Wako store in Ginza

Ginza (銀座^?) is a district of Chūō, Tokyo, located south of Yaesu and Kyōbashi, west of Tsukiji, east of Yūrakuchō and Uchisaiwaichō, and north of Shinbashi.

It is known as an upscale area of Tokyo with numerous department stores, boutiques, restaurants and coffeehouses. Ginza is recognized as one of the most luxurious shopping districts in the world. Many upscale fashion clothing flagship stores are located here, being also recognized as having the highest concentration of western shops in Tokyo. Prominent are Chanel, Dior, Abercrombie & Fitch, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton.^[1] Flagship electronic retail stores like the Sony showroom and the Apple Store are also here.

History[link]

Ginza is named after the silver-coin mint established there in 1612 during the Edo period.

Ginza as it appeared in the late 1870s-1880s (Miniature model at the Edo-Tokyo Museum)

After the Tsukiji area burnt to the ground in 1872, the Meiji government designated the Ginza area as model of modernisation. The government planned the construction of fireproof brick buildings, and larger, better streets connecting the Shimbashi Station and the foreign concession in Tsukiji, as well as to important government buildings. Designs for the area were provided by the Irish-born architect Thomas Waters; the Bureau of Construction of the Ministry of Finance was in charge of construction. In the following year, a Western-style shopping promenade on the street from the Shinbashi bridge to the Kyōbashi bridge in the southwestern part of Chūō with two- and three-story Georgian brick buildings was completed.

Ginza in 1946.

"Bricktown" buildings were initially offered for sale, later they were leased, but the high rent meant that many remained unoccupied. Nevertheless, the area flourished as a symbol of "civilisation and enlightenment", thanks to the presence of newspapers and magazine companies, who led the trends of the day. The area was also known for its window displays, an example of modern marketing techniques.

Most of these European-style buildings disappeared, but some older buildings still remain, most famously the Wakō building with the now-iconic Hattori Clock Tower. The building and clock tower were originally built by Kintarō Hattori, the founder of Seiko.

Its recent history has seen it as a promiment outpost of western luxury shops. Ginza is a popular destination on weekends, when the main north-south artery is closed to traffic. The traffic blockade began in the 1960s under governor Ryokichi Minobe.

Economy[link]

Ricoh is headquartered in the Ricoh Building in Ginza.^[2] In 2006, Ricoh's headquarters moved to the 25-story building from a previous location in Minato, Tokyo. In the Ricoh Building, the headquarters occupies the same space as its sales offices.^[2][3][4]

• Matsuya
• Oji Paper
• Recruit
• Ricoh
• Shise
• Wako

Dai-ichi Kikaku Senden Co., Ltd. opened in Chūō in Ginza, Chūō in December 1951. In January 1958 the company relocated to a new headquarters in Ginza. The company moved to another headquarters in Ginza in September 1961 and its name changed to Dai-ichi Kikaku Co., Ltd. In November 1974, after growth, the company moved to another headquarters in Ginza. In November 1981 Dai-ichi Kikaku moved its head office to a facility in Ginza and administrative office to a facility in Uchisaiwaichō, Chiyoda. The headquarters of Asatsu moved to Ginza in July 1995. Asatsu and Dai-ichi Kikaku merged into Asatsu-DK on January 1, 1999.^[5]

Subway stations[link]

• Ginza Station (Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line, Tokyo Metro Ginza Line, Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line)
• Ginza-itchōme Station (Tokyo Metro Yūrakuchō Line)
• Higashi-Ginza Station (Tokyo Metro Hibiya Line, Toei Asakusa Line)

Gallery[link]

This section looks like an image gallery. Wikipedia policy discourages galleries of random images of the article subject; please improve or remove the section accordingly, moving freely licensed images to Wikimedia Commons if not already hosted there. (May 2012)

• Mitsukoshi department store at Ginza.jpg

  Mitsukoshi department store at Ginza.

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  Kabuki-za theater

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  Sony Building and intersection at dusk

• Sukiyabashi intersection.jpg

  Yūrakuchō Center Building (Yūrakuchō Mullion) at the Sukiyabashi intersection

• 

  Abercrombie & Fitch flagship store in Ginza

• 

  Sukiyabashi Crossing at night

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  Ginza in the early 1900s, photographed by William H. Rau

• 

  Hokōsha Tengoku (歩行者天国), or Hokoten for short, means "pedestrian paradise". The term is used to refer to streets that are closed off to vehicle traffic. Each Sunday, from 12:00 noon until 5:00pm, various streets in Ginza are closed off - allowing people to walk along the streets.

See also[link]

Tokyo portal

• Harajuku
• Shinjuku
• Shibuya
• List of upscale shopping districts
• Tourism in Japan

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ginza

• Ginza on Wikitravel
• Tokyo Essentials: Ginza
• Ginza Concierge
• Ginza Architecture and Map

Coordinates: 35°40′01″N 139°46′02″E / 35.66682°N 139.76717°E / 35.66682; 139.76717

Vincent Anthony "Vince" Guaraldi (July 17, 1928 – February 6, 1976) was an Italian-American jazz musician and pianist noted for his innovative compositions and arrangements and for composing music for animated adaptations of the Peanuts comic strip. Guaraldi was born in San Francisco, California. He was the nephew of musician, singer, and whistler Muzzy Marcellino. Vince graduated from Lincoln High School, attended San Francisco State University, and served as an Army cook in the Korean War.

Italian American musical family[link]

According to Laura E. Ruberto (2010):

"Vincent Anthony Guaraldi ... was born in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco and raised out in the Avenues, surrounded by an Italian American musical family, especially on his mother’s side. According to the pianist’s son Dave Guaraldi, Vince was adopted by Tony Guaraldi, after Vince’s mother, Cannella Guaraldi, neè Marcellino, split with his biological father, Vince Delaio (sp?). Guaraldi’s maternal grandfather hailed from Sicily and at least some part of his family emigrated first to New York before coming west.

"And although it was his mother who arranged for his piano lessons as a kid, it was his uncles, Joe, a violinist, and Muzzy, a singer, who introduced him to the world of professional music."

