• 20th Century Fox
• A Drum Is a Woman
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• All Too Soon
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• 
  

• 
  Broadway theatre
  Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City. Along with London's West End theatre, Broadway theatre is widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world.
  The Broadway theatre district is a popular tourist attraction in New York. According to The Broadway League, Broadway shows sold approximately $1.081 billion worth of tickets in calendar year 2011, compared with $1.037 billion for 2010. Attendance in 2011 was 12.13 million.
  New York did not have a significant theatre presence until about 1750, when actor-managers Walter Murray and Thomas Kean established a resident theatre company at the Theatre on Nassau Street, which held about 280 people. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggar's Opera. In 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice and The Anatomist. The company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the year the 2,000-seat Park Theatre was built on Chatham Street (now called Park Row). The Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, and especially so with the arrival of the Virginia Minstrels in the 1840s.
  
  wn.com/Broadway_theatre
• 
  New York City
  New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. The city is referred to as New York City or The City of New York to distinguish it from the State of New York, of which it is a part. As a global power city, New York exerts a significant impact upon commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and entertainment. The home of the United Nations Headquarters, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has been described as the cultural capital of the world.
  Located on one of the world's largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, each of which comprises a state county. The five boroughs—The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island—were consolidated into a single city in 1898. With a Census-estimated 2011 population of 8,244,910 distributed over a land area of just 305 square miles (790 km²), New York is the most densely populated major city in the United States. As many as 800 languages are spoken in New York, making it the most linguistically diverse city in the world. The New York City Metropolitan Area's population is the United States' largest, with 18.9 million people distributed over 6,720 square miles (17,400 km²), and is also part of the most populous combined statistical area in the United States, containing 22.1 million people as of the 2010 Census.
  
  wn.com/New_York_City
• 
  United States
  The United States of America (commonly abbreviated to the United States, the U.S., the USA, America, and the States) is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its forty-eight contiguous states and Washington, D.C., the capital district, lie between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, bordered by Canada to the north and Mexico to the south. The state of Alaska is in the northwest of the continent, with Canada to the east and Russia to the west, across the Bering Strait. The state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The country also possesses several territories in the Pacific and Caribbean.
  At 3.79 million square miles (9.83 million km²) and with over 312 million people, the United States is the third or fourth largest country by total area, and the third largest by both land area and population. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The U.S. economy is the world's largest national economy, with an estimated 2011 GDP of $15.1 trillion (22% of nominal global GDP and over 19% of global GDP at purchasing-power parity). Per capita income is the world's sixth-highest.
  
  wn.com/United_States
• 
  White House
  The White House is the official residence and principal workplace of the President of the United States. Located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., the house was designed by Irish-born James Hoban, and built between 1792 and 1800 of white-painted Aquia sandstone in the Neoclassical style. It has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams. When Thomas Jefferson moved into the house in 1801, he (with architect Benjamin Henry Latrobe) expanded the building outward, creating two colonnades that were meant to conceal stables and storage.
  In 1814, during the War of 1812, the mansion was set ablaze by the British Army in the Burning of Washington, destroying the interior and charring much of the exterior. Reconstruction began almost immediately, and President James Monroe moved into the partially reconstructed house in October 1817. Construction continued with the addition of the South Portico in 1824 and the North in 1829. Because of crowding within the executive mansion itself, President Theodore Roosevelt had all work offices relocated to the newly constructed West Wing in 1901. Eight years later, President William Howard Taft expanded the West Wing and created the first Oval Office which was eventually moved as the section was expanded. The third-floor attic was converted to living quarters in 1927 by augmenting the existing hip roof with long shed dormers. A newly constructed East Wing was used as a reception area for social events; Jefferson's colonnades connected the new wings. East Wing alterations were completed in 1946, creating additional office space. By 1948, the house's load-bearing exterior walls and internal wood beams were found to be close to failure. Under Harry S. Truman, the interior rooms were completely dismantled and a new internal load-bearing steel frame constructed inside the walls. Once this work was completed, the interior rooms were rebuilt.
  
  wn.com/White_House

• Aaron Bell
  Samuel Aaron Bell (April 24, 1921, Muskogee, Oklahoma - July 28, 2003) was an American jazz double-bassist.
  As a child, Bell played piano, and learned brass instruments in high school. He attended Xavier University, where he began playing bass, and graduated in 1942; following this he joined the Navy, completing his service in 1946. He was a member of Andy Kirk's band in 1946 but enrolled at NYU in 1947. After completing a master's degree he joined Lucky Millinder's band and then gigged with Teddy Wilson.
  In the 1950s, Bell appeared on Billie Holiday's album Lady Sings the Blues and with Lester Young, Stan Kenton, Johnny Hodges, Cab Calloway, Carmen McRae, and Dick Haymes. In 1960 he left Hayes' band after being offered a position in the Duke Ellington Orchestra, opposite drummer Sam Woodyard. He left in 1962, spending time with Dizzy Gillespie before taking jobs on Broadway as a pit musician. He and Ellington collaborated once more in 1967, on a tribute to Billy Strayhorn.
  Bell held a residence at the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City from 1969 to 1972. He also began teaching at Essex College in Newark in 1970, remaining there until 1990. Later in the 1970s he toured with Norris Turney, Harold Ashby, and Cat Anderson; in the 1980s he returned to piano playing, and retired from active performance in 1989. He died in 2003.
  
  wn.com/Aaron_Bell
• Al Hibbler
  Albert George "Al" Hibbler (August 16, 1915 – April 24, 2001) was an American baritone vocalist, who sang with Duke Ellington's orchestra before having several pop hits as a solo artist. Some of his singing is classified as rhythm and blues, but he is best classified as a bridge between R&B and traditional pop music. According to one authority, "Hibbler cannot be regarded as a jazz singer but as an exceptionally good interpreter of twentieth-century popular songs who happened to work with some of the best jazz musicians of the time."
  Hibbler was born in Tyro, Mississippi, United States, and was blind from birth. At the age of 12 he moved to Little Rock, Arkansas where he attended Arkansas School for the Blind, joining the school choir. Later he began working as a blues singer in local bands, failing his first audition for Duke Ellington in 1935. However, after winning an amateur talent contest in Memphis, Tennessee, he joined a band led by Jay McShann in 1942, and the following year joined Ellington's orchestra, replacing Herb Jeffries.
  
  wn.com/Al_Hibbler
• Al Killian
  Albert H. (Al) Killian (15 Oct 1916 Alabama – 5 September 1950 Los Angeles) was an American jazz trumpet player and occasional bandleader during the big band era, also known for playing jump blues and East Coast blues. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, United States.The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Second edition, Three volumes, edited by Barry Kernfeld, Macmillan Publishers, London (2002)</ref> Killian got his start playing with Charlie Turner's Arcadians (mid-1930s) and went on to play with big bands led by Baron Lee, Teddy Hill, Don Redman, Claude Hopkins, Count Basie (1940–1942), Charlie Barnet (off and on from 1943 through 1946) and Lionel Hampton (1945). In 1946 Killian started his own big band, but soon quit bandleading to tour with Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series, where he played alongside such musicians as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lester Young. Following this he briefly toured with bands led by Billy Eckstine, Earl Spencer, and Boyd Raeburn, before landing a spot in Duke Ellington's band, where he toured and recorded for the last three years of his life. During this time he also led his own record session in Stockholm, and took part in one led by Lester Young, as well as participating in several jam sessions which were also recorded.
  
  wn.com/Al_Killian
• 
  Al Sears
  Al Sears (February 21, 1910, Macomb, Illinois-March 23, 1990, New York City) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and bandleader.
  Sears's first major gig came in 1928 when he replaced Johnny Hodges in Chick Webb's ensemble. Following this he played with Elmer Snowden (1931-32), then led his own groups between 1933 and 1941. In the early 1940s he was with Andy Kirk (1941-42) and Lionel Hampton (1943-44) before he became a member of Duke Ellington's Orchestra in 1944, replacing Ben Webster. He became one of Ellington's best-known soloists, and remained in his employ until 1949, when Paul Gonsalves took over his chair. He played with Johnny Hodges in 1951-52, and recorded the tune "Castle Rock" with him; the tune became a hit, but was released under Hodges's name. He played as a studio musician on a variety of R&B albums in the 1950s and recorded two albums for Swingville Records in 1960.
  
  wn.com/Al_Sears
• 
  Alice Babs
  Alice Babs (born Hildur Alice Nilsson on 26 January 1924) is a singer and actor from Kalmar, Sweden. While she has worked in a wide number of genres - e.g. Swedish folklore, Elizabethan songs and opera - she is best known internationally as a jazz singer. Making her breakthrough in Swing it magistern (Swing It, Teacher!) (1940), she appeared in more than a dozen Swedish language-films. Despite playing the well-behaved, good-hearted, cheerful girl, the youth culture forming with Alice Babs as its icon caused outrage among members of the older generation. A vicar called the Alice Babs cult the "foot and mouth disease to cultural life".^{[citation needed]}
  In 1958, she was the first artist to represent Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in 4th place with the song "Lilla stjärna" ("Little Star"). The same year, she formed Swe-Danes with Ulrik Neumann and Svend Asmussen. The group would later tour the United States together, before dissolving in 1965. A long and productive period of collaboration with Duke Ellington started in 1963. Among other works, Alice Babs performed his second and third Sacred Concerts that were originally written for her. Her voice had a range of more than three octaves; Duke Ellington said that when she did not sing the parts that he wrote for her, he had to use three different singers.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Alice_Babs
• Armand Zildjian
  Armand Zildjian (February 18, 1921 - December 26, 2002) was an American manufacturer of cymbals and the head of the Avedis Zildjian Company.
  Born in Quincy, Massachusetts, Armand Zildjian was the scion of a cymbals-making tradition that dated back to his ancestor Avedis, who began the company in 1623 in Istanbul. By family tradition, the secrets of cymbal making were passed on only to the oldest son, but Armand's father, Avedis Zildjian III, gave the information to both of his sons, Armand and Robert. This began a legal battle which ended only when Robert formed the Sabian Cymbals Company, in competition with his brother.
  Armand Zildjian attended Colgate University, and served with the United States Coast Guard in the Pacific during World War II. After the war, he returned to his father's factory in Norwell, Massachusetts, where, with the help of such music business stars as Chick Webb and Gene Krupa, he revolutionized the cymbals business by adding them to drum sets and making them thinner.
  
  wn.com/Armand_Zildjian
• Art Baron
  Art Baron (b. January 5, 1950 in Bridgeport, Connecticut) is an American jazz trombonist. He also plays didgeridoo, conch shell, penny-whistle, alto and bass recorder, and tuba.
  Baron is an alumnus of the Berklee College of Music. He joined the Duke Ellington band in August 1973, at the age of 23, during the last year Ellington led the band, and was the last trombonist Ellington ever hired. He leads The Duke's Men, a band made up of Duke Ellington band alumni. He has performed and/or recorded with Buddy Rich, Bruce Springsteen, Lou Reed, Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Illinois Jacquet, Sam Eckhardt, Roswell Rudd, Mel Tormé, Charlie Musselwhite, Andy Harlow, Fontella Bass, Sam Rivers, Glen Velez, John Tchicai, Wilber Morris, Alan Silva, George Gruntz, Joey DeFrancesco, Bobby Watson, Elliott Sharp, Annea Lockwood, Matt Glaser, and Cyro Baptista.
  Baron lives in New York City.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Art_Baron
• Arthur Whetsol
  Arthur Whetsel was an early "sweet" trumpeter for Duke Ellington's Washingtonians. Leaving the band in 1923 to study medicine, he returned in 1928 to perform on a number of Ellington's most recognizable pieces during Ellington's stint at the Cotton Club, including "Black Beauty", "Black and Tan", and "Mood Indigo". His sound provided a contrast with Bubber Miley, Ellington's other trumpeter during the period.
  
  wn.com/Arthur_Whetsol
• 
  Barney Bigard
  Albany Leon Bigard (March 3, 1906 – June 27, 1980), aka Barney Bigard, was an American jazz clarinetist and tenor saxophonist, though primarily known for the clarinet.
  Bigard was born in New Orleans and studied music and clarinet with Lorenzo Tio. He moved to Chicago in the early 1920s, where he worked with Joe "King" Oliver and others. During this period, much of his recording with Oliver and others, including clarinetist Johnny Dodds, was on tenor saxophone, an instrument he played often with great lyricism, as on Oliver's hit recording of "Someday Sweetheart".
  In 1927 he joined Duke Ellington's band in New York, where he stayed until 1942. With Ellington, he was the featured clarinet soloist, while also doing some section work on tenor.
  After leaving Ellington's Orchestra, he moved to Los Angeles, California and did sound track work, including an onscreen featured role with an allstar band led by Louis Armstrong in the 1946 film New Orleans.
  He began working with trombonist Kid Ory's band during the late 1940s, and later worked with Louis Armstrong's touring band, the All Stars, and others. He appeared and played in the movie St. Louis Blues in 1958, with Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Pearl Bailey and Eartha Kitt.
  
  wn.com/Barney_Bigard
• 
  Ben Webster
  Benjamin Francis Webster (March 27, 1909 – September 20, 1973), a.k.a. "The Brute" or "Frog," was an influential American jazz tenor saxophonist. Webster, born in Kansas City, Missouri, was considered one of the three most important "swing tenors" along with Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Known affectionately as "The Brute", he had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with his own distinctive growls), yet on ballads he played with warmth and sentiment. Stylistically he was indebted to alto star Johnny Hodges, who, he said, taught him to play his instrument.
  Webster learned to play piano and violin at an early age, before learning to play the saxophone, although he did return to the piano from time to time, even recording on the instrument occasionally. Once Budd Johnson showed him some basics on the saxophone, Webster began to play that instrument in the Young Family Band (which at the time included Lester Young). Kansas City at this point was a melting pot from which emerged some of the biggest names in 1930s jazz, and Webster joined Bennie Moten's legendary 1932 band that included Count Basie, Oran Page and Walter Page. This era has been recreated in Robert Altman's film Kansas City.
  
  wn.com/Ben_Webster
• 
  Benny Carter
  Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
  The National Endowment for the Arts honored Benny Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, winner of the Grammy Award in 1994 for his solo "Prelude to a Kiss", and also the same year, received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2000 awarded the National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton.
  Born in New York in 1907, the youngest of three children and the only boy, received his first music lessons on piano from his mother. Largely self-taught, by age fifteen, Carter was already sitting in at Harlem night spots. From 1924 to 1928, Carter gained valuable professional experience as a sideman in some of New York's top bands. As a youth, Carter lived in Harlem around the corner from Bubber Miley who was Duke Ellington's star trumpeter, Carter was inspired by Miley and bought a trumpet, but when he found he couldn't play like Miley he traded the trumpet in for a saxophone. For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, clarinetist-soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, pianists Earl Hines, Willie "The Lion" Smith, pianist Fats Waller, pianist James P. Johnson, pianist Duke Ellington and their various groups.
  
  wn.com/Benny_Carter
• 
  Benny Goodman
  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 well-known racially-integrated jazz groups. Goodman continued to perform to nearly the end of his life, including exploring his interest in classical music.
  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.
  
  wn.com/Benny_Goodman
• 
  Betty Roché
  Mary Elizabeth "Betty" Roché (January 9, 1920 – February 16, 1999) was an American blues singer, who became most famous with her cover of the song "Take the "A" Train". She recorded with the Savoy Sultans, Hot Lips Page, Duke Ellington, Charles Brown and Clark Terry.
  Roché was born in Wilmington, Delaware, United States. She settled in New York in 1939, started her career by winning an Apollo Theater amateur talent contest, sang with the Savoy Sultans from 1941 to 1942, then with Duke Ellington in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1953, she left the Ellington band and settled in San Diego, California. In 1960, she went back to New York and recorded for Prestige.
  Roché died in February 1999, aged 79.
  
