Front Line (album)
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Front Line (album)
''Front Line'' is an album by pianist Jodie Christian. It was recorded during January 1996 at Riverside Studios in Chicago, and was released later that year by Delmark Records. On the album, Christian is joined by saxophonists Norris Turney and Eddie Johnson, trumpeter Sonny Cohn, bassist John Whitfield, and drummers Ernie Adams and Gerryck King. Vocalist Francine Griffin also appears on one track. Reception In a review for AllMusic, Alex Henderson wrote: "Outside of the Windy City, Christian isn't nearly as well known as he deserves to be, but that doesn't make ''Front Line'' any less appealing." The authors of ''The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings'' called the album "good fun," and described the band as "a nice group of oldtimers." They stated: "Christian acts as coach and gets the best out of the team." Writing for ''JazzTimes'', Owen Cordle commented: "The results are first class... The underrated and versatile Christian shows all the traits that make Chicago pianists so li ...
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Jodie Christian
Jodie Christian (February 2, 1932 – February 13, 2012)
- accessed February 14, 2012
was an American jazz pianist, noted for and .


Early life

Christian was born in , Illinois. His "father was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, into a share-cropper's family. Realizing the futility of that life, Christian's grandfather sold his livestock and sent his family to Chicago, where Christian was born in 1932 on 44th Street and Prairie Avenue." Christian's mother, a church pianist, ...
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Ann Ronell
Ann Ronell (née Rosenblatt; December 25, 1905 — December 25, 1993) was an American composer and lyricist. She was best known for the standards "Willow Weep for Me" (1932) and "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" (1933). Early life Ronell was born in Omaha, Nebraska, to Morris and Mollie Rosenblatt. Ronell graduated from Omaha's Central High School in 1923. She enrolled in Wheaton College, Massachusetts, but transferred after her sophomore year to pursue a more serious music education.Benjamin Sears"Ann Ronell" ''American National Biography Online'', 2000 She graduated from Radcliffe College, where she studied music with Walter Piston. While at Radcliffe, Ronell wrote music for college plays and contributed reviews and interviews to the school's music publication. After interviewing George Gershwin, she struck up a friendship with the composer, who hired her as a rehearsal pianist for his show '' Rosalie''. It was Gershwin who suggested that she change her name from Rosenblatt to R ...
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1996 Albums
File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone on board; Eight people die in a blizzard on Mount Everest; Dolly the Sheep becomes the first mammal to have been cloned from an adult somatic cell; The Port Arthur Massacre occurs on Tasmania, and leads to major changes in Australia's gun laws; Macarena, sung by Los del Río and remixed by The Bayside Boys, becomes a major dance craze and cultural phenomenon; Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961 crash-ditches off of the Comoros Islands after the plane was hijacked; the 1996 Summer Olympics are held in Atlanta, marking the Centennial (100th Anniversary) of the modern Olympic Games., 300x300px, thumb rect 0 0 200 200 Centennial Olympic Park bombing rect 200 0 400 200 TWA FLight 800 rect 400 0 600 200 1996 Mount Everest disaster rect 0 200 30 ...
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Neal Hefti
Neal Paul Hefti (October 29, 1922 – October 11, 2008) was an American jazz trumpeter, composer, and arranger. He wrote music for ''The Odd Couple'' movie and TV series and for the ''Batman'' TV series. He began arranging professionally in his teens, when he wrote charts for Nat Towles. He composed and arranged while working as a trumpeter for Woody Herman providing the bandleader with versions of "Woodchopper's Ball" and "Blowin' Up a Storm" and composing "The Good Earth" and "Wild Root". He left Herman's band in 1946. Now concentrating on writing music only, he began an association with Count Basie in 1950. Hefti occasionally led his own bands. Beginnings Neal Paul Hefti was born October 29, 1922, to an impoverished family in Hastings, Nebraska, United States. As a young child, he remembered his family relying on charity during the holidays. He started playing the trumpet in school at the age of eleven, and by high school was spending his summer vacations playing in local terr ...
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Miles Davis
Miles Dewey Davis III (May 26, 1926September 28, 1991) was an American trumpeter, bandleader, and composer. He is among the most influential and acclaimed figures in the history of jazz and 20th-century music. Davis adopted a variety of musical directions in a five-decade career that kept him at the forefront of many major stylistic developments in jazz. Born in Alton, Illinois, and raised in East St. Louis, Davis left to study at Juilliard in New York City, before dropping out and making his professional debut as a member of saxophonist Charlie Parker's bebop quintet from 1944 to 1948. Shortly after, he recorded the ''Birth of the Cool'' sessions for Capitol Records, which were instrumental to the development of cool jazz. In the early 1950s, Davis recorded some of the earliest hard bop music while on Prestige Records but did so haphazardly due to a heroin addiction. After a widely acclaimed comeback performance at the Newport Jazz Festival, he signed a long-term contract wi ...
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All Blues
"All Blues" is a jazz composition by Miles Davis first appearing on the influential 1959 album ''Kind of Blue''. It is a twelve-bar blues in ; the chord sequence is that of a basic blues and made up entirely of seventh chords, with a VI in the turnaround instead of just the usual V chord. In the composition's original key of G this chord is an E7. "All Blues" is an example of modal blues in G mixolydian. A particularly distinctive feature of the piece is the bass line that repeats through the whole piece, except when a V or VI chord is reached (the 9th and 10th bars of a chorus). Further, there is a harmonically similar vamp that is played by the horns (the two saxophones in the case of ''Kind of Blue'') at the beginning and then (usually) continued by the piano under any solos that take place. Each chorus is usually separated by a four-bar vamp which acts as an introduction to the next solo/chorus. While originally an instrumental piece, lyrics were later added by Oscar Brown J ...