Early career and Grammy Award[link]

Guaraldi's first recording was made in November 1953 with Cal Tjader and came out early in 1954. The early 10-inch LP was called The Cal Tjader Trio, and included "Chopsticks Mambo", "Vibra-Tharpe", and "Lullaby of the Leaves". By 1955, Guaraldi had his own trio with Eddie Duran and Dean Reilly. He then reunited with Cal Tjader in June 1956 and was an integral part of two bands that the vibraphonist assembled. The first band played mainly straight jazz and included Al Torre (drums), Eugene Wright (bass) and Luis Kant (congas and bongos). The second band was formed in the spring of 1958 and included Al McKibbon (bass), Mongo Santamaría (congas and bongos) and Willie Bobo (drums and timbales). Reed men Paul Horn and Jose "Chombo" Silva were also added to the group for certain live performances and recordings. Guaraldi made a big splash with his performance with Tjader at the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival.

Guaraldi left the group early in 1959 to pursue his own projects full time. He probably would have remained a well-respected but minor jazz figure had he not written an original number to fill out his covers of Antonio Carlos Jobim/Luis Bonfá tunes on his 1962 album, Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus, inspired by the French/Brazilian film Black Orpheus, which won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Fantasy Records released "Samba de Orpheus" as a single, trying to catch the building bossa nova wave, but it was destined to sink without a trace when radio DJs began flipping it over and playing the B-side, Guaraldi's "Cast Your Fate to the Wind". A gentle, likeable tune, it stood out from everything else on the airwaves and became a grass-roots hit. It also won the Grammy for Best Original Jazz Composition. While "Cast Your Fate To The Wind" by Guaraldi achieved modest chart success as a single in 1963, a cover version two years later by British group Sounds Orchestral cracked the Billboard top 10 (in the spring of 1965). Unlike many songwriters who grow weary of their biggest hits, Guaraldi never minded taking requests to play it when he appeared live. "It's like signing the back of a check", he once remarked.

Guaraldi then recorded an album called Vince Guaraldi, Bola Sete, and Friends with guitarist Bola Sete, Fred Marshall (bass) and Jerry Granelli (drums). This began a period of collaboration between Guaraldi and Sete where Guaraldi began experimenting with bossa nova-influenced music as well as with the electric piano. This led to the recording and release of his album The Eclectic Vince Guaraldi. Shortly after this, Guaraldi undertook the role of composer and pianist for the Eucharist chorus at the San Francisco Grace Cathedral. Utilizing his Latin influences from his bossa nova days with Bola Sete, Guaraldi composed a number of pieces with waltz tempos and jazz standards and later recorded this performance in 1965.^[1]

[edit] Compositions for Charles Schulz's Peanuts

While searching for just the right music to accompany a planned Peanuts television documentary, Lee Mendelson (the producer of the special) heard a single version of "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" by Vince Guaraldi's trio on the radio while traveling in a taxicab on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California. Mendelson contacted Ralph J. Gleason, jazz columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and was put in touch with Guaraldi. He proposed that Guaraldi score the upcoming Peanuts Christmas special and Guaraldi enthusiastically took the job, performing a version of what became "Linus and Lucy" over the phone two weeks later. The soundtrack was recorded by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, with drummer Jerry Granelli, and Puzzy Firth standing in for bassist Fred Marshall, who was ill at the time. Guaraldi went on to compose scores for seventeen Peanuts television specials, plus the feature film A Boy Named Charlie Brown as well as the unaired television program of the same name.

Death[link]

Guaraldi died at age 47 on February 6, 1976. The evening before, he had dined at Peanuts producer Lee Mendelson's home, and was reportedly not feeling well, complaining of indigestion-like chest discomfort that his doctor had told him was nothing to worry about. The following evening, after concluding the first set at Butterfield's Nightclub in Menlo Park, California, with his rousing interpretation of "Eleanor Rigby," Guaraldi and drummer Jim Zimmerman returned to the room they were staying in that weekend at the adjacent Red Cottage Inn, to relax before the next set. Zimmerman commented, "He (Vince) was walking across the room and just collapsed. That was it." His cause of death has been variously described as a heart attack or an aortic aneurysm. Guaraldi had just finished recording the soundtrack for It's Arbor Day, Charlie Brown earlier that afternoon.

Guaraldi's untimely passing was a blow to his colleagues. "It was totally unexpected", said Peanuts executive producer Lee Mendelson. "The day of his funeral, they played the Charlie Brown music over the sound system in the church. It was not an easy day; he was so young. It was one of the saddest days of my life. He was up to my house the night before [his death], and said he had not been feeling well, and didn't know what it was." Peanuts animator Bill Meléndez added, "He was a real good guy and we miss him."^[2]

After Guaraldi's death, the music for the Peanuts series was composed first by San Francisco film and television composer Ed Bogas, who scored several Peanuts TV specials and motion pictures up to the early 1990s, along with Bogas' future wife Desirée Goyette, and occasionally, Judy Munsen. Bogas also did his own arrangements of Guaraldi's "Linus And Lucy" theme as a nod to the musician (most notably in It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown and What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown!).

Legacy[link]

A definitive, book-length biography of Guaraldi was published in March 2012. Vince Guaraldi at the Piano, by author and noted Guaraldi archivist Derrick Bang, chronicles Guaraldi's career and role in the Northern California jazz scene, and also includes a complete discography and filmography, as well as an appendix of quotations from Guaraldi's former sidemen.

David Benoit[link]

Noted jazz musician David Benoit has often credited Guaraldi and the original Peanuts Christmas special music for his interest in jazz. In 1985, Benoit recorded a cover of Guaraldi's "Linus and Lucy" for an album called This Side Up, which enjoyed considerable radio airplay and helped launch the smooth jazz genre. He released "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" on the album Waiting for Spring in 1989.

George Winston[link]

New Age pianist George Winston released a Guaraldi tribute album in 1996 entitled Linus and Lucy – The Music of Vince Guaraldi. Winston performed many Peanuts songs that had not been released by Guaraldi himself. "I love his melodies and his chord progressions", Winston said of Guaraldi. "He has a really personal way of doing voicings."^[3] The album was very successful, leading Winston to record a follow-up entitled Love Will Come – The Music of Vince Guaraldi, Volume 2, released in early 2010.^[4]

In 2003, a heretofore unknown live performance of the eight-part "Charlie Brown Suite" was released on the album The Charlie Brown Suite & Other Favorites. The performance was culled from tapes in Winston's private collection.