  wn.com/Betty_Roché
• 
  Billy Strayhorn
  William Thomas "Billy" Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American composer, pianist and arranger, best known for his successful collaboration with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington lasting nearly three decades. His compositions include "Chelsea Bridge", "Take the "A" Train" and "Lush Life".
  Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio. His family soon moved to the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his mother's family was from Hillsborough, North Carolina, and she sent him there to protect him from his father's drunken sprees. Strayhorn spent many months of his childhood at his grandparents' house in Hillsborough. In an interview, Strayhorn said that his grandmother was his primary influence during the first ten years of his life. He first became interested in music while living with her, playing hymns on her piano, and playing records on her Victrola record player.
  Strayhorn returned to Pittsburgh, and attended Westinghouse High School, later attended by Erroll Garner and Ahmad Jamal. In Pittsburgh, he began his musical career, studying classical music for a time at the Pittsburgh Music Institute, writing a high school musical, forming a musical trio that played daily on a local radio station, and, while still in his teens, composing (with lyrics) the songs "Life Is Lonely" (later renamed "Lush Life"), "My Little Brown Book", and "Something to Live For". While still in grade school, he worked odd jobs to earn enough money to buy his first piano. While in high school, he played in the school band, and studied under the same teacher who had also instructed jazz pianists Erroll Garner and Mary Lou Williams. By age 19, he was writing for a professional musical, Fantastic Rhythm.
  
  wn.com/Billy_Strayhorn
• Blue Mitchell
  Richard Allen (Blue) Mitchell (March 13, 1930 – May 21, 1979) was an American jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, rock, and funk trumpeter, known for many albums recorded as leader and sideman for Riverside, Blue Note and then Mainstream Records.
  Mitchell was born and raised in Miami, Florida. He began playing trumpet in high school where he acquired his nickname, Blue.
  After high school he played in the rhythm and blues ensembles of Paul Williams, Earl Bostic, and Chuck Willis. After returning to Miami he was noticed by Cannonball Adderley, with whom he recorded for Riverside Records in New York in 1958.
  He then joined the Horace Silver Quintet, playing with tenor saxophonist Junior Cook, bassist Gene Taylor and drummer Roy Brooks. Mitchell stayed with Silver's group until the band's break-up in 1964, after which he formed a group with members from the Silver quintet, substituting the young pianist Chick Corea for Silver and replacing Brooks, who had fallen ill, with drummer Al Foster. This group produced a number of records for Blue Note, disbanding in 1969, after which Mitchell joined and toured with Ray Charles till 1971.
  
  wn.com/Blue_Mitchell
• 
  Bob Hope
  Bob Hope, KBE, KCSG, KSS (born Leslie Townes Hope; May 29, 1903 – July 27, 2003) was an English-born American comedian and actor who appeared in vaudeville, on Broadway, and in radio, television and movies. He was also noted for his work with the US Armed Forces and his numerous USO shows entertaining American military personnel. Throughout his long career, he was honored for his humanitarian work. In 1996, the U.S. Congress honored Bob Hope by declaring him the "first and only honorary veteran of the U.S. armed forces." Bob Hope appeared in or hosted 199 known USO shows.
  Hope was born in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons. His English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaning woman. She married William Hope in April 1891 and the couple set up home at 12 Greenwood Street in the town, then moved to Whitehall and St George in Bristol, before eventually moving to Cleveland, Ohio in 1908. The family emigrated to the United States aboard the SS Philadelphia, and passed inspection at Ellis Island on March 30, 1908. Hope became a U.S. citizen in 1920 at the age of 17. In a 1942 legal document, Hope's legal name is given as Lester Townes Hope. His name on the Social Security Index is also listed as Lester T. Hope. His name as registered at birth was Leslie Towns [sic] Hope.
  
  wn.com/Bob_Hope
• Booty Wood
  Mitchell W. Wood, better known as Booty Wood (December 27, 1919, Dayton, Ohio - June 10, 1987, Dayton) was an American jazz trombonist.
  Wood played professionally on trombone from the late 1930s. He worked with Tiny Bradshaw and Lionel Hampton in the 1940s before joining the Navy during World War II. While there he played in a band with Clark Terry, Willie Smith, and Gerald Wilson. After his service ended he returned to play with Hampton, then worked with Arnett Cobb (1947-48), Erskine Hawkins (1948-50), and Count Basie (1951).
  He spent a few years outside of music, then played with Duke Ellington in 1959-60 and again in 1963; he returned once more early in the 1970s. He again played with the Count Basie Orchestra from 1979 into the middle of the following decade.
  
  wn.com/Booty_Wood
• Britt Woodman
  Britt Woodman (June 4, 1920, Los Angeles – October 13, 2000, Hawthorne, California) was a jazz trombonist. He is perhaps best known for his work with Duke Ellington and Charles Mingus.
  He knew Mingus from childhood, but first worked with Phil Moore and Les Hite. After service in World War II he played with Boyd Raeburn before joining with Lionel Hampton in 1946. In the 1950s he would work with Ellington. As a member of Ellington's band he can be heard on The Complete Porgy and Bess, Such Sweet Thunder, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, Black, Brown, and Beige and Indigos.
  In 1960 he moved on from Ellington to work in a pit orchestra. Later he worked with Mingus and can be heard on the 1963 album Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus. In the 1970s he led his own octet and worked with Toshiko Akiyoshi. In 1989 he was in the personnel for the album Epitaph (Mingus).
  Steve Turre, among others, have cited him as an influence.
  
  wn.com/Britt_Woodman
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  Buddy Rich
  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.
  Rich was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Jewish 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^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}.
  
  wn.com/Buddy_Rich
• Buster Cooper
  George "Buster" Cooper (born April 4, 1929) is an American jazz trombonist.
  Cooper was born in St. Petersburg, Florida. He played in a territory band with Nat Towles in Texas in the late 1940s, and gigged with Lionel Hampton in 1953. He played in the house band at the Apollo Theater in New York City in the mid-1950s, and following this spent time with Benny Goodman. Late in the 1950s he and his brother Steve formed a unit, the Cooper Brothers Band. From 1962 to 1969 he was trombonist in Duke Ellington's Orchestra. In 1973 he moved to Los Angeles and played in various jazz orchestras there over the next several decades; among them were The Juggernaut and Bill Berry's L.A. band. He has never recorded as a leader.
  Cooper currently is a bandleader, of the Buster Cooper Trio, at The Garden Restaurant, Saint Petersburg, Florida.
  
  wn.com/Buster_Cooper
• Butch Ballard
  George Edward "Butch" Ballard (December 26, 1918 – October 1, 2011) was an American jazz drummer who during his long career played with musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.
  Ballard was born in Camden, New Jersey and grew up in Frankford, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child he followed American Legion parades near his home, focusing particularly on the drummer. When he was about 10 years old, Ballard's father bought him a set of drums from a pawnbroker and he began to take lessons for 75 cents each. He got the nickname "Butch" after Machine Gun Butch, a character in the 1930 film The Big House. He attended Northeast High School in Philadelphia. When he was 21, he married Jessie, for whom he bought a house in Philadelphia in 1950.
  At around 16 years old, Ballard listened to Herb Thornton's band at the Boys Club in Philadelphia. They let him play with them, and he was invited to join a band by a man who heard him. For the following few months, he carried his drums across Philadelphia to rehearse. In 1938, Ballard started playing with Louis Armstrong's band The Dukes. He performed with them for a few years. In 1941 he began playing with the Cootie Williams Orchestra, performing with Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Pearl Bailey.
  
  wn.com/Butch_Ballard
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  Carmen Miranda
  Carmen Miranda, GCIH (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkaɾmẽȷ̃ miˈɾɐ̃dɐ], 9 February 1909 – 5 August 1955) was a Portuguese-born Braziliansamba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s. She was, by some accounts, the highest-earning woman in the United States and noted for her signature fruit hat outfit she wore in the 1943 movie The Gang's All Here. Though hailed as a talented performer, her movie roles in the United States soon became cartoonish and she grew to resent them. She is considered the precursor of Brazil's Tropicalismo.
  Carmen Miranda was born Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha in Várzea da Ovelha e Aliviada, a village in the northern Portuguese municipality of Marco de Canaveses. She was the second daughter of José Maria Pinto da Cunha (17 February 1887 – 21 June 1938) and Maria Emília Miranda (10 March 1886 – Rio de Janeiro, 9 November 1971). In 1909 when she was 10-months old, her father emigrated alone to Brazil and settled in Rio de Janeiro, where he opened a barber shop. Her mother followed in 1910 with their daughters Olinda and Maria do Carmo. Maria do Carmo, later Carmen, never returned to Portugal, but retained her Portuguese nationality. In Brazil, her parents had four more children: Amaro (1911), Cecília (1913), Aurora (1915–2005) and Óscar (1916).
  
  wn.com/Carmen_Miranda
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  Cat Anderson
  William Alonzo Anderson (12 September 1916 – 29 April 1981), known as Cat Anderson, was an American jazz trumpeter best known for his long period playing with Duke Ellington's orchestra, and for his extremely wide range (more than five octaves), especially his playing in the higher registers.
  Born in Greenville, South Carolina, Anderson lost both parents when he was four years old, and was sent to live at the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, where he learned to play trumpet. Classmates gave him the nickname "Cat" (which he used all his life) based on his fighting style. He toured and made his first recording with the Carolina Cotton Pickers, a small group based at the orphanage. After leaving the Cotton Pickers, Anderson played with guitarist Hartley Toots, Claude Hopkins' big band, Doc Wheeler's Sunset Orchestra (1938–1942), with whom he also recorded, Lucky Millinder, the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, Sabby Lewis's Orchestra, and Lionel Hampton, with whom he recorded the classic "Flying Home #2".
  
  wn.com/Cat_Anderson
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  Charlie Barnet
  Charles Daly Barnet (October 26, 1913 – September 4, 1991) was an American jazz saxophonist, composer, and bandleader.
  His major recordings were "Skyliner", "Cherokee", "The Wrong Idea", "Scotch and Soda", "In a Mizz", and "Southland Shuffle".
  Charlie Barnet was born in New York City. His parents divorced when he was two, and he was raised by his mother and her grandparents. His grandfather was Charles Frederick Daly, a vice-president for the New York Central Railroad, banker, and businessman.
  Barnet attended various boarding schools, both in the New York and Chicago areas. He learned to play piano and saxophone as a child. He often left school to listen to music and to try to gain work as a musician.
  Although he began his recording career in October 1933, Charlie Barnet was at the height of his popularity between 1939 and 1941, a period that began with his hit version of "Cherokee", written by Ray Noble and arranged by Billy May. In 1944, Barnet had another big hit with "Skyliner". In 1947, he started to switch from swing music to bebop. During his swing period his band included Buddy DeFranco, Roy Eldridge, Neal Hefti, Lena Horne, Barney Kessel, Dodo Marmorosa, Oscar Pettiford, and Art House, while later versions of the band included Maynard Ferguson, Doc Severinsen, and Clark Terry. Trumpeter Billy May was an arranger in the Charlie Barnet Orchestra before joining Glenn Miller in 1940.
  
  wn.com/Charlie_Barnet
• Chick Webb
  William Henry Webb, usually known as Chick Webb (February 10, 1905 – June 16, 1939) was an American jazz and swing music drummer as well as a band leader.
  Webb was born in Baltimore, Maryland to William H. and Marie Johnson Webb. From childhood, he suffered from tuberculosis of the spine, leaving him with short stature and a badly deformed spine. He supported himself as a newspaper boy to save enough money to buy drums, and first played professionally at age 11.
  At the age of 17 he moved to New York City and by 1926, he was leading his own band in Harlem. Jazz drummer Tommy Benford said he gave Webb drum lessons when he first reached New York.
  He alternated between band tours and residencies at New York City clubs through the late 1920s. In 1931, his band became the house band at the Savoy Ballroom. He became one of the best-regarded bandleaders and drummers of the new "Swing" style. Drumming legend Buddy Rich cited Webb's powerful technique and virtuoso performances as heavily influential on his own drumming, and even referred to Webb as "the daddy of them all". The Savoy often featured "Battle of the Bands" where Webb's band would compete with other top bands (such as the Benny Goodman Orchestra or the Count Basie Orchestra) from opposing bandstands. By the end of the night's battles the dancers seemed always to have voted Chick's band as the best. As a result Webb was deemed the most worthy recipient to be crowned the first "King of Swing." Notably, Webb lost to Duke Ellington in 1937. Although a judge declared Webb's band the official winner in 1938 over Count Basie's, and Basie himself said he was just relieved to come away from the contest without embarrassing himself, surviving musicians continued to dispute the ruling for decades to follow.{}
  
  wn.com/Chick_Webb
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  Clark Terry
  Clark Terry (born December 14, 1920) is an American swing and bop trumpeter, a pioneer of the flugelhorn in jazz, educator, NEA Jazz Masters inductee, and recipient of the 2010 Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Only three other trumpet players in history have ever received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award: Louis Armstrong (Clark's old mentor), Miles Davis (whom Clark mentored), and Dizzy Gillespie (who often described Clark as the greatest jazz trumpet player on earth). Clark Terry is one of the most prolific jazz musicians in history, having appeared on 905 known recording sessions, which makes him the most recorded trumpet player of all time. In comparison, Louis Armstrong performed on 620 sessions, Harry "Sweets" Edison on 563, and Dizzy Gillespie on 501.
  He has played with Charlie Barnet (1947), Count Basie (1948–1951),Duke Ellington (1951–1959) and Quincy Jones (1960), and has recorded regularly both as a leader and sideman. In all, his career in jazz spans more than sixty years.
  
  wn.com/Clark_Terry
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  Conte Candoli
  Secondo "Conte" Candoli (July 12, 1927–December 14, 2001) was an American jazz trumpeter based on the West Coast. He played in the big bands of Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman, and Dizzy Gillespie, and in Doc Severinsen's NBC Orchestra on The Tonight Show. He played with Gerry Mulligan, and on Frank Sinatra's TV specials. He also recorded with Supersax, a Charlie Parker tribute band that consisted of a saxophone quintet, the rhythm section, and either a trumpet or trombone.
  Conte was the younger brother of trumpeter Pete Candoli. He was born in Mishawaka, Indiana, on July 12, 1927. During the summer of 1943, before his junior year at Mishawaka High School in Mishawaka, Indiana, that Secondo "Conte" Candoli first sat in with Woody Herman's First Herd. After graduation in 1945, he joined the band full-time where he sat side-by-side with brother Pete Candoli in the trumpet section. Conte immediately went on the road, where he stayed for the next ten years, with Woody as well as with the legendary bands of Stan Kenton, Benny Goodman and Dizzy Gillespie.
  
  wn.com/Conte_Candoli
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  Cootie Williams
  Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams (July 10, 1911 – September 15, 1985) was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter.
  Born in Mobile, Alabama, United States, Williams began his professional career with the Young Family band, which included saxophonist Lester Young, when he was 14 years old. In 1928, he made his first recordings with pianist James P. Johnson in New York, where he also worked briefly in the bands of Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson. He rose to prominence as a member of Duke Ellington's orchestra, with which he performed from 1929 to 1940. He also recorded his own sessions during this time, both freelance and with other Ellington sidemen. In 1940 he joined Benny Goodman's orchestra, then in 1941 formed his own orchestra, in which over the years he employed Charlie Parker, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Bud Powell, Eddie Vinson, and other important young players.
  In 1947, Williams wrote the song "Cowpox Boogie" while recuperating from a bout with smallpox. He contracted the disease from a vaccination he insisted all band members receive.
  
