program that featured various styles of dance music. His familiar theme song by that title was based on ''Invitation to the Dance'' by Carl Maria von Weber. Since he needed new arrangements every week for the show, his agent, John Hammond, suggested that he purchase "hot" (swing) arrangements from Fletcher Henderson, an African-American musician from Atlanta who had New York's most popular African-American band in the 1920s and early 1930s.

Goodman, a wise businessman, helped Henderson in 1929 when the stock market crashed. He purchased all of Henderson's song books, and hired Henderson's band members to teach his musicians how to play the music.

In early 1935, Goodman and his band were one of three bands (the others were Xavier Cugat and "Kel Murray" [r.n. Murray Kellner]) featured on ''Let's Dance'' where they played arrangements by Henderson along with hits such as "Get Happy" and "Jingle Bells" from composer and arranger Spud Murphy. Goodman's portion of the program from New York, at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Time, aired too late to attract a large East Coast audience. However, unknown to him, the time slot gave him an avid following on the West Coast (they heard him at 9:30 p.m. Pacific Time). He and his band remained on ''Let's Dance'' until May of that year when a strike by employees of the series' sponsor, Nabisco, forced the cancellation of the radio show. An engagement was booked at Manhattan's Roosevelt Grill (filling in for Guy Lombardo), but the crowd there expected 'sweet' music and Goodman's band was unsuccessful. The band set out on a tour of America in May 1935, but was still poorly received. By August 1935, Goodman found himself with a band that was nearly broke, disillusioned and ready to quit.

Catalyst for the Swing era

In July 1935, a record of the Goodman band playing the Henderson arrangements of "King Porter Stomp" backed with "Sometimes I'm Happy", Victor 78 25090, had been released to ecstatic reviews in both ''Down Beat'' and ''Melody Maker''. In Pittsburgh at the Stanley Theater some of the kids danced in the aisles. This had made little impact on the band's tour until August 19 when they arrived in Oakland to play at McFadden's Ballroom. There, Goodman and his artists Gene Krupa, Bunny Berigan, and Helen Ward found a large crowd of young dancers, raving and cheering the hot music they had heard on the ''Let's Dance'' radio show. Herb Caen wrote that "from the first note, the place was in an uproar." One night later, at Pismo Beach, the show was another flop, and the band thought the overwhelming reception in Oakland had been a fluke.

The next night, August 21, 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, Goodman and his band began a three-week engagement. On top of the ''Let's Dance'' airplay, Al Jarvis had been playing Goodman records on KFWB radio, and Los Angeles fans were primed to hear him in person. Goodman started the evening with stock arrangements, but after an indifferent response, began the second set with the arrangements by Fletcher Henderson and Spud Murphy. According to Willard Alexander, the band's booking agent, Krupa said "If we're gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing." The crowd broke into cheers and applause. News reports spread word of the enthusiastic dancing and exciting new music that was happening. Over the course of the engagement, the "Jitterbug" began to appear as a new dance craze, and radio broadcasts carried the band's performances across the nation.

The Palomar engagement was such a marked success it is often exaggeratedly described as the beginning of the swing era. Donald Clarke wrote "It is clear in retrospect that the Swing Era had been waiting to happen, but it was Goodman and his band that touched it off."

In November 1935 Goodman accepted an invitation to play in Chicago at the Joseph Urban Room at the Congress Hotel. His stay there extended to six months and his popularity was cemented by nationwide radio broadcasts over NBC affiliate stations. While in Chicago, the band recorded ''If I Could Be With You'', ''Stompin' At The Savoy'', and ''Goody, Goody''. Goodman also played three special concerts produced by jazz aficionado and Chicago socialite Helen Oakley. These "Rhythm Club" concerts at the Congress Hotel included sets in which Goodman and Krupa sat in with Fletcher Henderson's band, perhaps the first racially integrated big band appearance before a paying audience in the United States. Goodman and Krupa played in a trio with Teddy Wilson on piano. Both combinations were well-received, and Wilson stayed on.

In his 1935–1936 radio broadcasts from Chicago, Goodman was introduced as the "Rajah of Rhythm." Slingerland Drum Company had been calling Krupa the "King of Swing" as part of a sales campaign, but shortly after Goodman and crew left Chicago in May 1936 to spend the summer filming ''The Big Broadcast of 1937'' in Hollywood, the title "King of Swing" was applied to Goodman by the media. Goodman left record company RCA for Columbia, following his agent and soon to be brother-in-law John Hammond.

At the end of June 1936, Goodman went to Hollywood, where, on June 30, 1936 his band began CBS's "Camel Caravan," its third, and, according to Connor and Hicks, its greatest of them all, sponsored radio show, co-starring Goodman and his old boss Nat Shilkret.

Carnegie Hall concert

In late 1937, Goodman's publicist Wynn Nathanson attempted a publicity stunt by suggesting Goodman and his band should play Carnegie Hall in New York City. If this concert were to take place, then Benny Goodman would be the first jazz bandleader to perform at Carnegie Hall. "Benny Goodman was initially hesitant about the concert, fearing for the worst; however, when his film ''Hollywood Hotel'' opened to rave reviews and giant lines, he threw himself into the work. He gave up several dates and insisted on holding rehearsals inside Carnegie Hall to familiarize the band with the lively acoustics."

The concert was the evening of January 16, 1938. It sold out weeks before, with the capacity 2,760 seats going for the top price of US$2.75 a seat, for the time a very high price. The concert began with three contemporary numbers from the Goodman band—"Don't Be That Way," "Sometimes I'm Happy," and "One O'Clock Jump." They then played a history of jazz, starting with a Dixieland quartet performing "Sensation Rag." Once again, initial crowd reaction, though polite, was tepid. Then came a jam session on "Honeysuckle Rose" featuring members of the Count Basie and Duke Ellington bands as guests. (The surprise of the session: Goodman handing a solo to Basie's guitarist Freddie Greene who was never a featured soloist but earned his reputation as the best rhythm guitarist in the genre—he responded with a striking round of chord improvisations.) As the concert went on, things livened up. The Goodman band and quartet took over the stage and performed the numbers that had already made them famous. Some later trio and quartet numbers were well-received, and a vocal on "Loch Lomond" by Martha Tilton provoked five curtain calls and cries for an encore. The encore forced Goodman to make his only audience announcement for the night, stating that they had no encore prepared but that Martha would return shortly with another number.

By the time the band got to the climactic piece "Sing, Sing, Sing", success was assured. This performance featured playing by tenor saxophonist Babe Russin, trumpeter Harry James, and Benny Goodman, backed by drummer Gene Krupa. When Goodman finished his solo, he unexpectedly gave a solo to pianist Jess Stacy. "At the Carnegie Hall concert, after the usual theatrics, Jess Stacy was allowed to solo and, given the venue, what followed was appropriate," wrote David Rickert. "Used to just playing rhythm on the tune, he was unprepared for a turn in the spotlight, but what came out of his fingers was a graceful, impressionistic marvel with classical flourishes, yet still managed to swing. It was the best thing he ever did, and it's ironic that such a layered, nuanced performance came at the end of such a chaotic, bombastic tune."

This concert has been regarded as one of the most significant in jazz history. After years of work by musicians from all over the country, jazz had finally been accepted by mainstream audiences. Recordings were made of this concert, but even by the technology of the day the equipment used was not of the finest quality. Acetate recordings of the concert were made, and aluminum studio masters were also cut.

Goodman took the newly discovered recording to his record company, Columbia, and a selection was issued on LP. These recordings have not been out of print since they were first issued. In early 1998, the aluminum masters were rediscovered and a new CD set of the concert was released based on these masters. The album released based on those masters went on to be one of the best selling live jazz albums of all time.

Charlie Christian

Pianist/arranger Mary Lou Williams was a good friend of both Columbia records producer John Hammond and Benny Goodman. She first suggested to John Hammond that he see Charlie Christian.

Charlie Christian was playing at the Ritz in Oklahoma City where [...] John Hammond heard him in 1939. Hammond recommended him to Benny Goodman, but the band leader wasn't interested. The idea of an electrified guitar didn't appeal, and Goodman didn't care for Christian's flashy style of dressing. Reportedly, Hammond personally installed Christian onstage during a break in a Goodman concert in Beverly Hills. Irritated to see Christian among the band, Goodman struck up "Rose Room", not expecting the guitarist to know the tune. What followed amazed everyone who heard the 45-minute performance.

Charlie was a hit on the electric guitar and remained in the Benny Goodman Sextet for two years (1939–1941). He wrote many of the group's head arrangements (some of which Goodman took credit for) and was an inspiration to all. The sextet made him famous and provided him with a steady income while Charlie worked on legitimizing, popularizing, revolutionizing, and standardizing the electric guitar as a jazz instrument.