Discography[link]

Albums as leader or co-leader[link]

• 1955 Modern Music from San Francisco
• 1956 Vince Guaraldi Trio
• 1957 A Flower is a Lovesome Thing
• 1962 Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus (also known as "Cast Your Fate to the Wind: Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus")
• 1963 Vince Guaraldi In Person
• 1963 Vince Guaraldi, Bola Sete and Friends
• 1964 The Latin Side Of Vince Guaraldi
• 1964 Jazz Impressions Of A Boy Named Charlie Brown
• 1965 From All Sides (with Bola Sete)
• 1965 The Grace Cathedral Concert
• 1965 A Charlie Brown Christmas
• 1966 Live at El Matador (with Bola Sete)
• 1968 Vince Guaraldi With San Francisco Boys Chorus
• 1968 Oh good Grief!
• 1969 The Eclectic Vince Guaraldi
• 1970 Alma-Ville
• 1989 Greatest Hits (Compilation album by Fantasy Records)
• 1998 Charlie Brown's holiday Hits
• 2001 Jazz Casual: Paul Winter / Bola Sete & Vince Guaraldi (1963 television recording)
• 2003 The Charlie Brown Suite & Other Favorites (previously unreleased material from late 1960s)
• 2005 Oaxaca (previously unreleased material from late 1960s/early 1970s)
• 2006 North Beach (previously unreleased material from late 1960s/early 1970s)
• 2006 A Charlie Brown Christmas [Original Recordings Remastered] Reissued 1965 album with additional recordings and more complete versions of some tracks
• 2006 Vince Guaraldi and the Lost Cues from the Charlie Brown Television Specials (previously unreleased recordings from 1972–1975)
• 2008 Vince Guaraldi and the Lost Cues from the Charlie Brown Television Specials: Volume 2
• 2008 Live on the Air
• 2009 Essential Standards (Compilation album by Fantasy Records)
• 2009 The Definitive Vince Guaraldi (Compilation album by Fantasy Records including two previously unreleased tracks)^[5]
• 2011 An Afternoon with The Vince Guaraldi Quartet

Notable appearances on other albums[link]

• 1953 The Cal Tjader Trio (Guaraldi's first recorded session)
• 1956 Introducing Gus Mancuso (w / Cal Tjader)
• 1957 Jazz At The Blackhawk (Cal Tjader Quartet)
• 1957 Cal Tjader (Cal Tjader Quartet)
• 1957 Conte Candoli Quartet
• 1958 Mas Ritmo Caliente (Cal Tjader)
• 1958 Stan Getz/Cal Tjader Sextet (all-star studio session that includes a long version of Guaraldi's piece "Ginza")
• 1958 Latin Concert (Cal Tjader Quintet)
• 1959 A Night At The Blackhawk (Cal Tjader Sextet)
• 1959 Latin For Lovers (Cal Tjader with Strings)
• 1959 Tjader Goes Latin (Cal Tjader)
• 1959 West Coast Jazz In Hifi (Richie Kamuca / Bill Holman)
• 1960 Little Band, Big Jazz (The Conte Candoli All Stars)
• 1974 Jimmy Witherspoon & Ben Webster – Previously Unissued Recordings (1960s session from Verve Records archive; the Black Orpheus incarnation of Guaraldi's trio supports the two leaders)

Albums showcasing or featuring Vince Guaraldi's music[link]

• 1988 Quiet as the Moon (Dave Brubeck)
• 1989 Happy Anniversary, Charlie Brown (Various artists including B. B. King, Chick Corea, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck)
• 1995 Joe's Cool Blues (Wynton Marsalis)
• 1996 Linus and Lucy – The Music of Vince Guaraldi (George Winston)
• 2000 Here's to You, Charlie Brown! 50 Great Years! (David Benoit)
• 2000 A Charlie Brown Christmas (Cyrus Chestnut Trio)
• 2000 The Seventh Song (Steve Vai)
• 2006 Wintersong (Sarah McLachlan)
• 2010 Merry Christmas II You (Mariah Carey)
• 2010 Love Will Come – The Music of Vince Guaraldi, Volume 2 (George Winston)

References[link]

• Liner notes to the 2006 re-mastered CD release of A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack.

External links[link]

• Vince Guaraldi official site (requires Macromedia Flash for all content)
• Vince Guaraldi biography and discography at FiveCentsPlease
• 'Vince Guaraldi at the Piano' by Derrick Bang (ISBN: 978-0-7864-5902-5) The definitive musical biography of Vince Guaraldi, published in March 2012.

Stan Getz
With his granddaughter Katie in 1987 at the Lincoln Center
Background information
Birth name	Stanley Gayetzky
Born	(1927-02-02)February 2, 1927 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Died	June 6, 1991(1991-06-06) (aged 64) Malibu, California, United States
Genres	Jazz Bossa nova West coast jazz Cool jazz
Occupations	Saxophonist
Instruments	Tenor saxophone, Baritone Saxophone
Years active	1943–1991
Labels	Verve Records
Associated acts	Kenny Barron, Bill Evans, J.J. Johnson, Bob Brookmeyer, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Byrd, Chet Baker, Gary Burton, Cal Tjader, Woody Herman, João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Victor Lewis

Stanley Getz (February 2, 1927 – June 6, 1991) was an American jazz saxophone player. Getz was known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, his prime influence being the wispy, mellow timbre of his idol, Lester Young.^[1] Coming to prominence in the late 1940s with Woody Herman's big band, Getz is described by critic Scott Yanow^[2] as "one of the all-time great tenor saxophonists". Getz went on to perform in bebop, cool jazz and third stream, but is perhaps best known for popularizing bossa nova, as in the worldwide hit single "The Girl from Ipanema" (1964).

Early life[link]

Getz was born on February 2, 1927, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His parents were Ukrainian Jews who emigrated from the Kiev area in 1903. The family later moved to New York City for better employment opportunities. Getz worked hard in school, receiving straight As, and finished sixth grade close to the top of his class. Getz's major interest was in musical instruments, and he felt a need to play every instrument in sight. He played a number of them before his father bought him his first saxophone at the age of 13. Even though his father also got him a clarinet, Getz instantly fell in love with the saxophone and began practicing eight hours a day.

He attended James Monroe High School (New York) in the Bronx. In 1941, he was accepted into the All City High School Orchestra of New York City. This gave him a chance to receive private, free tutoring from the New York Philharmonic's Simon Kovar, a bassoon player. He also continued playing the saxophone. He eventually dropped out of school in order to pursue his musical career, but was later sent back to the classroom by the school system's truancy officers.^[1]

In 1943 at the age of 16,^[3] he was accepted into Jack Teagarden's band, and because of his youth he became Teagarden's ward. Getz also played along with Nat King Cole and Lionel Hampton. After playing for Stan Kenton, Jimmy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman, Getz was a soloist with Woody Herman from 1947 to 1949 in "The Second Herd", and he first gained wide attention as one of the band's saxophonists, who were known collectively as 'The Four Brothers', the others being Serge Chaloff, Zoot Sims and Herbie Steward.^[3] With Herman, he had a hit with "Early Autumn" and after Getz left "The Second Herd" he was able to launch his solo career. He would be the leader on almost all of his recording sessions after 1950.