  wn.com/Cootie_Williams
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  Count Basie
  William "Count" Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother first taught him piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and improvised to accompany silent films at a local theater in his town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with groups to the major jazz cities of Chicago, St. Louis and Kansas City. In 1929 he joined Bennie Moten's band in Kansas City, and played with them for years, until Moten's death in 1935.
  That year Basie formed his own jazz orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others. Many notable musicians came to prominence under his direction, including the tenor saxophonists Lester Young and Herschel Evans, the guitarist Freddie Green, trumpeters Buck Clayton and Harry "Sweets" Edison and singers Jimmy Rushing and Joe Williams. Basie's theme songs were "One O'Clock Jump," developed in 1935 in the early days of his band, and "April In Paris".
  
  wn.com/Count_Basie
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  Danny Kaye
  Danny Kaye (born David Daniel Kaminski; January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. His best known performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and rapid-fire nonsense songs.
  Kaye starred in 17 movies, notably The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), Hans Christian Andersen (1952), and — perhaps his most accomplished performance — The Court Jester (1956). His films were extremely popular, especially his bravura performances of patter songs and children's favorites such as The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF in 1954 and received the French Legion of Honor in 1986 for his many years of work with the organization.
  David Daniel Kaminski was born to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn. Jacob and Clara Nemerovsky Kaminski and their two sons, Larry and Mac, left Ekaterinoslav two years before his birth; he was the only one of their sons born in the United States. He spent his early youth attending Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn, where he began entertaining his young classmates with songs and jokes, before moving to Thomas Jefferson High School, but he never graduated. His mother died when he was in his early teens. Clara enjoyed the impressions and humor of her youngest son and always had words of encouragement for them; her death was a great loss for young Danny.
  
  wn.com/Danny_Kaye
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  Dizzy Gillespie
  John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie ( /ɡɨˈlɛspi/; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and, occasionally, singer.
  Allmusic's Scott Yanow wrote, "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."
  Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic complexity previously unknown in jazz. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks and his light-hearted personality were essential in popularizing bebop.
  In the 1940s Gillespie, together with Charlie Parker, became 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.
  
  wn.com/Dizzy_Gillespie
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  Don Menza
  Don Menza (born April 22, 1936) is an American saxophonist, arranger, composer, session musician, and jazz educator noted for his many contributions to American jazz and big band music.
  Don Menza was born and raised in Buffalo, New York, where he began playing tenor saxophone when he was 13. He studied saxophone with musician and teacher John Sedola. After serving in the U. S. Army, he worked with Maynard Ferguson's Orchestra (1960–1962) as both a soloist and an arranger. A short tenure with Stan Kenton and a year leading a quintet in Buffalo preceded a period living in Germany (1964–1968). Later, he returned to the United States and joined Buddy Rich's 1968 big band in the "jazz tenor" chair, recording the famous solo cadenza on "Channel One Suite" (Recorded "live" at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas) that utilized circular breathing and has become known as a classic among music educators and musicians alike. In the late 1960s, he settled in California and performed in the bands of Elvin Jones (1969) and Louie Bellson. Other artists with which Menza has recorded include Keely Smith, Cold Blood, Natalie Cole, Pat Boone, and Leonard Cohen.
  
  wn.com/Don_Menza
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  Duke Ellington
  Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and big-band leader. Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions. In the opinion of Bob Blumenthal of The Boston Globe "In the century since his birth, there has been no greater composer, American or otherwise, than Edward Kennedy Ellington." A major figure in the history of jazz, Ellington's music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, composing stage musicals, and world tours. Several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death and the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowed on him a special posthumous honor in 1999.
  
  wn.com/Duke_Ellington
• Eddie Preston
  Eddie Preston (May 9, 1925 – June 22, 2009) was an American jazz trumpeter.
  He was born in Dallas, Texas and died in Palm Coast, Florida.
  Preston began playing in big bands after World War II, and did stints with Lionel Hampton (1955-56), Ray Charles (1959), Louis Jordan (1960-61), Duke Ellington (1962), and Count Basie (1963). He played with Charles Mingus between 1963 and 1965 and again in 1970-72, with the time in between spent freelancing with musicians such as Sonny Stitt and Frank Foster. He played again with Ellington in 1971 and then did some work as a leader, as well as working with Roland Kirk in 1977 and Archie Shepp in 1979.
  With Charles Mingus
  
  wn.com/Eddie_Preston
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  Ella Fitzgerald
  Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996), also known as the "First Lady of Song", "Queen of Jazz", and "Lady Ella", was an American jazz and song vocalist. With a vocal range spanning three octaves (D♭3 to D♭6), she was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing.
  Fitzgerald was a notable interpreter of the Great American Songbook. Over the course of her 59-year recording career, she was the winner of 13 Grammy Awards and was awarded the National Medal of Arts by Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George H. W. Bush.
  Fitzgerald was born in Newport News, Virginia, the child of a common-law marriage between William and Temperance "Tempie" Fitzgerald. The pair separated soon after her birth and she and her mother went to Yonkers, New York, where they eventually moved in with Tempie's longtime boyfriend, Joseph Da Silva. Fitzgerald's half-sister, Frances Da Silva, was born in 1923. She and her family were Methodists and were active in the Bethany African Methodist Episcopal Church and she regularly attended worship services, Bible study, and Sunday School.
  
  wn.com/Ella_Fitzgerald
• Ernie Royal
  Ernest Andrew Royal (June 2, 1921 in Los Angeles – March 16, 1983 in New York City) was a jazz trumpeter.
  His older brother was clarinetist and alto saxophonist Marshal Royal, with whom he appears on the classic Ray Charles big band recording The Genius of Ray Charles (1959).
  He began in Los Angeles as a member of Les Hite's Orchestra in 1937. In the following 20 years he would work with Lionel Hampton, Woody Herman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Wardell Gray, Stan Kenton and recording as a member of the Charles Mingus Octet, with Teo Macero, John Lewis and Kenny Clarke, among others, in 1953.
  He led ten albums, most of them recorded in Paris. In 1957 he became a staff musician for the American Broadcasting Company. He went on to play in the Tonight Show Band and can be heard on the Miles Davis albums Miles Ahead (1957), Porgy and Bess (1958), and Sketches of Spain (1960).
  A resident of Teaneck, New Jersey, Royal died of cancer at age 61 at Mount Sinai Hospital on March 16, 1983.
  
  wn.com/Ernie_Royal
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  Frank Sinatra
  Francis Albert "Frank" Sinatra,  /sɨˈnɑːtrə/, (December 12, 1915 – May 14, 1998) was an American singer and film actor.
  Beginning his musical career in the swing era with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra became an unprecedentedly successful solo artist in the early to mid-1940s, after being signed to Columbia Records in 1943. Being the idol of the "bobby soxers", he released his first album, The Voice of Frank Sinatra in 1946. His professional career had stalled by the 1950s, but it was reborn in 1953 after he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in From Here to Eternity.
  He signed with Capitol Records in 1953 and released several critically lauded albums (such as In the Wee Small Hours, Songs for Swingin' Lovers, Come Fly with Me, Only the Lonely and Nice 'n' Easy). Sinatra left Capitol to found his own record label, Reprise Records in 1961 (finding success with albums such as Ring-a-Ding-Ding!, Sinatra at the Sands and Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim), toured internationally, was a founding member of the Rat Pack and fraternized with celebrities and statesmen, including John F. Kennedy. Sinatra turned 50 in 1965, recorded the retrospective September of My Years, starred in the Emmy-winning television special Frank Sinatra: A Man and His Music, and scored hits with "Strangers in the Night" and "My Way".
  
  wn.com/Frank_Sinatra
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  Fraser MacPherson
  John Fraser MacPherson, CM (10 April 1928 - 27 September 1993) was a Canadian jazz musician born in St. Boniface, Manitoba.
  He moved to Victoria, British Columbia as a child, where he learned piano, clarinet, alto and tenor saxophones. After moving to Vancouver to continue a commerce degree, he played in bands led by Ray Norris, Dave Robbins, Paul Ruhland and Doug Parker as well as leading his own groups and eventually taking over the leadership of the Cave supperclub band. He took a year's leave in 1958 to study in New York, adding the flute to his list of instruments. He played on the CBC and won a Juno Award for Best Jazz Album in 1983. He was awarded the Order of Canada in 1987.
  Throughout the 1960s and 1970s MacPherson was a first-call studio player in Vancouver, as well as leading the house band at the Cave supperclub. He also taught briefly in the Jazz and Commercial Music department at Vancouver Community College, where his students included future Powder Blues Band baritone saxophonist Gordie Bertram and New Orleans based saxophonist and jazz educator John Doheny. MacPherson's first album as leader of a small jazz group, Live at the Planetarium, was originally recorded for broadcast on the French-language CBC radio network. MacPherson leased the master tapes and released them on his own independent label, West End Records. The album was subsequently picked up and re-released on the Concord label, and MacPherson went on to record several other releases for them. He also recorded for Toronto's Sackville records and Montreal's Justin Time label.
  
  wn.com/Fraser_MacPherson
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  Fred Guy
  Fred Guy (b. May 23, 1897, Burkesville, Georgia - d. Dec. 22, 1971) was an American jazz banjo player and guitarist.
  Guy was raised in New York City. He played guitar and banjo with Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra, and in 1925 he joined Duke Ellington's Washingtonians, replacing Elmer Snowden. Guy played with Ellington for 24 years, including his years at the Cotton Club.
  Early on he played only banjo but in the 1930s started playing more and more guitar with the band as the rhythm section in jazz changed rapidly. He played a Gibson banjo and an L5 or L7 Gibson guitar.
  On Ellington's "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" he plays a moving line with chords using inversions and on "Black and Tan Fantasy" he plays backwards fan strokes which are difficult to hear on the recording. He did not solo, and his guitar work is often difficult to hear on record. After he left Ellington's band in 1949, he was not replaced.
  He went on to manage a ballroom in Chicago. He appeared in the 1929 film Black and Tan with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
  
  wn.com/Fred_Guy
• Freddie Jenkins
  Freddie "Posey" Jenkins (October 10, 1906–1978) was an American jazz trumpeter.
  Jenkins played in the Jenkins Orphanage Band when young, and attended Wilberforce University. following this he played with Edgar Hayes and Horace Henderson (1924–28) before taking a position in Duke Ellington's Orchestra in 1928. As a member, he soloed in the 1930 film Check and Double Check during a performance of the song "Old Man Blues". He remained with the Ellington Orchestra until 1934, when lung problems forced him to quit.
  He recovered and formed his own group in 1935, recording one session as a leader; sidemen included Ward Pinkett, Albert Nicholas and Bernard Addison. After this he played with Luis Russell in 1936. In 1937-38 he played with Ellington again, and for a short time thereafter played with Hayes Alvis. After 1938, his lung ailment returned and he retired from performance. In later years he worked in songwriting, disc jockeying, and in music press.
  
  wn.com/Freddie_Jenkins
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  Gene Krupa
  Gene Krupa (January 15, 1909 – October 16, 1973) was an American jazz and big band drummer and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style.
  Eugene Bertram Krupa was born in Chicago, the youngest of Anna (Oslowski) and Bartłomiej Krupa's nine children. Krupa's father, Bartłomiej, was an immigrant from Poland, and his mother, Anna, was born in Shamokin, Pennsylvania. His parents were very religious and had groomed Gene for the priesthood. He spent his grammar school days at various parochial schools and upon graduation, attended St Joseph's College for a year, but later decided it was not his vocation. He studied with Sanford A. Moeller and began playing professionally in the mid 1920s with bands in Wisconsin. He broke into the Chicago scene in 1927, when he was picked by MCA to become a member of "Thelma Terry and Her Playboys," the first notable American Jazz band (outside of all-girl bands) to be led by a female musician. The Playboys were the house band at The Golden Pumpkin nightclub in Chicago and also toured extensively throughout the eastern and central United States.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Gene_Krupa
• Harold Ashby
  Harold Ashby (March 21, 1925 in Kansas City, Missouri – June 13, 2003 in New York City) was a jazz tenor saxophonist. He is perhaps known for his work with Duke Ellington's band (having replaced Jimmy Hamilton in 1968) and stylistic similarities with Ben Webster.
  He worked as a freelance musician after leaving the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1975, and took part in various reunions of Ellington alumni, as well as recording and gigging with his own bands. Recorded interview about his life at: http://www.jazzure.com/ashby.html
  
  
  
  wn.com/Harold_Ashby
• Harold Farberman
  Harold Farberman (born November 2, 1929) is an American conductor, composer, and percussionist.
  Farberman studied percussion at Juilliard and composition at the New England Conservatory and at Tanglewood with Aaron Copland. In 1951, he joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra as the youngest player ever to become a full-time member of the orchestra..
  Farberman's conducting positions included principal guest conductor of the Denver Symphony Orchestra in 1963, and music director and conductor of the Colorado Springs Orchestra from 1967–1970, and the Oakland Symphony Orchestra (later reorganized as the Oakland East Bay Symphony) from 1971 to 1979, where he gave a rare concert performance of Scott Joplin's folk opera Treemonisha. He has championed the work of Charles Ives, having recorded more of his works than any other conductor including all four of his symphonies. He has also recorded the complete symphonies of Gustav Mahler and Michael Haydn with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta, respectively.
  
  wn.com/Harold_Farberman
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  Harry Carney
  Harry Howell Carney (April 1, 1910 – October 8, 1974) was an American swing baritone saxophonist, clarinetist, and bass clarinetist mainly known for his 45-year tenure in Duke Ellington's Orchestra. Carney started off as an alto player with Ellington, but soon switched to the baritone. His strong, steady saxophone often served as the anchor of Duke's music. He also played clarinet and bass clarinet on occasion.
  Harry Howell Carney was born in 1910 in Boston, Massachusetts. At seventeen he ran off to join Duke Ellington's orchestra starting first on clarinet and eventually moving on to baritone saxophone.
  Carney was the longest serving player in Duke Ellington's orchestra. He was always present and on occasions when Ellington was absent he took over as conductor, particularly when Ellington wished to make a stage entrance after the band had begun playing the first piece of a performance. Ellington and Carney were close friends. The majority of their careers they rode together in Carney's car to concerts, allowing Ellington to come up with new ideas. Fictionalised accounts of these road trips are documented in Geoff Dyer's But Beautiful.
  
  wn.com/Harry_Carney
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  Harry James
  Henry Haag “Harry” James (March 15, 1916 - July 5, 1983) was an actor and musician best known as a trumpeter who led a swing band during the Big Band Swing Era of the 1930s and 1940s. He was especially known among musicians for his astonishing technical proficiency as well as his superior tone.
  Harry James was born in Albany, Georgia, the son of a bandleader of a traveling circus. By the age of 10 he was taking trumpet lessons from his father, who placed him on a strict daily practice schedule. Each day, James was given one page to learn from the Arban's book and was not allowed to pursue any other pastime until he had learned that particular page.
  In 1931 his family settled in Beaumont, Texas, where James began playing with local dance bands.
  In 1935 he joined the nationally popular Ben Pollack but at the start of 1937 left Pollack to join Benny Goodman's orchestra, where he stayed through 1938. He was nicknamed "The Hawk" early in his career for his ability to "sight-read." A common joke was that if a fly landed on his written music, Harry James would play it. His low range had a warmth associated with the cornet and even the flugelhorn, but he achieved this on the trumpet. This was emulated by Jack Sheldon, but this sound was underrecorded in favor of James' brilliant high register.
  
