Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron (February 21, 1917 – March 8, 1965) was an American

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 ...

composer, arranger, and pianist.

Biography

Tadd Dameron, Mary Lou Williams and Dizzy Gillespie

Born in

Cleveland Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, Dameron was the most influential arranger of the

bebop Bebop or bop is a style of jazz developed in the early-to-mid-1940s in the United States. The style features compositions characterized by a fast tempo, complex chord progressions with rapid chord changes and numerous changes of key, instrumen ...

era, but also wrote charts for swing and

hard bop Hard bop is a subgenre of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or "bop") music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz that incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospe ...

players. The bands he arranged for included those of

Count Basie William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...

Artie Shaw Artie Shaw (born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky; May 23, 1910 – December 30, 2004) was an American clarinetist, composer, bandleader, actor and author of both fiction and non-fiction. Widely regarded as "one of jazz's finest clarinetists", Shaw led ...

Jimmie Lunceford James Melvin Lunceford (June 6, 1902 – July 12, 1947) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era. Early life Lunceford was born on a farm in the Evergreen community, west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mis ...

Dizzy Gillespie John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie (; October 21, 1917 – January 6, 1993) was an American jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer, educator and singer. He was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuosic style of Roy Eldridge but addi ...

Billy Eckstine William Clarence Eckstine (July 8, 1914 – March 8, 1993) was an American jazz and pop singer and a bandleader during the swing and bebop eras. He was noted for his rich, almost operatic bass-baritone voice. In 2019, Eckstine was posthumously ...

, and

Sarah Vaughan Sarah Lois Vaughan (March 27, 1924 – April 3, 1990) was an American jazz singer. Nicknamed "Sassy" and "Jazz royalty, The Divine One", she won two Grammy Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and was nominated for a total of nine ...

. In 1940-41 he was the piano player and arranger for the Kansas City band Harlan Leonard and his Rockets. He and lyricist

Carl Sigman Carl Sigman (September 24, 1909 – September 26, 2000) was an American songwriter. Early life Born in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York to a Jewish-American family, Sigman graduated from law school and passed his bar exams to practice in ...

wrote " If You Could See Me Now" for Sarah Vaughan and it became one of her first signature songs. According to the composer, his greatest influences were

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 ' ...

and

Duke Ellington Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American jazz pianist, composer, and leader of his eponymous jazz orchestra from 1923 through the rest of his life. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based ...

. In the late 1940s, Dameron wrote arrangements for Gillespie's big band, who gave the première of his large-scale orchestral piece ''Soulphony in Three Hearts'' at

Carnegie Hall Carnegie Hall ( ) is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City. It is at 881 Seventh Avenue (Manhattan), Seventh Avenue, occupying the east side of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street (Manhattan), 56th and 57th Street (Manhatta ...

in 1948. Also in 1948, Dameron led his own group in New York, which included

Fats Navarro Theodore "Fats" Navarro (September 24, 1923 – July 6, 1950) was an American jazz trumpet player. He was a pioneer of the bebop style of jazz improvisation in the 1940s. He had a strong stylistic influence on many other players, including Cl ...

; the following year Dameron was at the Paris Jazz Festival with

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 music ...

. From 1961 he scored for recordings by

Milt Jackson Milton Jackson (January 1, 1923 – October 9, 1999), nicknamed "Bags", was an American jazz vibraphonist, usually thought of as a bebop player, although he performed in several jazz idioms. He is especially remembered for his cool swinging solo ...

Sonny Stitt Edward Hammond Boatner Jr. (February 2, 1924 – July 22, 1982), known professionally as Sonny Stitt, was an American jazz saxophonist of the bebop/hard bop idiom. Known for his warm tone, he was one of the best-documented saxophonists of his ...

, and Blue Mitchell. Dameron also arranged and played for

rhythm and blues Rhythm and blues, frequently abbreviated as R&B or R'n'B, is a genre of popular music that originated in African-American communities in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly ...

musician

Bull Moose Jackson Benjamin Clarence "Bull Moose" Jackson (April 22, 1919 – July 31, 1989)Allmusic biography Accessed January 2008. was an American blues and rhythm-and-blues singer and saxophonist, who was most successful in the late 1940s. He is considered a p ...

. Playing for Jackson at that same time was

Benny Golson Benny Golson (born January 25, 1929) is an American bebop/hard bop jazz tenor saxophonist, composer, and arranger. He came to prominence with the big bands of Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, more as a writer than a performer, before launch ...

, who was to become a jazz composer in his own right. Golson has said that Dameron was the most important influence on his writing. Dameron composed several bop and swing

standards Standard may refer to: Symbols * Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs * Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification Norms, conventions or requirements * Standard (metrology), an object th ...

, including " Hot House", "If You Could See Me Now", " Our Delight", "

Good Bait "Good Bait" is a jazz composition written by American jazz piano player and composer Tadd Dameron and by band leader Count Basie. It was introduced in 1944 and was popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Form Good Bait uses the changes to "I've Got Rhyth ...

" (composed for

) and " Lady Bird". Dameron's bands from the late 1940s and early 1950s featured leading players such as Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon,

Sonny Rollins Walter Theodore "Sonny" Rollins (born September 7, 1930) is an American jazz tenor saxophonist who is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. In a seven-decade career, he has recorded over sixty albums as a ...

, Wardell Gray, and

Clifford Brown Clifford Benjamin Brown (October 30, 1930 – June 26, 1956) was an American jazz trumpeter and composer. He died at the age of 25 in a car accident, leaving behind four years' worth of recordings. His compositions "Sandu", "Joy Spring", an ...