Career[link]

In the mid to late 1950s working from Scandinavia, Getz became popular playing cool jazz with Horace Silver, Johnny Smith, Oscar Peterson, and many others. His first two quintets were notable for their personnel, including Charlie Parker's rhythm section of drummer Roy Haynes, pianist Al Haig and bassist Tommy Potter. A 1953 line-up of the Dizzy Gillespie/Stan Getz Sextet featured Gillespie, Getz, Oscar Peterson, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown and Max Roach.^[1]

Returning to the U.S. from Europe in 1961, Getz became a central figure in introducing bossa nova music to the American audience. Teaming with guitarist Charlie Byrd, who had just returned from a U.S. State Department tour of Brazil, Getz recorded Jazz Samba in 1962 and it became a hit. The title track was an adaptation of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba". Getz won the Grammy for Best Jazz Performance of 1963 for "Desafinado", from the same album. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc.^[4] As a follow-up, Getz recorded the album, Jazz Samba Encore!, with one of the originators of bossa nova, Brazilian guitarist Luiz Bonfá. It also sold more than a million copies by 1964, giving Getz his second gold disc.^[4]

He then recorded the album Getz/Gilberto, in 1963,^[5] with Tom Jobim, João Gilberto and his wife, Astrud Gilberto. Their "The Girl from Ipanema" won a Grammy Award. The piece became one of the most well-known latin jazz tracks. Getz/Gilberto won two Grammys (Best Album and Best Single). A live album, Getz/Gilberto Vol. 2, followed, as did Getz Au Go Go, a live recording at the Cafe Au Go Go. Getz's affair with Astrud Gilberto brought an end to his musical partnership with her and her husband, and he began to move away from bossa nova and back to cool jazz. While still working with the Gilbertos, he recorded the jazz album Nobody Else But Me, with a new quartet including vibraphonist Gary Burton, but Verve Records, wishing to continue building the Getz brand with bossa nova, refused to release it. It eventually came out 30 years later, after Getz had died.

In 1972, Getz recorded in the fusion idiom with Chick Corea, Tony Williams and Stanley Clarke, and in this period experimented with an Echoplex on his saxophone. He had a cameo in the film The Exterminator (1980).

In the mid-1980s Getz worked regularly in the San Francisco Bay area and taught at Stanford University as an artist-in-residence at the Stanford Jazz Workshop until 1988.^[6] In 1986, he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame. During 1988, Getz worked with Huey Lewis and the News on their Small World album. He played the extended solo on the title track, which became a minor hit single.

His tenor saxophone of choice was the Selmer Mark VI.

Personal life[link]

Getz married Beverly Byrne, a vocalist with the Gene Krupa band, on November 7, 1946; they had three children together.

Getz became involved with drugs and alcohol while a teenager. In 1954, he was arrested for attempting to rob a pharmacy to get a morphine fix. As he was being processed in the prison ward of Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, Beverly gave birth to their third child one floor below. Getz tried to escape his narcotics addiction by moving to Copenhagen. He married Swedish aristocrat Monica Silfverskiöld on November 3, 1956, and had two children with her: Pamela and Nicolas. Getz divorced Monica in 1987.

Zoot Sims, who had known Getz since their time with Herman, once described him as 'a nice bunch of guys', as a consequence of the wide behavioural range of which Getz was capable. Getz died of liver cancer in June 6, 1991. His body was cremated and the ashes scattered at sea, off the coast of Malibu, California.

In 1998, the 'Stan Getz Media Center and Library' at Berklee College of Music was dedicated through a donation from the Herb Alpert Foundation.

Discography[link]

Awards[link]

• Grammy Award for Best Jazz Performance, Soloist or Small Group (Instrumental) "Desafinado," Stan Getz. 1962
• Grammy Award for Record of the Year, "The Girl From Ipanema," 1964
• Grammy Award for Album of the Year, Getz/Gilberto, Stan Getz and João Gilberto (Verve)1964
• Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Small Group or Soloist With Small Group, Getz/Gilberto, Stan Getz 1964
• Grammy Award for Best Jazz Solo Performance, "I Remember You" Stan Getz 1991

Bibliography[link]

• The Stan Getz discography, Astrup, Arne. 1978
• Stan Getz, Palmer, Richard. 1988.
• Stan Getz: an appreciation of his recorded work, Kirkpatrick, Ron. 1992.
• Stan Getz: nobody else but me, Gelly, Dave. 2002.
• Stan Getz: an annotated bibliography and filmography, Churchill, Nicholas. 2005.
• Jazz saxophone: an in-depth look at the styles of the tenor masters, Taylor, Dennis, 2004.
• Maggin, Donald L. (1996). Stan Getz. A Life in Jazz. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-15555-3. 

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Official Stan Getz homepage
• 1986 Interview
• Getz discography

‎

Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. a.k.a. Cal Tjader (July 16, 1925–May 5, 1982) was a Latin jazz musician, though he also explored various other jazz idioms. Unlike other American jazz musicians who experimented with the music from Cuba, the Caribbean, and Latin America, he never abandoned it, performing it until his death.

Tjader primarily played the vibraphone. He was also accomplished on the drums, bongos, congas, timpani, and the piano. He worked with numerous musicians from several cultures. He is often linked to the development of Latin Rock and Acid Jazz. Although fusing jazz with Latin music is often categorized as "Latin Jazz" (or, earlier, "Afro-Cuban Jazz"), Tjader's output swung freely between both styles.

He won a Grammy in 1980 for his album La Onda Va Bien, capping off a career that spanned over forty years.

Early years (1925–1943)[link]

Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. (last name pronounced "chay-der") was born 16 July 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri to touring Swedish American vaudevillians. His father tap danced and his mother played piano, a husband-wife team going from city to city with their troupe to earn a living. (His grandfather was Dr. Anton William Tjader, a notable Nevada surgeon mentioned in Mark Twain's Early Tales and Sketches.) At the age of two, Tjader's parents settled in San Mateo, California and opened a dance studio. His mother (who dreamed of becoming a concert pianist) instructed him in classical piano and his father taught him to tap dance. He performed around the Bay Area as "Tjader Junior", a tap-dancing wunderkind. He performed a brief non-speaking role dancing alongside Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the film The White of the Dark Cloud of Joy.