  wn.com/Harry_James
• Hayes Alvis
  Hayes Alvis (May 1, 1907 – December 29, 1972) was an American jazz bassist and tubist.
  Born in Chicago on May 1, 1907, Alvis began on drums but switched to tuba and bass after playing with Jelly Roll Morton in 1927-28. He played tuba with Earl Hines from 1928 to 1930, and did arrangements for Hines as well.
  He moved to New York City in 1931 and played with Jimmie Noone in the Mills Blue Rhythm Band from 1931–34 and 1936. A very early double-bass solo can be heard on his 1932 recording "Rhythm Spasm". Alvis also occasionally played baritone saxophone in this ensemble as well, and was the group's tour namager. From 1935 to 1938 Alvis played with Duke Ellington, working with fellow bassist/tubist Billy Taylor.
  After his stint with Ellington, Alvis played with Benny Carter, Joe Sullivan, and Louis Armstrong (in whose ensemble he replaced Pops Foster). From 1942 to 1945 he played in an Army band led by Sy Oliver. After the war, he played with Dave Martin^{[disambiguation needed ]} until 1947, and then took a longstanding run as a house musician at the Cafe Society in New York City.
  
  wn.com/Hayes_Alvis
• Herb Jeffries
  Herbert "Herb" Jeffries (born September 24, 1913) is an American jazz and popular singer and actor.
  Born in Detroit, Michigan as Herbert Jeffrey, he is the son of Umberto Balentino, a pianist of African-American and Sicilian descent and his wife, Mildred, who was of Irish descent.
  A jazz and popular singer, Jeffries is noted for being the first black man to star in an American western. He starred as a singing cowboy in several all-black Western films, in which he sang his own western compositions. Jeffries obtained financing for the first black western film and hired Spencer Williams to appear with him. In addition to starring in the film, he sang and performed his own stunts as the cowboy character Bob Blake.
  Jeffries began his career working with Erskine Tate and his Vendome Orchestra when he moved to Chicago from Detroit at the urging of Louis Armstrong. His break came during the 1933 Chicago World's Fair—Century of Progress Exposition singing with the Earl Hines Orchestra on Hines’ national broadcasts live from the Grand Terrace Cafe. His first recordings were with Hines in 1934, including "Just to be in Carolina". As of 2011, Jeffries is the sole surviving member of that Earl Hines orchestra. He then recorded extensively with Duke Ellington from 1940 to 1942. His most famous song, "Flamingo" (recorded in 1940 with Ellington), sold over 50 million copies. He was replaced in the Ellington band by Al Hibbler in 1943.
  
  wn.com/Herb_Jeffries
• Herbie Jones
  Herbie Jones (1926, Miami - March 19, 2001, New York City) was an American jazz trumpeter and arranger.
  Jones dropped out of college to move to New York, where he joined the Lucky Millinder band. In subsequent years he worked with Andy Kirk, Buddy Johnson, and Cab Calloway, and studied under Eddie Barefield. Jones spent several years as Duke Ellington's first trumpeter in the 1960s, and worked as an arranger and transcriber with Ellington and Billy Strayhorn. Among his arrangements were "El Busto", "Cootie's Caravan", "The Prowling Cat", and "The Opener".
  After leaving Ellington, Jones became director of an alternative school in New York, and directed the Police Athletic League's bugle corps. He died as a result of diabetes in 2001.
  
  wn.com/Herbie_Jones
• Hilton Jefferson
  Hilton Jefferson (July 30, 1903 – November 14, 1968) was an American jazz alto saxophonist born in Danbury, Connecticut, perhaps best-known for leading the saxophone section from 1940-1949 in the Cab Calloway band. Jefferson is said to have been "a soft, delicate saxophone player, with an exquisite sensibility."
  In 1929 Jefferson began his professional career with Claude Hopkins, and throughout the 1930s was busy working for the big bands of Chick Webb, Fletcher Henderson and McKinney's Cotton Pickers. From 1952-1953 Jefferson performed with Duke Ellington, but ultimately became a bank guard to support himself with a steady income. In the 1950s he continued to perform, especially with Rex Stewart and some former members of the Fletcher Henderson band.
  With Dizzy Gillespie
  
  wn.com/Hilton_Jefferson
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  Howard Hawks
  Howard Winchester Hawks (May 30, 1896–December 26, 1977) was an American film director, producer and screenwriter of the classic Hollywood era. He is popular for his films from a wide range of genres such as Scarface (1932), Bringing Up Baby (1938), Only Angels Have Wings (1939), His Girl Friday (1940), Sergeant York (1941), To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Red River (1948), The Thing from Another World (1951), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and Rio Bravo (1959).
  In 1975, Hawks was awarded the Honorary Academy Award as "a master American filmmaker whose creative efforts hold a distinguished place in world cinema," and in 1942 he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for Sergeant York.
  Howard Hawks was born in Goshen, Indiana on May 30, 1896. Hawks was the first-born child of Frank W. Hawks (1865–1950), a wealthy paper manufacturer, and the former Helen Howard (1872–1952), the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. Hawks's family on his father's side were American pioneers and his ancestor John Hawks had emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1630. The family eventually settled in Goshen and by the 1890s was one of the wealthiest families in the Mid-West, due mostly to the highly profitable Goshen Milling Company. Hawk's maternal grandfather C. W. Howard (1845–1916) had homesteaded in Neenah, Wisconsin in 1862 at age 17 and within 15 years had earned a fortune in the town's Paper mill and other industrial endeavors. Frank Hawks and Helen Howard met in the early 1890s and married in 1895. Hawks was the oldest of five children and his birth was followed by Kenneth Neil Hawks (August 12, 1899- January 2, 1930), William Bellinger Hawks (1902- January 10, 1969), Grace Louise Hawks (October 17, 1903- December 23, 1927) and Helen Bernice Hawks (1906- May 4, 1911). In 1898 the family moved to Neenah, Wisconsin where Franks Hawks began working for his father-in-law's Howard Paper Company.
  
  wn.com/Howard_Hawks
• Irving Mills
  Irving Mills (January 16, 1894 – April 21, 1985) was a jazz music publisher, also known by the name of "Joe Primrose."
  Mills was born to Jewish parents in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. He founded Mills Music with his brother Jack in 1919. Between 1919 and 1965, when they sold Mills Music, Inc., they built and became the largest independent music publisher in the world. He died in 1985 in Palm Springs, California. His interment was at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery.
  Irving and Jack discovered a number of great songwriters, among them Sammy Fain, Harry Barris, Gene Austin, Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy McHugh, and Dorothy Fields. He either discovered or greatly advanced the careers of Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, Ben Pollack, Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, Will Hudson, Raymond Scott and many others.
  Although not a musician himself (he did sing, however), Irving decided to put together his own studio recording group. In Irving Mills and his Hotsy Totsy Gang he had for sidemen: Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Arnold Brillhardt, Arthur Schutt, and Manny Klein. Other variations of his bands featured Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, and Red Nichols (Irving gave Red Nichols the tag "and his Five Pennies.")
  
  wn.com/Irving_Mills
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  Ivie Anderson
  Ivie Anderson (sometimes Ivy) (July 10, 1905 – December 28, 1949) was an American jazz singer. She was best known for her performances with Duke Ellington's orchestra between 1931 and 1942.
  She was born in Gilroy, California. With a sweet, clear singing voice, she was a popular attraction with Ellington's band. Her performance of "Stormy Weather" in the movie short Bundle of Blues (1933) was only eclipsed by the later and far better known version sung by Lena Horne in Horne's movie that was also entitled Stormy Weather (1943).
  Over Ellington's long career as bandleader, his indifference toward vocalists changed with the hiring of Anderson, who was generally considered the best vocalist he ever employed.
  She also appeared as a singer in the Marx Brothers movie A Day at the Races (1937) and the same year in Hit Parade of 1937 (as Ivy Anderson).
  Other Ellington songs featuring Anderson include
  (The Gotham Stompers session included members of Ellington's band plus members of Chick Webb's) ," "My Old Flame," "When My Sugar Walks Down the Street," "Mood Indigo," "Rocks in My Bed" and "I Got It Bad & That Ain't Good."
  
  wn.com/Ivie_Anderson
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  James Brown
  James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist. He is the originator of funk music and is a major figure of 20th century popular music and dance.
  In a career that spanned decades, Brown profoundly influenced the development of many different musical genres. Brown moved on a continuum of blues and gospel-based forms and styles to a profoundly "Africanized" approach to music making. Brown performed in concerts, first making his rounds across the Chitlin' Circuit, and then across the country and later around the world, along with appearing in shows on television and in movies. Although he contributed much to the music world through his hitmaking, Brown holds the record as the artist who charted the most singles on the Billboard Hot 100 without ever hitting number one on that chart.
  For many years, Brown's touring show was one of the most extravagant productions in American popular music. At the time of Brown's death, his band included three guitarists, two bass guitar players, two drummers, three horns and a percussionist. The bands that he maintained during the late 1960s and 1970s were of comparable size, and the bands also included a three-piece amplified string section that played during ballads. Brown employed between 40 and 50 people for the James Brown Revue, and members of the revue traveled with him in a bus to cities and towns all over the country, performing upwards of 330 shows a year with almost all of the shows as one-nighters. In 1986, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and in 1990 into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
  
  wn.com/James_Brown
• Jimmy Blanton
  Jimmie Blanton (October 5, 1918 – July 30, 1942) was an influential American jazz double bassist. Blanton is credited with being the originator of more complex pizzicato and bowed bass solos in a jazz context than previous bassists.
  Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Blanton originally learned to play the violin, but took up the bass while at Tennessee State University, performing with the Tennessee State Collegians from 1936 to 1937, and during the vacations with Fate Marable. After leaving university to play full time in St Louis with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra (with whom he made his first recordings), he joined Duke Ellington's band in 1939.
  Though he stayed with Ellington for only two years, Blanton made an incalculable contribution in changing the way the double bass was used in jazz. Previously the double bass was rarely used to play anything but quarter notes in ensemble or solos but by soloing on the bass more in a 'horn like' fashion, Blanton began sliding into eighth- and sixteenth-note runs, introducing melodic and harmonic ideas that were totally new to jazz bass playing. His virtuosity put him in a different class from his predecessors, making him the first true master of the jazz bass and demonstrating the instrument's unsuspected potential as a solo instrument. Such was his importance to Ellington's band at the time, together with the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, that it became known as the Blanton–Webster band. Blanton also recorded a series of bass and piano duets with Ellington.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Blanton
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  Jimmy Dorsey
  James "Jimmy" Dorsey (February 29, 1904 – June 12, 1957) was a prominent American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, trumpeter, composer, and big band leader. He was known as "JD". He composed the jazz and pop standards "I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and "It's The Dreamer In Me".
  Jimmy Dorsey was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the son of a music teacher and older brother of Tommy Dorsey who also became a prominent musician. He played trumpet in his youth, appearing on stage with J. Carson McGee's King Trumpeters in 1913. He switched to alto saxophone in 1915, and then learned to double on clarinet. Jimmy Dorsey played on a clarinet outfitted with the Albert system of fingering, as opposed to the more common Boehm system used by most of his contemporaries including Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw.
  With his brother Tommy playing trombone, he formed Dorsey’s Novelty Six, one of the first jazz bands to broadcast. In 1924 he joined the California Ramblers (who were based in New York City). He did much free lance radio and recording work throughout the 1920s. The brothers also appeared as session musicians on many jazz recordings. He joined Ted Lewis's band in 1930, with whom he toured Europe.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Dorsey
• Jimmy Forrest
  Jimmy Forrest (January 24, 1920 – August 26, 1980) was an African American jazz musician, who played tenor saxophone throughout his career.
  Forrest is famous for his first solo recording of "Night Train". It reached #1 on the Billboard R&B chart in March 1952, and stayed at the top for seven weeks. "Hey Mrs. Jones" (#3 R&B) and "Bolo Blues" were his other major hits. All were made for United Records, which recorded Forrest between 1951 and 1953. He recorded frequently as both a sideman and a bandleader.
  Born Jimmy Robert Forrest Jr., in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, he played alongside Fate Marable as a young man. He was with Jay McShann in 1940-42 and with Andy Kirk from 1942-48, when he joined Duke Ellington. During the early 1950s, he led his own combos. He also played with Miles Davis, in early 1952 at The Barrel Club. After his solo career, he played in small combos with Harry "Sweets" Edison and Al Grey, as well as appearing with Count Basie.
  Late in life Forrest married Betty Tardy, and settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he died in August 1980, aged 60.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Forrest
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  Jimmy Hamilton
  Jimmy Hamilton (25 May 1917 – 20 September 1994) was an American jazz clarinetist, tenor saxophonist, arranger, composer, and music educator, best known for his twenty-five years with Duke Ellington.
  Hamilton was born in Dillon, South Carolina, and grew up in Philadelphia. Having originally learnt to play piano and brass instruments, in the 1930s he started playing the latter in local bands, before switching to clarinet and saxophone. In 1939 he played with Lucky Millinder, Jimmy Mundy, and Bill Doggett, going on to join the Teddy Wilson sextet in 1940. After two years with Wilson, he played with Eddie Heywood and Yank Porter.
  In 1943 he replaced Barney Bigard in the Duke Ellington orchestra, and stayed with Ellington until 1968. His style was very different on his two instruments: on tenor saxophone he had an R&B sound, while on clarinet he was much more precise and correct, though fluent. He wrote some of his own material in his time with Ellington.
  After he left the Ellington orchestra Hamilton played and arranged on a freelance basis, before spending the 1970s and 1980s in the Virgin Islands teaching music. On his retirement from teaching he continued to perform with his own groups from 1989 to 1990. Hamilton died in St. Croix, Virgin Islands, at the age of seventy-seven.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Hamilton
• Jimmy Woode
  Jimmy Woode (born James Bryant Woode, 23 September 1926, Philadelphia – 23 April 2005, Lindenwold, New Jersey) was a jazz bassist. His father, also named Jimmy Woode, was a music teacher and pianist who played with Hot Lips Page. Woode studied piano and bass in Boston at Boston University and at the Conservatory of Music, as well as at the Philadelphia Academy.
  He played and/or recorded in bands with Flip Phillips, Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat Pierce, Sidney Bechet, Billie Holiday, Jaki Byard, Earl Hines, Jimmy Witherspoon and Miles Davis.
  He joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1955, appearing on many of Ellington's recordings, including Such Sweet Thunder and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, both from 1957, as well as the historic 1956 Newport Jazz Festival session. He stayed with the Orchestra until 1960, when he left to live in Europe.
  Jimmy Woode's song "Just Give Me Time" was covered by Carola in 1966, first released on her album Carola & Heikki Sarmanto Trio, reaching the Finnish charts in 2004.
  
  wn.com/Jimmy_Woode
• Jo Jones
  Jo Jones (October 7, 1911 – September 3, 1985) was an American jazz drummer.
  Known as Papa Jo Jones in his later years, he was sometimes confused with another influential jazz drummer, Philly Joe Jones. The two died only a few days apart.
  Born as "Jonathan David Samuel Jones" in Chicago, Illinois, he moved to Alabama where he learned to play several instruments, including saxophone, piano, and drums. He worked as a drummer and tap-dancer at carnival shows until joining Walter Page's band, the Blue Devils in Oklahoma City in the late 1920s. He recorded with trumpeter Lloyd Hunter's Serenaders in 1931, and later joined pianist Count Basie's band in 1934. Jones, Basie, guitarist Freddie Green and bassist Walter Page were sometimes billed as an 'all-American Rhythm section'. Jones took a brief break for two years when he was in the military, but he remained with Basie until 1948. He participated in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concert series.
  He was one of the first drummers to promote the use of brushes on drums and shifting the role of timekeeping from the bass drum to the hi-hat cymbal. Jones had a major influence on later drummers such as Buddy Rich, Kenny Clarke, Roy Haynes, Max Roach, and Louie Bellson. He also starred in several films, most notably the musical short Jammin' the Blues (1944).
  
