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Don Wise
Donald Grover Wise (born March 24, 1942, in Westerly, Rhode Island) is an American tenor saxophonist, songwriter, and music producer. He gained attention as reliable sideman of the singer-songwriter Delbert McClinton from Lubbock, Texas, for more than 20 years. Wise played with many artists and in venues all over the globe in his more than 50-year musical career. He released four CDs under his own name before retiring from the music business in 2008. Wise is married and lives with his family in Knoxville, Tennessee. Development and musical career Wise began playing music on a clarinet. At age 12 he moved to the saxophone, initially alto sax and a year later settled on the tenor sax. He was inspired by the rhythm and blues of the 1950s; however, he also played country, swing, and big band music. He joined his first band in 1957. Riding the tide of rock 'n' roll, they called themselves the Rhythm Rockers. Early saxophone influences were Red Prysock, Sam "The Man" Taylor, Ear ...
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Knoxville, Tennessee
Knoxville is a city in and the county seat of Knox County, Tennessee, Knox County in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 United States census, Knoxville's population was 190,740, making it the largest city in the East Tennessee Grand Divisions of Tennessee, Grand Division and the state's third largest city after Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, Memphis.U.S. Census Bureau2010 Census Interactive Population Search. Retrieved: December 20, 2011. Knoxville is the principal city of the Knoxville Metropolitan Area, Knoxville Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had an estimated population of 869,046 in 2019. First settled in 1786, Knoxville was the first capital of Tennessee. The city struggled with geographic isolation throughout the early 19th century. The History of rail transportation in the United States#Early period (1826–1860), arrival of the railroad in 1855 led to an economic boom. The city was bitterly Tennessee in the American Civil War#Tenne ...
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Junior Walker
Autry DeWalt Mixon Jr. (June 14, 1931 – November 23, 1995), known professionally as Junior Walker, was an American multi-instrumentalist (primarily saxophonist and vocalist) who recorded for Motown during the 1960s. He also performed as a session and live-performing saxophonist with the band Foreigner during the 1980s. Early life Walker was born Autry DeWalt Mixon Jr. on June 14, 1931, in Blytheville, Arkansas, but grew up in South Bend, Indiana. He began playing saxophone while in high school, and his saxophone style was the anchor for the sound of the bands he later played in. Career His career started when he developed his own band in the mid-1950s as the Jumping Jacks. His longtime friend and drummer Billy Nicks (1935–2017) formed his own group, the Rhythm Rockers. Periodically, Nicks would sit in on Jumping Jack's shows, and Walker would sit in on the Rhythm Rockers shows. Nicks obtained a permanent gig at a local TV station in South Bend, Indiana, and asked Walker t ...
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Sam Butera
Sam Butera (August 17, 1927 – June 3, 2009) was an American tenor saxophonist and singer-songwriter best noted for his collaborations with Louis Prima and Keely Smith. Butera is frequently regarded as a crossover artist who performed with equal ease in both R&B and the post-big band pop style of jazz that permeated the early Vegas nightclub scene. Biography Butera was born and raised in an Italian-American family in New Orleans, where his father, Joe, ran a butcher shop and played guitar in his spare time. He heard the saxophone for the first time at a wedding when he was seven years old, and, with his father's encouragement, he began to play. Butera's professional career blossomed early, beginning with a stint in big band drummer Ray McKinley's orchestra directly after high school. Butera was named one of America's top upcoming jazzmen by ''Look'' magazine when he was only eighteen years old, and, by his early twenties, he had landed positions in the orchestras of Tommy Dor ...
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King Curtis
Curtis Ousley (born Curtis Montgomery; February 7, 1934 – August 13, 1971), known professionally as King Curtis, was an American saxophonist who played rhythm and blues, jazz, and rock and roll. A bandleader, band member, and session musician, he was also a musical director and record producer. A master of the instrument, he played tenor, alto, and soprano saxophone. He played riffs and solos on hit singles such as " Respect" by Aretha Franklin (1965), and "Yakety Yak" by The Coasters (1958) and his own "Soul Twist" (1962), "Soul Serenade" (1964), and "Memphis Soul Stew" (1967). Early life Curtis Montgomery was born in Fort Worth, Texas, the son of Ethel Montgomery, and was adopted, with his sister Josephine Allen (died 2019), by Josie and William Ousley. Curtis attended I.M. Terrell High School, and studied and performed music with schoolmate Ornette Coleman (1930–2015). Career Curtis started playing saxophone at the age of twelve in the Fort Worth area. He took interest ...
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David "Fathead" Newman
David "Fathead" Newman (February 24, 1933 – January 20, 2009) was an American jazz and rhythm-and-blues saxophonist, who made numerous recordings as a session musician and leader, but is best known for his work as a sideman on seminal 1950s and early 1960s recordings by Ray Charles. The AllMusic Guide to Jazz wrote that "there have not been many saxophonists and flutists more naturally soulful than David 'Fathead' Newman." Newman was a leading exponent of the "Texas Tenor" saxophone style, a big-toned, bluesy approach popularized by jazz tenor players from that state. Early life Newman was born in Corsicana, Texas, United States, on February 24, 1933, but grew up in Dallas, where he studied first the piano and then the saxophone. According to one account, he got his nickname "Fathead" in school when "an outraged music instructor used it as an epithet after catching Mr. Newman playing a Sousa march from memory rather than from reading the sheet music, which rested upside down ...