He joined a Dixieland band and played around the Bay Area. At age sixteen, he entered a Gene Krupa drum solo contest, making it to the finals and ultimately winning by playing "Drum Boogie." The win was overshadowed by that morning's event: Japanese planes had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Army and college (1940s)[link]

Tjader entered the United States Army in 1943 and served as a medic until 1946. Upon his return he enrolled at San Jose State College under the G.I. Bill, majoring in education. (He hoped to become a schoolteacher.) Later he transferred to San Francisco State College, still intending to teach. It was there he took timpani lessons, his only formal music training.

At San Francisco State he met Dave Brubeck, a young pianist also fresh from a stint in the Army. Brubeck introduced Tjader to Paul Desmond. The three connected with more players and formed the Dave Brubeck Octet with Tjader on drums. Although the group only recorded one album (and had an abysmal time finding work), the recording is regarded as important due to its early glimpse at these soon-to-be-legendary jazz greats.

After the Octet disbanded, Tjader and Brubeck formed a trio, performing jazz standards in the hope of finding more work. The Dave Brubeck Trio succeeded and became a fixture in the San Francisco jazz scene. Tjader taught himself the vibraphone in this period, alternating between it and the drums depending on the song.

Sideman (1951–1954)[link]

Brubeck suffered major injuries in a diving accident in 1951 in Hawaii and the trio was forced to dissolve. Tjader continued the trio work in California with bassist Jack Weeks from Brubeck's trio and pianists John Marabuto or Vince Guaraldi, recording his first 10" LP as a leader with them for Fantasy, but soon worked with Alvino Rey and completed his degree at San Francisco State.

Jazz pianist George Shearing recruited Tjader in 1953 when Joe Roland left his group. Al McKibbon was a member of Shearing's band at the time and he and Tjader encouraged Shearing to add Cuban percussionists. Tjader played bongos as well as the vibes - "Drum Trouble" was his bongo solo feature. Down Beat's 1953 Critics Poll nominated him as best New Star on the vibes. His next 10" LP as a leader was recorded for Savoy during that time, as well as his first Latin Jazz for a Fantasy 10" LP.

While in New York City, bassist Al McKibbon took Tjader to see the Afro-Cuban big bands led by Machito and Chico O'Farrill, both at the forefront of the nascent Latin jazz sound. In New York he also met Mongo Santamaría and Willie Bobo who were members of Tito Puente's orchestra at the time. Tjader is often credited as the musician who brought the vibraphones to Latin jazz. However, John Storm Roberts points out that Tito Puente deserves the title, as he performed Afro-Cuban tunes on the vibraphone in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Leader (1954–1962)[link]

Tjader soon quit Shearing after a gig at a San Francisco jazz club called The Blackhawk. In April 1954, he formed The Cal Tjader Modern Mambo Quintet. The members were brothers Manuel and Carlos Duran on piano and bass respectively, Bayardo "Benny" Velarde on timbales, bongos, and congas, and Edgard Rosales on congas (Luis Miranda replaced Rosales after the first year). Back in San Francisco and recording for Fantasy Records, the group produced several albums in rapid succession, including Mambo with Tjader.

The Mambo craze reached its pitch in the late 1950s, a boon to Tjader's career. Unlike the exotica of Martin Denny and Les Baxter, music billed as "impressions of" Oceania (and other locales), Tjader's bands featured seasoned Cuban players and top-notch jazz talent conversant in both idioms. Some consider his Modern Mambo Quintet his greatest band, and perhaps the greatest small-combo Latin jazz band ever.

Tjader also cut several notable straight-ahead jazz albums for Fantasy under separate groups, most notably The Cal Tjader Quartet (composed of bassist Gene Wright, drummer Al Torre, and Vince Guaraldi). As such, he is considered a member of San Francisco's flourishing 1950s bebop scene. Tjader is sometimes lumped in as part of the West Coast (or "cool") jazz sound, although his rhythms and tempos (both Latin and bebop) had little in common with the work of Los Angeles jazzmen Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, or Art Pepper. He did team up with legendary jazz saxophonist Stan Getz in 1958, producing a well-received album.

Tjader and his band opened the second Monterey Jazz Festival in 1959 with an acclaimed "preview" concert. The first festival had suffered financially. Tjader is credited with bringing in big ticket sales for the second and saving the landmark festival before it had even really started.

The Modern Mambo Quintet disbanded within a couple of years. Tjader formed several more small-combo bands, playing regularly at such San Francisco jazz clubs as the Blackhawk.

Verve and Skye Records (1960s)[link]

After recording for Fantasy for nearly a decade, Tjader signed with better-known Verve Records, founded originally by Norman Granz but owned by then by MGM. With the luxury of larger budgets and seasoned recording producer Creed Taylor in the control booth, Tjader cut a varied string of albums. During the Verve years Tjader worked with Donald Byrd, Lalo Schifrin, Anita O'Day, Willie Bobo, Armando Peraza, a young Chick Corea, Clare Fischer, Jimmy Heath, Kenny Burrell, and others. Tjader recorded with big band orchestras for the first time, and even made an album based on Asian scales and rhythms.

His biggest success was the album Soul Sauce (1964). Its title track, a Dizzy Gillespie cover Tjader had been toying with for over a decade, was a radio hit (hitting the top 20 on New York's influential pop music station WMCA in May 1965), and landed the album on Billboard's Top 50 Albums of 1965. Originally titled "Guachi Guaro" (a nonsensical phrase in Spanish), Tjader transformed the Gillespie/Chano Pozo composition into something new. (The name "Soul Sauce" came from Taylor's suggestion for a catchier title and Bobo's observation that Tjader's version was spicier than the original.) The song's identifiable sound is a combination of the call-outs made by Bobo ("Salsa ahi na ma ... sabor, sabor!") and Tjader's crisp vibes work. The album sold over 100,000 copies and popularized the word salsa in describing Latin dance music.

The 1960s were Tjader's most prolific period. With the backing of a major record label, he could afford to stretch out and expand his repertoire. The most obvious deviation from his Latin jazz sound was Several Shades of Jade (1963) and the follow-up Breeze From the East (1963). Both albums attempted to combine jazz and Asian music, much as Tjader and others had done with Afro-Cuban. The result was dismissed by the critics, chided as little more than the dated exotica that had come and gone in the prior decade.