  wn.com/Jo_Jones
• Joe Benjamin
  Joseph Rupert "Joe" Benjamin (November 4, 1919 – January 26, 1974) was an American jazz bassist.
  Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Benjamin played with numerous high-profile jazz musicians in a variety of idioms. Early in his career he played in the big bands of Artie Shaw, Fletcher Henderson, Sy Oliver, and Duke Ellington.
  Later credits include work with Roland Kirk, Hank Garland, Dave Brubeck, Marian McPartland, Louis Armstrong (in his later years), Mal Waldron, Jo Jones, Gary Burton, Sarah Vaughan, Roy Haynes, Art Taylor, and Brother Jack McDuff.
  With Dizzy Gillespie
  With Roland Kirk
  With Gerry Mulligan & Paul Desmond
  With Sarah Vaughan
  With Mal Waldron
  
  wn.com/Joe_Benjamin
• Johnny Coles
  Johnny Coles (July 3, 1926, Trenton, New Jersey - December 21, 1997, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) was an American jazz trumpeter.
  Coles spent his early career playing with R&B groups, including those of Eddie Vinson (1948–1951), Bull Moose Jackson (1952), and Earl Bostic (1955–1956). He was with James Moody from 1956 to 1958, and played with Gil Evans's orchestra between 1958 and 1964, including on the Miles Davis album Sketches of Spain. After this he spent time with Charles Mingus in his sextet which also included Eric Dolphy, Clifford Jordan, Jaki Byard, and Dannie Richmond. Following this he played with Herbie Hancock (1968–1969), Ray Charles (1969–1971), Duke Ellington (1971–1974), Art Blakey (1976), Dameronia, Mingus Dynasty, and the Count Basie Orchestra under the direction of Thad Jones (1985–1986).
  Coles, nicknamed "Little Johnny C", recorded as a leader several times over the course of his career. He died of cancer in 1997.
  With Tina Brooks
  With Gil Evans
  With Booker Ervin
  With Grant Green
  
  wn.com/Johnny_Coles
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  Johnny Hodges
  John Keith "Johnny" Hodges (July 25, 1906 – May 11, 1970) was an American alto saxophonist, best known for his solo work with Duke Ellington's big band. He played lead alto in the saxophone section for many years, except the period between 1932–1946 when Otto Hardwick generally played first chair. Hodges was also featured on soprano saxophone, but refused to play soprano after 1946, when he was given the lead chair. He is considered one of the definitive alto saxophones players of the Big Band Era (alongside Benny Carter).
  Hodges started playing with Lloyd Scott, Sidney Bechet, Lucky Roberts and Chick Webb. When Ellington wanted to expand his band in 1928, Ellington's clarinet player Barney Bigard recommended Hodges, who was featured on both alto and soprano sax. His playing became one of the identifying voices of the Ellington orchestra. Hodges left the Duke to lead his own band (1951–1955), but returned to the large ensemble shortly before Ellington's triumphant return to prominence – the orchestra's performance at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival.
  
  wn.com/Johnny_Hodges
• Joya Sherrill
  Joya Sherrill (August 20, 1924, Bayonne, New Jersey – June 28, 2010, Great Neck, New York) was an American jazz vocalist and children's television show host.
  Sherrill began her career with Duke Ellington in 1942, aged 17, later becoming a member of his orchestra from 1944 to 1946. She had a hit with Ellington's tune "I'm Beginning to See the Light". Subsequently, she worked as a soloist, performing with Rex Stewart, Ray Nance, and others into the 1960s. She returned to Ellington for 1959's A Drum Is a Woman. She toured the U.S. in 1959 and then took a role in the Broadway show The Long Dream. She toured with Benny Goodman in the USSR in 1962 and then returned to sing with Ellington in 1963.
  From 1970 to 1982 she had a children's television show, Time for Joya, later called Joya's Fun School. Later in the 1980s she hosted a children's show in the Middle East.
  She died of complications from leukemia in 2010, aged 85. She was survived by a son, a daughter, a sister and two grandchildren.
  
  wn.com/Joya_Sherrill
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  Juan Tizol
  Juan Tizol (22 January 1900 – 23 April 1984) was a Puerto Rican trombonist and composer. He is best-known as a member of Duke Ellington's band, and as the co-writer of the jazz standards "Caravan" and "Perdido".
  Tizol was born in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico. Music was a large part of his life from an early age. His first instrument was the violin, but he soon switched to valve trombone, the instrument he would play throughout his career. His musical training came mostly from his uncle Manuel Tizol, who was the director of the municipal band and the symphony in San Juan. Throughout his youth, Juan played in his uncle’s band and also gained experience by playing in local operas, ballets and dance bands. In 1920, Juan joined a band that was traveling to the United States to work in Washington D.C. The group eventually made it to Washington (traveling as stowaways) and established residence at the Howard Theater where they played for touring shows and silent movies. At the Howard they also were hired to play in small jazz or dance groups. This is where Juan first came in contact with Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington.
  
  wn.com/Juan_Tizol
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  Junior Raglin
  Alvin "Junior" Raglin (March 16, 1917 - November 10, 1955) was an American swing jazz double-bassist.
  Raglin started out on guitar but had picked up bass by the mid-1930s. He played with Eugene Coy from 1938 to 1941 in Oregon, and then joined Duke Ellington's Orchestra, where he replaced Jimmy Blanton. Raglin remained in Ellington's employ from 1941 to 1945.
  After leaving Ellington's orchestra, Raglin led his own quartet, and also played with Dave Rivera, Ella Fitzgerald, and Al Hibbler. He returned to play with Ellington again briefly in 1946 and 1955. Raglin fell ill in the late 1940s and quit performing; he died in 1955 at age 38. He never recorded as a leader.
  
  wn.com/Junior_Raglin
• Kay Davis
  Katherine McDonald Wimp née Katherine McDonald stage name Kay Davis (December 5, 1920 – Apopka January 27, 2012) was an American jazz singer best known for her time with the orchestra of Duke Ellington.
  Davis was born in Evanston, Illinois and attended Evanston Township High School before she studied voice and piano at Northwestern University, where she received her bachelor's degree in 1942 and her masters in 1943. Her grandfather, William H. Twiggs, was a civic leader for whom a park in Evanston is named.
  In 1944 she joined Duke Ellington's orchestra, where she sang alongside Joya Sherrill and Al Hibbler. She is best known for her wordless vocals in pieces such as "Transblucency" and "On a Turquoise Cloud". She also sang many pieces with lyrics. She is the only person Ellington allowed to reprise Adelaide Hall's famous wordless vocal on "Creole Love Call". Her tenure in Ellington's band coincided with their increasing exposure on film, especially for Universal Pictures. Davis and Billy Strayhorn gave the first performance of Strayhorn's "Lush Life" on November 13, 1948 at Carnegie Hall—even though the song had been written in the 1930s.
  
  wn.com/Kay_Davis
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  Lalo Schifrin
  Lalo Schifrin (born June 21, 1932) is an Argentine composer, pianist and conductor. He is best known for his film and TV scores, such as the "Theme from Mission: Impossible". He has received four Grammy Awards and six Oscar nominations. Schifrin, associated with the jazz music genre, is also noted for work with Clint Eastwood in the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, particularly the Dirty Harry films.
  Schifrin was born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires to Jewish parents. His father, Luis Schifrin, led the second violin section of the orchestra at the Teatro Colón for three decades. At the age of six, Schifrin began a six-year course of study on piano with Enrique Barenboim, the father of the pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. At age 16, Schifrin began studying piano with the Greek-Russian expatriate Andreas Karalis, former head of the Kiev Conservatory, and harmony with Argentine composer Juan Carlos Paz. During this time, Schifrin also became interested in jazz.
  Although Schifrin studied sociology and law at the University of Buenos Aires, it was music that captured his attention. At age 20, he successfully applied for a scholarship to the Paris Conservatoire. While there, he attended Olivier Messiaen's classes and formally studied with Charles Koechlin, a disciple of Maurice Ravel. At night he played jazz in the Paris clubs. In 1955, Schifrin played piano with Ástor Piazzolla and represented his country at the International Jazz Festival in Paris.
  
  wn.com/Lalo_Schifrin
• Larry Novak
  Lawrence R. "Larry" Novak (b. May 18, 1933) is an American jazz pianist. He is the father of drummer Gary Novak.
  Larry Novak was born in Chicago. He learned piano from age five and began playing jazz at 14. He studied at Loyola University Chicago and the University of Minnesota, followed by a stint playing in a military band in 1959-60. Novak led a trio ensemble at the London House in Chicago from 1961 to 1963 and then at Mr. Kelly's from 1963 to 1975, a gig he inherited from Marty Rubenstein. During this time, he released the album Larry Novak Plays! on Dot Records, issued in 1964. Novak played with and arranged for Peggy Lee and worked extensively with Pearl Bailey; he also worked with singers Mel Tormé, Frank Sinatra, Joe Williams, Sarah Vaughan, and Carmen McRae. Among the instrumentalists he played with are Dizzy Gillespie, Al Hirt, Charlie Shavers, Barney Kessel, Scott LaFaro, Sonny Stitt, Louie Bellson, Terry Gibbs, Buddy DeFranco, Phil Woods, and Scott Hamilton.
  From 1984, Novak taught at DePaul University.
  
  wn.com/Larry_Novak
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  Lionel Hampton
  Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor. Like Red Norvo, he was one of the first jazz vibraphone players. Hampton ranks among the great names in jazz history, having worked with a who's who of jazz musicians, from Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich to Charlie Parker and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
  Lionel Hampton was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1908, and was raised by his grandmother. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother moved to her hometown Birmingham, Alabama. He spent his early childhood in Kenosha, Wisconsin before he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1916. As a youth, Hampton was a member of the Bud Billiken Club, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which was off limits because of racial segregation. During the 1920s—while still a teenager—Hampton took xylophone lessons from Jimmy Bertrand and started playing drums. Hampton was raised Roman Catholic, and started out playing fife and drum at the Holy Rosary Academy near Chicago.
  
  wn.com/Lionel_Hampton
• Lou Blackburn
  Lou Blackburn (November 12, 1922 – 1990) was an American jazz trombonist born in Rankin, Pennsylvania who performed in several genres, especially the swing genre. He also performed in the West Coast jazz and soul jazz mediums. During the 1950s he played swing music with Lionel Hampton, and also Charlie Ventura. In the early 1960s he began performing with musicians like Cat Anderson, among others. He also appears on the album Mingus at Monterey by Charles Mingus. He also did crossover work with The Beach Boys and The Turtles, among others. Since 1970 he lived in Germany, where he toured successfully with his ethno jazz band Mombasa. In 1990 he died in Berlin.
  With June Christy
  With Gil Fuller
  With Chico Hamilton
  With The Three Sounds
  
  
  
  wn.com/Lou_Blackburn
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  Louie Bellson
  Luigi Paulino Alfredo Francesco Antonio Balassoni (July 6, 1924 – February 14, 2009), known by the stage name Louie Bellson (his own preferred spelling, although he is often seen in sources as Louis Bellson), was an Italian-American jazz drummer. He was a composer, arranger, bandleader, and jazz educator, and is credited with pioneering the use of two bass drums.
  Bellson was an internationally acclaimed artist who performed in most of the major capitals around the world. Bellson and his first wife, the actress and singer Pearl Bailey (married 1952–1990), had the second highest number of appearances at the White House (only Bob Hope had more). He was a vice president at Remo, a drum company. Louie was also very great friends with the cymbal manufacturer Armand Zildjian.
  Louie Bellson was born in Rock Falls, Illinois, in 1924 and started playing drums at three years of age. At age 15, he pioneered the double-bass drum set-up. His detailed sketch earned him an 'A' in his high school art class. At age 17, he triumphed over 40,000 drummers to win the Slingerland National Gene Krupa contest. Louie graduated from Moline High School, Moline, IL, in 1939.
  
  wn.com/Louie_Bellson
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  Louis Armstrong
  Louis Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana.
  Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an "inventive" cornet and trumpet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the music's focus from collective improvisation to solo performance. With his instantly recognizable deep and distinctive gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer, demonstrating great dexterity as an improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song for expressive purposes. He was also greatly skilled at scat singing (vocalizing using sounds and syllables instead of actual lyrics).
  Renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice almost as much as for his trumpet-playing, Armstrong's influence extends well beyond jazz music, and by the end of his career in the 1960s, he was widely regarded as a profound influence on popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first truly popular African-American entertainers to "cross over," whose skin-color was secondary to his music in an America that was severely racially divided. It allowed him socially acceptable access to the upper echelons of American society that were highly restricted for a black man. While he rarely publicly politicized his race, often to the dismay of fellow African-Americans, he was privately a strong supporter of the Civil Rights movement in America.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Louis_Armstrong
• Louis Metcalf
  Louis Metcalf (February 28, 1905 - October 27, 1981) was a jazz cornetist and trumpeter. He played for a short time with Duke Ellington for which he is best remembered.
  Metcalf was born in Webster Groves, Missouri. As a youth he first trained on the drums but switched over to cornet permanently. As a teenager in St. Louis, Missouri he played with Charlie Creath.
  Metcalf moved to New York City in 1923 and participated in the fertile jazz scene there, playing with such legends as Willie "The Lion" Smith, Jelly Roll Morton, Benny Carter and King Oliver. In 1926 Duke Ellington hired Metcalf to play in his seminal orchestra, where his mellow tone contrasted with Bubber Miley's. In the 1930s Metcalf led his own bands and joined Fletcher Henderson's.
  In 1946 Metcalf moved to Montreal and formed the International Band, the first to play the nascent bebop style in Canada. Under his leadership the Café Saint-Michel was the hub of the jazz scene in Montreal for a few years, with local musicians such as the young Oscar Peterson and visiting Americans such as Art Pepper, Fats Navarro and Sonny Rollins sitting in with the band.
  
  wn.com/Louis_Metcalf
• Major Holley
  Major Holley (July 10, 1924, Detroit, Michigan – October 25, 1990, Maplewood, New Jersey) was an American jazz upright bassist.
  Holley attended the prestigious Cass Technical High School. Holley played violin and tuba when young and started playing bass while serving in the Navy. In the latter half of the 1940s he played with Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, and Ella Fitzgerald; in 1950 he and Oscar Peterson recorded duets, and he also played with Peterson and Charlie Smith as a trio. He was married to Minnie (Millicent) Walton née Aitcheson .
  In the mid-1950s he moved to England and worked at the BBC. Upon his return to America he toured with Woody Herman in 1958 and with Al Cohn/Zoot Sims in 1959-60. A prolific studio musician, he played with Duke Ellington in 1964 and with the Kenny Burrell Trio, Coleman Hawkins, Lee Konitz, Roy Eldridge, Michel Legrand, Milt Buckner, Jay McShann and Quincy Jones in the 1960s and 1970s. From 1967 to 1970 he taught at the Berklee College of Music.
  Holley was noted for singing along with his arco (bowed) bass solos, a technique Slam Stewart also used. Holley and Stewart recorded together on two albums in the 1970s.
  
  wn.com/Major_Holley
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  Mercer Ellington
  Mercer Kennedy Ellington (11 March 1919 – 8 February 1996) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and arranger.
  Ellington was born in Washington, DC, the son of famous composer, pianist, and bandleader Duke Ellington. By the age of eighteen he had written his first piece to be recorded by his father ("Pigeons and Peppers").
  In 1939, 1946–1949, and 1959 he led his own bands, many of whose members went on to play with his father, or to achieve independent fame (notably Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham, Idrees Sulieman, Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus, and Carmen McRae). During the 1940s in particular he wrote pieces that became standards, including "Things Ain't What They Used to Be", "Jumpin' Punkins", "Moon Mist", and "Blue Serge". He also wrote the lyrics to Hillis Walters' popular song, "Pass Me By" (1946), which was recorded by Lena Horne, Carmen McRae and Peggy Lee.
  He composed for his father from 1940 to 1941, worked as road manager for Cootie Williams' orchestra (1941 to 1943 and again in 1954), and returned to work for his father playing E-flat horn in 1950, and then as general manager and copyist from 1955 to 1959. In 1960 he became Della Reese's musical director, then in 1962 went on take a job as a radio DJ in New York for three years. In 1965 he again returned to his father's orchestra, this time as trumpeter and road manager.
  