Charlie Christian's recordings and rehearsal dubs made with Benny Goodman in the early forties are widely known and were released by Columbia.

Beyond swing

Goodman continued his meteoric rise throughout the late 1930s with his big band, his trio and quartet, and a sextet. By the mid-1940s, however, big bands lost a lot of their popularity. In 1941, ASCAP had a licensing war with music publishers. In 1942 to 1944 and 1948, the musician's union went on strike against the major record labels in the United States, and singers took the spot in popularity that the big bands once enjoyed. During this strike, the United States War Department approached the union and requested the production of the V-Disc, a set of records containing new and fresh music for soldiers to listen to. Also, by the late 1940s, swing was no longer the dominant mode of jazz musicians.

Bebop, Cool Jazz

By the 1940s, jazz musicians were borrowing advanced ideas from classical music. The recordings Goodman made in bop style for Capitol Records were highly praised by jazz critics. When Goodman was starting a bebop band, he hired Buddy Greco, Zoot Sims, Wardell Gray and a few other modern players.

Goodman enjoyed the bebop and cool jazz that was beginning to arrive in the 1940s. When Goodman heard Thelonious Monk, a celebrated pianist and accompanist to bop players Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Kenny Clarke, he remarked, "I like it, I like that very much. I like the piece and I like the way he played it. [...] I think he's got a sense of humor and he's got some good things there."

By 1953, Goodman completely changed his mind about bebop. "Maybe bop has done more to set music back for years than anything [...] Basically it's all wrong. It's not even knowing the scales. [...] Bop was mostly publicity and people figuring angles."

Forays into classical repertoire

Goodman's first classical recording dates from April 25, 1938 when he recorded Mozart's Clarinet Quintet in A major, K. 581, with the Budapest Quartet. After his bop period, Goodman furthered his interest in classical music written for the clarinet, and frequently met with top classical clarinetists of the day. In 1946, he met Ingolf Dahl, an emigre classical composer on the faculty of the University of Southern California, who was then musical director of the Victor Borge show. They played chamber music together (Brahms, Milhaud, Hindemith, Debussy) and in 1948 Goodman played in the world premiere performance of Dahl's ''Concerto a Tre''.

In 1949, when he was 40, Goodman decided to study with Reginald Kell, one of the world's leading classical clarinetists. To do so, he had to change his entire technique: instead of holding the mouthpiece between his front teeth and lower lip, as he had done since he first took a clarinet in hand 30 years earlier, Goodman learned to adjust his embouchure to the use of both lips and even to use new fingering techniques. He had his old finger calluses removed and started to learn how to play his clarinet again—almost from scratch.

Goodman commissioned and premiered works by leading composers for clarinet and symphony orchestra that are now part of the standard repertoire, namely ''Contrasts'' by Béla Bartók, ''Clarinet Concerto No. 2, Op. 115'' by Malcolm Arnold, ''Derivations for Clarinet and Band'' by Morton Gould, and Aaron Copland's Clarinet Concerto. While Leonard Bernstein's ''Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs'' was commissioned for Woody Herman's big band, it was premiered by Goodman. Woody Herman was the dedicatee (1945) and first performer (1946) of Igor Stravinsky's ''Ebony Concerto'', but many years later Stravinsky made another recording, this time with Benny Goodman as the soloist.

He made a further recording of Mozart's Clarinet Quintet, in July 1956 with the Boston Symphony String Quartet, at the Berkshire Festival; on the same occasion he also recorded Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Charles Munch. He also recorded the clarinet concertos of Weber and Carl Nielsen.

Other recordings of classical repertoire by Goodman are:

''Premiere Rhapsodie for Clarinet'' by Claude Debussy

Clarinet Sonata No. 2 in E flat by Johannes Brahms

Rondo from ''Grand Duo Concertant in E flat'' by Weber, and

An arrangement by Simeon Bellison of Beethoven's ''Variations on a theme from Mozart's "Don Giovanni"''.

Touring with Armstrong

After forays outside of swing, Goodman started a new band in 1953. According to Donald Clarke, this was not a happy time for Goodman.

Movies

Benny Goodman's band appeared as a specialty act in major musical features, including ''The Big Broadcast of 1937'', ''Hollywood Hotel'' (1938), ''Syncopation'' (1942), ''The Powers Girl'' (1942), ''Stage Door Canteen'' (1943), ''The Gang's All Here'' (1943), ''Sweet and Lowdown'' (1944) and ''A Song Is Born'' (1948). Goodman's only starring feature was ''Sweet and Lowdown'' (1944).

Goodman's success story was told in the 1955 motion picture ''The Benny Goodman Story'' with Steve Allen and Donna Reed. A Universal-International production, it was a follow up to 1954's successful ''The Glenn Miller Story''. The screenplay was heavily fictionalized, but the music was the real draw. Many of Goodman's professional colleagues appear in the film, including Ben Pollack, Gene Krupa, Lionel Hampton and Harry James.

Personality and influence

Goodman was regarded by some as a demanding taskmaster, by others an arrogant and eccentric martinet. Many musicians spoke of "The Ray", Goodman's trademark glare that he bestowed on a musician who failed to perform to his demanding standards. Guitarist Allan Reuss incurred the maestro's displeasure on one occasion, and Goodman relegated him to the rear of the bandstand, where his contribution would be totally drowned out by the other musicians. Vocalists Anita O'Day and Helen Forrest spoke bitterly of their experiences singing with Goodman. "The twenty or so months I spent with Benny felt like twenty years," said Forrest. "When I look back, they seem like a life sentence." At the same time, there are reports that he privately funded several college educations and was sometimes very generous, though always secretly. When a friend once asked him why, he reportedly said, "Well, if they knew about it, everyone would come to me with their hand out."

Goodman is also responsible for a significant step in racial integration in America. In the early 1930s, black and white jazz musicians could not play together in most clubs or concerts. In the Southern states, racial segregation was enforced by the Jim Crow laws. Benny Goodman broke with tradition by hiring Teddy Wilson to play with him and drummer Gene Krupa in the Benny Goodman Trio. In 1936, he added Lionel Hampton on vibes to form the Benny Goodman Quartet; in 1939 he added pioneering jazz guitarist Charlie Christian to his band and small ensembles, who played with him until his death from tuberculosis less than three years later. This integration in music happened ten years before Jackie Robinson became the first black American to enter Major League Baseball. "[Goodman's] popularity was such that he could remain financially viable without touring the South, where he would have been subject to arrest for violating Jim Crow laws." According to ''Jazz'' by Ken Burns, when someone asked him why he "played with that nigger" (referring to Teddy Wilson), Goodman replied, "I'll knock you out if you use that word around me again".

John Hammond and Alice Goodman

One of Benny Goodman's closest friends off and on, from the 1930s onward was celebrated Columbia records producer John H. Hammond. Hammond and Goodman were so close that Hammond influenced Goodman's move from RCA records to the newly created Columbia records in 1939.

Benny Goodman dated John H. Hammond's sister Alice Frances Hammond (1913–1978) for three months. She had previously been married to British politician George Duckworth, from whom she obtained a divorce. She and Goodman married on March 14, 1942. They had two daughters, Benjie and Rachel.

Both daughters studied music, though neither became the musical prodigy Goodman was.

Hammond had encouraged Goodman to integrate his band, persuading him to employ pianist Teddy Wilson. But Hammond's tendency to interfere in the musical affairs of Goodman's and other bands led to Goodman pulling away from him. In 1953 they had another falling-out during Goodman's ill-fated tour with Louis Armstrong, which was produced by John Hammond.

Goodman appeared on a 1975 PBS salute to Hammond but remained at a distance. In the 1980s, following the death of Alice Goodman, John Hammond and Benny Goodman, both by then elderly, reconciled. On June 25, 1985, Goodman appeared at Avery Fisher Hall in New York City for "A Tribute to John Hammond".

Later years

After winning numerous polls over the years as best jazz clarinetist, Goodman was inducted into the ''Down Beat'' Jazz Hall of Fame in 1957.

Goodman continued to play on records and in small groups. One exception to this pattern was a collaboration with George Benson in the 1970s. The two met when they taped a PBS salute to John Hammond and re-created some of the famous Goodman-Charlie Christian duets.

Benson later appeared on several tracks of a Goodman album released as "Seven Come Eleven." In general Goodman continued to play in the swing style he was most known for. He did, however, practice and perform classical clarinet pieces and commissioned compositions for clarinet. Periodically he would organize a new band and play a jazz festival or go on an international tour.

