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Freddie Redd
Freddie Redd (May 29, 1928 – March 17, 2021) was an American hard-bop pianist and composer. He is best known for writing music to accompany '' The Connection'' (1959), a play by Jack Gelber. According to Peter Watrous, writing in ''The New York Times'': "Mr. Redd hung out at jam sessions in the 1950s and played with many of the major figures, Sonny Rollins to Art Blakey, and worked regularly with Charles Mingus. When things got tough, he just moved on, living in Guadalajara, Mexico, and in Paris and London." Biography Redd was born and grew up in New York City; after losing his father at the age of one, he was raised by his mother, who moved around Harlem, Brooklyn and other neighborhoods. An autodidact, he began playing the piano at a young age and took to studying jazz seriously when he was 18, after a friend played him a record of "Shaw 'Nuff" by Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie during his military service in Korea (1946–1949). Upon discharge from the Army in 1949, he ...
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Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west and north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle. Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissan ...
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Charlie Parker
Charles Parker Jr. (August 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955), nicknamed "Bird" or "Yardbird", was an American jazz saxophonist, band leader and composer. Parker was a highly influential soloist and leading figure in the development of bebop, a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique, and advanced harmonies. Parker was an extremely brilliant virtuoso and introduced revolutionary rhythmic and harmonic ideas into jazz, including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. Primarily a player of the alto saxophone, Parker's tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career on the road with Jay McShann. This, and the shortened form "Bird", continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise". Parker was an icon for the hipste ...
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Blue Note Records
Blue Note Records is an American jazz record label owned by Universal Music Group and operated under Capitol Music Group. Established in 1939 by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis, it derived its name from the blue notes of jazz and the blues. Originally dedicated to recording traditional jazz and small group swing, the label began to switch its attention to modern jazz around 1947. From there, Blue Note grew to become one of the most prolific, influential and respected jazz labels of the mid-20th century, noted for its role in facilitating the development of hard bop, post-bop and avant-garde jazz, as well as for its iconic modernist art direction. History Historically, Blue Note has principally been associated with the " hard bop" style of jazz (mixing bebop with other forms of music including soul, blues, rhythm and blues and gospel), but also recorded essential albums in the avant-garde and free styles of jazz. Horace Silver, Jimmy Smith, Freddie Hubbard, Lee Morgan, ...
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The Connection (1961 Film)
''The Connection'' is a 1961 found footage feature film directed by the American experimental filmmaker Shirley Clarke. The film was Clarke's first feature; she had made several short films over the previous decade. Jack Gelber wrote the screenplay, adapting his play of the same name. The film was the subject of significant court cases regarding censorship. It is the first known movie shot in the found footage format and beginning with a found footage title card. Plot A title card announces that the film is a result of found footage assembled by cameraman J.J. Burden ( Roscoe Lee Browne) working for the acclaimed documentary filmmaker Jim Dunn ( William Redfield), who has disappeared. Leach ( Warren Finnerty) a heroin addict, introduces the audience to his apartment where other heroin addicts, a mix of current and former jazz musicians, are waiting for Cowboy ( Carl Lee), their drug connection, to appear. As the men grow increasingly nervous, waiting for their fix, some of them ...
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The Living Theatre
The Living Theatre is an American theatre company founded in 1947 and based in New York City. It is the oldest experimental theatre group in the United States. For most of its history it was led by its founders, actress Judith Malina and painter/poet Julian Beck. After Beck's death in 1985, company member Hanon Reznikov became co-director with Malina; the two were married in 1988. After Malina's death in 2015, her responsibilities were taken over by her son Garrick Maxwell Beck. The Living Theatre and its founders were the subject of the 1983 documentary ''Signals Through the Flames''. History In the 1950s, the group was among the first in the U.S. to produce the work of influential European playwrights such as Bertolt Brecht (''In The Jungle of Cities'' in New York, 1960) and Jean Cocteau, as well as modernist poets such as T. S. Eliot and Gertrude Stein. One of their first major productions was Pablo Picasso's '' Desire Caught By the Tail''; other early productions were ''M ...
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Rolf Ericson
Rolf Ericson (August 29, 1922 – June 16, 1997) was a Swedish jazz trumpeter. He also played the flugelhorn. Yanow, Scott. Biography ''AllMusic'' Early career Ericson was born in Stockholm, Sweden. He moved to New York City in 1947 and, in 1949, joined Charlie Barnet's big band and then with Woody Herman in 1950. Later, he worked with Paul Gonsalves, Charlie Parker, and Charles Mingus. Returning to Sweden in 1950, he recorded as a leader and with Arne Domnérus, as well as for Leonard Feather's Swinging Swedes and Lars Gullin, He returned to the U.S. during 1953–1956, and played with the big bands of Charlie Spivak, Harry James, the Dorsey Brothers, and Les Brown, and was with the Lighthouse All-Stars. In 1956, he toured Sweden and played with Ernestine Anderson and Lars Gullin. Later career From 1956 to 1965, he was back in the U.S., working with Dexter Gordon, Harold Land, Stan Kenton, Woody Herman, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Gerry Mullig ...
