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Dear Ella
''Dear Ella'' is a 1997 studio album by Dee Dee Bridgewater, recorded in tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, who had died the previous year. For ''Dear Ella'', Bridgewater won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album and Slide Hampton won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) for his arrangement of "Cotton Tail" at the 40th Grammy Awards. Reception Raoul Hernandez of ''The Austin Chronicle'' stated, "As with nature, music is in a constant state of regeneration. For every fallen John Coltrane there's a James Carter, for every departed Miles Davis, a Terence Blanchard. Sometimes it takes generations to fill a hole, but new trees sprout every day. One forest in need of re-seeding has long been the Satin Doll woods, where craters left by Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald still gape. Only recently has Cassandra Wilson helped fill the gap, and now with Dear Ella, Dee Dee Bridgewater is ready to take her side." ''All About Jazz'' revie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dee Dee Bridgewater
Dee Dee Bridgewater (née Denise Garrett, May 27, 1950) is an American jazz singer and actress. She is a three-time Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, as well as a Tony Award-winning stage actress. For 23 years, she was the host of National Public Radio's syndicated radio show ''JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater''. She is a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for the Food and Agriculture Organization. Biography Born Denise Eileen Garrett in Memphis, Tennessee, she was raised Catholic in Flint, Michigan. Her father, Matthew Garrett, was a jazz trumpeter and teacher at Manassas High School, and through his playing, she was exposed to jazz early on. At the age of sixteen, she was a member of a Rock and R&B trio, singing in clubs in Michigan. At 18, she studied at Michigan State University before she went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. With the school's jazz band, she toured the Soviet Union in 1969. The next year, she met trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, and aft ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cotton Tail
"Cotton Tail" is a 1940 composition by Duke Ellington. It is based on the rhythm changes from George Gershwin's "I Got Rhythm". The first Ellington recording (4 May 1940) is notable for the driving tenor saxophone solo by Ben Webster. Originally an instrumental, "Cotton Tail" later had lyrics written for it by Ellington. Later, more lyrics were written, based on the 1940 recording, by Jon Hendricks, and recorded by Lambert, Hendricks and Ross. The 1941 Soundie gives the title as "Hot Chocolate," with "Cotton Tail" below it in parentheses and smaller letters, but this was likely done by the producer, as that title does not seem to appear anywhere else between the original record's release and this production. Slide Hampton's arrangement of "Cotton Tail" on Dee Dee Bridgewater's 1997 album '' Dear Ella'' won him the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) in 1998. "Cotton Tail" is the theme song for "The Art of Jazz," a music history radio program ho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sonny Burke
Joseph Francis "Sonny" Burke (March 22, 1914 – May 31, 1980) was an American musical arranger, composer, Big Band leader and producer. In 1937, he graduated from Duke University, where he had formed and led the jazz big band known as the Duke Ambassadors. Background During the 1930s and 1940s, Burke was a big band arranger in New York City, worked with Sam Donahue's band, and during the 1940s and 1950s worked as an arranger for the Charlie Spivak and Jimmy Dorsey bands, among others. In 1955, he wrote, along with Peggy Lee, the songs to Disney's ''Lady and the Tramp''. He also wrote songs with John Elliot for Disney's ''Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom'', which won the 1953 Oscar for Best Short Subject (Cartoons).Cotter, Bill, ''The Wonderful World of Disney Television: A Complete History'', p. 549, Hyperion, 1997. He wrote the music for number of popular songs, including " Black Coffee" and "Midnight Sun", co-written with jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. The song's lyrics ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Midnight Sun (Lionel Hampton And Sonny Burke Song)
"Midnight Sun" was originally an instrumental composed by Lionel Hampton and Sonny Burke in 1947 and is now considered a jazz standard. Subsequently, Johnny Mercer wrote the words to the song. First recording "Midnight Sun" was first recorded by Lionel Hampton himself and his orchestra in a Los Angeles studio on November 10, 1947, with solos by Hampton and trumpeter Wendell Culley (Decca Matrix L 4546).Cf. entry of "Midnight Sun" in the [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charlie Shavers
Charles James Shavers (August 3, 1920 – July 8, 1971) was an American jazz trumpeter who played with Dizzy Gillespie, Nat King Cole, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Dodds, Jimmie Noone, Sidney Bechet, Midge Williams, Tommy Dorsey, and Billie Holiday. He was also an arranger and composer, and one of his compositions, "Undecided", is a jazz standard. Career Shavers's father, a distant relative of Fats Navarro, was from the Shavers family of Key West, Florida. Charlie Shavers was a cousin of heavyweight boxer Earnie Shavers. Born in New York City, he took up piano and banjo before switching to trumpet. In the mid-1930s, he performed with Tiny Bradshaw and Lucky Millinder. In 1935, he played in the trumpet section with Dizzy Gillespie and Carl (Bama) Warwick in Frankie Fairfax's Campus Club Orchestra. In 1936, he joined John Kirby's Sextet as trumpet soloist and arranger. He was only 16, but gave his birth date as 1917 to avoid child labor laws; many biographies still list this date. Sha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leo Robin