Despite increasing health problems, he continued to play until his death from a heart attack in New York City in 1986 at the age of 77, in his home at Manhattan House, 200 East 66th Street. A longtime resident of Pound Ridge, New York, Benny Goodman is interred in the Long Ridge Cemetery, Stamford, Connecticut. The same year, Goodman was honored with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Benny Goodman's musical papers were donated to Yale University after his death.

He is a member of the National Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in the radio division.

His music was featured in the 2010 documentary ''Jews and Baseball: An American Love Story'', narrated by Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman.

Discography

(This discography combines LP and CD reissues of Goodman recordings under the dates of the original 78 rpm recordings through about 1950)

''A Jazz Holiday'' (1928, Decca)

''Benny Goodman and the Giants of Swing'' (1929, Prestige)

''BG and Big Tea in NYC'' (1929, GRP)

''Swinging 34 Vols. 1 & 2 (1934, Melodean)

''Sing, Sing, Sing'' (1935, Bluebird)

''The Birth of Swing'' (1935, Bluebird)

''Original Benny Goodman Trio and Quartet Sessions, Vol. 1: After You've Gone'' (1935, Bluebird)

''Stomping at the Savoy'' (1935, Bluebird)

''Air Play'' (1936, Doctor Jazz)

''Roll 'Em, Vol. 1'' (1937, Columbia)

''Roll 'Em, Vol. 2'' (1937, CBS)

''From Spirituals to Swing'' (1938, Vanguard)

''The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert'' Vols. 1, 2, & 3 (Live) (1938, Columbia)

''Mozart Clarinet Quintet'' (with Budapest String Quartet) (1938, Victor)

''Ciribiribin'' (Live) (1939, Giants of Jazz)

''Swingin' Down the Lane'' (Live) (1939, Giants of Jazz)

''Featuring Charlie Christian'' (1939, Columbia)

''Eddie Sauter Arrangements'' (1940, Columbia)

''Swing Into Spring'' (1941, Columbia)

''Undercurrent Blues'' (1947, Blue Note)

''Swedish Pastry'' (1948, Dragon)

''The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert'' (1950, Columbia)

''Sextet'' (1950, Columbia)

''BG in Hi-fi'' (1954, Capitol)

''The Benny Goodman Story Volume 1'' (1955?, Decca)

''Mozart Clarinet concerto'' (with Boston symphomy) (1956)

''The Great Benny Goodman'' (1956, Columbia)

''Peggy Lee Sings with Benny Goodman'' (1957, Harmony)

''Benny in Brussels'' Vols. 1 & 2 (1958, Columbia)

''In Stockholm 1959'' (1959, Phontastic)

''The Benny Goodman Treasure Chest'' (1959, MGM)

''Texaco's Swing into Spring 59'' (1959, Cunningham & Walsh, Inc.)

''Swing With Benny Goodman And His Orchestra'' (1960s?, Columbia/Harmony)

''Benny Goodman in Moscow'' (1962, RCA Victor)

''Benny Goodman Today'' (London Records of (1970) Canada Ltd.)

''Benny Goodman And His Orchestra'' (1977)

''Benny Goodman Live at Carnegie Hall; 40th Anniversary Concert'' (1978)

''Live! Benny Let's Dance'' (1986)

''The King Swings Star Line''

''Pure Gold'' (1992)

''1935–1938'' (1998)

''Portrait of Benny Goodman'' (Portrait Series) (1998)

''Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert '38'' (1998)

''Bill Dodge All-star Recording'' (1999)

''1941–1955 His Orchestra and His'' (1999)

''Live at Carnegie Hall'' (1999)

''Carnegie Hall: The Complete Concert'' (2006) Remastered again

Notes

References

External links

Benny Goodman official site

Benny Goodman web biography with audio

Benny Goodman scores (a portion of the musician's estate) in the Music Division of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts

Benny Goodman papers (the bulk of the musician's estate) in Irving S. Gilmore Music Library of Yale University

Benny Goodman biography

for the Benny Goodman Sextet performing live in 1950 as regulars on the DuMont network TV series Star Time, see http://www.jfredmacdonald.com/avhighlights/playbawtv34_startime.htm

Category:1909 births Category:1986 deaths Category:Swing clarinetists Category:Swing bandleaders Category:Big band bandleaders Category:American jazz clarinetists Category:Musicians from Chicago, Illinois Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:National Radio Hall of Fame inductees Category:Jazz bandleaders Category:Clarinetists Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Chess Records artists Category:Vocalion Records artists Category:Jewish American musicians Category:People from Westchester County, New York

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name	Buddy Rich
background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
birth name	Bernard Rich
alias	Traps the Drum Wonder (as a boy) and "B" (as an adult)
birth date	September 30, 1917
death date	April 02, 1987
religion	Jewish
origin	Brooklyn, New York, US
instrument	Drums, percussion
genre	Jazz, big band, swing, bebop
occupation	Musician, songwriter, bandleader, actor
years active	1919–1987
associated acts	Joe MarsalaBunny BeriganArtie ShawTommy DorseyBenny CarterHarry JamesLes BrownCharlie VenturaJazz at the PhilharmonicNat King ColeElla FitzgeraldGene Krupa and Louis Armstrong
website	http://www.buddyrich.com/
notable instruments	}}

Bernard "Buddy" Rich (September 30, 1917 – April 2, 1987) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. Rich was billed as "the world's greatest drummer" and was known for his virtuosic technique, power, groove, and speed.

Early life

Rich was born in Brooklyn, New York, to vaudevillians Robert and Bess Rich. His talent for rhythm was first noted by his father, who saw that Buddy could keep a steady beat with spoons at the age of one. He began playing drums in vaudeville when he was 18 months old, billed as "Traps the Drum Wonder." At the peak of Rich's childhood career, he was reportedly the second-highest paid child entertainer in the world (after Jackie Coogan). At 11 he was performing as a bandleader. He received no formal drum instruction, and went so far as to claim that instruction would only degrade his musical talent. He also never admitted to practicing, claiming to play the drums only during performances and was not known to read music. He expressed great admiration for, and was influenced by, the playing of Chick Webb, Gene Krupa, Dave Tough, and Jo Jones, among others.

Jazz career

Rich first played jazz with a major group in 1937 with Joe Marsala and guitarist Jack Lemaire. He then played with Bunny Berigan (1938) and Artie Shaw (1939), and even instructed a 14-year-old Mel Brooks in drumming for a short period when playing for Shaw. At 21, Rich participated in his first major recording with the Vic Schoen Orchestra (the band that backed the Andrews Sisters). In 1938, he was also hired to play in Tommy Dorsey's orchestra where he met and performed with Frank Sinatra. In 1942, Rich left the Dorsey band to join the United States Marine Corps. He rejoined the Dorsey group after leaving the Marines two years later. In 1946, Rich formed his own band with financial support from Sinatra, and continued to lead different groups on and off until the early fifties.

In addition to Tommy Dorsey (1939–1942, 1945, 1954–1955), Rich also played with Benny Carter (1942), Harry James (1953-1956–1962, 1964, 1965), Les Brown, Charlie Ventura, and Jazz at the Philharmonic, as well as leading his own band and performing with all-star groups. In the early fifties Rich played with Dorsey and also began to perform with trumpeter Harry James, an association which lasted until 1966. In 1966, Rich left James in order to develop a new big band. For most of the period from 1966 until his death, he led successful big bands in an era when the popularity of big bands had waned from their 1930s and 40s peak. In this later period, Rich continued to play clubs but he had stated in multiple interviews that the great majority of his big band's performances were at high schools, colleges and universities, with club performances done to a much lesser degree. Rich also served as the session drummer for many recordings, where his playing was often much more understated than in his own big-band performances. Especially notable were Rich's sessions for the late-career comeback recordings of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, on which he worked with pianist Oscar Peterson and his famous trio featuring bassist Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis.

Drumming technique and well known performances

Rich's technique has been one of the most standardized and coveted in drumming. His dexterity, musicality of playing style, speed and smooth execution are considered "holy grails" of drum technique and have been considered next to impossible to duplicate. While Rich typically held his sticks using traditional grip, he was also a skilled "match grip" player, and was one of few drummers to master the one-handed roll on both hands. Some of his more spectacular moves are crossover riffs, where he would criss-cross his arms from one drum to another, sometimes over the arm, and even under the arm at great speed.

He often used contrasting techniques to keep long drum solos from getting mundane. Aside from his energetic explosive displays, he would go into quieter passages. One passage he would use in most solos starts with a simple single-stroke roll on the snare picking up speed and power, then slowly moving his sticks closer to the rim as he gets quieter and then eventually playing on just the rim itself while still maintaining speed. Then he would reverse the effect and slowly move towards the center of the snare while increasing power.