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Irving Mills
Irving Harold Mills (born Isadore Minsky; January 16, 1894 – April 21, 1985) was an American music publisher, musician, lyricist, and jazz artist promoter. He sometimes used the pseudonyms Goody Goodwin and Joe Primrose. Personal Mills was born to a Jewish family in Odessa, Russian Empire, although some biographies state that he was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. His father, Hyman Minsky (1868–1905), was a hat maker who had immigrated from Odessa to the United States with his wife Sofia ''(née'' Sophia Dudis; born 1870). Hyman died in 1905, forcing Irving and his brother, Jacob ''(aka'' "Jack"; 1891–1979), to work odd jobs including bussing at restaurants, selling wallpaper, and working in the garment industry. By 1910, Mills was listed as a telephone operator. Mills married Beatrice ("Bessie") Wilensky (1896–1976) in 1911 and they subsequently moved to Philadelphia. By 1918, Mills was working for publisher Leo Feist. His brother, Jack, was ...
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Barney Bigard
Albany Leon "Barney" Bigard (March 3, 1906 – June 27, 1980) was an American jazz clarinetist known for his 15-year tenure with Duke Ellington. He also played tenor saxophone. Biography Bigard was born in New Orleans to Creole parents, Alexander and Emanuella Bigard. He had two brothers, Alexander Jr. and Sidney. His uncle, Emile Bigard, was a jazz violinist. He attended local schools and studied music and clarinet with Lorenzo Tio. In the early 1920s, he moved to Chicago, where he worked with King Oliver and others. During this period, much of his recording, including with clarinetist Johnny Dodds, was on tenor saxophone, which he played often with great lyricism, as on Oliver's "Someday Sweetheart". In December 1927, Bigard joined Duke Ellington's orchestra in New York. He played with Ellington until 1942. They played primarily at the Cotton Club until 1931, then toured almost nonstop for over a decade. With Ellington, he was the featured clarinet soloist, while also d ...
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Mood Indigo
"Mood Indigo" is a jazz song with music by Duke Ellington and Barney Bigard and lyrics by Irving Mills. Composition Although Irving Mills—Jack Mills's brother and publishing partner—took credit for the lyrics, Mitchell Parish claimed in a 1987 interview that he had written the lyrics. The tune was composed for a radio broadcast in October 1930 and was originally titled "Dreamy Blues". It was "the first tune I ever wrote specially for microphone transmission", Ellington recalled. "The next day wads of mail came in raving about the new tune, so Irving Mills put a lyric to it." Renamed "Mood Indigo", it became a jazz standard." The main theme was provided by Bigard, who learned it in New Orleans, Louisiana from his clarinet teacher Lorenzo Tio, who called it a "Mexican Blues". Ellington's arrangement was first recorded by his band for Brunswick on October 17, 1930. It was recorded twice more in 1930. These recordings included Arthur Whetsel (trumpet), Tricky Sam Nanton (tr ...
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Billy Strayhorn
William Thomas Strayhorn (November 29, 1915 – May 31, 1967) was an American jazz composer, pianist, lyricist, and arranger, who collaborated with bandleader and composer Duke Ellington for nearly three decades. His compositions include "Take the 'A' Train", "Chelsea Bridge", "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing", and " Lush Life". Early life Strayhorn was born in Dayton, Ohio, United States. His family soon moved to the Homewood section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. However, his mother's family came from Hillsborough, North Carolina, and she sent him there to protect him from his father's drunken sprees. Strayhorn spent many months of his childhood at his grandparents' house in Hillsborough. In an interview, Strayhorn said that his grandmother was his primary influence during the first ten years of his life. He became interested in music while living with her, playing hymns on her piano, and playing records on her Victrola record player. Return to Pittsburgh and meeting Ellington S ...
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Chelsea Bridge (song)
"Chelsea Bridge" (1941) is an impressionistic jazz standard composed by Billy Strayhorn. History The piece was originally recorded by the Duke Ellington orchestra on 2 December 1941, with Strayhorn (rather than Ellington himself) on piano and solos by tenor saxophonist Ben Webster and valve trombonist Juan Tizol. It has since been recorded by Webster several times, including with Gerry Mulligan in 1959, as well as by Vince Guaraldi (1956), Joe Henderson (1967), Kenny Burrell (1975), Bobby Hutcherson (1988), Lew Tabackin (1989), Joe Lovano (1994), Ahmad Jamal (1995), André Previn (1999 and live in 2000), Keith Jarrett (1999), and Wynton Marsalis (1999), among many others. Strayhorn himself returned to the piece, recording it as an unaccompanied piano solo on his 1961 album ''The Peaceful Side''. Another version appears on the posthumously released album ''Lush Life'', issued by the Red Baron label. In 1958, lyrics were written for the song by Bill Comstock, a member of The Four F ...
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Bob Russell (songwriter)
Bob Russell (April 25, 1914 – February 18, 1970) was an American songwriter (mainly lyricist) born Sidney Keith Rosenthal in Passaic, New Jersey. Career Russell attended Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He worked as an advertising copywriter in New York; for a time, his roommate there was Sidney Sheldon, later a novelist. He turned to writing material for vaudeville acts, and then for film studios, ultimately writing complete scores for two movies: ''Jack and the Beanstalk (1952 film), Jack and the Beanstalk'' and ''Reach for Glory''. The latter film received the Locarno International Film Festival prize in 1962. A number of other movies featured compositions by Russell, including ''Affair in Trinidad'' (1952), ''The Blue Gardenia, Blue Gardenia'' (1953), ''The Girl Can't Help It'' (1956), ''The Girl Most Likely'' (1957), ''A Matter of WHO'' (1961), ''Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd'' (1952), ''Sound Off (film), Sound Off'' (1952), ''That Midnight Kiss'' (1949 ...
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