Other experiments were not so easily dismissed. Tjader teamed up with New Yorker Eddie Palmieri in 1966 to produce El Sonido Nuevo ("The New Sound"). A companion LP was recorded for Palmieri's contract label, Tico, titled Bamboleate.

While Tjader's prior work was often dismissed as "Latin lounge", here the duo created a darker, more sinister sound. Cal Tjader Plays The Contemporary Music Of Mexico And Brazil (1962), released during the bossa nova craze, actually bucked the trend, instead using more traditional arrangements from the two countries' past.

In the late 1960s Tjader, along with guitarist Gábor Szabó and Gary McFarland, helped to found the short-lived Skye record label. Tjader's work of this period is characterized by a groovier, almost funk-based sound. Solar Heat (1968) and Tjader Plugs In (1968–69) are precursors to acid jazz and remain valued among rare groove fans today.

Lean years (1970s)[link]

During the 1970s Tjader bounced from Verve to Skye and then back to Fantasy, the label he'd started with in 1954. Attempting to stay current and relevant, Tjader added electronic instruments to his lineup and began to employ rock beats behind his arrangements. His most notable album during this period is Amazonas (1975) (produced by Brazilian percussionist Airto Moreira). He also played on the soundtrack to the 1972 animated film release Fritz the Cat, most notably on the track entitled "Mamblues".

It was in this period Tjader discovered and groomed conguero Poncho Sanchez. Sanchez has called Tjader his "musical father".

In 1976 Tjader recorded several live shows performed at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Like the Monterey Jazz Festival show, he played a mix of jazz standards and Latin arrangements. Later he toured Japan with saxophonist Art Pepper, the latter recovering from alcohol and drug dependencies. These shows were considered successful in a time when jazz music was increasingly seen as anachronistic.

Final years (1979 to 1982)[link]

Carl Jefferson, president of Concord Records, created a subsidiary label called Concord Picante to market Latin jazz. In reality, Jefferson formed the label specifically to promote and distribute Tjader's work, whom he'd recently signed.

Unlike his excursions in the 1960s and his jazz-rock attempts in the 1970s, Tjader's Concord Picante work was largely straight-ahead Latin jazz. Electronic instruments and rock backbeats were dropped, reverting to a more "classic" sound. During the prior decade he'd built up a top-notch crew of young musicians, his best lineup since his Modern Mambo Quintet of the 1950s, with Mark Levine on piano, Roger Glenn on flute, Vince Lateano on drums, Robb Fisher on the bass, and Poncho Sanchez on the congas.

Tjader cut five albums for Concord Picante, the most successful being La Onda Va Bien (1979) (roughly "The Good Life") which earned a Grammy award in 1980 for Best Latin Recording. That Onda would win an award as best Latin album reveals Tjader's expertise and his ability to cultivate the same in his band. La Onda Va Bien is regarded as a seminal Latin Jazz album.

The A section of Tjader's "Sabor" is a 2-3 onbeat/offbeat guajeo, minus some notes.

A section of "Sabor" by João Donato, as arranged by Mark Levine, and performed by Cal Tjader.

Just as lifelong performer Tjader was born on tour, he also died on tour. On the road with his band in Manila, he collapsed from a heart attack and died on 5 May 1982.

Legacy[link]

Alongside Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson, many vibraphonists today count Tjader as a vital influence, including Dave Pike, Spyro Gyra's Dave Samuels, and Ruben Estrada. Latin rock guitarist Carlos Santana also named Tjader as a forebearer.

Tjader's legacy is associated with Gábor Szabó and Gary McFarland's, who worked and founded Skye Records together.

The American Hip-Hop Band, "A Tribe Called Quest" sampled songs from Cals', "Aquarius" as an outro to most of the songs off the album, "Midnight Marauders."

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• Vibrations (Savoy, 1951)
• Cal Tjader: Vibist (Savoy, 1953)
• Cal Tjader, Vol. 1 (Savoy, 1953)
• The Cal Tjader Trio (Fantasy, 1953)
• Tjader Plays Mambo (Fantasy, 1954)
• Mambo with Tjader (Fantasy, 1954)
• Tjader Plays Tjazz (Fantasy, 1954)
• Plays Afro-Cuban (Fantasy, 1954)
• Cal Tjader Quartet (Fantasy, 1956)
• The Cal Tjader Quartet (Fantasy, 1956)
• Latin Kick (Fantasy, 1956)
• The Cal Tjader Quintet (Fantasy, 1956)
• Jazz at the Blackhawk (Fantasy, 1957)
• Más ritmo caliente (Fantasy, 1957)
• Cal Tjader (Fantasy, 1957)
• The Cal Tjader-Stan Getz Sextet (Fantasy, 1958)
• Cal Tjader's Latin Concert (Fantasy, 1958)
• Latin for Lovers with Strings (Fantasy, 1958)
• San Francisco Moods (Fantasy, 1958)
• Concert by the Sea, Vol. 1 (Fantasy, 1959)
• Concert by the Sea, Vol. 2 (Fantasy, 1959)
• Cal Tjader Goes Latin (Fantasy, 1959)
• Live and Direct (Fantasy, 1959)
• A Night at the Blackhawk (Fantasy, 1959)
• West Side Story (Fantasy, 1960)
• Concert on the Campus (Fantasy, 1960)
• Demasado caliente (Fantasy, 1960)
• Latino (Fantasy, 1960)
• In a Latin Bag (Verve, 1961)
• Cal Tjader Plays Harold Arlen (Fantasy, 1961)
• Cal Tjader Plays, Mary Stallings Sings (Fantasy, 1961)
• The Cal Tjader Quartet (Fantasy, 1961)
• Saturday Night / Sunday Night at the Blackhawk, San Francisco (Verve, 1962)
• Cal Tjader Plays the Contemporary Music of Mexico and Brazil (Verve, 1962)
• Cal Tjader Live and Direct (Fantasy, 1962)
• The Cal Tjader Quartet (Fantasy, 1962)
• Anita O'Day / Cal Tjader: Time for Two (Verve, 1962)
• Sona libre (Verve, 1963)
• Several Shades of Jade (Verve, 1963)
• Breeze from the East (Verve, 1963)
• Warm Wave (Verve, 1964)
• Soul Sauce (Verve, 1965)
• Soul Bird: Whiffenpoof (Verve, 1965)
• Soul Burst (Verve, 1966)
• Cal Tjader and Eddie Palmieri: El sonido nuevo / The New Soul Sound (Verve, 1966)
• Latin for Dancers (Fantasy, 1966)
• Eddie Palmieri / Cal T'jader: Bamboléate (Tico, 1967)
• Along Comes Cal (Verve, 1967)
• Hip Vibrations (Verve, 1967)
• The Prophet (Verve, 1968)
• Solar Heat (Skye, 1968)
• Sounds Out Burt Bacharach (Skye, 1968)
• Plugs In (Skye, 1969)
• Live at the Funky Quarters (Fantasy, 1970)
• Primo (Fantasy, 1970)
• Agua dulce (Fantasy, 1971)
• Descarga (Fantasy, 1971)
• Cal Tjader and Charlie Byrd: Tambu (Fantasy, 1973)
• Puttin' It Together (Fantasy, 1975)
• Amazonas (Fantasy, 1975)
• Grace Cathedral Concert (Fantasy, 1976)
• Guarabe (Fantasy, 1976)
• Here (Fantasy, 1977)
• Breathe Easy (Fantasy, 1977)
• Tjader (Fantasy, 1978)
• La onda va bien (Concord Picante, 1979)
• Gózame! Pero ya (Concord Picante, 1980)
• The Shining Sea (Concord Picante, 1981)
• A fuego vivo (Concord Picante, 1981)
• Cal Tjader and Carmen McRae: Heat Wave (Concord Jazz, 1982)
• Good Vibes (Concord Picante, 1984)
• Latin + Jazz = Cal Tjader (DCC, 1990; recorded 1968)
• Huracán (LaserLight Digital, 1990; recorded 1978)
• Last Night When We Were Young (Fantasy, 1991)
• Concerts in the Sun (Fantasy, 2002; recordings from 1960)
• Cuban Fantasy (Fantasy, 2003; live recordings from 1977)
• Live at the Monterey Jazz Festival 1958-1980 (Concord, 2008)

