Word: ellington
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most people know that the composer of Take the "A" Train and Satin Doll and of orchestral suites like Such Sweet Thunder was Duke Ellington. But most people are wrong. The composer, or in many cases the co-composer, of those and dozens of other hallmarks of the Ellington sound was a dapper, diminutive musicians' musician named Billy Strayhorn. From 1938 until his death of cancer in 1967, Strayhorn was Ellington's artistic alter ego--bolstered and publicly praised by the Duke but working always in his shadow, less an employee than a member of his extended household...
Together--and often working with the brilliant arranging skills of Nelson Riddle--Fitzgerald and Granz then went on to songbooks for the likes of Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Duke Ellington, Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, Irving Berlin and Johnny Mercer, the great composers of the great era of American popular music. Those songbooks became the foundation of a legacy, the single source for a musical standard that Fitzgerald, as much as anyone, helped make timeless. "Some kids in Italy call me 'Mama Jazz,'" she recalled. "I thought that was so cute. As long as they...
...magic and mystery and doom of the blues. Ella's art had a sunnier side, a more adaptive quality that let her be, if not an absolute original, a peerless interpreter, a superb vocal actress who could snuggle into Porter's playfulness or Arlen's melodrama or Ellington's chromatic gymnastics with equal agility. Billie Holiday's music was a lifeline. She lived out all the suffering of her songs. For Ella Fitzgerald, music seemed more like a safe harbor, a home from which she rarely ventured...
Wynton Marsalis is leading a revolution of tradition. While many of his contemporaries play bland but best-selling smooth jazz and jazz-fusion, Marsalis champions core values: master the instrument, study the greats such as Monk and Ellington and dress and comport yourself with the dignity the music deserves. Though the battle for the music's soul goes on, the success of other young jazz stars in the '90s, from saxophonist Joshua Redman to pianist Eric Reed, is proof of Marsalis' influence. "I've played 150 concerts a year for 15 years," he says. "It helped to rebuild the jazz...
Roberts has recorded formidable material before--on his 1991 CD, Three Giants, he covered works by Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk. But on Portraits in Blue he takes on his biggest musical challenge by remaking material that is even more familiar and sacrosanct to many listeners. Says Roberts: "Rhapsody in Blue is a piece everyone knows, so the changes you hear, if done right, can give you some idea of the power of jazz music. I wanted to try and bring the piece up to date without sacrificing its basic nature and personality." Because Rhapsody in Blue...