1967 in jazz:
Bobby Bryant (born January 24, 1944) was a cornerback for the Minnesota Vikings during the days of the Purple People Eaters (1968–1980). Bryant was a fierce competitor despite his size (his playing weight probably never exceeded 170 pounds) leading to the nickname "Bones". Predictably, he was often injured during his career, but when healthy, he was known as a big-play cornerback, often making a key interception to win a big game or to preserve a win when it appeared the opponent was about to score. Bryant is second on the Vikings all-time list with 51 career interceptions. (Paul Krause leads with 53). He was named to the 1975 and 1976 NFC Pro Bowl squads. He is one of 10 Vikings to have played in all four of their Super Bowls in the 1970s. He also played on special teams returning kicks and punts and was known for blowing kisses to the crowd.
Joseph Leslie "Joe" Sample (born February 1, 1939) is an American pianist, keyboard player and composer.
He is one of the founding members of the Jazz Crusaders, the band which became simply The Crusaders in 1971, and remained a part of the group until its final album in 1991 (not including the 2003 reunion album Rural Renewal).
Sample began playing the piano when he was five years old. He was a student of the late great organ and piano extraordinaire Curtis Mayo. Since the early 1980s, he has enjoyed a successful solo career and has guested on many recordings by other performers and groups, including Miles Davis, George Benson, Jimmy Witherspoon, B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Steely Dan, and The Supremes. Sample incorporates jazz, gospel, blues, Latin, and classical forms into his music.
In high school in the 1950s, Sample teamed up with two friends, saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer "Stix" Hooper, to form a group called the Swingsters. While studying piano at Texas Southern University, Sample met and added trombonist Wayne Henderson and several other players to the Swingsters, which became the Modern Jazz Sextet and then the Jazz Crusaders, in emulation of one of the leading progressive jazz bands of the day, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Sample never took a degree from the university; instead in 1960, he and the Jazz Crusaders made the move from Houston to Los Angeles.
Marion Brown (September 8, 1931 – October 18, 2010) was a jazz alto saxophonist and ethnomusicologist. He is most well known as a member of the 1960s avant-garde jazz scene in New York City, playing alongside musicians such as John Coltrane, Archie Shepp, and John Tchicai. He performed on Coltrane's landmark 1965 album Ascension.
Brown was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1931. He joined the Army in 1953 and in 1956 went to Clark College to study music. In 1960 Brown left Atlanta and studied pre-law at Howard University for two years. He moved to New York in 1962 where he befriended poet Amiri Baraka and many musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, Pharaoh Sanders, Paul Bley and Rashied Ali. He appeared on several important albums from this period such as Shepp's Fire Music and New Wave in Jazz, but most notably John Coltrane's Ascension.
In 1967, Brown travelled to Paris, France where he developed an interest in architecture, Impressionistic art, African music and the music of Eric Satie. In the late 1960s, he was an American Fellow in Music Composition and Performance at the Cité Internationale Des Artists in Paris. Around 1970, he provided the soundtrack for Marcel Camus' film Le Temps fou, a soundtrack featuring Steve McCall, Barre Phillips, Ambrose Jackson and Gunter Hampel.
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.