. In 1956 he led two sessions based on his compositions, released as the 1956 album "

Fontainebleau Fontainebleau (; ) is a commune in the metropolitan area of Paris, France. It is located south-southeast of the centre of Paris. Fontainebleau is a sub-prefecture of the Seine-et-Marne department, and it is the seat of the ''arrondissement ...

" and the 1957 album " Mating Call". The latter featured John Coltrane. Dameron developed an addiction to narcotics toward the end of his career. He was arrested on drug charges in 1957 and 1958, and served time (1959–60) in a federal prison hospital in

Lexington, Kentucky Lexington is a city in Kentucky, United States that is the county seat of Fayette County, Kentucky, Fayette County. By population, it is the List of cities in Kentucky, second-largest city in Kentucky and List of United States cities by popul ...

. After his release, Dameron recorded a single notable project as a leader, The Magic Touch, but was sidelined by health problems; he had several

heart attack A myocardial infarction (MI), commonly known as a heart attack, occurs when blood flow decreases or stops to the coronary artery of the heart, causing damage to the heart muscle. The most common symptom is chest pain or discomfort which may tr ...

s before dying of cancer in 1965, at the age of 48. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

Tributes

* In the 1980s drummer Philly Joe Jones and trumpeter

Don Sickler Don Sickler (January 6, 1944) is an American jazz trumpeter, arranger and producer.Dameronia Dameronia was the name of a bebop jazz ensemble founded by Don Sickler * Saxophonist Dexter Gordon called him the "romanticist" of the bop movement. * Music critic

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 an ...

called Dameron the "definitive arranger/composer of the bop era". * Saxophonist Joe Lovano included five Dameron tunes on his 2000 album ''

52nd Street Themes ''52nd Street Themes'' is a studio album by the American jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano. It was recorded in early November 1999 and released by the Blue Note Records, Blue Note label on April 25, 2000. The album won the Grammy Award for Grammy Award ...

''. * In 2006, trumpeter Peter Welker released ''Duke, Billy And Tadd'' as a tribute to

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 ...

, and Dameron. * Turkish drummer

Ferit Odman Ferit Odman is a jazz drummer based in Istanbul, Turkey. Education Odman started his music studies in Sweden as an AFS exchange student in 1999, then received a full scholarship to Istanbul Bilgi University in 2001, where he obtained his B.A. ...

released ''Dameronia with Strings'', an album featuring eight Dameron tunes, in 2015. * Trumpeter

Joe Magnarelli Joseph Anthony Magnarelli (born January 19, 1960) is an American jazz trumpeter and flugelhornist. Early life and education Magnarelli was born in Syracuse, New York. He received a bachelor's degree from the State University of New York at Fr ...

's 2019 album ''If You Could See Me Now'' is a tribute to Dameron. * In 2019, singer

Vanessa Rubin Vanessa Rubin (born March 14, 1957) is an American jazz vocalist. Biography Born in Cleveland, Ohio, to parents from Trinidad and Louisiana, Rubin grew up in a musical household. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in journalism from Ohio St ...

released an album titled ''The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron''.

Discography

As leader/co-leader

As sideman

With John Coltrane * ''John Coltrane Plays for Lovers'' (Prestige, 1966) * ''Trane's Blues'' (Giants of Jazz, 1990) With

* ''At Birdland'' (Durium, 1976) * ''The Early Days Vol. 1'' (Giants of Jazz, 1985) * ''Birdland Days'' (Fresh Sound, 1990) With Dexter Gordon * ''New Trends of Jazz Volume 3'' (Savoy, 1952) * ''Long Tall Dexter'' (Savoy, 1976) * '' Dexter Rides Again'' (Savoy, 1985) With

* ''Memorial Album'' (Blue Note, 1951) * ''New Trends of Jazz Vol. 5'' (Savoy, 1952) * ''Fats-Bud-Klook-Sonny-Kinney'' (Savoy, 1955) * ''Fats Navarro Memorial Theodore "Fats" Navarro 1923–1950 Volume I'' (London, 1956) * ''The Fabulous Fats Navarro Volume 1'' (Blue Note, 1957) * ''The Fabulous Fats Navarro Volume 2'' (Blue Note, 1957) * ''Fats Navarro Featured with the Tadd Dameron Quintet'' (Jazzland, 1961) * ''Fats Navarro Memorial Volume 1'' (CBS, 1964) * ''Prime Source'' (Blue Note, 1975) * ''Fat Girl'' (Savoy, 1977) * ''Featured with the Tadd Dameron Band'' (Milestone, 1977) * ''At Royal Roost Volume 1'' (Jazz View, 1991) * ''Fats Blows 1946–1949'' (Giants of Jazz, 1991) * ''Royal Roost Sessions 1948'' (Fresh Sound, 1991) With Charlie Parker * ''Bird Lives'' (Continental, 1962) * ''Pensive Bird'' (Ember, 1969) * ''Broadcast Performances Vol. 2'' (ESP Disk, 1973)

References

External links

Tadd Dameron biographical information at the Dameron/Damron Family Association web page.

Jazzbiographies.com.
Interview with Paul Combs, Author of DAMERONIA: THE LIFE AND MUSIC OF TADD DAMERON * http://www.jazzhistorydatabase.com/content/musicians/combs_paul/interview.php {{DEFAULTSORT:Dameron, Tadd 1917 births 1965 deaths African-American jazz pianists American jazz composers American male jazz composers American music arrangers Blue Note Records artists Musicians from Cleveland Jazz arrangers Deaths from cancer in New York (state) 20th-century American composers 20th-century American pianists Burials at Ferncliff Cemetery American male pianists Jazz musicians from Ohio 20th-century American male musicians Dameronia members 20th-century jazz composers 20th-century African-American musicians