Leo Robin (April 6, 1900 – December 29, 1984) was an American composer, lyricist and songwriter. He is probably best known for collaborating with Ralph Rainger on the 1938 Oscar-winning song "Thanks for the Memory," sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in the film ''The Big Broadcast of 1938'', and with Jule Styne on "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend," a song whose witty, Cole Porter style of lyric came to be identified with its famous interpreter Marilyn Monroe. Biography Robin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. His father was Max Robin, a salesman. Leo's mother was Fannie Finkelpearl Robin. He studied at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and at Carnegie Tech's drama school. He later worked as a reporter and as a publicist. Robin's first hits came in 1926 with the Broadway production ''By the Way'', with hits in several other musicals immediately following, such as ''Bubbling Over'' (1926), ''Hit the Deck, Judy'' (1927), and ''Hello Yourself'' (1928 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Undecided
"Undecided" is a popular song written by Sid Robin and Charlie Shavers and published in 1938. Recordings *The first recording was made by John Kirby and The Onyx Club Boys on October 28, 1938, and released by Decca Records as catalog number 2216, with the B-side, "From A Flat to C". *It was also recorded by Chick Webb and his Orchestra with vocal by Ella Fitzgerald on February 17, 1939 and released by Decca Records as catalog number 2323, with the B-side, "In the Groove at the Grove". *The Dandridge Sisters recorded a cover in July, 1939, and Django Reinhardt recorded a version with Quintette du Hot Club de France, and Beryl Davis on vocals, in August of the same year. *The biggest hit version was recorded by The Ames Brothers with Les Brown's orchestra on June 25, 1951 and released by Coral Records as catalog number 60566, with the B-side, " Sentimental Journey". It first reached the '' Billboard'' chart on September 28, 1951 and lasted 20 weeks on the chart, peaking at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, ''The Threepenny Opera'', which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose,Kurt Weill Cjschuler.net. Retrieved on August 22, 2011. ''''. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
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Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marc Blitzstein
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein (March 2, 1905January 22, 1964), was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical ''The Cradle Will Rock'', directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration. He is known for ''The Cradle Will Rock'' and for his off-Broadway translation/adaptation of ''The Threepenny Opera'' by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. His works also include the opera '' Regina'', an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play ''The Little Foxes''; the Broadway musical ''Juno'', based on Seán O'Casey's play '' Juno and the Paycock''; and ''No for an Answer''. He completed translation/adaptations of Brecht's and Weill's musical play ''Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'' and of Brecht's play ''Mother Courage and Her Children'' with music by Paul Dessau. Blitzstein also composed music for films, such as ''Surf and Seaweed'' (1931) and '' The Spanish Earth'' (1937), and he contributed two songs to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mack The Knife
"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" (german: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", italic=no, link=no) is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama ''The Threepenny Opera'' (german: Die Dreigroschenoper, link=no). The song sings about a knife-wielding criminal of the London underworld from the musical named Macheath, the "Mack the Knife" of the title. The song has become a popular standard recorded by many artists after it was recorded by Louis Armstrong in 1955. The most popular version of the song was by Bobby Darin in 1959, whose recording became a number one hit in the US and UK and earned him two Grammys. Ella Fitzgerald also received a Grammy for her performance of the song in 1961. ''The Threepenny Opera'' A '' Moritat'' is a medieval version of the murder ballad performed by strolling minstrels. In ''The Threepenny Opera'', the singer with his street organ introduces and closes the drama with the tale of the dea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Van Alexander
Van Alexander (May 2, 1915 – July 19, 2015) was an American bandleader, arranger, and composer. Early years Van Alexander was born Alexander Van Vliet Feldman in Harlem. His mother was a classical pianist, and she taught him to play the piano. He studied music at Columbia University. Alexander led bands and arranged music beginning in high school. Career He landed a job selling arrangements to Chick Webb in the middle of the 1930s. A-Tisket, A-Tasket" became a hit for Webb and Ella Fitzgerald, becoming one of her signature tunes. Alexander arranged other nursery rhymes for jazz, such as " Where, Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?" and "Got a Pebble in My Shoe". In 1938, Alexander formed his own band and played in theaters into the 1940s. When his group disbanded, he and two others from the group joined Larry Clinton's orchestra. George T. Simon, in his book, ''The Big Bands'', quoted Clinton as saying that he had "a package deal from Van Alexander. He had given up his band an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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