Rich also demonstrated incredible skill at brush technique. On one album, 1955's ''The Lionel Hampton Art Tatum Buddy Rich Trio'', Rich plays brushes almost exclusively throughout.

Another Rich technique that few drummers have been able to perfect is the stick-trick – a fast roll performed by slapping two drumsticks together in a circular motion.

In 1942, Rich and drum teacher Henry Adler co-authored the instructional book ''Buddy Rich's Modern Interpretation of Snare Drum Rudiments,'' regarded as one of the more popular snare-drum rudiment books.

One of Adler's former students introduced Adler to Rich. "The kid told me Buddy played better than [Gene] Krupa. Buddy was only in his teens at the time and his friend was my first pupil. Buddy played and I watched his hands. Well, he knocked me right out. He did everything I wanted to do, and he did it with such ease. When I met his folks, I asked them who his teacher was. 'He never studied,' they told me. That made me feel very good. I realized that it was something physical, not only mental, that you had to have."

In a 1985 interview, Adler clarified the extent of his teacher-student relationship to Rich and their collaboration on the instructional book:

"I had nothing to do with [the rumor that I taught Buddy how to play]. That was a result of Tommy Dorsey's introduction to the Buddy Rich book," Adler said. "I used to go around denying it, knowing that Buddy was a natural player. Sure, he studied with me, but he didn't come to me to learn how to hold the drumsticks. I set out to teach Buddy to read. He'd take six lessons, go on the road for six weeks and come back. He didn't have time to practice."

"Tommy Dorsey wanted Buddy to write a book and he told him to get in touch with me. I did the book and Tommy wrote the foreword. Technically, I was Buddy's teacher, but I came along after he had already acquired his technique."

When asked about Rich's ability to read music, Bobby Shew, lead trumpeter in Rich's mid-60s big band replied, :"No. He’d always have a drummer there during rehearsals to read and play the parts initially on new arrangements... He’d only have to listen to a chart once and he’d have it memorized. We'd run through it and he'd know exactly how it went, how many measures it ran and what he'd have to do to drive it... The guy had the most natural instincts."

The ''West Side Story'' Medley

Perhaps his most popular later performance was a big band arrangement of a medley derived from the Leonard Bernstein classic ''West Side Story'', first released on the 1966 album ''Buddy Rich's Swingin' New Big Band''

The West Side Story medley is a complex and difficult-to-perform big-band arrangement which highlights Rich's remarkable ability to blend the rhythm of his drumming into his band's playing of the musical chart. Penned by Bill Reddie, Rich received the West Side Story arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's melodies from the famed musical in the mid-1960s and found it to be very challenging even for him. It consists of many rapid-fire time changes and signatures and took almost a month of constant rehearsals to perfect. It since became a staple in all his performances, clocking in at various lengths from seven to fifteen minutes. Bernstein himself had nothing but praise for it. In 2002, a DVD was released called ''The Lost West Side Story Tapes'' that captured a 1985 performance of this along with other numbers. These tapes had been previously thought to have been lost in a fire. Rich's ability to create spontaneous drum solos that matched and melded with the musical intricacies and intensity of big band scores was chief among his musical brilliance.

''Channel One'' Suite

After the West Side Story Medley, Rich's most famous performance was the Channel One Suite by Bill Reddie. Like the West Side Story Medley, the Channel One Suite generally was a quite long performance ranging from about 12 minutes to about 26 minutes and usually contained 2 or 3 drum solos. Although 26 minute performances of the Channel One Suite were not incredibly common, they were not unheard of. A recording of one of his live performances was released in 2006 which contained a 26 minute Channel One Suite.

TV appearances

In the 1950s, Rich was a frequent guest on ''The Steve Allen Show'' and other television variety shows. Beginning in 1962, Rich was also a frequent guest on Johnny Carson's ''Tonight Show'' and ''The Merv Griffin Show'', among others, and appeared with his Big Band on British television, on Michael Parkinson's talk show ''Parkinson'' and on the Terry Wogan Show (the last on October 29, 1986, only a few months prior to his death). One of his most widely seen television performances was in a 1981 episode of ''The Muppet Show'', where he engaged Muppet drummer "Animal" (played by Ronnie Verrell) in a drum battle. Rich also made guest appearances on the TV shows ''Here's Lucy'' and ''Hee Haw''.

In an episode of Michael Parkinson's British talk show, Parkinson kidded Rich about his Donny Osmond kick, by claiming that Rich was the president of The Osmonds' fan club.

Instruments

Buddy was known as a performer and endorser of Slingerland ''Radio King'', and Rogers Drums. He switched to Ludwig drums for much of the 1970s to the early 1980s. While recovering from a heart attack in 1959, Rich was presented with an original Slingerland Radio King 5X14 wood snare drum completely reconditioned by the Eames drum company. Later, a mismatched Radio King set was completely refurbished for Rich and he used that set right up to his death in 1987. His typical setup included a 14"X26" bass drum, 9"X13" mounted tom, two 16"X16" floor toms (although he rarely used the second tom where he would simply place a towel on the surface), and a 5"X14" snare drum. His cymbals were typically Zildjian consisting of standard 14" hi hats, 20" ride, either a 6" or 8" splash, two 18" crashes, and a 20" swish.

Personality

Although Rich was usually helpful and friendly, he had a short temper. While he threatened many times to fire members of his band, he seldom did so, and for the most part he lauded his band members during television and print interviews. Dusty Springfield allegedly slapped Rich after several days of "putting up with Rich's insults and show-biz sabotage."

In the Beastie Boys song "Sabotage", the lyrics "I'm Buddy Rich when I fly off the handle," referred to Rich's temper. Buddy Rich held a black belt in karate, as mentioned in a CNN television interview with Larry King, c. 1985.

Band member and lifelong friend David Lucas says that "Rich had a soft heart underneath it all. His favorite song was "It's Not Easy Being Green".

The tapes

Rich's temper, mercurial attitude and imposing personality are documented in secret recordings that pianist Lee Musiker made during some of his tantrums on tour buses and backstage in the early 1980s. These recordings, long circulated in bootleg form, have done much to fuel the reputation of Rich's personality. The tapes were popular with comedians Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David, who used three quotes from them more or less verbatim on ''Seinfeld'':

"If I have to tell you again, we're gonna take it outside and I'm gonna show you what it's like!" ("The Opposite")

"This guy – this is not my kind of guy." ("The Understudy")

"Then let's see how he does, up there, without all the assistance!" ("The Butter Shave")

On one recording, Rich threatens to fire Dave Panichi, a trombonist, for wearing a beard. Days before Rich died, he was visited by Mel Tormé, who claims that one of Rich's last requests was "to hear the tapes" that featured his angry outbursts. At the time, Tormé was working on an authorized biography of Rich which was released after Rich's death, titled ''Traps, The Drum Wonder: The Life of Buddy Rich''.

Death and legacy

Buddy Rich remained active performing until the end of his life. On April 2, 1987, Rich died of heart failure following surgery for a malignant brain tumor. He is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. He was 69.

Since Rich's death, a number of memorial concerts have been held. In 1994, the Rich tribute album ''Burning for Buddy: A Tribute to the Music of Buddy Rich'' was released. Produced by Rush drummer/lyricist Neil Peart, the album features performances of Rich staples by a number of rock and jazz drummers such as Kenny Aronoff, Dave Weckl, Steve Gadd, Max Roach, Steve Smith, and Peart himself, accompanied by the Buddy Rich Big Band. A second volume was issued in 1997.

In Italy, Rich's version of Winning the West was from 1973 to 1976 the musical theme of a weekly TV sports magazine broadcast, ''La domenica sportiva''.

Buddy is also mentioned in the television show Archer as the possible father of Sterling Mallory Archer.

