Jazz

[Wilton Jameson ]

(b New Albany, IN, July 21, 1939). American educator, publisher, record producer, and saxophonist. He performed locally from the age of 15 and while studying at Indiana University (BM 1961; MM 1962) led groups that worked in southern Indiana and Kentucky. Having taught music education at Indiana University Southeast (1967–9) and classical saxophone at the University of Louisville (1970–72), in the early 1970s he established a week-long jazz workshop (or “jazz camp”) held during the summer; by the late 1990s the workshop took place twice annually. Aebersold also presented workshops in other countries, including Australia, Germany, England, Scotland, Denmark, and Canada. In 1992 he received an honorary doctorate in music from Indiana University and began teaching jazz improvisation at the the University of Louisville.

In addition to his principal instrument, Aebersold plays piano and double bass, but he is far better known as an educator than as a performer. In ...

[AFJS]

Organization formed in 1985 to facilitate international communication among jazz societies, festivals, and presenters. It aids operational aspects involving the aforementioned, provides a forum for interaction within the jazz community, researches current trends, and publishes a quarterly newsletter (Federation Jazz) and manuals on operations, membership recruitment and retention, event production and promotion, fund-raising, and jazz education. The organization holds national and regional meetings, has experts available on the Internet, and maintains a Washington legislative watch. With a membership of more than 100,000, it undertakes cooperative ventures with other national and regional groups committed to the preservation, performance, and advancement of jazz. The AFJS maintains a central office in Sacramento, California....

(b Armavir, Russia, March 15, 1919; d New York, Nov 22, 2017). Record producer and writer of Armenian descent. He grew up in New York, played piano (from 1930), and studied English literature at Yale University (BA 1941); while a student he began to work as a jazz critic for Tempo (1937). Later he was a contributing editor on jazz to Mademoiselle and Pic (1946–8), contributed to Esquire’s 1947 Jazz Book, and, with W.E. Schaap, revised and enlarged Charles Delaunay’s Hot Discography for its first American edition (1948). He wrote articles for Down Beat and Metronome and provided numerous liner notes for jazz albums. Avakian produced the pioneering documentary jazz album Chicago Jazz (1939–40) for Decca, and in early 1940 began to work for Columbia, where he established a series of jazz reissues. After four years of military service he returned to Columbia as a full-time record producer for jazz and popular music; he was director of the international department and later head of the popular album department. In ...

[Stephen Alan ]

(b New York, June 3, 1942). American record producer. After working in promotion for the rock music labels MGM (1969–70) and Elektra (1970–71) he joined ABC–Impulse (1971), where he served initially as national director of promotion; he then resurrected the Impulse! label to produce and issue new recordings by, among others, Dewey Redman, Gato Barbieri, Keith Jarrett, Sam Rivers, and Marion Brown. In 1974 he moved to the newly formed company Arista (jazz), for which he created and directed jazz labels, organized the outright purchase of Savoy (ii), and, with the assistance of the producer Bob Porter, supervised the reissue of material from Savoy’s catalogue. Backer left Arista in 1980 and spent a year away from music. Early in 1982 he began to work for both Antilles (as a creative consultant and in artists and repertory) and Windham Hill (as its East Coast general manager); for the latter he created a short-lived jazz label, Magenta. Having joined RCA (mid-...

[Samuel David]

(b Portsmouth, VA, Feb 22, 1926). American drummer and administrator. After serving as a pilot in World War II he studied drumming in New York and played with Johnny Hodges, Charles Mingus, Lou Donaldson (with whom he made several albums from 1957 to 1961), Curtis Fuller, and Horace Silver; he is best known for his work with Gerry Mulligan (1954–68) and with Clark Terry and Bob Brookmeyer (in the 1960s); he may be seen with Mulligan in the films Jazz on a Summer’s Day and The Subterraneans (both 1960). He also recorded with Al Sears (1954), Ben Webster (1957), Art Farmer (1958), Fuller (1959, 1961), Charlie Rouse (1960), Mark Murphy (1962), and Vi Redd and Lucky Thompson (both 1963), and in a quintet co-led by Zoot Sims and Brookmeyer (1965...