Tribute albums[link]

• Louie Ramirez: Tribute to Cal Tjader (Caimán, 1986)
• Poncho Sanchez: Soul Sauce: Memories of Cal Tjader (Concord, 1995)
• Dave Samuels: Tjader-ized : A Cal Tjader Tribute (Verve, 1998)
• Gary Burton: For Hamp, Red, Bags, and Cal (Concord Jazz, 2001)
• Paquito D'Rivera and his Latin Jazz Ensemble with Louie Ramírez: A Tribute to Cal Tjader (Yemayá, 2003)

References[link]

• Clemens, Samuel Langhorne (1980). Early Tales & Sketches 1851-1864 (Works of Mark Twain). University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03186-5
• Pepper, Art and Laurie Pepper (1979). Straight Life. New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-306-80558-8
• Roberts, John Storm (1999). Latin Jazz: The First of the Fusions, 1880s to Today. New York: Schirmer Books. ISBN 0-8256-7192-2
• Yanow, Scott (2000). Afro-Cuban Jazz. San Francisco: Miller Freeman Books. ISBN 0-87930-619-X

External links[link]

Biography portal

• Soul Vibrations: The Cal Tjader Website
• The complete Cal Tjader discography from Music City
• Space Age Pop
• Cached history of Dr. Anton William Tjader, by Gary Tjader
• Excerpt from Early Tales and Sketches referring to Dr. Anton Tjader
• Downbeat's 1953 Critics Poll
• Poncho Sanchez: Straight-ahead Jazz With A Little Salsa On The Side

Art Blakey
Blakey
Background information
Birth name	Arthur Blakey
Also known as	Abdullah Ibn Buhaina
Born	(1919-10-11)October 11, 1919 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania United States
Died	October 16, 1990(1990-10-16) (aged 71) New York City, New York, U.S.
Genres	Hard bop, bebop
Occupations	Drummer, bandleader
Instruments	Drums, percussion
Years active	1942–1990
Labels	Blue Note
Associated acts	Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Art Blakey Quartet, Art Blakey Quintet, Art Blakey & the Afrocuban Boys
Website	www.artblakey.com

Arthur "Art" Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990),^[1] known later as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina, was an American Grammy Award-winning jazz drummer and bandleader. He was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.

Along with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, he was one of the inventors of the modern bebop style of drumming. He is known as a powerful musician and a vital groover; his brand of bluesy, funky hard bop was and continues to be profoundly influential on mainstream jazz. For more than 30 years his band, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, included many young musicians who went on to become prominent names in jazz. The band's legacy is thus not only known for the music it produced, but as a proving ground for several generations of jazz musicians;^[2] Blakey's groups are matched only by those of Miles Davis in this regard.^[3]

Blakey was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame (in 1982), the Grammy Hall of Fame (in 2001), and was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005.

Before the Messengers[link]

Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing the piano full-time, leading a commercial band. Shortly afterwards, reputedly because he thought he would be unable to compete with the emerging pianist Erroll Garner, he taught himself to play the drums in the aggressive swing style of Chick Webb, Sid Catlett and Ray Bauduc. He joined Mary Lou Williams as a drummer for an engagement in New York in autumn 1942. He then toured with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1939–1942). During his years with Billy Eckstine’s big band (1944–7), Blakey became associated with the bebop movement, along with his fellow band members Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro and others.^[4]

By the late forties and early fifties, Blakey was backing musicians such as Miles Davis, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk — he is often considered to have been Monk's most empathetic drummer,^[5] and he played on both Monk's first recording session as a leader (for Blue Note Records in 1947) and his final one (in London in 1971), as well as many in between.

Blakey said that he travelled to Africa during 1948 and 1949. He converted to Islam during this period and took the name Abdullah Ibn Buhaina (which led to the nickname "Bu"). In the early 1950s he performed and broadcast with such musicians as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

From his earliest recording sessions with Eckstine, and particularly in his historic sessions with Monk in 1947, Blakey exuded power and originality, creating a dark cymbal sound punctuated by frequent loud snare- and bass-drum accents in triplets or cross-rhythms. Although Blakey discouraged comparison of his own music with African drumming, he adopted several African devices, including rapping on the side of the drum and using his elbow on the tom-tom to alter the pitch. His much-imitated trademark, the forceful closing of the hi-hat on every second and fourth beat, was part of his style from 1950 to '51. A loud and domineering drummer, Blakey also listened and responded to his soloists. His contribution to jazz as a discoverer and molder of young talent over three decades was no less significant than his very considerable innovations on his instrument.^[4]

The Jazz Messengers[link]

Art Blakey on a tour billed as part of the "Giants of Jazz" in Hamburg, Germany in 1973

In 1947 Blakey organized the Seventeen Messengers, a rehearsal band, and recorded with an octet called the Jazz Messengers.^[6] The use of the Messengers tag only stuck with the group co-led at first by both Blakey and pianist Horace Silver, though the name was not used on the earliest of their recordings. Blakey and Silver recorded together on several occasions, including live at Birdland with trumpeter Clifford Brown and alto-saxophonist Lou Donaldson in 1954 for Blue Note, having formed in 1953 a regular cooperative group with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham.