Discography

Studio and live albums as leader or co-leader

1953: ''The Flip Phillips Buddy Rich Trio'' (Clef Records)

1954: ''The Swinging Buddy Rich'' (Norgran Records)

1955: ''Sing and Swing with Buddy Rich'' (Norgran)

1955: ''Buddy and Sweets'' (Norgran)

1955: ''The Lester Young Buddy Rich Trio'' (Norgran)

1955: ''The Wailing Buddy Rich'' (Norgran)

1955: ''Krupa and Rich'' (Clef) (with Gene Krupa)

1955: ''The Lionel Hampton Art Tatum Buddy Rich Trio'' (Clef)

1956: ''Buddy Rich Sings Johnny Mercer'' (Verve Records)

1956: ''This One's for Basie'' (Verve) – re-issued 1967 as ''Big Band Shout''

1957: ''Buddy Rich Just Sings'' (Verve)

1958: ''Buddy Rich in Miami'' (Verve)

1959: ''Richcraft'' (Mercury Records) – also ''The Rich Rebellion'' (Wing)

1959: ''Rich versus Roach'' (Mercury) (with Max Roach)

1959: ''The Voice is Rich'' (Mercury)

1960: ''The Driver'' (EmArcy Records)

1961: ''Playtime'' (Argo Records)

1961: ''Blues Caravan'' (Verve)

1962: ''Burnin' Beat'' (Verve) (with Gene Krupa)

1965: ''Are You Ready for This? (Roost) – with Louie Bellson

1966: ''Swingin' New Big Band'' (Pacific Jazz Records/Blue Note Records)

1966: ''The Sounds of '66'' (Reprise Records) (Live, with Sammy Davis, Jr.)

1967: ''Big Swing Face'' (Pacific Jazz) (Live)

1967: ''The New One!'' (Pacific Jazz) – aka ''Take it Away''

1968: ''Rich à la Rakha'' (World Pacific) (with Alla Rakha)

1968: ''Mercy, Mercy'' (Pacific Jazz) (Live)

1969: ''Buddy & Soul'' (Pacific Jazz) (Live)

1970: ''Keep the Customer Satisfied'' (Liberty Records) (Live)

1971: ''A Different Drummer'' (RCA Records)

1971: ''Rich in London'' (RCA) – expanded UK release = ''Buddy Rich: Very Alive at Ronnie Scott's'' (RCA (UK)) (Live)

1972: ''Stick It'' (RCA)

1973: ''The Roar of '74'' (Groove Merchant Records)

1974: ''Very Live at Buddy's Place'' (Groove Merchant) (Live)

1974: ''Transition'' (Groove Merchant) – with Lionel Hampton

1974: ''The Last Blues Album, Vol. 1'' (Groove Merchant)

1975: ''Big Band Machine'' (Groove Merchant)

1976: ''Speak No Evil'' (RCA)

1977: ''Buddy Rich Plays and Plays and Plays'' (RCA)

1977: ''Lionel Hampton Presents Buddy Rich'' (Who's Who In Jazz) – aka ''Buddy's Cherokee...'' also released as ''The Sound of Jazz, Vol 10''

1977: ''Class of '78'' (The Great American Gramophone Company) – also released as ''The Greatest Drummer That Ever Lived with The Best Band I Ever Had''

1977: ''Europe '77'' (Magic)

1978: ''Together Again: For the First Time'' (Gryphon/Century) – aka ''When I Found You'' (with Mel Tormé)

1980: ''Live at Ronnie Scott's'' (DRG) – aka ''The Man from Planet Jazz'' (Live)

1981: ''The Buddy Rich Band'' (MCA)

1983: ''Rich and Famous'' (Amway) – aka ''The Magic of Buddy Rich'', aka ''Buddy Rich – The Man''

1985: ''Mr. Drums: Live on King Street, San Francisco'' (Café) (Live)

Posthumous releases of previously unreleased recordings

2001: ''Wham! The Buddy Rich Big Band Live'' (Label M)

2004: ''No Funny Hats'' (Lightyear)

Notable compilation albums

1960: ''The Drum Battle (Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich at JATP)'' (Verve)

196?: ''The Best of Buddy Rich'' (Pacific Jazz)

1969: ''Super Rich'' (Verve)

1971: ''Time Being'' (Bluebird/RCA)

1987: ''Compact Jazz: Buddy Rich'' (Verve)

1990: ''Compact Jazz: Gene Krupa & Buddy Rich'' (Verve)

1992: ''No Jive'' (Novus)

1998: ''Buddy Rich: The Legendary '47–'48 Orchestra Vol. 1'' (Hep Records)

1998: ''Buddy Rich: The Legendary '46–'48 Orchestra Vol. 2'' (Hep)

2005: ''Classic EmArcy, Verve, Small Group Buddy Rich Sessions'' (7 CD Box set, Mosaic Records #232)

References

External links

Official website

Buddy Rich at Wikiquote

(Discography and brief biography)

Buddy Rich videos, pictures, quotes, and set-up at TotalDrumsets.com

Category:1917 births Category:1987 deaths Category:American jazz drummers Category:American jazz composers Category:Bebop drummers Category:Big band drummers Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Deaths from brain cancer Category:Deaths from heart failure Category:Jazz bandleaders Category:Mainstream jazz drummers Category:Musicians from New York Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Swing drummers Category:Vaudeville performers Category:RCA Records artists Category:American Jews

cs:Buddy Rich da:Buddy Rich de:Buddy Rich es:Buddy Rich eo:Buddy Rich fr:Buddy Rich fy:Buddy Rich it:Buddy Rich he:באדי ריץ' ja:バディ・リッチ no:Buddy Rich nn:Buddy Rich pl:Buddy Rich pt:Buddy Rich ru:Рич, Бадди fi:Buddy Rich sv:Buddy Rich tr:Buddy Rich

Name	Matthew Herbert
Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	Matthew Herbert
Alias	Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, Wishmountain
Born	1972
Origin	United Kingdom
Genre	Electronic musicMicrohouseTechno
Occupation	DJ, Producer
Years active	1995 to present
Website	http://www.matthewherbert.com
Past members	}}

Matthew Herbert (born 1972), also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, is a British electronic musician. He has pioneered the use of so-called 'real', 'ordinary' or 'found' sounds in modern electronic music.

Career

Herbert began experimenting with aleatoric processes while studying drama at Exeter University in the early 1990s. He gave his first professional public performance in 1995 as Wishmountain, reportedly using a bag of crisps as an instrument. Two years of performing under this name followed before he retired Wishmountain in favor of Radio Boy. In addition to creating rhythmic musique concrete as Radio Boy, however, Herbert worked on more traditional, yet relatively experimental dance music.

In the mid 90s he traveled to San Francisco, where he met jazz singer Dani Siciliano. In 1998, Herbert issued ''Around the House,'' which successfully mixed dance beats, sounds generated by everyday kitchen objects, and Siciliano's wry vocals. By the late Nineties, Herbert was remixing tracks for dance artists like Moloko, Motorbass, Alter Ego, and others. (Many of these were later collected on ''Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes''.) He also recorded singles, EPs, and albums under a variety of aliases (Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, and Transformer) as well as his own name.

In 2001, Herbert issued ''Bodily Functions''. Similar in structure to ''Around the House,'' it culled sounds generated by manipulating human hair and skin as well as internal bodily organs. Less severe than Matmos' work, its light and sinuous dance sound augured the rise of microhouse. ''Bodily Functions'' benefited from a deal Herbert signed with electronic imprint Studio !K7, making it his first full-length to receive worldwide distribution.

''Goodbye Swingtime'', a 2003 album issued as the Matthew Herbert Big Band, combined the political commentary of Radio Boy with the song structure of his Herbert albums. Recorded with sixteen musicians from the British jazz world, including saxophonists Dave O'Higgins and Nigel Hitchcock, pianist Phil Parnell, and bassist Dave Green, the band is complemented on stage by Siciliano, Arto Lindsay, Warp recording artist Jamie Lidell, and Mara Carlyle.

In 2005, he released a record entitled Plat Du Jour, a record made entirely from objects and situations in the food chain. He recorded beneath the sewers of fleet street, with Vietnamese coffee beans, inside industrial chicken farms, drove a tank over a recreation of the dinner that Nigella Lawson cooked for George Bush and Tony Blair, and recorded 3500 people biting an apple at the same time. The track entitled The Final Meal of Stacey Lawton was made in collaboration renowned chef Heston Blumenthal

On May 30, 2006, Herbert issued ''Scale'', his most successful album to date. In the U.S., it reached number 20 on ''Billboard'''s electronic music album chart. Entertainment Weekly remarked, "Herbert sneakily subverts Scale's apocalyptic thematic thread into something warm and danceable." Online magazine Pitchfork Media noted, "Sophisticated and whimsical, joyful and yet tinged with sadness, Scale is one of this year's great albums."

In October 2008 Matthew Herbert released the second album by his Matthew Herbert Big Band project, entitled 'There's Me And There's You', fronted by vocalist Eska. On the record he recorded inside the houses of parliament, at a landfill site, and in the lobby of the British Museum with 70 volunteers.

In 2010 Matthew Herbert released two of a three part trilogy of albums. The first: One One, was entirely written and performed by Herbert alone, the seconds : One Club was made exclusively out of sounds recorded at the Robert Johnson nightclub in Offenbach in Germany on one night.

