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Sketches On Standards
''Sketches on Standards'' (subtitled ''Request selections from the Kenton Dance Library'') is an album by pianist and bandleader Stan Kenton featuring performances of jazz standards recorded in 1953 and originally released on the Capitol label as a 10-inch LP.Vosbein, PStan Kenton Discographyaccessed April 11, 2016Maynard Ferguson Discography accessed April 11, 2016 Critical reception The review by Scott Yanow noted "although these concise interpretations are not essential, the music is quite pleasing". On |
Stan Kenton
Stanley Newcomb Kenton (December 15, 1911 – August 25, 1979) was an American popular music and jazz artist. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking. Kenton was also a pioneer in the field of jazz education, creating the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp in 1959 at Indiana University.Sparke, Michael. ''Stan Kenton: This is an Orchestra.'' UNT Press (2010). . Early life Stan Kenton was born on December 15, 1911, in Wichita, Kansas; he had two sisters (Beulah and Erma Mae) born three and eight years after him. His parents, Floyd and Stella Kenton, moved the family to Colorado, and in 1924, to the Greater Los Angeles Area, settling in suburban Bell, California. Kenton attended Bell High School; his high-school yearbook picture has the prophetic notation "Old Man Jazz". Kenton started learning pian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ram Ramirez
Roger "Ram" Ramirez (September 15, 1913 – 11 January 1994) was a Puerto Rican jazz pianist and composer. He was a co-composer of the song "Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)" Early life Ramirez was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 15, 1913. He grew up in New York and started playing the piano at a young age. Later life and career Ramirez's first professional performances were in the early 1930s. In 1933 he played with Monette Moore, then with Rex Stewart and Sid Catlett in New York. He joined Willie Bryant in 1935, and toured Europe with Bobby Martin in 1937. During the first half of the 1940s Ramirez played with Ella Fitzgerald, Frankie Newton, Charlie Barnet, John Kirby, and Catlett, in addition to leading his own band. Ramirez wrote "Lover Man (Oh, Where Can You Be?)" in 1942, which became a jazz standard following Billie Holiday's recording of it two years later. He was a freelance into the mid-1950s, when he added electronic organ to his instruments. In 1953 he w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Dubin
Alexander Dubin (June 10, 1891 – February 11, 1945) was an American lyricist. He is best known for his collaborations with the composer Harry Warren. Life Al Dubin came from a Russian Jewish family that emigrated to the United States from Switzerland when he was two years old. Born in Zürich, Switzerland, he grew up in Philadelphia. Between ages of thirteen and sixteen, Dubin played hookey from school in order to travel into New York City to see Broadway musical shows. At age 14 he began writing special material for a vaudeville entertainer on 28th Street between 5th and Broadway in New York City, otherwise known as Tin Pan Alley. Dubin was accepted and enrolled at Perkiomen Seminary in September 1909, but was expelled in 1911, after writing their Alma Mater. After leaving Perkiomen, Dubin got himself a job as a singing waiter at a Philadelphia restaurant. He continued to write lyrics and tried selling them to area publishing firms. During this time, Dubin met composer Joe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorenz Hart
Lorenz Milton Hart (May 2, 1895 – November 22, 1943) was an American lyricist and half of the Broadway songwriting team Rodgers and Hart. Some of his more famous lyrics include " Blue Moon", " The Lady Is a Tramp", "Manhattan", "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered", and "My Funny Valentine". Life and career Hart was born in Harlem, New York City, the elder of two sons, to Jewish immigrant parents, Max M. and Frieda (Isenberg) Hart, of German background. Through his mother, he was a great-grandnephew of the German poet Heinrich Heine. His father, a business promoter, sent Hart and his brother to private schools. (His brother, Teddy Hart, also went into theatre and became a musical comedy star. Teddy Hart's wife, Dorothy Hart, wrote a biography of Lorenz Hart.) Hart received his early education from Columbia Grammar School and entered Columbia College in 1913, before switching to Columbia University School of Journalism, where he attended for two years. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 30, 1979) was an American Musical composition, composer who worked primarily in musical theater. With 43 Broadway musicals and over 900 songs to his credit, Rodgers was one of the most well-known American composers of the 20th century, and his compositions had a significant influence on popular music. Rodgers is known for his songwriting partnerships, first with lyricist Lorenz Hart and then with Oscar Hammerstein II. With Hart he wrote musicals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including ''Pal Joey (musical), Pal Joey'', ''A Connecticut Yankee (musical), A Connecticut Yankee'', ''On Your Toes'' and ''Babes in Arms.'' With Hammerstein he wrote musicals through the 1940s and 1950s, such as ''Oklahoma!'', ''Flower Drum Song'', ''Carousel (musical), Carousel'', ''South Pacific (musical), South Pacific'', ''The King and I'', and ''The Sound of Music''. His collaborations with Hammerstein, in particular, are celebrated for brin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
There's A Small Hotel