The "Jazz Messengers" name was first used for this group on a 1954 recording nominally led by Silver, with Blakey, Mobley, Dorham and Doug Watkins — the same quintet would record The Jazz Messengers at the Cafe Bohemia the following year, still functioning as a collective. Donald Byrd replaced Dorham, and the group recorded an album called simply The Jazz Messengers for Columbia Records in 1956. Blakey took over the group name when Silver left after the band's first year (taking Mobley, Byrd and Watkins with him to form a new quintet with a variety of drummers), and the band was known as "Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers" from then onwards with Blakey being the sole leader, and he remained associated with it for the rest of his life. It was the archetypal hard-bop group of the 1950s, playing a driving, aggressive extension of bop with pronounced blues roots. Towards the end of the 1950s, the saxophonists Johnny Griffin and Benny Golson were in turn briefly members of the group. Golson, as music director, wrote several jazz standards which began as part of the band book such as "I Remember Clifford", and "Blues March" was regularly revived by later editions of the group. "Along Came Betty" and "Are You Real" were other Golson compositions for Blakey.

From 1959 to 1961 the group featured Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Jymie Merritt, Lee Morgan, and Bobby Timmons.^[1] The second line-up (1961–1964) was a sextet that added trombonist Curtis Fuller and replaced Morgan and Timmons with Freddie Hubbard and Cedar Walton, respectively.^[1] Shorter was now the musical director of the group, and many of his original compositions such as "Lester Left Town" remained repertoire staples later on. (Other players over the years made permanent marks on Blakey's repertoire — Timmons, composer of "Dat Dere" and "Moanin'", and later, Bobby Watson.) Shorter's more experimental inclinations pushed the band at the time into an engagement with the 1960s "New Thing", as it was called: the influence of Coltrane's contemporary records on Impulse! is evident on Free For All (1964), often cited as the greatest document of the Shorter-era Messengers (and certainly one of the most fearsomely powerful examples of hard bop on record).^{[citation needed]}

Up to the 1960s Blakey also recorded as a sideman with many other musicians: Jimmy Smith, Herbie Nichols, Cannonball Adderley, Grant Green, and Jazz Messengers graduates Lee Morgan and Hank Mobley, amongst many others. However, after the mid-1960s he mostly concentrated on his own work as a leader. Blakey also made a world tour in 1971–2 with the Giants of Jazz (with Dizzy Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Thelonious Monk and Al McKibbon).^[4]

Later career[link]

Blakey went on to record dozens of albums with a constantly changing group of Jazz Messengers — he had a policy of encouraging young musicians: as he remarked on-mike during the live session which resulted in the A Night at Birdland albums in 1954: "I'm gonna stay with the youngsters. When these get too old I'll get some younger ones. Keeps the mind active."^[1] After weathering the fusion era in the 1970s with some difficulty (recordings from this period are less plentiful and include attempts to incorporate instruments like electric piano), Blakey's band got revitalized in the early 1980s with the advent of neotraditionalist jazz. Blakey's ferociousness and tenacity while drumming earned him the nickname "Jazz Tiger", or "The Tiger of Jazz". Wynton Marsalis was for a time the band's trumpeter and musical director, and even after Marsalis's departure Blakey's band continued as a proving ground for many "Young Lions" like Johnny O'Neal, Philip Harper, Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison and Kenny Garrett.

Blakey continued performing and touring with the group into the late 1980s; Ron Wynn notes that Blakey had "played with such force and fury that he eventually lost much of his hearing, and at the end of his life, often played strictly by instinct."^[7] Some reports suggest Blakey had hearing problems as early as 1959. Blakey died in 1990 in New York City, leaving behind a vast legacy and approach to jazz which is still the model for countless hard-bop players.^[1][7]

Jazz Messengers alumni[link]

This section requires expansion.

Piano

Wynton Kelly, Joanne Brackeen, Donald Brown, Walter Davis, Jr., Sam Dockery, Kenny Drew, Benny Green, John Hicks, Keith Jarrett, Geoffrey Keezer, Mulgrew Miller, Johnny O'Neal, Horace Silver, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, James Williams

Reeds

Dale Barlow, Gary Bartz, Kenny Garrett, Lou Donaldson, John Gilmore, Benny Golson, Johnny Griffin, Billy Harper, Donald Harrison, Javon Jackson, Branford Marsalis, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Bill Pierce, David Schnitter, Wayne Shorter, Ira Sullivan, Jean Toussaint, Bobby Watson

Trumpet

Terence Blanchard, Clifford Brown, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham, Bill Hardman, Philip Harper, Freddie Hubbard, Brian Lynch, Chuck Mangione, Wynton Marsalis, Lee Morgan, Woody Shaw, Valery Ponomarev, Charles Tolliver

Trombone

Steve Davis, Robin Eubanks, Curtis Fuller, Frank Lacy, Tim Williams

Bass

Spanky DeBrest, Charles Fambrough, Dennis Irwin, Jymie Merritt, Curly Russell, Victor Sproles, Doug Watkins, Wilbur Ware, Reggie Workman, Riccardo Del Fra, Stanley Clarke

Guitar

Bobby Broom, Kevin Eubanks

Drums

Ralph Peterson, Jr.

Awards[link]

• Jazz Mobile Development and Preservation of Jazz (1970)
• Newport Jazz Festival Hall of Fame (1976)
• Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame Reader's Choice Award (1981)
• Smithsonian Performing Arts Certificate of Appreciation (1982)
• Lee Morgan Memorial Award (1982)
• Jazz Hall of Fame Induction (1982)
• Grammy Award Best Jazz Instrumental Performance, Group (1984) for the album New York Scene
• Jazznote Award (1986)
• Doctorate of Music (1987; Berklee College of Music)
• Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award (1991)
• Grammy Hall of Fame Induction for the album Moanin' (2001)
• Pittsburgh Jazz Festival Award
• Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award (2005; awarded posthumously)

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Art Blakey

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Art Blakey

• Official Art Blakey website