That same year he also released a reworking of Mahler's tenth symphony for the Deutsche Grammophon's Recomposed series. Much of the recording was made inside Mahler's composing hut in toblach, by his graveside and in a crematorium.

In 2011 the final part of the trilogy: One Pig will be released. Herbert has recorded the life cycle of a farmed pig from birth, to dinner plate. The animal rights organisation PETA condemned the record before even hearing it.

Matthew commissioned various items to be made from the pig. one item was a drum made by Stephen Calcutt using the pig skin . the making of the drum was documented at OnePigDrum

Theories and politics

In 2000, Herbert wrote a manifesto titled ''"Personal Contract for the Composition of Music (Incorporating the Manifest of Mistakes)"'', which served as a theoretical guide for much of his ensuing work. Often referred to as PCCOM, some of its eleven goals includes a personal ban on using drum machines and pre-existing samples, and ensuring that anything created in the studio can be replicated in live performance.

Many of his less dance-oriented projects (chiefly those not recorded under the name Herbert) take on sundry political concerns, using specific objects to create a conceptual piece. His 2001 project as Radio Boy, ''The Mechanics of Destruction'' sampled objects from McDonald's & The Gap merchandise as a protest against corporate globalism. It was made available as a free MP3 download, via concerts and could be acquired by sending an addressed envelope to accidental records. It is still available to download for free.

In 2005 Herbert released the album ''Plat du Jour'' under his proper name, Matthew Herbert. The disc addresses commercial food production and marketing.

In February 2006, Herbert helped form the virtual community Country X. In an introduction posted on the website, he writes, "Why not start a country? only this time, a virtual one. free from the necessity to defend its borders physically, we can reduce the violence of exclusion. a new description of resistance."

Herbert shared some of his thoughts on the future in an article for UK music magazine, 'Clash', writing "we are facing a perfect storm of shit: global financial meltdown, massive climatic shifts and the end of oil."

Accidental Records

By 2000 Herbert assembled several microlabels he initiated, including Soundslike (for his Herbert alias) and Lifelike (originally called Lowlife, begun in 1998 for his Doctor Rockit alias), under the umbrella Accidental Records. In addition to documenting Herbert's sundry projects, these imprints issued works from The Soft Pink Truth, Mara Carlyle, Mugison and Beckett & Taylor among others. Between 2008 and 2009, the label released 'Butterflies' by Finn Peters, the sophomore record of Matthew Herbert Big Band named 'There's Me And There's You', The Invisible's debut album, Setsubun Bean Unit, and Micachu's debut named 'Jewellery'.

2010/2011 sees the release of a trilogy concept album by Herbert, beginning with 'One One', followed by 'One Club' and 'One Pig'.

Additional projects

Matthew Herbert has produced remixes for numerous artists, including Moloko, Ennio Morricone, Quincy Jones, Björk, R.E.M., Perry Farrell, Serge Gainsbourg, Yoko Ono, John Cale, The Avalanches and Cornelius. He programmed three tracks on Björk's ''Vespertine'', and produced The Invisible's debut album, along with Moloko singer Róisín Murphy's album ''Ruby Blue'. He has also produced albums for Micachu, Merz and Finn Peters

He has contributed music to several films, including ''Human Traffic'' and Dogme 95 director Kristian Levring's The Intended, Agathe Clery, Le Defi, HBO's A Number, as well as UK television, theatrical and concert dance productions.

Herbert also wrote music for the YouTube documentary film ''Life in a Day'' along with prominent composer Harry Gregson-Williams.

Discography

As Herbert

''100 lbs'' (1996)

''Parts One Two and Three'' (1996)

''Parts Remixed'' (1996)

''Around the House'' (1998)

''Bodily Functions'' (2001)

''Secondhand Sounds: Herbert Remixes'' (2002)

''Scale'' (2006)

As Matthew Herbert

''Letsallmakemistakes'' (Globus Mix Vol. 5) (1995)

''Plat du Jour'' (2005)

''Score'' (2006)

''Recomposed: Mahler symphony X'' (2010)

''One One'' (2010)

''One Club'' (2009)

''One Pig'' (2011)

As Doctor Rockit

''The Music of Sound'' (1996)

''Indoor Fireworks'' (2000)

''Veselka's Diner'' (2003)

''The Unnecessary History of Doctor Rockit'' (2004)

As The Matthew Herbert Big Band

''Goodbye Swingtime (2003)

''There's Me and There's You (2008)

As Radio Boy

''Wishmountain Is Dead, Long Live Radio Boy'' (1997)

''The Mechanics of Destruction'' (2001)

As Wishmountain

''Wishmountain'' (1998)

''Wishmountain is Dead'' (1998)

References

External links

Matthew Herbert's own website

The Matthew Herbert Big Band website

100lbs website

Scale website

The Mechanics of Destruction (site expired)

Accidental Records website

Matthew Herbert's PCCOM manifesto

Matthew Herbert at Discogs

Plat du Jour website

Matthew Herbert and Accidental Records activity

Cool Hunting Video on Herbert released jan. 2007

Category:1972 births Category:Living people Category:Intelligent dance music musicians Category:Remixers Category:British experimental musicians

de:Matthew Herbert es:Matthew Herbert fr:Matthew Herbert ja:マシュー・ハーバート pt:Matthew Herbert ru:Херберт, Мэтью

Background	non_vocal_instrumentalist
Birth name	John Birks Gillespie
Born	October 21, 1917Cheraw, South Carolina, U.S.
Died	January 06, 1993Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.
Instrument	Trumpet, piano, trombone
Genre	BebopAfro-Cuban jazz
Occupation	Trumpeter, bandleader, singer, composer
Years active	1935–1993
Associated acts	Charlie ParkerCab CallowayBud Powell
Label	Pablo Records, Verve Records, Savoy Records, RCA Victor Records, Milan Records, Douglas Records }}

John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpet player, bandleader, singer, and composer dubbed "the sound of surprise".

Together with Charlie Parker, he was a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz. He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Jon Faddis and Chuck Mangione.

Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote that "Dizzy Gillespie's contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time (some would say the best), Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up copying Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis's emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy's style was successfully recreated . . . Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time."

In addition to featuring in the epochal moments in bebop, he was instrumental in founding Afro-Cuban jazz, the modern jazz version of what early-jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the "Spanish Tinge". Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and gifted improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. Dizzy's beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.

Biography

Early life and career

He was born in Cheraw, South Carolina, the youngest of nine children born to James and Lottie Gillespie. James was a local bandleader, so instruments were made available to Dizzy. He started to play the piano at the age of four. Dizzy's father died when the boy was only ten years old. Dizzy taught himself how to play the trombone as well as the trumpet by the age of twelve. From the night he heard his idol, Roy Eldridge, play on the radio, he dreamed of becoming a jazz musician. He received a music scholarship to the Laurinburg Institute in Laurinburg, North Carolina He attended for two years before accompanying his family when they moved to Philadelphia.

Dizzy's first professional job was with the Frank Fairfax Orchestra in 1935, after which he joined the respective orchestras of Edgar Hayes and Teddy Hill, essentially replacing Roy Eldridge as first trumpet in 1937. Teddy Hill’s band was where Dizzy Gillespie made his first recording, ''King Porter Stomp''. At this time Dizzy met a young woman named Lorraine from the Apollo Theatre, whom he married in 1940. They remained married until his death in 1993. Dizzy stayed with Teddy Hill’s band for a year, then left and free-lanced with numerous other bands. In 1939, Dizzy joined Cab Calloway's orchestra, with which he recorded one of his earliest compositions, the instrumental ''Pickin' the Cabbage'', in 1940. (Originally released on ''Paradiddle'', a 78rpm backed with a co-composition with Cozy Cole, Calloway's drummer at the time, on the Vocalion label, #5467).

Dizzy was fired by Calloway in late 1941, after a notorious altercation between the two. The incident is recounted by Dizzy, along with fellow Calloway band members Milt Hinton and Jonah Jones, in Jean Bach's 1997 film, The Spitball Story. Calloway did not approve of Dizzy's mischievous humor, nor of his adventuresome approach to soloing; according to Jones, Calloway referred to it as “Chinese music.” During one performance, Calloway saw a spitball land on the stage, and accused Dizzy of having thrown it. Dizzy denied it, and the ensuing argument led to Calloway striking Dizzy, who then pulled out a switchblade knife and charged Calloway. The two were separated by other band members, during which scuffle Calloway was cut on the hand.

During his time in Calloway's band, Dizzy Gillespie started writing big band music for bandleaders like Woody Herman and Jimmy Dorsey. He then freelanced with a few bands - most notably Ella Fitzgerald's orchestra, composed of members of the late Chick Webb's band, in 1942.