(Andrejevich )

(b Novosibirsk, Russian SFSR [now Russia], March 16, 1947). Russian drummer, writer, broadcaster, and educator. He began playing jazz in 1962, and after graduating from the state medical institute in Novosibirsk in 1971 he pursued a dual career as a jazz musician and an obstetrician. In 1975 he established Tvorcheskoye Dhazovoye Ob’yedinenie (Creative Jazz Unity), the first association of musicians and jazz promoters east of the Urals. He performed with Vladimir Tolkachev in the Musical Improvising Trio (1975–9), with Igor Dmitriev in various groups (including, from 1977, Zolotoye Gody Dhaza (Golden Jazz Years), with Vytautas Labutis in the quartet SibLitMash (Siberian-Lithuanian Jazz Machine, 1980s), and with Vagif Sadykhov in another quartet (1998), while also working as a freelance with Vladimir Chekasin, Anatoly Vapirov, Igor Butman, Joe Locke, Paul Bollenback, and former members of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, among others. In 1990 he began to broadcast on radio, and in ...

[Benoit, Jean-Louis]

(b Philadelphia, May 18, 1926; d nr Paris, Feb 10, 1997). American organist and leader. His father was from Martinique. A child prodigy, he grew up in Baltimore, where he was taught by his grandmother; his grandfather was a Baptist minister, and Bennett directed their church choir from the age of 12. After military service (1943–6), during which time he played tuba and thereby developed his ability to invent bass lines, he began his jazz career in Baltimore (1947), leading a piano trio modeled after that of Nat “King” Cole. In 1949, under the influence of Wild Bill Davis, he began to play organ, an instrument he used professionally from 1951. By 1956 he was performing in a style much closer to that of Jimmy Smith rather than Davis, and from 1957 to 1959 he toured the Midwest and the East Coast with his own hard-bop organ trio. The following year he moved to Paris, where he performed at the Blue Note with Jimmy Gourley or René Thomas in Kenny Clarke’s trio, accompanying numerous distinguished guest soloists (until ...

(b Berlin, July 20, 1922; d Hamburg, Germany, Feb 4, 2000). German writer and record producer. Having first studied in Berlin he attended the University of Karlsruhe (1940–42). He was a founder in 1945 of the Südwestfunk Baden-Baden, where he led the jazz department until 1987, and in 1951 of the Deutsche Jazz Föderation. During the following decades he organized and directed many festivals and concert series (including Jazztime Baden-Baden, from 1947; the American Folk Blues Festival, 1962–8; the Berliner Jazztage, later known as the Jazzfest Berlin, 1964–72; the New Jazz Meeting Baden-Baden, which he founded in 1966; and the Olympic Games Jazz Festival in Munich, 1972) and was the producer and host of broadcasts both on radio (from the Baden-Baden festival) and television (“Jazz, gehört und gesehen,” 1954–72); he also organized an annual jazz concert at the Donaueschingen Festival for Contemporary Music (from ...

(b Dortmund, Germany, April 23, 1959). German drummer, bandleader, and record producer. He grew up in a musical family and played trumpet, clarinet, and piano as a youth; he then took up drums and studied classical percussion at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Trossingen (1977–81). After attending the Drummers’ Collective in New York (1981–2) he either performed as a drummer or directed big bands. In the 1980s he concentrated on fusion, but later he became known for his mainstream and big-band work; apart from these activities he was first timpanist in the SWF-Rundfunkorchester from 1981. Between 1986 and 1993 his own big band played with such guest soloists as Art Farmer, Slide Hampton, Bob Mintzer, Jiggs Whigham, Jim Snidero, Barbara Dennerlein, Ack van Rooyen, and Silvia Droste. As a sideman Berg worked with, among others, the quartet of Louis Stewart and the guitarist Heiner Franz (...

(bc1926; d Los Angeles, Feb 6, 1988). American record producer. After working in 1950-51 for the Discovery label, in 1952 he became a founder of Pacific Jazz; he continued to be associated with that company until 1970, served as a film producer, and then returned to jazz and remained active until his death as a producer for Contemporary....