  wn.com/Mercer_Ellington
• Money Johnson
  Harold "Money" Johnson (February 23, 1918, Tyler, Texas - March 28, 1978, New York City) was an American jazz trumpeter.
  Johnson first played trumpet at age 15. He moved to Oklahoma City in 1936 and played with Charlie Christian and Henry Bridges before joining Nat Towles's band. He played briefly with Horace Henderson and Bob Dorsey in the early 1940s before returning to Towles's band in 1944 in Chicago. He also played with Count Basie, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, and Bull Moose Jackson in the 1940s. His associations in the 1950s included Louis Jordan (1951), Lucky Thompson (1953), Sy Oliver, Buddy Johnson, Cozy Cole, Mercer Ellington, Little Esther (1956), and Panama Francis (for a tour of Montevideo, Uruguay in 1953).
  In the 1960s Johnson played in the house band at the Apollo Theater in New York, and recorded with King Curtis in 1962. He toured the USSR with Earl Hines in 1966. From 1968 he played in the Duke Ellington Orchestra and also worked again with Hines and Oliver. He recorded with Buck Clayton in 1975.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Money_Johnson
• Murray McEachern
  Murray McEachern (16 August 1915–28 April 1982) was a Canadian jazz trombonist and alto saxophonist born in Toronto, perhaps best-known for having played trombone for Benny Goodman from 1936-1937. McEachern is equally remembered for playing both the trombone and alto saxophone for the Casa Loma Orchestra from 1937-1941.
  McEachern studied the violin at the Toronto Conservatory of Music as a boy, and played his first concert recital at Massey Hall at age 12. As a teenager Murray studied both the saxophone and clarinet, playing with Lucio Agostini and also appearing on CRBC with Percy Faith. Over time McEachern became proficient on several instruments, including the trombone, bass and trumpet.
  In 1936 he went to Chicago in search of work, and got a break as soloist on trombone for Benny Goodman's big band. He also worked with the Jack Hylton orchestra and then with the Casa Loma Orchestra (led by Glen Gray) from 1937-1941. In 1941 McEachern joined the Paul Whiteman orchestra and shortly after began entertaining U.S. troops during World War II. In 1947 he worked with the Phil Moore orchestra.
  
  wn.com/Murray_McEachern
• Nelson Williams
  Nelson "Cadillac" Williams (September 26, 1917, Montgomery, Alabama - 1973, Voorburg, Holland) was an American jazz trumpeter.
  Williams began playing piano at age 13 and settled on trumpet soon afterwards; he may have played with Cow Cow Davenport while still a teenager. In the 1930s he played in the territory bands Trianon Crackerjacks and Brown Skin Models, and acted as musical director for the Dixie Rhythm Girls. Around 1940 he left Alabama for Philadelphia, where he played with Tiny Bradshaw before joining the U.S. Army during World War II.
  After the war Billy Eckstine hired Williams, and following this he worked with John Kirby and Billy Kyle. In 1949 he began the first of several stints with Duke Ellington, who bestowed upon him the nickname "Cadillac". In 1951 he left Ellington's employ and moved to Paris, where he led his own bands and recorded for French labels. He returned to Ellington in 1956, and played with him again in 1969 on a tour of Europe. He died in the Netherlands in 1973.
  
  wn.com/Nelson_Williams
• Norris Turney
  Norris Turney (September 8, 1921, Wilmington, Ohio – January 17, 2001, Kettering, Ohio) was an American jazz flautist and saxophonist.
  Turney began his career in the Midwest, playing in territory bands such as the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra. He played with Tiny Bradshaw in Chicago before moving to New York City, where he played with the Billy Eckstine Orchestra in 1945-46. Turney had little luck in New York, however, and returned to Ohio to play in local ensembles through the 1950s. He toured with Ray Charles in 1967, then was hired by Duke Ellington, in whose orchestra he played from 1969 to 1973. He was hired to play alto saxophone as an "insurance policy" due to the failing health of Johnny Hodges. He was the first flute soloist to ever play in Ellington's orchestra. He also played tenor saxophone in the band.
  Following his tenure with Ellington, he played with the Savoy Sultans and the Newport All-Stars, as well as in several pit orchestras. Turney recorded as a leader between 1975 and 1978, and released the CD, Big, Sweet 'n Blue in 1993 on Mapleshade Records. He died of kidney failure in 2001.
  
  wn.com/Norris_Turney
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  Oscar Pettiford
  Oscar Pettiford (30 September 1922 – 8 September 1960) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer known particularly for his pioneering work in bebop.
  Pettiford was born at Okmulgee, Oklahoma; his mother was Choctaw and his father was half Cherokee and half African American. Like many people with African American and Native American ancestry, his Native heritage was not generally known except to a few close friends, such as David Amram.
  He grew up playing in the family band in which he sang and danced before switching to piano at the age of 12 then to double bass when he was 14. He is quoted as say he did not like the way people were playing the bass so he developed his own way of playing it. Despite being admired by the likes of Milt Hinton at the age of 14, he gave up in 1941 as he did not believe he could make a living. Five months later, he once again met Milt, who persuaded him to return to music.
  In 1942 he joined the Charlie Barnet band and in 1943 gained wider public attention after recording with Coleman Hawkins on his "The Man I Love." He also recorded with Earl Hines and Ben Webster around this time. He and Dizzy Gillespie led a bop group in 1943. In 1945 Pettiford went with Hawkins to California, where he appeared in The Crimson Canary, a mystery movie known for its jazz soundtrack, which also featured Josh White. He then worked with Duke Ellington from 1945 to 1948 and for Woody Herman in 1949 before working mainly as a leader in the 1950s.
  
  wn.com/Oscar_Pettiford
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  Otto Hardwick
  Otto James "Toby" Hardwicke (May 31, 1904 – August 5, 1970) was a saxophone player associated with Duke Ellington.
  Hardwick started on string bass at the age of 14, then moved to C-melody sax and finally settled on alto saxophone. A childhood friend of Duke Ellington's, Hardwick joined Ellington's first band in Washington, D. C. in 1919. Hardwick also worked for banjoist Elmer Snowden at Murray's Casino.
  In 1923, Ellington, Hardwick, Snowden, trumpeter Arthur Whetsol, and drummer Sonny Greer had success as the Washingtonians in New York. After a disagreement over money, Snowden was forced out of the band and Duke Ellington was elected as the new leader.
  They were booked at a Times Square nightspot called the Kentucky Club for three years where they met Irving Mills, who produced and published Ellington's music.
  Hardwick occasionally doubled violin and string bass in the 1920s, but specialized on alto sax. He also played clarinet and bass, baritone and soprano saxes.
  Hardwick left the Duke Ellington band in 1928 to visit Europe, where he played with Noble Sissle, Sidney Bechet and Nekka Shaw's Orchestra, and led his own orchestra before returning to New York in 1929.
  
  wn.com/Otto_Hardwick
• Paul Gonsalves
  Paul Gonsalves, ((1920-07-12)July 12, 1920 – May 15, 1974(1974-05-15)) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist best known for his association with Duke Ellington. At the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, Gonsalves played a 27-chorus solo in the middle of Ellington's "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue". That performance is credited with revitalizing Ellington's waning career in the 50's.
  Born in Brockton, Massachusetts to Cape Verdean parents, Gonsalves' first instrument was the guitar, and as a child he was regularly asked to play Cape Verdean folk songs for his family. He grew up in New Bedford, Massachusetts and played as a member of the Sabby Lewis Orchestra. His first professional engagement in Boston was with the same group on tenor saxophone, in which he played before and after his military service during World War II. Before joining Duke Ellington's orchestra in 1950, he had also played with the big bands of Count Basie (1947–1949) and Dizzy Gillespie (1949–1950).
  At the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival, Gonsalves' solo in Ellington's song "Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue" contained 27 choruses; the publicity from which is credited with reviving Ellington's career. This performance is captured on the album Ellington at Newport. Gonsalves was a featured soloist in numerous Ellingtonian settings. He received the nickname "The Strolling Violins" from Ellington for playing solos while walking through the crowd.
  
  wn.com/Paul_Gonsalves
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  Pearl Bailey
  Pearl Mae Bailey (March 29, 1918 – August 17, 1990) was an American actress and singer. After appearing in vaudeville, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946. She won a Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly! in 1968. In 1986, she won a Daytime Emmy award for her performance as a fairy godmother in the ABC Afterschool Special, Cindy Eller: A Modern Fairy Tale.
  Her rendition of "Takes Two to Tango" hit the top ten in 1952.
  Bailey was born in Southampton County in southeastern Virginia, to the Reverend Joseph and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey. She was reared in the Bloodfields neighborhood of Newport News, Virginia.
  She made her stage-singing debut when she was 15 years old. Her brother Bill Bailey was beginning his own career as a tap dancer, and suggested she enter an amateur contest at Philadelphia’s Pearl Theater. She entered, won first prize, later won a similar contest at Harlem’s famous Apollo Theater, and decided to pursue a career in entertainment.
  
  wn.com/Pearl_Bailey
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  Peggy Lee
  Peggy Lee (May 26, 1920 – January 21, 2002) was an American jazz and popular music singer, songwriter, composer, and actress in a career spanning six decades. From her beginning as a vocalist on local radio to singing with Benny Goodman's big band, she forged a sophisticated persona, evolving into a multi-faceted artist and performer. She wrote music for films, acted, and created conceptual record albums—encompassing poetry, jazz, chamber pop, and art songs.
  Lee was born Norma Deloris Egstrom in Jamestown, North Dakota, the seventh of eight children of Marvin Olof Egstrom, a station agent for the Midland Continental Railroad, and his wife Selma Amelia (Anderson) Egstrom. Her mother died when Lee was just four years old. Her father was Swedish American and her mother was Norwegian American.
  Lee first sang professionally over KOVC radio in Valley City, North Dakota. She later had her own series on a radio show sponsored by a local restaurant that paid her a "salary" in food. Both during and after her high school years, Lee sang for paltry sums on local radio stations. Radio personality Ken Kennedy, of WDAY in Fargo, North Dakota (the most widely heard station in North Dakota), changed her name from Norma to Peggy Lee.^{[citation needed]} Thereafter, Lee left home and traveled to Los Angeles at the age of 17.
  
  wn.com/Peggy_Lee
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  Pete Candoli
  Pete Candoli (June 28, 1923 – January 11, 2008) was an American swing and West Coast jazz trumpeter. He played with the big bands of Woody Herman, Stan Kenton, and many others, and worked extensively in the studios of the recording and television industries. He was born in Mishawaka, Indiana.
  Born as Walter Joseph Candoli, Candoli's professional career began at the age of 13, when he became a member of the American Federation of Musicians. He quickly found a spot as lead trumpeter, and by 1940 had become a part of Sonny Dunham's band. In 1941 he left the band to replace Ziggy Elman of the Tommy Dorsey band. During this time the band performed in three films, Las Vegas Nights (1941), Girl Crazy (1943) and Upbeat In Music (1943). In 1944 Candoli joined the Teddy Powell band. It was while with Teddy Powell that he brought his younger brother Conte into the big band major league.
  After 1945, Candoli worked with several bands including notably that of Stan Kenton. Later, he drifted into the "West Coast Jazz" and studio scenes. Despite his range, he rarely played lead, reserved instead for feature roles. He became a favorite collaborator of many influential musicians and performers, including Peggy Lee, Henry Mancini, and Frank Sinatra, and was widely sought for studio work. In 1957, Pete and Conte reunited to form the Candoli Brothers band.^{[citation needed]} Candoli was also featured prominently on the DePatie-Freleng Enterprises cartoon series The Ant and the Aardvark, which utilized a jazz score for its theme and musical cues.
  
  wn.com/Pete_Candoli
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  Peter Giger
  Peter Giger (born April 12, 1939 in Zurich, grown up in and near to Berne) is a Swiss percussionist and bandleader.
  1958 professional musician, tours in Europe with the Tremble Kids, Oskar Klein, Albert Nicholas, Bill Coleman, Joe Turner, Wild Bill Davison, Peanuts Holland
  1960 after short guest performance with Armand Gordons Ragtime Band, moves to Paris: Bill Coleman, Stéphane Grapelli, Memphis Slim a. o.
  1961 Claude Bolling Sextet / Big Band
  1963 LP-recordings with Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, Alice Babs, Tour with Beryl Bryden, Diz Dizzley and Johnny Parker in Malaysia and Sarawak.
  1964 with tap dancer Harold Nicholas, Renè Urtreger
  1965-68 studio-musician in Paris, again with Claude Bolling
  1969 moves back to Berne. “FOUR FOR JAZZ”, Heinz Bigler, Isla Eckinger, Joe Haider, Gerd Dudek, Benny Bailey. Co-founder of the Swiss Jazz School
  1970 Initiator of the first international Jazz Clinic in Wengen, Switzerland
  1972 moves to Frankfurt / M., Albert Mangelsdorff Quintett, until 1977 tours in Europe, Asia, Africa, Near East.
  
  wn.com/Peter_Giger
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  Queen Esther Marrow
  Queen Esther Marrow is an American soul and gospel singer.
  Queen Esther Marrow was born in Newport News, Virginia. She began her career at the age of 22 when her talent and vocal gifts were discovered by Duke Ellington and made her debut as a featured artist in his "Sacred Concert" world tour. Marrow and Ellington formed a long life friendship during the next four years while touring together. Queen has since performed with such musical greats as Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald, B.B. King, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea and Bob Dylan.
  In 1965, Marrow became active in the civil rights movement when she performed in Dr. Martin Luther King’s World Crusade. There she met her lifetime idol Mahalia Jackson, with whom she would later share the stage. Other political activists on the crusade were Jesse Jackson, Sidney Poitier and Dr. Ralf Abernathy.
  Marrow was also involved in musical theater, jazz, television and film. She played Auntie ‘Em on Broadway in “The Wiz,” and was featured in several other Broadway shows including “Comin’ Uptown”, “Nice To Be Civilized,” and she starred as her idol Mahalia Jackson in the national tour of “Sing Mahalia Sing,” directed by George Faison. Marrow was featured in Motown’s film, “The Last Dragon,” produced by Berry Gordy. Her numerous television appearances have ranged from the serious to the comic. They include “Duke Ellington: The Music Lives On”, as Oscar the Grouch’s mother in “Sesame Street” on PBS and “New York to Paris with The Harlem Gospel Singers” also on PBS. In 1990, a dream of Marrow’s came true when “Truly Blessed,” a musical about Mahalia Jackson written by and starring Queen Esther was seen in San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and in New York on Broadway. The musical received three Helen Hayes nominations including Best New Play.
  