In 1943, Dizzy joined the Earl Hines orchestra. The legendary big band of Billy Eckstine gave his unusual harmonies a better setting and it was as a member of Eckstine's band that he was reunited with Parker, a fellow member of Hines's more conventional band. In 1945, Dizzy left Eckstine's band because he wanted to play with a small combo. A "small combo" typically comprised no more than five musicians, playing the trumpet, saxophone, piano, bass and drums.He was a world renowned figure and was a major influence on modern day jazz.

The rise of bebop

Bebop was known as the first modern jazz style. However, it was unpopular in the beginning and was not viewed as positively as swing music was. Bebop was seen as an outgrowth of swing, not a revolution. Swing introduced a diversity of new musicians in the bebop era like Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Kenny Clarke, Oscar Pettiford, and Gillespie. Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created. With Charlie Parker, Gillespie jammed at famous jazz clubs like Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House, where the first seeds of bebop were planted. Charlie Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines.

Gillespie compositions like "Groovin' High", "Woody n' You" and "Salt Peanuts" sounded radically different, harmonically and rhythmically, from the swing music popular at the time. "A Night in Tunisia", written in 1942, while Gillespie was playing with Earl Hines' band, is noted for having a feature that is common in today's music, a non-walking bass line. The song also displays Afro-Cuban rhythms. One of their first (and greatest) small-group performances together was only issued in 2005: a concert in New York's Town Hall on June 22, 1945. Gillespie taught many of the young musicians on 52nd Street, including Miles Davis and Max Roach about the new style of jazz. After a lengthy gig at Billy Berg's club in Los Angeles, which left most of the audience ambivalent or hostile towards the new music, the band broke up. Unlike Parker, who was content to play in small groups and be an occasional featured soloist in big bands, Gillespie aimed to lead a big band himself; his first, unsuccessful, attempt to do this was in 1945.

After his work with Parker, Gillespie led other small combos (including ones with Milt Jackson, John Coltrane, Lalo Schifrin, Ray Brown, Kenny Clarke, James Moody, J.J. Johnson, and Yusef Lateef) and finally put together his first successful big band. Dizzy Gillespie and his band tried to popularize bop and make Dizzy Gillespie a symbol of the new music. He also appeared frequently as a soloist with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic. He also headlined the 1946 independently-produced musical revue film ''Jivin' in Be-Bop''.

In 1948 Dizzy was involved in a traffic accident when the bicycle he was riding was bumped by an automobile. He was slightly injured, and found that he could no longer hit the B-flat above high C. He won the case, but the jury awarded him only $1000, in view of his high earnings up to that point.

In 1956 he organized a band to go on a State Department tour of the Middle East and earned the nickname "the Ambassador of Jazz". During this time, he also continued to lead a big band that performed throughout the United States and featured musicians including Pee Wee Moore and others. This band recorded a live album at the 1957 Newport jazz festival that featured Mary Lou Williams as a guest artist on piano.

Afro-Cuban music

In the late 1940s, Gillespie was also involved in the movement called Afro-Cuban music, bringing Afro-Latin American music and elements to greater prominence in jazz and even pop music, particularly salsa. Afro-Cuban jazz is based on traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms. Dizzy Gillespie was introduced to Chano Pozo in 1947 by Mario Bauza, a Latin jazz trumpet player. Chano Pozo became Gillespie's conga drummer for his band. Dizzy Gilespie also worked with Mario Bauza in New York jazz clubs on 52nd street and several famous dance clubs such as Palladium and the Apollo Theater in Harlem. They played together in the Chick Webb band and Cab Calloway's band, where Gillespie and Bauza became life-long friends. Dizzy helped develop and mature the Afro-Cuban jazz style.

Afro-Cuban jazz was considered bebop-oriented, and some musicians classified it as a modern style. Afro-Cuban jazz was successful because it never decreased in popularity and it always attracted people to dance to its unique rhythms. Gillespie's most famous contributions to Afro-Cuban music are the compositions "Manteca" and "Tin Tin Deo" (both co-written with Chano Pozo); he was responsible for commissioning George Russell's "Cubano Be, Cubano Bop", which featured the great but ill-fated Cuban conga player, Chano Pozo. In 1977, Gillespie discovered Arturo Sandoval while researching music during a tour of Cuba.

Later years

His biographer Alyn Shipton quotes Don Waterhouse approvingly that Dizzy in the fifties "had begun to mellow into an amalgam of his entire jazz experience to form the basis of new classicism". Another opinion is that, unlike his contemporary Miles Davis, Gillespie essentially remained true to the bebop style for the rest of his career.

In 1960, he was inducted into the ''Down Beat'' magazine's Jazz Hall of Fame.

During the 1964 United States presidential campaign the artist, with tongue in cheek, put himself forward as an independent write-in candidate. He promised that if he were elected, the White House would be renamed "The Blues House," and a cabinet composed of Duke Ellington (Secretary of State), Miles Davis, (Director of the CIA), Max Roach (Secretary of Defense), Charles Mingus (Secretary of Peace), Ray Charles (Librarian of Congress), Louis Armstrong (Secretary of Agriculture), Mary Lou Williams (Ambassador to the Vatican), Thelonious Monk (Travelling Ambassador) and Malcolm X (Attorney General). He said his running mate would be Phyllis Diller. Campaign buttons had been manufactured years ago by Gillespie's booking agency "for publicity, as a gag", but now proceeds from them went to benefit the Congress of Racial Equality, Southern Christian Leadership Conference and Martin Luther King, Jr.; in later years they became a collector's item. In 1971 Gillespie announced he would run again but withdrew before the election for reasons connected to the Baha'i faith.

Gillespie published his autobiography, ''To Be or Not to Bop'', in 1979.

Gillespie was a vocal fixture in many of John Hubley and Faith Hubley's animated films, such as ''The Hole'', ''The Hat'', and ''Voyage to Next''.

In the 1980s, Dizzy Gillespie led the United Nation Orchestra. For three years Flora Purim toured with the Orchestra and she credits Gillespie with evolving her understanding of jazz after being in the field for over two decades. David Sánchez also toured with the group and was also greatly influenced by Gillespie. Both artists later were nominated for Grammy awards. Gillespie also had a guest appearance on ''The Cosby Show'' as well as ''Sesame Street'' and ''The Muppet Show''.

In 1982, Dizzy Gillespie had a cameo appearance on Stevie Wonder's hit "Do I Do". Gillespie's tone gradually faded in the last years in life, and his performances often focused more on his proteges such as Arturo Sandoval and Jon Faddis; his good-humoured comedic routines became more and more a part of his live act.

In 1988, Gillespie had worked with Canadian flautist and saxophonist Moe Koffman on their prestigious album ''Oo Pop a Da.'' He did fast scat vocals on the title track and a couple of the other tracks were played only on trumpet.

In 1989 Gillespie gave 300 performances in 27 countries, appeared in 100 U.S. cities in 31 states and the District of Columbia, headlined three television specials, performed with two symphonies, and recorded four albums. He was also crowned a traditional chief in Nigeria, received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres; France's most prestigious cultural award. He was named Regent Professor by the University of California, and received his fourteenth honorary doctoral degree, this one from the Berklee College of Music. In addition, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award the same year. The next year, at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts ceremonies celebrating the centennial of American jazz, Gillespie received the Kennedy Center Honors Award and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers ''Duke Ellington Award'' for 50 years of achievement as a composer, performer, and bandleader. In 1993 he received the Polar Music Prize in Sweden.

November 26, 1992 at Carnegie Hall in New York, following the Second Bahá'í World Congress was Dizzy's 75th birthday concert and his offering to the celebration of the centenary of the passing of Bahá'u'lláh. Gillespie was to appear at Carnegie Hall for the 33rd time. The line-up included: Jon Faddis, Marvin "Doc" Holladay, James Moody, Paquito D'Rivera, and the Mike Longo Trio with Ben Brown on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. But Gillespie didn't make it because he was in bed suffering from cancer of the pancreas. "But the musicians played their real hearts out for him, no doubt suspecting that he would not play again. Each musician gave tribute to their friend, this great soul and innovator in the world of jazz."

Gillespie also starred in a film called ''The Winter in Lisbon'' released in 2004. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7057 Hollywood Boulevard in the Hollywood section of the City of Los Angeles. He is honored by the December 31, 2006 - A Jazz New Year's Eve: Freddy Cole & the Dizzy Gillespie All-Star Big Band at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Death and legacy

A longtime resident of Englewood, NJ, he died of pancreatic cancer January 6, 1993, aged 75, and was buried in the Flushing Cemetery, Queens, New York. Mike Longo delivered a eulogy at his funeral. He was also with Gillespie on the night he died, along with Jon Faddis and a select few others.