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Ernestine Anderson
Ernestine Anderson (November 11, 1928 – March 10, 2016) was an American jazz and blues singer. In a career spanning more than six decades, she recorded over 30 albums. She was nominated four times for a Grammy Award. She sang at Carnegie Hall, the Kennedy Center, the Monterey Jazz Festival (six times over a 33-year span), as well as at jazz festivals all over the world. In the early 1990s she joined Qwest Records, the label founded by fellow Garfield High School graduate Quincy Jones. Life and career Ernestine Irene Anderson (and her twin sister Josephine) were born in Houston, Texas,Gaar, Gillian G., "Ernestine Anderson", ''Seattle Metropolitan'', December 2008, p. 62. on November 11, 1928. Her mother, Erma, was a housewife, and her father, Joseph, a construction worker who sang bass in a gospel quartet.Vacher, Peter"Ernestine Anderson obituary" ''The Guardian'', March 20, 2016. By the age of three, Anderson showed a talent for singing along with her parents' old blues 78 r ...
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Nat Hentoff
Nathan Irving Hentoff (June 10, 1925 – January 7, 2017) was an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic, and syndicated columnist for United Media. Hentoff was a columnist for ''The Village Voice'' from 1958 to 2009. Following his departure from ''The Village Voice'', Hentoff became a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and continued writing his music column for ''The Wall Street Journal'', which published his works until his death. He often wrote on First Amendment issues, vigorously defending the freedom of the press. Hentoff was formerly a columnist for: '' Down Beat'', ''JazzTimes'', ''Legal Times'', ''The Washington Post'', ''The Washington Times'', ''The Progressive'', ''Editor & Publisher'' and ''Free Inquiry''. He was a staff writer for ''The New Yorker'', and his writings were also published in: ''The New York Times'', ''Jewish World Review'', ''The Atlantic'', ''The New Republic'', ''Commonweal'', and '' Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo''. Early ...
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Scott Yanow
Scott Yanow (born October 4, 1954) is an American jazz reviewer, historian, and author. Allmusic Biography/ref> Biography Yanow was born in New York City and grew up near Los Angeles. Since 1974, he was a regular reviewer of many jazz styles and was the jazz editor for ''Record Review.'' He wrote for many jazz and arts magazines, including '' JazzTimes'', ''Jazziz'', '' Down Beat'', '' Cadence'', ''CODA'' and the ''Los Angeles Jazz Scene''. In September 2002, Yanow was interviewed on-camera by CNN about the Monterey Jazz Festival and wrote an in-depth biography on Dizzy Gillespie for AllMusic.com. He authored 12 books on jazz (including 2022's Life Through The Eyes Of A Jazz Journalist), over 900 liner notes for CDs and over 20,000 reviews of jazz recordings. Yanow was a contributor to and co-editor of the third edition of the '' All Music Guide to Jazz''. He continues to write for ''Downbeat, Jazziz'', the ''Los Angeles Jazz Scene'', "Syncopated Times," "Jazz Artistry Now," ...
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Jive Bombers
The Jive Bombers were an American R&B group from New York City. The Jive Bombers consisted of members of two previous vocal groups, Sonny Austin & the Jive Bombers and The Palmer Brothers. They first recorded under the name The Sparrows in 1949 for Coral Records, and changed their name to The Jive Bombers in 1952 to record for Citation Records. Their 1957 Savoy Records single " Bad Boy", co-written by Avon Long and Lil Hardin, was a hit in the U.S., peaking at No. 7 on the R&B Singles chart and No. 36 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100. The song has since been covered by The Escorts, Mink DeVille, Ringo Starr, Buster Poindexter (a.k.a. David Johansen), Sha Na Na, and others, and was used in the 1990 film ''Cry-Baby ''Cry-Baby'' is a 1990 American teen musical romantic comedy film written and directed by John Waters. It was the only film of Waters's over which studios were in a bidding war, coming off the heels of the successful '' Hairspray''. The film s ...''. What distinguis ...
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Oscar Pettiford
Oscar Pettiford (September 30, 1922 – September 8, 1960) was an American jazz double bassist, cellist and composer. He was one of the earliest musicians to work in the bebop idiom. Biography Pettiford was born in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, United States. His mother was Choctaw, and his father Harry "Doc" Pettiford was half Cherokee and half African American. He grew up playing in the family band in which he sang and danced before switching to piano at the age of 12, then to double bass when he was 14. He is quoted as saying he did not like the way people were playing the bass, so he developed his own way of playing it. Despite being admired by the likes of Milt Hinton at the age of 14, he gave up in 1941 as he did not believe he could make a living. Five months later, he once again met Hinton, who persuaded him to return to music. In 1942, he joined the Charlie Barnet band and in 1943 gained wider public attention after recording with Coleman Hawkins on his " The Man I Love". Pe ...
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Cootie Williams
Charles Melvin "Cootie" Williams (July 10, 1911 – September 15, 1985) was an American jazz, jump blues, and rhythm and blues trumpeter. Biography Born in Mobile, Alabama, Williams began his professional career at the age of 14 with the Young Family band, which included saxophonist Lester Young. According to Williams he acquired his nickname as a boy when his father took him to a band concert. When it was over his father asked him what he'd heard and he replied, "Cootie, cootie, cootie." In 1928, he made his first recordings with pianist James P. Johnson in New York, where he also worked briefly in the bands of Chick Webb and Fletcher Henderson. Williams rose to prominence as a member of Duke Ellington's orchestra when the band was playing at the Cotton Club, with which he first performed from 1929 to 1940. He also recorded his own sessions during this time, both freelance and with other Ellington sidemen. Williams was renowned for his "jungle"-style trumpet playing ( ...
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