  wn.com/Queen_Esther_Marrow
• Quentin Jackson
  Quentin "Butter" Jackson (born January 13, 1909 in Springfield, Ohio; died October 2, 1976 in New York City) was an American jazz trombonist. In the early stage of his career he worked with Cab Calloway and was in the Duke Ellington Orchestra. Later he did notable work with Charles Mingus, Kenny Burrell, and others.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Quentin_Jackson
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  Ray Nance
  Ray Willis Nance (December 10, 1913 Chicago - January 28, 1976 in New York City ) was a jazz trumpeter, violinist and singer. He best known for his long association with band leader Duke Ellington.
  Nance lead his own band in Chicago from 1932 to 1937. Then, he worked with Earl "Fatha" Hines from 1937 to 1939; and from 1939 to 1940 he worked with Horace Henderson.
  Ellington hired Nance to replace trumpeter Cootie Williams in 1940. Nance's first public performance with Ellington was the famous Fargo, North Dakota ballroom dance. Shortly after joining the band, Nance was given the trumpet solo on the first recorded version of "Take the "A" Train," which became the Ellington theme, a major hit and a jazz standard. Nance's "A Train" solo is one of the most copied and admired trumpet solos in jazz history. Indeed, when Cootie Williams returned to the band more than twenty years later, he would play Nance's solo on "A Train" almost exactly as the original.
  Nance was often featured on violin and was the only violin soloist ever featured in Ellington's orchestra. He is also one of the well-known vocalists from the Ellington orchestra, having sung not the first version (that credit goes to Ivie Anderson), but arguably the definitive version of "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)." It was his contribution to take the previously instrumental horn riff into the lead vocal, which constitute the now infamous, "Doo wha, doo wha, doo wha, doo wha, yeah!" He was often featured as vocalist on "Jump for Joy," "Just A-Sittin' and A-Rockin'" and "Just Squeeze Me (But Please Don't Tease Me)". His multiple talents (trumpet, violin, vocals and also dancing) earned him the nickname "Floorshow".
  
  wn.com/Ray_Nance
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  Rex Stewart
  Rex Stewart (22 February 1907 – 7 September 1967) was an American jazz cornetist best known for his work with the Duke Ellington orchestra.
  After stints with Elmer Snowden, Fletcher Henderson, Horace Henderson, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, and Luis Russell, Stewart joined the Ellington band in 1934, in replacement of Freddie Jenkins. Ellington arranged many of his pieces to showcase Stewart's half-valve effects, muted sound, and forceful style.
  Stewart co-wrote "Boy Meets Horn" and "Morning Glory" while with Ellington, and frequently supervised outside recording sessions by members of the Ellington band. After eleven years Stewart left to lead his own groups - " little swing bands, that were a perfect setting for his solo playing." He also toured Europe and Australia with Jazz at the Philharmonic from 1947 to 1951. From the early 1950s on he worked in radio and television and published highly regarded jazz criticism. The book Jazz Masters of the Thirties is a selection of his criticism.
  
  wn.com/Rex_Stewart
• Rick Henderson
  Rick Henderson (April 25, 1928 – May 21, 2004) was an American jazz saxophonist and arranger.
  Born in Washington, D.C., Henderson studied composition as a high schooler and played in the late 1940s locally. He served in the Army from 1951-53, then joined Duke Ellington's Orchestra after being recommended by Clark Terry. He played with Ellington during his years on Capitol Records, doing arrangements in addition to his duties as a player; he also composed tunes such as "Carney" for the Ellington band. He left Ellington's employ in 1956, and returned to Washington, where he led the Howard Theatre's house band until 1964. Following this he worked as an arranger and composer for jazz orchestras as well as military bands and school ensembles. Among those who used Henderson's charts, in addition to Ellington, were Count Basie, Illinois Jacquet, and Billy Taylor. He continued to lead bands into the 1990s, and died of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease in 2004.
  
  wn.com/Rick_Henderson
• Rolf Ericson
  Rolf Ericson (August 29, 1922 – June 16, 1997) was a Swedish jazz trumpeter. He also played the flugelhorn.
  He moved to New York City in 1947 and in 1949 joined Charlie Barnet's big band and with Woody Herman in 1950. Later he did notable work with Paul Gonsalves, Charlie Parker, Lars Gullin, and Charles Mingus.
  Returning to Sweden in 1950, he recorded as a leader and with Arne Domnérus, as well as for Leonard Feather's Swinging Swedes. He returned to the U.S. during 1953-1956, and played with the big bands of Charlie Spivak, Harry James, the Dorsey Brothers, and Les Brown and was with the Lighthouse All-Stars. In 1956, he toured Sweden and played with Ernestine Anderson and Lars Gullin.
  From 1956-1965 he was back in the U.S., working with Dexter Gordon, Harold Land, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mulligan, Dan Terry, Max Roach and Charles Mingus, among others. He was with the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1963-1971. In the early 1960s he made three recordings as a member of the Rod Levitt orchestra (octet). Rolf played with The Al Porcino Big Band in Berlin in the late 70's and early 80's.
  
  wn.com/Rolf_Ericson
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  Rosemary Clooney
  Rosemary Clooney (May 23, 1928 – June 29, 2002) was an American singer and actress. She came to prominence in the early 1950s with the novelty hit "Come On-a My House" written by William Saroyan and his cousin Ross Bagdasarian (better known as David Seville, the father figure of Alvin and the Chipmunks), which was followed by other pop numbers such as "Botch-a-Me" (a cover version of the Italian song Ba-Ba-Baciami Piccina by Alberto Rabagliati), "Mambo Italiano", "Tenderly", "Half as Much", "Hey There" and "This Ole House", although she had success as a jazz vocalist. Clooney's career languished in the 1960s, partly due to problems related to depression and drug addiction, but revived in 1977, when her White Christmas co-star Bing Crosby asked her to appear with him at a show marking his 50th anniversary in show business. She continued recording until her death in 2002. She was the aunt of Academy Award winning actor George Clooney.
  Clooney was born in Maysville, Kentucky, the daughter of Marie Frances (Guilfoyle) and Andrew Joseph Clooney. Her father was of Irish and German descent and her mother was of Irish and English ancestry. She was raised Catholic. When Clooney was fifteen, her mother and brother, Nick, moved to California. She and her sister, Betty, remained with their father.^{[citation needed]} The family resided in the John Brett Richeson House in the late 1940s.
  
  wn.com/Rosemary_Clooney
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  Roy Eldridge
  David Roy Eldridge (January 30, 1911 – February 26, 1989), nicknamed "Little Jazz" was an American jazz trumpet player. His sophisticated use of harmony, including the use of tritone substitutions, his virtuosic solos exhibiting a departure from the smooth and lyrical style of earlier jazz trumpet innovator Louis Armstrong, and his strong impact on Dizzy Gillespie mark him as one of the most influential musicians of the swing era and a precursor of bebop.
  Eldridge was born on the North Side of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on January 30, 1911 to parents Alexander, a carpenter, and Blanche, a gifted pianist with a talent for reproducing music by ear, a trait that Eldridge claims to have inherited from her. Eldridge began playing the piano at age five; he claims to have been able to play coherent blues licks at even this young age. The young Eldridge looked up to his older brother, Joe, particularly because of Joe's diverse musical talents on the violin, alto saxophone, and clarinet. Roy took up the drums at the age of six, taking lessons and playing locally. Joe recognized his brother's natural talent on the bugle, which Roy played in a local church band, and tried to convince Roy to play the valved trumpet When Roy began to play drums in his brother's band, Joe soon convinced him to pick up the trumpet, but Roy made little effort to gain proficiency on the instrument at first. It wasn't until the death of their mother, when Roy was eleven, and his father's subsequent remarriage that Roy began practicing more rigorously, locking himself in his room for hours, and particularly honing the instrument's upper register. From an early age, Roy lacked proficiency at sight-reading, a gap in his musical education that would affect him for much of his early career, but he could replicate melodies by ear very effectively.
  
  wn.com/Roy_Eldridge
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  Russell Procope
  Russell Procope (August 11, 1908 – January 21, 1981), an American clarinettist and alto saxophonist, was known best for his long tenure in the reed section of Duke Ellington's orchestra, where he was one of its two signature clarinet soloists.
  Procope was born in New York City, and grew up in San Juan Hill, where he went to school with Benny Carter. His first instrument was the violin, but he switched to clarinet and alto saxophone. He began his professional career in 1926 as a member of Billy Freeman's orchestra. At the age of twenty he recorded with Jelly Roll Morton, and went on to play with bands led by Benny Carter, Chick Webb (1929-1930), Fletcher Henderson (spring of 1931 to 1934), Tiny Bradshaw, Teddy Hill, King Oliver, and Willie Bryant.
  Fletcher Henderson's band was dissolved in 1934. Along with several other ex-Henderson musicians, Procope went into Benny Carter's orchestra. He also worked for a time with the Tiny Bradshaw and Willie Bryant bands before joining Teddy Hill in 1935. During his stay with Teddy Hill's orchestra the trumpet section included, at various times, Roy Eldridge, Bill Coleman, Frank Newton, and Dizzy Gillespie, while trombonist Dickie Wells and tenor-saxophonist Chu Berry were two other distinguished soloists who played with the band. It was a member of this orchestra that Russell Procope made his first trip to Europe in 1937; Teddy Hill's band formed part of "The Cotton Club Revue," an all-coloured show, which during its European tour appeared at the London Palladium.
  
  wn.com/Russell_Procope
• Sam Woodyard
  Sam Woodyard (January 7, 1925, Elizabeth, New Jersey - September 20, 1988, Paris, France) was an American jazz drummer.
  Woodyard was largely an autodidact on drums, and played locally in the Newark, New Jersey area in the 1940s. He gigged with Paul Gayten in an R&B group, and then played in the early 1950s with Joe Holiday, Roy Eldridge, and Milt Buckner. In 1955, he joined Duke Ellington's orchestra, and remained the ensemble's drummer until 1966.
  After his time with Ellington, Woodyard played behind Ella Fitzgerald, and then moved to Los Angeles. In the 1970s he played less due to health problems, but recorded with Buddy Rich and toured with Claude Bolling. In 1983 he played in a band with Teddy Wilson, Buddy Tate, and Slam Stewart. His last recording was on Steve Lacy's 1988 album The Door; he died a little more than a month afterward.
  
  wn.com/Sam_Woodyard
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  Sarah Vaughan
  Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century."
  Nicknamed "Sailor" (for her salty speech), "Sassy" and "The Divine One", Sarah Vaughan was a Grammy Award winner. The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her its "highest honor in jazz", the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989.
  Biographies of Vaughan frequently stated that she was immediately thrust into stardom after a winning Amateur Night performance at Harlem's Zeus Theater. In fact, the story that biographer Renee relates seems to be a bit more complex. Vaughan was frequently accompanied by a friend, Doris Robinson, on her trips into New York City. Sometime in the fall of 1942 (when Sarah was 18 years old), Vaughan suggested that Robinson enter the Apollo Theater Amateur Night contest. Vaughan played piano accompaniment for Robinson, who won second prize. Vaughan later decided to go back and compete herself as a singer. Vaughan sang "Body and Soul" and won, although the exact date of her victorious Apollo performance is uncertain. The prize, as Vaughan recalled later to Marian McPartland, was US$10 and the promise of a week's engagement at the Apollo. After a considerable delay, Vaughan was contacted by the Apollo in the spring of 1943 to open for Ella Fitzgerald.
  
  wn.com/Sarah_Vaughan
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  Shorty Baker
  Harold "Shorty" Baker (May 26, 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA – November 8, 1966 in New York City) was a jazz trumpeter.
  Baker started on drums, but switched to trumpet in his teens. He began on riverboats and played with Don Redman in the mid-1930s. He also worked with Teddy Wilson and Andy Kirk before his more noted association with Duke Ellington. He would marry Kirk's pianist Mary Lou Williams and though the two separated shortly thereafter, they never officially divorced.
  Baker worked on and off in Duke Ellington's Orchestra from 1942 to 1962. This orchestra's trumpet section had some of the leading trumpeters of the swing to bop era, including Clark Terry and William "Cat" Anderson. He also worked with Johnny Hodges's group in the early 1950s.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Shorty_Baker
• 
  Sid Catlett
  Sidney Catlett (January 17, 1910 – March 25, 1951), was a swinging jazz drummer often referred to as "Big Sid Catlett" because of his large frame.
  Catlett was born in Evansville, Indiana, and started at piano, but switched to drums and entered formal study when his family moved to Chicago. His career began in Chicago in 1928 with Darnell Howard. In adulthood, he moved to New York City and worked with Benny Carter, Fletcher Henderson, Elmer Snowden, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Ben Webster, and others. In 1941, he joined Benny Goodman's band and after that joined Teddy Wilson's Sextet. In 1944, he did an album with pianist Harry Gibson. He also had his own band and played for Louis Armstrong's All Stars from 1947 to 1949 and became his drummer of choice. He played bop, dixieland, and other styles.
  In early 1951, he began to suffer from pneumonia. In that same year, he died of a heart-attack while visiting friends backstage at an Hot Lips Page benefit concert in Chicago, Illinois.
  In 1996, he was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
  
  wn.com/Sid_Catlett
• Skippy Williams
  Elmer, or Elbert, Skippy Williams (July 27, 1916 – February 28, 1994) was a jazz tenor saxophonist and musical arranger.
  First credited as the arranger for some July 12, 1939 recordings for Earl Hines and His Orchestra, Skippy Williams is best known as the substitute for Ben Webster in Duke Ellington's orchestra. Replacing Webster in August 1943, Williams appears on Ellinton's Carnegie Hall recordings in December 1943. He left Ellington in May 1950. To start his own band and was replaced by Big Al Sears.
  In the mid-40s he gave tenor sax classes to Pepper Adams in Rochester, NY, and was working with Thelonious Monk in 1946, credited as bandleader for Monk.
  Williams also worked with Art Tatum, Fletcher Henderson, Count Basie, Lucky Millinder, Bob Chester, and, according to some sources, played tenor sax on the original recording of Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock", a claim made by several musicians.
  
  wn.com/Skippy_Williams
• Snooky Young
  Eugene Edward "Snooky" Young (February 3, 1919 – May 11, 2011) was an American jazz trumpeter. He was known for his mastery of the plunger mute, with which he was able to create a wide range of sounds.
  Young was lead trumpeter of the Jimmie Lunceford band from 1939 to 1942. He played with Count Basie (three stints totalling eight years), Gerald Wilson and Lionel Hampton, among others, and was an original member of the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Big Band.
  His longest engagement was with NBC, where, as a studio trumpeter, he joined the Tonight Show Band in 1967 and stayed with them until 1992, when the band was replaced by a new, smaller group.
  He was also part of the touring ensemble that traveled with Doc Severinsen, performing live concert dates, corporate events, and headling shows in the main rooms of Las Vegas. The one nighters usually occurred on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays, as Severinsen was committed to the Tonight Show on weeknights.
  For the Las Vegas gigs, the nucleus of Severinsen's touring band (Young, Conductor Steve Thoma, and drummer Paul Line) would commute to Vegas nightly, leaving Van Nuys airport around 6:00pm via Lear Jet, arriving in Las Vegas by 7:00. A limousine would transport the musicians directly backstage, where they would dress & prepare for an 8:00 pm & midnight show. Then back to the airport for the ride back to Los Angeles, where Severinsen and Young had their NBC gig, and Steve Thomas and Paul Line were undertaking studio sessions daily.
  
  wn.com/Snooky_Young
• 
  Sonny Greer
  Sonny Greer (13 December 1895 – 23 March 1982) was an American jazz drummer, best known for his work with Duke Ellington.
  Greer was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and played with Elmer Snowden's band and the Howard Theatre's orchestra in Washington, D.C. before joining Duke Ellington, whom he met in 1919. He was Ellington's first drummer, playing with his quintet, the Washingtonians, and moving with Ellington into the Cotton Club. As a result of his job as a designer with the Leedy Drum Company of Indiana, Greer was able to build up a huge drum kit worth over $3,000, as well as chimes, a gong, timpani, and vibes.
  Greer was a heavy drinker, as well as a pool-hall hustler (when he needed to retrieve his drums from the pawnbroker), and in 1950 Ellington responded to his drinking and occasional unreliability by taking a second drummer, Butch Ballard, with them on a tour of Scandinavia. This enraged Greer, and the consequent argument led to their permanent estrangement.
  Greer continued to play, mainly as a free-lance drummer, working with musicians such as Johnny Hodges, Red Allen, J. C. Higginbotham, Tyree Glenn, and Brooks Kerr, as well as appearing in films, and briefly leading his own band. He was part of a tribute to Ellington in 1974, which achieved great success throughout the United States.
  