At the time of his death, Dizzy Gillespie was survived by his widow, Lorraine Willis Gillespie; a daughter, jazz singer Jeanie Bryson; and a grandson, Radji Birks Bryson-Barrett. Gillespie had two funerals. One was a Bahá'í funeral at his request, at which his closest friends and colleagues attended. The second was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York open to the public.

Dizzy Gillespie, a Bahá'í since 1970, was one of the most famous adherents of the Bahá'í Faith which helped him make sense of his position in a succession of trumpeters as well as turning his life from knife-carrying roughneck to global citizen, and from alcohol to ''soul force'', in the words of author Nat Hentoff, who knew Gillespie for forty years. He spoke about the Baha'i Faith frequently on his trips abroad. He is often called the ''Bahá'í Jazz Ambassador''. He is honored with weekly jazz sessions at the New York Bahá'í Center.

Style

Gillespie has been described as the "Sound of Surprise". ''The Rough Guide to Jazz'' describes his musical style:

In Dizzy's obituary, Peter Watrous describes his performance style:

Wynton Marsalis summed up Gillespie as a player and teacher:

"Bent" trumpet

Gillespie's trademark trumpet featured a bell which bent upward at a 45-degree angle rather than pointing straight ahead as in the conventional design. In honor of this trademark, the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History has collected Gillespie's B-flat trumpet. According to Gillespie's autobiography, this was originally the result of accidental damage caused by someone sitting on it during a job on January 6, 1953, but the constriction caused by the bending altered the tone of the instrument, and Gillespie liked the effect. Gillespie's biographer Alyn Shipton writes that Gillespie likely got the idea when he saw a similar instrument in 1937 in Manchester, England while on tour with the Teddy Hill Orchestra. An English trumpeter was using such an instrument because his vision was poor and the horn made reading music easier. According to this account (from British journalist Pat Brand) Gillespie was able to try out the horn and the experience led him, much later, to commission a similar horn for himself.

Whatever the origins of Gillespie's upswept trumpet, by June, 1954, Gillespie was using a professionally manufactured horn of this design, and it was to become a visual trademark for him for the rest of his life.

Discography

1937-49 ''The Complete RCA Victor Recordings''

1941: ''The Immortal Charlie Christian'' (with Christian, Thelonious Monk, Delta Music re-released on Laserlight cassette)

1950: ''Bird & Diz''

1952: ''Dee Gee Days - The Savoy Sessions''

1953: ''Jazz at Massey Hall''

1953: ''Diz & Getz'' (with Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Max Roach, Herb Ellis)

1954: ''Afro''

1956: ''Modern Jazz Sextet''

1957: ''Sittin' In'' (with Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins)

1957: ''Dizzy Gillespie at Newport''

1957: ''Sonny Side Up'' (with Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt)

1957: ''Dizzy in Greece''

1958: ''Birks' Works'' (Dizzy Gillespie Big Band)

1959: ''Have Trumpet, Will Excite!''

1959: ''The Ebullient Mr. Gillespie''

1960: ''A Portrait of Duke Ellington''

1960/1961: ''Gillespiana/Carnegie Hall Conert'' (Verve Records)

1961: ''An Electrifying Evening with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet''

1961: ''Perceptions'' (Verve Records) (written by J.J. Johnson, conducted by Gunther Schuller)

1962: ''Dizzy on the French Riviera'' (Philips Records)

1963: ''New Wave'' (Philips Records) (with Lalo Schifrin, Bola Sete)

1963: ''Something Old, Something New''

1963: ''Dizzy Gillespie and the Double Six of Paris''

1964: ''Jambo Caribe'' (Limelight Records)

1965: ''The New Continent'' (Limelight)

1964: ''The Melody Lingers On'' (Limelight)

1967: ''Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac'' (Impulse!)

1968: ''Live at the Village Vanguard'' (produced by Sonny Lester

1968: ''Reunion Big Band In Berlin'' (MPS Records)

1969: ''Strictly Bebop'' (with Babs Gonzalez, Tad Dameron, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, John Coltrane), rec. 1949 EMI Capitol

1969: ''Real Thing'' (Perception Records)

1970: ''Portrait of Jenny'' (Perception)

1971: ''Giants'' (Perception, with Bobby Hackett)

1971: ''Dizzy Gillespie and the Mitchell Ruff Duo In Concert'' (Mainstream Records)

1974: ''Oscar Peterson and Dizzy Gillespie''

1975: ''Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods'' (with Machito, Chico O'Farrill, Mario Bauza)

1975: ''Jazz Maturity...Where It's Coming From''

1975: ''Oscar Peterson and The Trumpet Kings - Jousts''

1975: ''The Trumpet Kings at Montreux '75''

1976: ''Dizzy's Party''

1977: ''The Gifted Ones'' (with Count Basie)

1977: ''Free Ride''

1981: ''Digital at Montreux, 1980'' (Toots Thielemans, Bernard Purdie)

1985: ''New Faces'' (with Robert Ameen, Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland, Lonnie Plaxico, Charlie Christian)

1988: ''Oop Pop a Da'' (with Moe Koffman)

1989: ''Live at the Royal Festival Hall London July 10, 1989''

1989: ''The Symphony Sessions'' (with Ron Holloway, Ed Cherry, John Lee, Ignacio Berroa)

1990: ''The Winter in Lisbon''

1990: ''Rhythmstick'' (CTI Records)

1991: ''Live! at Blues Alley'' (with Ron Holloway, Ed Cherry, John Lee, Ignacio Berroa)

1992: ''Groovin' High''

1992: ''To Bird With Love''

1995: ''In Paris v.2'' Vogue RCA 1995

2000: ''Dizzy For President'' Douglas Records

Filmography

1983 ''Jazz in America'' (Embassy)

1986 ''In Redondo Beach/Jazz In America'' ( Embassy)

1991 ''Dizzy Gillespie: A Night in Tunisia'' (VIEW)

1993 ''Live in London'' (Kultur Video)

1998 ''Dizzy Gillespie & Charles Mingus'' (Vidjazz)

1998 ''Dizzy Gillespie: Ages'' (Vidjazz)

1999 ''Jazz Casual: Dizzy Gillespie'' (Rhino)

2001 ''Jivin'in Be-Bop'' (Jazz Classic Video)

2001 ''Dizzy Gillespie: A Night in Chicago'' (VIEW)

2001 ''Live at the Royal Festival Hall 1987'' (Pioneer)

2002 ''Live in Montreal'' (Image)

2003 ''20th Century Jazz Masters''

2003 ''Swing Era (with Mel Torme)'' (Idem)

2005 ''Norman Granz Jazz in Montreux: Presents Dizzy Gillespie Sextet '77'' (Eagle Vision USA)

2005 ''Summer Jazz Live at New Jersey 1987'' (FS World Jazz / Alpha Centauri Entertainment)

2005 ''A Night in Havana: Dizzy Gillespie in Cuba'' (New Video Group)

2006 ''Jazz Icons: Live in '58 & '70'' (Universal)

2008 ''London Concerts 1965 & 1966'' (Impro-Jazz Spain)

Bibliography

''To Be, or Not...to Bop''. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

References

External links

The Dizzy Gillespie All-Stars

Dizzy Gillespie's "The Cult of Bebop"

Dizzy Gillespie Talking to Les Tomkins in 1973

Dizzy Gillespie Mulitmedia Directory - Kerouac Alley

Dizzy Gillespie Concerts & Interviews on NPR Music

Category:1917 births Category:1993 deaths Category:People from Cheraw, South Carolina Category:African American musicians Category:American Bahá'ís Category:American jazz bandleaders Category:American jazz composers Category:American jazz trumpeters Category:American memoirists Category:Bebop trumpeters Category:Burials at Flushing Cemetery Category:Cancer deaths in New Jersey Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Cuban jazz (genre) bandleaders Category:Cuban jazz (genre) composers Category:Cuban jazz (genre) trumpeters Category:Deaths from pancreatic cancer Category:Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winners Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Latin jazz bandleaders Category:Latin jazz composers Category:Latin jazz trumpeters Category:Musicians from Pennsylvania Category:Musicians from South Carolina Category:People from Bergen County, New Jersey Category:People from Corona, Queens Category:RCA Victor artists Category:Savoy Records artists Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients Category:Verve Records artists Category:Prestige Records artists Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Converts to the Bahá'í Faith Category:20th-century Bahá'ís Category:Manor Records artists

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