"There's a Small Hotel" is a 1936 song composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Lorenz Hart. Originally written for but dropped from the musical ''Billy Rose's Jumbo'' (1935), it was used in ''On Your Toes'' (1936), where it was introduced by Ray Bolger and Doris Carson, and repeated by Jack Whiting and Vera Zorina in the London West End production that opened on 5 February 1937, at the Palace Theatre. Betty Garrett sang it in the 1948 film ''Words and Music'', and it was interpolated in the film version of '' Pal Joey'' (1957) with a Frank Sinatra-Nelson Riddle collaboration. Background According to the biography of Lorenz Hart by Frederick Nolan (''Lorenz Hart - A Poet on Broadway'', 1994; Oxford University Press, ), the song was inspired by a visit that Richard Rodgers made to the Stockton Inn, in Stockton, New Jersey. Hart reputedly found the melody insistently cloying and often ad-libbed raunchy parody verses, much to Rodgers' chagrin. Another claimant to be the inspi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ira Gershwin
Ira Gershwin (born Israel Gershovitz; December 6, 1896 – August 17, 1983) was an American lyricist who collaborated with his younger brother, composer George Gershwin, to create some of the most memorable songs in the English language of the 20th century. With George, he wrote more than a dozen Broadway shows, featuring songs such as "I Got Rhythm", "Embraceable You", " The Man I Love" and " Someone to Watch Over Me". He was also responsible, along with DuBose Heyward, for the libretto to George's opera ''Porgy and Bess''. The success the Gershwin brothers had with their collaborative works has often overshadowed the creative role that Ira played. His mastery of songwriting continued after George's early death in 1937. Ira wrote additional hit songs with composers Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, Harry Warren and Harold Arlen. His critically acclaimed 1959 book ''Lyrics on Several Occasions'', an amalgam of autobiography and annotated anthology, is an important source for studying t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Gershwin
George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ''Rhapsody in Blue'' (1924) and ''An American in Paris'' (1928), the songs " Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera ''Porgy and Bess'' (1935), which included the hit " Summertime". Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris, intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influenced style; Maurice Ravel voiced similar objections when Gershwin inq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fascinating Rhythm
"Fascinating Rhythm" is a popular song written by George Gershwin in 1924 with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was first introduced by Cliff Edwards, Fred Astaire and Adele Astaire in the Broadway musical '' Lady Be Good.'' The Astaires also recorded the song on April 19, 1926, in London with George Gershwin on the piano (English Columbia 3968 or 8969). Many recorded versions exist. One of the rarest recordings is by Joe Bari (a pseudonym of Anthony Dominick Benedetto, later better known as Tony Bennett) for Leslie Records in 1949 and issued as catalog number 919 with "Vieni Qui" as the flip side. Having rerecorded it as a duet with Diana Krall in 2018 for their duet album ''Love Is Here to Stay'', he currently holds the Guinness World Record for the "longest time between the release of an original recording and a re-recording of the same single by the same artist". "Fascinating Rhythm" inspired the riff to the 1974 Deep Purple song "Burn". The 1926 Astaire/Gershwin version and a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yip Harburg
Edgar Yipsel Harburg (born Isidore Hochberg; April 8, 1896 – March 5, 1981) was an American popular song lyricist and librettist who worked with many well-known composers. He wrote the lyrics to the standards "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" (with Jay Gorney), " April in Paris", and "It's Only a Paper Moon", as well as all of the songs for the film '' The Wizard of Oz'', including " Over the Rainbow". He was known for the social commentary of his lyrics, as well as his leftist leanings. He championed racial and gender equality and union politics. He also was an ardent critic of religion. Early life and career Harburg, the youngest of four surviving children (out of ten), was born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side of New York City on April 8, 1896.Yip Harburg: Biography from Answers.com Retrieved January 2, 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Arlen
Harold Arlen (born Hyman Arluck; February 15, 1905 – April 23, 1986) was an American composer of popular music, who composed over 500 songs, a number of which have become known worldwide. In addition to composing the songs for the 1939 film '' The Wizard of Oz'' (lyrics by Yip Harburg), including " Over the Rainbow", Arlen is a highly regarded contributor to the Great American Songbook. "Over the Rainbow" was voted the 20th century's No. 1 song by the RIAA and the NEA. Life and career Arlen was born in Buffalo, New York, the child of a Jewish cantor. His twin brother died the next day. He learned to play the piano as a youth, and formed a band as a young man. He achieved some local success as a pianist and singer before moving to New York City in his early twenties, where he worked as an accompanist in vaudeville and changed his name to Harold Arlen. Between 1926 and about 1934, Arlen appeared occasionally as a band vocalist on records by The Buffalodians, Red Nichols, Joe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