  wn.com/Sonny_Greer
• 
  Taft Jordan
  Taft Jordan (February 15, 1915, Florence, South Carolina – December 1, 1981, New Orleans) was an American jazz trumpeter, heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong.
  Jordan played early in his career with the Washboard Rhythm Kings before joining Chick Webb's orchestra from 1933 to 1942, remaining there after Ella Fitzgerald became its frontwoman. Jordan and Bobby Stark traded duties as the main trumpet soloist in Webb's orchestra. From 1943 to 1947 he played with Duke Ellington, then with Lucille Dixon at the Savannah Club in New York City from 1949 to 1953. After this he played less often, though he toured with Benny Goodman in 1958, played on Miles Davis's Sketches of Spain, and worked with the New York Jazz Repertory Company. He recorded four tunes as a leader in 1935, and led his own band in 1960-61, when he recorded LPs for Mercury, Aamco Records, and Moodsville.
  Jordan recorded 4 titles for ARC (Banner, Melotone, Oriole, Perfect, Romeo) on February 21 and 22, 1935. It was an all-star group consisting of
  
  wn.com/Taft_Jordan
• Teresa Brewer
  Teresa Brewer (7 May 1931 – 17 October 2007) was an American pop singer whose style incorporated elements of country, jazz, R&B, musicals and novelty songs. She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording nearly 600 songs.
  Theresa Breuer grew up in Toledo, Ohio. Her father was an inspector of glass for the Libbey Owens Company (now Pilkington Glass); her mother was a housewife. At the age of two, Theresa was taken by her mother to audition for a radio program, "Uncle August's Kiddie Show" on Toledo's WSPD. She performed for cookies and cupcakes donated by the sponsor. Although she never took singing lessons, she took tap dancing lessons. From age five to twelve, she sang and danced on the "Major Bowes Amateur Hour," then a popular touring radio show. Her aunt Mary traveled with Theresa until 1949, when Theresa married. She was devoted to her aunt, who shared Brewer's home until her death in 1993.
  At the age of 12, Theresa returned to Toledo and ceased touring in order to have a normal school life. She continued to perform on local radio. In January 1948, the 16 year-old won a local competition and (with three other winners) was sent to New York to appear on a talent show called "Stairway to the Stars", featuring Eddie Dowling. It was at about that time that she changed the spelling of her name from Theresa Breuer to Teresa Brewer. She won a number of talent shows and played night clubs in New York (including the famous Latin Quarter).
  
  wn.com/Teresa_Brewer
• 
  Tommy Dorsey
  Thomas Francis "Tommy" Dorsey, Jr. (November 19, 1905 - November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombonist, trumpeter, composer, and bandleader of the Big Band era. He was known as "The Sentimental Gentleman of Swing", due to his smooth-toned trombone playing. He was the younger brother of bandleader Jimmy Dorsey. After Dorsey broke with his brother in the mid-1930s, he led an extremely popular and highly successful band from the late 1930s into the 1950s.
  Thomas Francis Dorsey, Jr. was born in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the second of four children born to Thomas Francis Dorsey, Sr. and Theresa (née Langton) Dorsey. The Dorsey brothers' two younger siblings were Mary and Edward (who died young). At age 15, Jimmy Dorsey recommended his brother Tommy as the replacement for Russ Morgan in the germane 1920s territory band "The Scranton Sirens." Tommy and Jimmy worked in several bands, including those of Tal Henry, Rudy Vallee, Vincent Lopez, Nathaniel Shilkret, and especially Paul Whiteman. In 1929, the Dorsey Boys had their first hit with "Coquette" for OKeh records. The Dorsey Brothers band signed with Decca records in 1934, having a hit with "I Believe In Miracles". Future bandleader Glenn Miller was a member of the Dorsey Brothers Orchestra in 1934 and 1935, composing "Annie's Cousin Fanny" and "Dese Dem Dose" both recorded for Decca for the band. Ongoing acrimony between the brothers, however, led to Tommy Dorsey's walking out to form his own band in 1935, just as the orchestra was having a hit with "Every Little Moment."
  
  wn.com/Tommy_Dorsey
• 
  Tricky Sam Nanton
  Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton (February 1, 1904 – July 20, 1946) was a famous trombonist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.
  Nanton was born in New York City and began playing professionally in Washington with bands led by Cliff Jackson and Elmer Snowden. He joined Ellington in 1926.
  From 1923 to 1924, he worked with Frazier's Harmony Five. A year later, he performed with banjoist Elmer Snowden. At age 22, Joe Nanton found his niche in Duke Ellington's Orchestra when he reluctantly took the place of his friend Charlie Irvis. He remained a member of the orchestra until his early death in 1946. Nanton, along with Lawrence Brown, anchored one of the outstanding jazz trombone sections of the swing era, their different, complementary talents and personalities opening up a wide range of trombone sounds and solos in the early Ellington bands.
  Nanton was one of the great pioneers of the plunger mute. Together with his musical soulmate Bubber Miley on trumpet, Nanton is largely responsible for creating the characteristic Wah-wah sounds copied by many later brass soloists in the swing era. Their highly expressive growl and plunger sounds were the main ingredient in the band's famous “jungle” sound that evolved during the band's late 1920s engagement at Harlem's "Cotton Club". After Miley's premature departure in 1929, Nanton taught Cootie Williams, Miley's successor, some of the growl and plunger techniques that Miley had used. Williams became a plunger virtuoso in his own right and helped the band retain its distinctive sound.
  
  wn.com/Tricky_Sam_Nanton
• 
  Tyree Glenn
  Evan Tyree Glenn (November 23, 1912, Corsicana, Texas – May 18, 1974, Englewood, New Jersey) was an American trombone player.
  Tyree played trombone and vibraphone with local Texas bands before moving in the early 1930s to Washington, D.C., where he performed with several prominent bands of the Swing Era. He played with Bob Young^{[disambiguation needed ]} (1930), then he joined Tommy Myles's band (1934-1936). After he left Myles, he moved to the West Coast, playing with groups headed by Charlie Echols (1936). Further, he played with Eddie Barefield (1936), Eddie Mallory's band (1937) and Benny Carter (1937) and played with Cab Calloway from 1939 to 1946.
  He toured around Europe with Don Redman's big band (1946). From 1947 to 1951 he played with Duke Ellington and was an effective wah-wah trombonist in the Tricky Sam Nanton tradition and Ellington's only vibraphonist, being well-featured on the Liberian Suite. After, he played also with Howard Biggs's Orchestra.
  During the 1950s, Glenn did studiowork, led his quartet at the Embers, did some television, radio and acting work, and freelanced in swing and Dixieland settings. In 1953 he joined Jack Sterling's New York daily radio show, with which he remained until 1963. During 1965-1968, he toured the world with Louis Armstrong's All-Stars and played until Armstrong died in 1971. Later, Glenn led his own group during his last few years.
  
  wn.com/Tyree_Glenn
• Victor Gaskin
  Roderick Victor Gaskin, born The Bronx, New York, November 23, 1934 is a jazz bassist.
  Gaskin moved to Los Angeles in 1962 and started playing with Paul Horn and Red Mitchell before going on to become one of many bass players for the Jazz Crusaders. He also recorded with Curtis Amy and Dupree Bolton, before becoming a part of the West Coast jazz scene, accompanying Buddy Collette, Shelly Manne, and Bud Shank.
  Between 1966 and 1970, he was a member of Cannonball Adderley's groups, and in 1970 recorded with Duke Ellington's octet, quintet, quartet and trio.
  He started playing with the Billy Taylor Trio in the late 1970s, continuing until 1993,as well as with Johnny Hartman and Hank Jones.
  
  
  
  wn.com/Victor_Gaskin
• Wellman Braud
  Wellman Braud (January 25, 1891 – October 29, 1966) was a Creole American jazz upright bassist. His family sometimes spelled their last name "Breaux", pronounced "Bro".
  Born in St. James Parish, Louisiana, Braud came to New Orleans, in his early teens. He was playing violin and the upright bass and leading a trio in venues in the Storyville District before 1910. He moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1917. In 1923 he went to London with the Plantation Orchestra, in which he doubled on bass and trombone. Next he moved to New York City where he played with Wilber Sweatman's band before joining Duke Ellington. His vigorous melodic bass playing, alternately plucking, slapping, and bowing, was an important feature of the early Ellington Orchestra sound in the 1920s and 1930s. Braud's playing on Ellington's regular radio broadcasts and recordings helped popularize the slap style of string bass playing, as well as encouraging many dance bands of the time to switch from using a tuba to an Upright bass. (Like many of his contemporary New Orleans bassists, Braud doubled on tuba, and he recorded on that instrument on some sides with Ellington.)
  
  wn.com/Wellman_Braud
• Wendell Marshall
  Wendell Marshall (October 24, 1920, St. Louis, Missouri – February 6, 2002, St. Louis) was an American jazz double-bassist.
  Marshall was Jimmy Blanton's cousin. He studied at Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri, then served in the Army during World War II. Following his discharge, he played with Stuff Smith, then relocated to New York City, where he began playing with Mercer Ellington. From 1948 to 1955 he played with Duke Ellington.
  Following his time with the Duke, Marshall played in pit orchestras on Broadway and freelanced with Mary Lou Williams, Art Blakey, Donald Byrd, Milt Jackson, and Hank Jones among others. He retired in 1968.
  With Milt Jackson
  
  wn.com/Wendell_Marshall
• Wikipedia Persondata
  wn.com/Wikipedia_Persondata
• 
  Wilbur De Paris
  Wilbur de Paris (January 11, 1900 – January 3, 1973) was a trombone player and band leader, especially known for mixing New Orleans jazz style with Swing.
  De Paris was born in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where his father, Sidney G. Paris, who came from West Virginia and who was a musician (trombone, banjo, guitar), a circus barker, a ventriloquist, a minstrel, etc., had met and married his mother, Fannie Hyatt.^{[citation needed]} By the autumn of 1906, when he was five, de Paris had started playing alto saxophone, and a year later was working for his father in one of his plantation shows.
  These shows were small travelling theatrical-musical groups of singers, dancers, actors, comedians, and musicians who mainly worked for Theatre Owners and Bookers Association in the South. They performed in small tents and theatres with a mixture of drama, musical and comedy sketches, magic, etc., which would later be incorporated into vaudeville.^{[citation needed]}
  De Paris heard jazz first at age 16, circa 1917, as a member of a summer show that played at the Lyric Theatre. He also met Louis Armstrong whilst playing the saxophone at Tom Anderson's Cafe, and with A. J. Piron.^{[citation needed]} After high school, de Paris worked for his father for a time, then worked for more travelling shows in the east, then started playing in Philadelphia in the early 1920s. His first band was Wilbur de Paris and his Cottonpickers. After the Wall Street Crash in 1929 he disbanded his second group and went to New York to play for many years with the greats of jazz and to make records.^{[citation needed]}
  
  wn.com/Wilbur_De_Paris
• 
  Wild Bill Davis
  Wild Bill Davis (November 24, 1918 in Glasgow, Missouri – August 17, 1995 in Moorestown, New Jersey) was the stage name of American jazz pianist, organist, and arranger William Strethen Davis.
  Davis was born in Glasgow, Missouri. He is best known for his pioneering jazz electronic organ recordings and for his tenure with the Tympany Five, the legendary backing group for Louis Jordan. Prior to the emergence of Jimmy Smith in 1956, Davis (whom Smith had reportedly first seen playing organ in the 1930s) was the pacesetter among organists.
  He originally played guitar and wrote arrangements for Milt Larkin's Texas-based big band during 1939–1942, a band which also included Arnett Cobb, Illinois Jacquet, and Tom Archia on horns. After leaving the Larkin orchestra, Davis worked in Chicago as a pianist, recording with Buster Bennett in 1945. He played a crucial role as the pianist-arranger in Louis Jordan's Tympany Five (1945–1947) at the peak of their success. After leaving Jordan, he returned to Chicago for a time, recording again with Buster Bennett and working with Claude McLin. After switching from piano to organ, Davis moved to the East Coast. In 1950, he began leading an influential trio of organ, guitar, and drums, which recorded for OKeh.
  
  wn.com/Wild_Bill_Davis

• Chocolate Sundae
• When Your Lover Has Gone
• Candy
• Ballade: Lush Life / Lullaby of the Leaves / Makin' Whoopee / It Never Entered My Mind
• Woody'n You

• Tapooze Don
• If We Were in Love
• Wanderlust
• The Boss
• Smedley
• Cool Cool Blue
• Long Ago
• The Third Eye

• First Movement - Entrance
• Second Movement - The Knuf Brothers
• Third Movement - Conversations
• Fourth Movement - Then and Now
• Warbird

• Homer's Hang Up
• Bewitched
• Earl's Pad
• Moonlight Fiesta
• (Set Break)
• I'm Shooting High
• Bombs Away
• Blast Off
• Break Time
• It's Music Time
• Zip
• Checkerway
• Drum Foolery

• Don't Stop Now
• Lover Man
• Indian Summer
• Cipriana
• With Bells On
• Darn That Dream
• Three Ton Blues
• Seven Come Eleven

• The Hawk Talks
• Skin Deep
• Black: Work Song
• Black: Come Sunday
• Black: Light
• Brown: West Indian Dance
• Brown: Emancipation Proclamation
• Brown: The Blues
• Beige
• European Skallyhoppin'
• Portrait of Billy Strayhorn
• Sketches

• Soar Like an Eagle
• Waltz for Mia
• 57th St. Blues
• Ode to the Oba
• Basso Bravo
• Peaceful Thunder
• Valencia
• Brush Strokes
• Rainbow Dreams
• Shavetail
• 3 P.M.
• 5 1/2 Weeks
• Sing a Song of Love

• Air Mail Special
• I Think of You
• Don't Be That Way
• I Can't Get Started
• Take Me Home
• If I Were a Bellson
• Cherokee
• Prelude to a Kiss
• In Roy's Corner
• Reach for the Sky
• Begin the Beguine
• Get Up and Go

• Allen's Alley
• Five Notes of Blues
• Head Start
• Threesome Shuffle
• Berne, Baby, Berne!
• Another Who?

• The Lady Is a Tramp
• Yesterdays
• Everything Happens to Me
• On a Clear Day
• Surrey With the Fringe on Top
• My Heart Stood Still
• Chicago
• Lover

• One Score and Four Drummers Ago
• Shelly's Blues
• 4 Aces
• Drum Battle, Section 1
• Super Mellow
• In a Japanese Garden
• Take Three and C

• Thunderbird
• The Little Pixie
• Nails
• Serenade in Blues
• Back on the Scene
• No More Blues
• Cottontail
• Softly With Feeling

• Caravan
• Ode to a Friend
• The Peaceful Poet
• Together We Rise
• Hot
• Hookin' It
• Waltzing at Denison
• Walkin' With Buddy

• Percussionistically Speaking
• A Pearl for Louie
• Fascinatin' Rhythm
• Copasetic
• All God's Chillun Got Rhythm
• Skin Deep
• Loris
• For Europeans Only
• Phalanges
• Caxton Hall Swing
• Copasetic (short version)

• Our Manne Shelly
• Alone Together
• Step Lightly
• 24th Day
• 150 Pounds of Bones
• Sambandrea Swing
• Oleo
• Berne, Baby, Berne!
• Back Home
• Sonny Side
• Tru Blue
• Spacin' Home

Born: 1924-07-06

Died: 2009-02-14