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Teacho Wiltshire
George "Teacho" Wiltshire (born Audrick Gladstone Wiltshire; September 20, 1909 – September 29, 1968) was a Barbadian-born American R&B pianist, bandleader, arranger, A&R man, and songwriter, who had success in the 1950s and 1960s with musicians including Annie Ross, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the Isley Brothers and the Drifters. Life and career Wiltshire was born on a plantation near Belleplaine in St Andrew Parish, Barbados, the son of Estelle Wiltshire and an unknown father. In 1917, he and his mother emigrated to the United States, and settled in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn, New York City. After his mother married, he adopted his stepfather's surname and was registered at school as Audrick Rock, though in later adult life he used the name George Wiltshire. He married in 1929 but the couple soon separated.Opal Louis Nations and Bob Eagle, "Back Room Wizards: Teacho Wiltshire", ''Blues & Rhythm'', No.372, September 2022, pp.14-18 In the 1930s, he played ...
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Saint Andrew, Barbados
Saint Andrew ("St. Andrew") is one of eleven parishes of Barbados. It is situated in the northeastern area in the country. Saint Andrew is one of the more unspoiled parts of the island owing to its physical makeup of green rolling hills. The parish of Saint Andrew also has the country's highest natural elevation, the Mount Hillaby at the southern part of the parish. The parish is named after the patron saint, Saint Andrew, who is also the basis of the name for Barbados' former national award " The Order of Saint Andrew" and also the shape of the cross formed by two sugar cane stalks in the national Coat of Arms of Barbados. During the colonial years under Britain, the British thought the area resembled the hills and fields of Scotland. This led to parts of the Parish of Saint Andrew today being nicknamed the "Scotland District". During the 1990s the Government of the time proposed a " Greenland Landfill" located within the parish. However, because of Saint Andrew's fragile envi ...
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Lionel Hampton
Lionel Leo Hampton (April 20, 1908 – August 31, 2002) was an American jazz vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, and bandleader. Hampton worked with jazz musicians from Teddy Wilson, Benny Goodman, and Buddy Rich, to Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, and Quincy Jones. In 1992, he was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and he was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1996. Biography Early life Lionel Hampton was born in 1908 in Louisville, Kentucky, and was raised by his mother. Shortly after he was born, he and his mother moved to her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama. He spent his early childhood in Kenosha, Wisconsin, before he and his family moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1916. As a youth, Hampton was a member of the Bud Billiken Club, an alternative to the Boy Scouts of America, which was off-limits because of racial segregation. During the 1920s, while still a teenager, Hampton took xylophone lessons from Jimmy Bertrand and began to play drums. Hampton was raised ...
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Record Label
A record label, or record company, is a brand or trademark of music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a publishing company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing, promotion, and enforcement of copyright for sound recordings and music videos, while also conducting talent scouting and development of new artists, and maintaining contracts with recording artists and their managers. The term "record label", derives from the circular label in the center of a vinyl record which prominently displays the manufacturer's name, along with other information. Within the mainstream music industry, recording artists have traditionally been reliant upon record labels to broaden their consumer base, market their albums, and promote their singles on streaming services, radio, and television. Record labels also provide publicists, who assist performers in gaining positi ...
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The Mello-Moods
The Mello-Moods were an American R&B musical ensemble, operating from the late 1940s to mid-1950s. Their members were Ray "Buddy" Wooten, Bobby Williams, Monteith P. "Monte" Owens, Alvin "Bobby" Baylor and Jimmy Bethea. Composed of teenagers from Resurrection Catholic School in Harlem, the group's music was nonetheless focused on an adult market. After the band broke up in 1953, Baylor, Owens and Williams went on to join another band, The Solitaires. Monte Owens died on March 3, 2011, in the Bronx, New York, after illness, at the age of 74.Thedeadrockstarsclub.com
- accessed March 2011