[Bo ]

(b Ludvika, Sweden, Sept 6, 1937). Swedish trumpeter, composer, and radio producer. After working in local dance bands he formed his own hard-bop quintet while at the University of Uppsala, where he studied musicology. Later he performed and recorded with Gugge Hedrenius (1962–6, 1971–1980s), Arne Domnérus (1964–8, and occasionally thereafter), the tenor saxophonist Börje Fredriksson, Jan Johansson, and others. From 1966 to 1990 he was head of the jazz department at Sveriges Radio AB (Swedish Radio), and in this capacity he initiated Radiojazzgruppen (ii) in 1967. During the same period he played in Red Mitchell’s group Communication (1971–82), the Sandviken Big Band (1975–85), CBQ, the quintet led by the alto saxophonist Christer Boustedt (1984–6), its continuation, after Boustedt’s death, as the Contemporary Bebop Quintet (from 1986), and the band Good Morning Blues (from 1989). Having composed and arranged for big bands from the 1960s, in ...

(b Toledo, OH, May 5, 1941; d Dover, DE, Dec 17, 2020). American pianist, composer, record producer, and leader. He played piano from the age of four and when he was only six heard Art Tatum. Having pursued classical studies on piano and pipe organ, he was, at the age of 14, a soloist with the Toledo Youth Orchestra, a church organist and choir director, and a jazz pianist. He attended Oberlin College Conservatory (BM 1962), spent his junior year (1960–61) at the Mozarteum Academy, and undertook graduate studies at the University of Wichita (1962–3), the University of Southern California (1963–4), and the University of Michigan (MM 1966); while at Oberlin he played with Roland Kirk. Following graduation he worked with Marion Brown (1966–7) and Max Roach (1967–70) and in a quintet led by Bobby Hutcherson and Harold Land (...

(b Bristol, England, Aug 24, 1959). English double bass player and arts administrator. The son of professional classical musicians, he took up cello at the age of three and attended St John’s College, Cambridge, as a chorister (1967–72). He continued his education at Radley College, Berkshire, and then at the Guildhall, London, but left in 1975 to manage a record shop. Five years later he began working for the music publisher Hal Leonard. In the mid-1980s, having bought a double bass, he began to play jazz, and appeared with numerous British players and visiting Americans. He was with Stan Tracey from 1990 to 1996, touring worldwide, and in 1991 became the principal double bass player with John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. In 1994 he began working with Tony Coe; he assembled a band featuring Coe for the Jersey Jazz Festival and made broadcasts and recordings (including ...

(b Stamford, CT, Sept 20, 1948). Record producer. He played drums, saxophone, and flute in his youth, and during his years in college he began working as a radio announcer and produced his first recording, by George Freeman. In the late 1960s and early 1970s he contributed articles to Down Beat, Jazz & Pop, Rolling Stone, and other periodicals, and from around 1972 to 1974 he was a producer for Atlantic. Thereafter he was active as a freelance. From 1975 to around 1977 and again from 1979 to 1981 he worked for Blue Note, systematically reissuing on LP its back catalogue and some previously unissued recordings. Around 1976 he began to produce sessions for Arista, most notably for its subsidiary Arista/Freedom. He was also responsible for the issue of previously unreleased recordings, in particular those of John Coltrane, for Impulse!, and he produced new sessions for Columbia (notably those of Woody Shaw), Muse (ii), and others, notably material drawn from free-jazz performances and issued as a four-LP set, ...

[Laka D; Koc, Dorota Mary]

(b Oxford, England, Jan 8, 1953). English singer, pianist, composer, and music director. From a background in rock and soul bands, notably Soulyard, from 1982 to 1988 she was a member of the Guest Stars, in which she played piano and sang; she also wrote much of the group’s material. In 1982 she co-founded the Lydia D’Ustebyn Swing Orchestra, was an organizer of Early Evening Jazz, the first women’s jazz festival held in London (at the Drill Hall), and sang in the a cappella group the Hipscats (comprising five singers, including Jan Ponsford, Jim Dvorak, and Ruthie Smith, and later the pianist Alastair Gavin). An intermittent affiliation with Carol Grimes involved work in her band and in a duo. She sang and played piano with Annie Whitehead, with whom she recorded the album Mix Up (1985, Paladin 6), then led her own band, which included Claude Deppa. In the 1990s she played with Mervyn Afrika, Kate Westbrook, the percussionist Josefina Cupido, and the saxophonists Louise Elliot and Diane McLaughlin, composed and directed music for stage shows, and taught. Laka Daisical is a propulsive pianist and exciting performer heavily influenced by African-American gospel music, as exemplified by ...

