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Earl Washington (musician)
Earl "The Ghost" Washington (April 3, 1921 in Chicago, Illinois – June 18, 1975 in Evergreen Park, Illinois) was a jazz pianist. Early life Earl Edward Washington was born, the third child (two older sisters before him), on Sunday, April 3, 1921, in the Prairie Avenue District neighborhood on the near Southeast Side of Chicago. His parents experienced hard economic times in the pre- and post-Depression era, moving their ever-expanding family to the small neighborhood of Morgan Park where they could afford a home. Washington attended Washburn High School, also on the South side of Chicago, that his mother enrolled him in due to his interest in "art". As a young boy, Washington wanted to be a jazz pianist, but his mother wanted him to study classical music, as she had done as a child herself. She arranged private classical piano lessons with the family's music teacher Dr. Walter Dellers (Professor of Music at the Chicago Academy of Music). Dellers advised her not to change ...
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Motown
Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on June 7, 1958, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of ''motor'' and ''town'', has become a nickname for Detroit, where the label was originally headquartered. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned label that achieved crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels (including Tamla Motown, the brand used outside the US) were the most of the Motown sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop appeal. Motown was the most successful soul music label, with a net worth of $61 million. During the 1960s, Motown achieved 79 records in the top-ten of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969. Following the events of the Detroit Riots of 1967, and the loss of key songwriting/production team Holland–Dozier– ...
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Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, sixteen Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors, Kennedy Center Honor. As a composer he wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway theatre, Broadway musical ''West Side Story'', which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (West Side Story (1961 ...
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Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century classical music, composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernism (music), modernist music. Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka (ballet), Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913). The last transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase", which continued with works such as ''Renard (Stravinsky), Renar ...
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Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism (music), modernism, baroque music, baroque, Neoclassicism (music), neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, ''Boléro'' (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abi ...
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Oscar Peterson
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a Canadian virtuoso jazz pianist and composer. Considered one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time, Peterson released more than 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy, and received numerous other awards and honours. He played thousands of concerts worldwide in a career lasting more than 60 years. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, simply "O.P." by his friends, and informally in the jazz community as "the King of inside swing". Biography Early years Peterson was born in Montreal, Quebec, to immigrants from the West Indies (Saint Kitts and Nevis and the British Virgin Islands); His mother, Kathleen, was a domestic worker and his father, Daniel, worked as a porter for Canadian Pacific Railway and was an amateur musician who taught himself to play the organ, trumpet and piano. Peterson grew up in the neighbourh ...
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Art Tatum
Arthur Tatum Jr. (, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest in his field. From early in his career, Tatum's technical ability was regarded by fellow musicians as extraordinary. Many pianists attempted to copy him; others questioned their own skills after encountering him, and some even switched instruments in response. In addition to being acclaimed for his virtuoso technique, Tatum extended the vocabulary and boundaries of jazz piano far beyond his initial stride influences, and established new ground in jazz through innovative use of reharmonization, voicing, and bitonality. Tatum grew up in Toledo, Ohio, where he began playing piano professionally and had his own radio program, rebroadcast nationwide, while still in his teens. He left Toledo in 1932 and had residencies as a solo pianist at clubs in major urban centers including New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. In that decade, he settled into a patt ...
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Johnny Pate
John William Pate (born December 5, 1923) is an American former jazz bassist who became a producer, arranger, and leading figure in Chicago soul, pop, and rhythm and blues. He learned piano and tuba as a child and later picked up the bass guitar. He learned arranging while serving in the United States Army. Career The jazz era Following stints with Coleridge Davis and Stuff Smith in the 1940s,Johnny Pateat Allmusic in 1951, Pate was recording on Chess Records with Eddie South and his Orchestra, credited on bass and arrangements. This was also the first of a series of Chess recordings on which Pate collaborated with saxophonist Eddie Johnson. In the 1950s, he was also a resident arranger for Red Saunders's house band at the Club DeLisa. Johnny Pate's trio recorded for a number of Chicago labels, including Gig and Talisman. For the Cincinnati-based Federal Records, the Johnny Pate Quintet had a hit with "Swinging Shepherd Blues", which reached No. 17 on the ''Billboard'' R&B c ...
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Indiana University
Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana University Bloomington (IU Bloomington) is the flagship campus of Indiana University. The Bloomington campus is home to numerous premier Indiana University schools, including the College of Arts and Sciences, the Jacobs School of Music, an extension of the Indiana University School of Medicine, the School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering, which includes the former School of Library and Information Science (now Department of Library and Information Science), School of Optometry, the O'Neil School of Public and Environmental Affairs, the Maurer School of Law, the School of Education, and the Kelley School of Business. *Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), a partnership between Indiana University and Purdue Universi ...
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Workshop Jazz Records
Motown Records is an American record label owned by the Universal Music Group. It was founded by Berry Gordy Jr. as Tamla Records on June 7, 1958, and incorporated as Motown Record Corporation on April 14, 1960. Its name, a portmanteau of ''motor'' and ''town'', has become a nickname for Detroit, where the label was originally headquartered. Motown played an important role in the racial integration of popular music as an African American-owned label that achieved crossover success. In the 1960s, Motown and its subsidiary labels (including Tamla Motown, the brand used outside the US) were the most of the Motown sound, a style of soul music with a mainstream pop appeal. Motown was the most successful soul music label, with a net worth of $61 million. During the 1960s, Motown achieved 79 records in the top-ten of the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 between 1960 and 1969. Following the events of the Detroit Riots of 1967, and the loss of key songwriting/production team Holland–Dozier– ...
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WVON
WVON (1690 AM "The Voice of the Nation", originally "Voice of the Negro") is a radio station serving the Chicago market, which airs an African-American-oriented talk format. WVON is owned by Midway Broadcasting Corporation, and broadcasts at 1690 kHz via a local marketing agreement with frequency owner iHeartMedia. WVON's origins date back to 1963, when the radio station's owner Chess Records began programming soul, and rhythm and blues music. The station played an active role during the Civil Rights Movement during this era. Its present African-American-oriented talk format began in 1986. The station served as a springboard for Barack Obama during the early days of his political career. Licensed to Berwyn, Illinois, WVON has studios in the South Loop,Iconic WVON radio station ...
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Herb Kent (disc Jockey)
Herbert Rogers Kent (October 5, 1928 – October 22, 2016) was "the longest-running DJ in the history of radio", a radio personality in Chicago, Illinois, for more than seven decades. As a high school student, Kent began hosting a classical music program for Chicago’s WBEZ. Over the years he “has served as an inspiration to a number of aspiring African-American broadcasters.” He was known as the "cool gent", a phrase that he coined to rhyme with his name. Early years Kent was born Herbert Rogers Kent in Cook County Hospital in Chicago. An only child, he grew up in the Bronzeville neighborhood in Chicago. He attended Hyde Park High School and Northwestern University. He told a reporter in 2009 that as early as age 6 he "had a love affair with radio", as he enjoyed listening to a blues station at that age. Career Members of Kent's radio audience usually felt as if they knew him personally, even though they might never have met him — a familiarity facilitated by "his live ...
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