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Earl Bostic
Eugene Earl Bostic (April 25, 1913 – October 28, 1965) was an American alto saxophonist. Bostic's recording career was diverse, his musical output encompassing jazz, swing, jump blues and the post-war American rhythm and blues style, which he pioneered. He had a number of popular hits such as "Flamingo", "Harlem Nocturne", "Temptation", "Sleep", "Special Delivery Stomp", and "Where or When", which all showed off his characteristic growl on the horn. He was a major influence on John Coltrane.Williams, T. (1985), "That's Earl Brother" Liner Notes 12"LP Spotlite SPJ152 Herts, UK. Career Bostic was born in 1913 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He turned professional at the age of 18 when he joined Terence Holder's "Twelve Clouds of Joy". Bostic made his first recording with Lionel Hampton in October 1939, with Charlie Christian, Clyde Hart and Big Sid Catlett. Before that, he performed with Fate Marable on New Orleans riverboats. Bostic graduated from Xavier University in New Orleans. He ...
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Sam Taylor (saxophonist)
Samuel Leroy Taylor, Jr. (July 12, 1916 – October 5, 1990), Sam Taylor Biography ''AllMusic'' known as Sam "The Man" Taylor, was an American jazz, rhythm and blues, and blues tenor saxophonist. Taylor was born in Lexington, Tennessee, United States. He attended Alabama State University, where he played with the Bama State Collegians. He later worked with Scatman Crothers, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Buddy Johnson, Louis Jordan and Big Joe Turner. Taylor was one of the most requested session saxophone players in New York recording studios in the 1950s. He also replaced Count Basie as the house bandleader on Alan Freed's radio series, ''Camel Rock 'n Roll Dance Party'', on CBS. Taylor played the saxophone solo on Turner's "Shake, Rattle and Roll". He also played on "Harlem Nocturne"; on " Money Honey", recorded by Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters in 1953; and on "Sh-Boom" by the Chords. During the 1960s, he led a five-piece band, the Blues Cha ...
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Red Prysock
Wilburt "Red" Prysock (February 2, 1926 – July 19, 1993) was an American R&B tenor saxophonist, one of the early Coleman Hawkins-influenced saxophonists to move in the direction of rhythm and blues, rather than bebop. Career With Tiny Grimes and his Rocking Highlanders, Prysock staged a saxophone battle with Benny Golson on "Battle of the Mass". He first gained attention as a member of Tiny Bradshaw's band, playing the lead saxophone solo on his own "Soft", which was a hit for the Bradshaw band in 1952. Prysock also played with Roy Milton and Cootie Williams. In 1954, he signed with Mercury Records as a bandleader and had his biggest hit, the instrumental "Hand Clappin'" in 1955. During the same year, he joined the band that played at Alan Freed's stage shows. He also played on several hit records by his brother, singer Arthur Prysock, in the 1960s. Personal life Prysock was born in 1926 in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States, and died of a heart attack in 1993 in Chic ...
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Big Band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and dominated jazz in the early 1940s when swing was most popular. The term "big band" is also used to describe a genre of music, although this was not the only style of music played by big bands. Big bands started as accompaniment for dancing. In contrast to the typical jazz emphasis on improvisation, big bands relied on written compositions and arrangements. They gave a greater role to bandleaders, arrangers, and sections of instruments rather than soloists. Instruments Big bands generally have four sections: trumpets, trombones, saxophones, and a rhythm section of guitar, piano, double bass, and drums. The division in early big bands, from the 1920s to 1930s, was typically two or three trumpets, one or two trombones, three or four saxo ...
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Country Music
Country (also called country and western) is a genre of popular music that originated in the Southern and Southwestern United States in the early 1920s. It primarily derives from blues, church music such as Southern gospel and spirituals, old-time, and American folk music forms including Appalachian, Cajun, Creole, and the cowboy Western music styles of Hawaiian, New Mexico, Red Dirt, Tejano, and Texas country. Country music often consists of ballads and honky-tonk dance tunes with generally simple form, folk lyrics, and harmonies often accompanied by string instruments such as electric and acoustic guitars, steel guitars (such as pedal steels and dobros), banjos, and fiddles as well as harmonicas. Blues modes have been used extensively throughout its recorded history. The term ''country music'' gained popularity in the 1940s in preference to '' hillbilly music'', with "country music" being used today to describe many styles and subgenres. It came to encomp ...
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Rhythm And Blues
Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music ... ith aheavy, insistent beat" was becoming more popular. In the commercial rhythm and blues music typical of the 1950s through the 1970s, the bands usually consisted of piano, one or two guitars, bass, drums, one or more saxophones, and sometimes background vocalists. R&B lyrical themes often encapsulate the African-American experience of pain and the quest for freedom and joy, as well as triumphs and failures in terms of relationships, economics, and aspirations. The term "rhythm and blues" has undergone a number of shifts in meaning. In the early 1950s, it was frequently applied to blues records. Starting in the mid-1950s, after this style of music contr ...
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