(b Toronto, ON, Feb 13, 1913; d Escondido, CA, May 27, 2001). American writer and record producer. In 1934 she settled in Chicago, where she became active as a jazz journalist and promoter, writing for the Chicago Herald-Examiner and Down Beat, founding the Chicago Rhythm Club, and promoting listening concerts featuring such performers as Earl Hines and Billie Holiday. At one such concert, Dance was responsible for bringing together Benny Goodman and Teddy Wilson in one of the first highly publicized interracial collaborations in jazz. She also produced her first recordings for the Okeh label (1935). In 1937 she relocated to New York, where she produced many of the legendary Duke Ellington small band recordings, collaborated with Red Norvo, Mildred Bailey, and Bob Crosby, and managed Chick Webb, organizing swing battles at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem featuring the Webb Orchestra and Ella Fitzgerald. Among the many concerts that she organized was Benny Goodman’s historic ...

(b Wivelsfield, nr Haywards Heath, England, March 20, 1927; d Burnham, England, May 25, 2004). English multi-instrumentalist, record producer, and discographer. He learned piano briefly as a child, took up drums in school and guitar during army service in Austria (1945–8), and played banjo in a quartet before working with Mick Mulligan from October 1948. One month after taking up trombone in 1949 he joined the Crane River Jazz Band, with which he remained until spring 1951 and recorded in 1953. He played with the cornetist Steve Lane (1952), Cy Laurie (late 1954), and Sandy Brown (1955 – summer 1956), at which time he began doubling on alto saxophone; his trombone playing can be heard on Brown’s Africa Blues (1955, Tempo A128). He then joined Acker Bilk (for three months in late 1957), for whom he played alto saxophone and guitar, and led his own band. His principal later associations were as trombonist with and arranger for the Temperance Seven (...

(Winston )

(b Philadelphia, May 14, 1889; d New York, May 19, 1939). American dancer, choreographer, and impresario. He went to Ireland in 1903 as a member of a juvenile “piccaninny” group, then toured Europe with Belle Davis (1903–8); his dancing during this period may be seen in the film Die schöne Davis mit ihren drei Negern (1906). Thereafter he worked as an eccentric solo act, and from 1910 into the 1930s was featured as a step dancer in revues in London, Paris, and Berlin; he also toured South America in 1923. In 1925 he starred in La revue nègre, with music provided by Claude Hopkins’s Charleston Jazz Band. He then organized his own revue, Black People (1926), which toured Europe and North Africa with members of Sam Wooding’s band. He organized further revues in Berlin (1926) and New York (1927...

[Nugetre]

(b Constantinople [now Istanbul], July 31, 1923; d New York, Dec 14, 2006). American record producer, brother of Nesuhi Ertegun. He traveled internationally in his youth—his father was minister to Switzerland, Turkish observer at the League of Nations, and the Turkish ambassador to France (living in Paris from 1929), Great Britain (London from 1931), and the United States (Washington, DC, from 1934)—and was educated at St. John’s College, Annapolis (BA 1944). He first became involved with Herb Abramson in running two small, short-lived record labels, Quality and Jubilee; then in late 1947 the two men founded the company and label Atlantic (jazz), with Ertegun as vice-president. It became one of the largest independent labels concerned with jazz, rhythm-and-blues, and soul recordings, and retained this position throughout the 1950s and 60s. The company was purchased by Warner Bros. in 1967 but remained under its previous management. In the 1980s and 90s Ertegun continued to be an executive of great importance in popular music, and in ...

(b Constantinople [now Istanbul], Nov 27, 1917; d New York, July 15, 1989). American record producer, brother of Ahmet Ertegun. Like his brother, he moved about internationally on account of his father’s ambassadorial career. After moving to Washington in 1934 he promoted jazz concerts there (1941–4), then settled in Los Angeles, where he and his wife, Marili Morden, organized a band led by Kid Ory; they established the record label Crescent in Hollywood to record the band. Later they operated the Jazzman label (1946–51), which again had a repertory of traditional jazz. In the mid-1940s Ertegun wrote for the journal Clef and was editor of Record Changer. From 1951 to 1954 he lectured in the history of American music at UCLA, and delivered the first courses on the history of jazz given for college credit in any American university; during this period he also worked for the Good Time Jazz and Contemporary labels. In ...