Discography

The group released four records: two on the

Twisted (Annie Ross Song)
"Twisted" is a 1952 vocalese song with lyrics by Annie Ross, set to a tenor saxophone solo of the same name by Wardell Gray that was recorded in 1949. It has been covered by Bette Midler, Joni Mitchell, and many others. Background "Twisted" is a whimsical account of the protagonist's insanity that satirises psychoanalysis. In 1952, Ross met Prestige Records owner Bob Weinstock, who asked her to write lyrics to a jazz solo, in a similar way to King Pleasure, a practice that would later be known as vocalese. The next day, she presented him with "Twisted", a treatment of saxophonist Wardell Gray's 1949 composition of the same name, a classic example of the genre. She later said of the inspiration for the song: The song, first released in 1952 and later collected on the album ''King Pleasure Sings/Annie Ross Sings'', was an underground hit, and resulted in her winning '' DownBeat''s New Star award. Ross released a second version with the vocalese trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross on ...
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Art Blakey
Arthur Blakey (October 11, 1919 – October 16, 1990) was an American jazz drummer and bandleader. He was also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after he converted to Islam for a short time in the late 1940s. Blakey made a name for himself in the 1940s in the big bands of Fletcher Henderson and Billy Eckstine. He then worked with bebop musicians Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie. In the mid-1950s, Horace Silver and Blakey formed the Jazz Messengers, a group that the drummer was associated with for the next 35 years. The group was formed as a collective of contemporaries, but over the years the band became known as an incubator for young talent, including Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Jackie McLean, Johnny Griffin, Curtis Fuller, Chuck Mangione, Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, Cedar Walton, Woody Shaw, Terence Blanchard, and Wynton Marsalis. ''The Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz'' calls the ...
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Percy Heath
Percy Heath (April 30, 1923 – April 28, 2005) was an American jazz bassist, brother of saxophonist Jimmy Heath and drummer Albert Heath, with whom he formed the Heath Brothers in 1975. Heath played with the Modern Jazz Quartet throughout their long history and also worked with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Wes Montgomery, and Thelonious Monk. Biography Heath was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, and spent his childhood in Philadelphia. His father played the clarinet and his mother sang in the church choir. He started playing violin at the age of eight and also sang locally. He was drafted into the Army in 1944, but saw no combat. Deciding after the war to go into music, he bought a stand-up bass and enrolled in the Granoff School of Music in Philadelphia. Soon he was playing in the city's jazz clubs with leading artists. In Chicago in 1948, he recorded with his brother on a Milt Jackson album, as members of the Howard McGhee Sextet.
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Vocalese
Vocalese is a style of jazz singing in which words are added to an instrumental soloist's improvisation. Definition Vocalese uses recognizable lyrics that are sung to pre-existing instrumental solos, as opposed to scat singing, which uses nonsense words such as "bap ba dee dot bwee dee" in solos. In the "first wave" of vocalese creation, that sometimes took the form of a tribute to the original instrumentalist. The word "vocalese" is a play on the musical term " vocalise"; the suffix "-ese" is meant to indicate a sort of language. The term was attributed by Jon Hendricks to the jazz critic Leonard Feather to describe the first Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross album, '' Sing a Song of Basie''. Most vocalese lyrics are entirely syllabic, as opposed to melismatic. That may lead to the use of many words sung quickly in a given phrase, especially in the case of bebop. Notable vocalese performers Vocalise's best-known practitioners and popularisers are Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, cons ...
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Moody's Mood For Love
"Moody's Mood for Love" is a 1952 song by Eddie Jefferson, whose melody is derived from an improvised solo by jazz saxophonist James Moody (saxophonist), James Moody (and a brief solo in the middle by pianist Thore Swanerud) on a 1949 recording of the 1935 song "I'm in the Mood for Love". The song is structured as a duet, with a man proclaiming his love for a woman, and the woman (in the part of the melody corresponding to the piano solo) responding in kind. The song gained widespread popularity after being recorded by singer King Pleasure, with the woman's part sung by Blossom Dearie. The song helped to popularize the vocalese jazz singing style. It has since been covered by many artists. Moody himself adopted the song as his own, recording it with Jefferson on the 1956 album ''Moody's Mood for Love (album), Moody's Mood for Love'' and often singing the song himself in concert. History James Moody created his improvised solo in 1949 on a visit to Sweden. Moody's playing clearl ...
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King Pleasure
King Pleasure (born Clarence Beeks; March 24, 1922 – March 21, 1982) was an American jazz vocalist and an early master of vocalese, where a singer sings words to a well-known instrumental solo. Biography Born as Clarence Beeks in Oakdale, Tennessee, United States, he moved to New York City in the mid-1940s working as a bartender and became a fan of bebop music. King Pleasure first gained attention by singing the Eddie Jefferson vocalese classic "Moody's Mood For Love", based on a 1949 James Moody saxophone solo to "I'm In The Mood For Love". Pleasure's 1952 recording, his first after signing a contract with the Prestige label, is considered a jazz classic; the female vocalist featured is Blossom Dearie. He and Betty Carter also recorded a famous vocalese version of "Red Top", a jazz classic penned by Kansas Citian Ben Kynard and recorded by Gene Ammons and others. Other notable recordings include a presciently elegiac version of "Parker's Mood", the year before Charlie Parker ...
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Prestige Records
Prestige Records is a jazz record company and label founded in 1949 by Bob Weinstock in New York City which issued recordings in the mainstream, bop, and cool jazz idioms. The company recorded hundreds of albums by many of the leading jazz musicians of the day, sometimes issuing them on subsidiary labels. In 1971, the company was sold to Fantasy, which was later absorbed by Concord. History The Prestige office was located at 446 West 50th Street, New York City. Its catalogue included Gene Ammons, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Stan Getz, Wardell Gray, Thelonious Monk, and Sonny Rollins. Audio engineer Rudy Van Gelder was the recording engineer of many Prestige albums in the 1950s and early-to-mid-1960s. Prestige created new labels in 1960: Swingville, Moodsville, covering jazz, Bluesville featuring blues revival artists, Lively Arts featuring spoken word recordings and Prestige International, Prestige Folklore, Irish and Near East with folk and world music. By the later 1950s, We ...
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