with Larry "DOC" Elliott
From the desk of Larry “DOC” Elliott host of T H O J M
Larry "DOC" Elliott
THOJM is hotter than July !
As we enter this seventh month of the year 2010 (our seventh month of existence as well)...we take this time out to thank our members and supporters of good music the World over. We encourage you to join us in spreading the word about this unique website that features music, rarely seen video footage, informative chatroom sessions...pictures from events at venues all over the World as well as educational and biographical information about famous musicians in Jazz Music. We strive to continue "Preserving the Past and Promoting the Future" of this original American art form with assistance from YOU! We encourage you to invite others...participate in the chatroom sessions where you're sure to find future friends and music lovers. Upload your pictures from Jazz events in your area to the site. Let's heat up the month of July with our knowledge and information...as well as our invites to others that might enjoy joining us and participating as well. Let us continue our prayers for those affected by the Gulf Coast oil spilll...and remember to... "Keep the Beat" !
Larry "Doc" Elliott
Host of The History of Jazz Music
(www.thehistoryofjazzmusic.ning.com)
Executive Auto Wash
We have a winner of the History Highlights contest!
Congratulations to “Iris Nunez” for being the first to answering all three questions correctly about Nina Simone.
Congratulations Gee!
Berry Gordy and Gee Caver
The gangs of my youth.
By Gee Caver
Growing up on the Eastside of Detroit in the late 60’s was a fun time. Our house was mid block right in front of the street light. Some summer nights the neighborhood ‘gangs’ would square off under the street light. Somebody was always challenging somebody else talking smack and playing the dozens.
In my neighborhood, the gangs were vocal groups. Bobby Croft from the Cavaliers lived across the street, the Steptones lived around the corner. They were friends with The Primes, The Elgins and The Distant who merged to become The Temptations. Mr. Bo, who sang the blues, lived down the street and so many other groups whose names escape me harmonized under (my) streetlight. I’m sure many songs were conceived and dance steps worked out amid the moths and mosquitoes attracted to the light.
There were no instruments, computers, beat boxes, producers or engineers. Nobody got angry if a note was missed, they just worked it out. There were no guns, knives or fists fights. We clapped and cheered on the groups. The young girls in the neighborhood developed crushes on one or several of the singers. The young guys, when not shooting marbles or playing basketball wanted to be in a group. Such an easy - simple time. Sure miss those days.
Have A Very Musical Day
Gee Caver
Gisele “Gee” Caver is a freelance journalist and entertainment consultant from the Metro Detroit area.
keyofgee@gmail.com
Please help us preserve The History of Jazz Music!
Crawford was born in Memphis, Tennessee. He began formal piano studies at age nine and was soon playing for his church choir. His father had brought an alto saxophone home from the service and when Hank entered Manassas High School, he took it up in order to join the band. He credits Charlie Parker, Louis Jordan, Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges as early influences.
Crawford appears on an early 1952 Memphis recording for B.B. King with a band including Ben Branch and Ike Turner.
In 1958 Crawford went to college at Tennessee State University in Nashville, Tennessee. While at TSU, he majored in music studying theory and composition, as well as playing alto and baritone saxophone in the Tennessee State Jazz Collegians. He also led his own rock 'n' roll quartet, "Little Hank and the Rhythm Kings". This is when Crawford met Ray Charles. They all thought he looked and sounded just like Hank O'Day, a legendary local saxophonist, and that's when they nicknamed him Hank. Charles hired Crawford originally as a baritone saxophonist. Crawford switched to alto in 1959 and remained with Charles' band—becoming its musical director until 1963.
When Crawford left Ray Charles in 1963 to form his own septet, he had already established himself with several albums for Atlantic. From 1960 until 1970, he recorded twelve LPs for the label, many while balancing his earlier duties as Ray’s director. He released such pre-crossover hits as “Misty”, “The Peeper”, “Skunky Green”, and “Whispering Grass”.
He also has done musical arrangement for Etta James, Lou Rawls, and others. Much of his career has been in R&B, but in the 1970s he had several successful jazz albums with I Hear a Symphony reaching 11 on Billboard's Jazz albums list and 159 for Pop albums.
David Sanborn cites Crawford as being one of his primary influences. Crawford is recognized by saxophonists as having a particularly unique and pleasing sound. In 1981, he featured, with fellow horn players Ronnie Cuber and David Newman, on B.B. King's There Must Be a Better World Somewhere.
In 1983 he moved to Milestone Records as a premier arranger, soloist, and composer, writing for small bands—that include guitarist Melvin Sparks, organist Jimmy McGriff, and Dr. John. In 1986, Crawford began working with blues-jazz organ master Jimmy McGriff. They recorded four co-leader dates for Milestone Records: Soul Survivors, Steppin’ Up, On the Blue Side, and Road Tested, and toured together extensively.
The new century found Crawford, shifting gears and going for a more mainstream jazz set in his 2000 release The World of Hank Crawford. Though the songs are compositions from jazz masters such as Duke Ellington and Tadd Dameron, he delivers in that sanctified church sound that is his trademark. Followed by The Best of Hank Crawford and Jimmy McGriff (2001), and Back (2007).
He had two children, Michael A. Crawford and Sherri L. Crawford and a grandchild, Tiffany M. Crawford.
Please enjoy the link provided by Jazz on the Tube: http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/229.html For more information on Hank Crawford please contact us at thehistoryofjazzmusic@gmail.com
On the 11th of March, 1950, Bobby McFerrin was born. His parents were classical singers and he began to study music theory early on in his life. His family then moved to Los Angeles. During high school and then in College, UCSC, he focused on the piano. Once he finished college, Bobby McFerrin toured with numerous bands including the Ice Follies.
However, it was only in 1977 that Bobby McFerrin decide to become a singer. At one point he met Bill Cosby who arranged for him take part in the 1980 Playboy Jazz Festival. It was only two years later where he released his firm album called "Bobby McFerrin" in 1982. It was in 1983, that Bobby McFerrin started converting without a band. This eventually led him to make a solo tour in Germany. It was in Germany that he recorded his album "The Voice". From that point on, he continued to make solo tours in the most prestigious locations. It is also important to realize that Bobby McFerrin worked with several important people like Garrison Keillor, Jack Nicholson, and Joe Zawinul. On "Another Night in Tunisia", Bobby McFerrin won two Grammies.
McFerrin was also featured in TV commercials for Levi's and Ocean Spray and also ended up singing the theme song for the Cosby Show and the movie Round Midnight by Bertrand Tavernier which got hum another Grammy. By now, Bobby McFerrin had achieved a great deal of success as a vocal and had released his platinum album Simple Pleasures which included the hit "Don't Worry be Happy".
There is another important aspect of McFerrin's life. He was part of the artistic leadership of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and in 1994 he joined as the creative chair. Among his numerous other activities, McFerrin he developed a program called CONNECT which is an education and outreach program. In 1996, he was recognized for his work with bringing the youth into classical music as the ABC Person of the Week. Also, he was given a 60 minutes feature with Mike Wallace.
His most recent works has been his album Bang Zoom which was released in January of 1996. Also, his latest work Circle Songs he focussed on his tremendous vocal talent. He continues to conduct symphonies. Indeed, he has conducted in practically all the great orchestra including the New York Philharmonic. Over the years, Bobby McFerrin has been an inspiration to millions and a musician who has evolved the music he so passionately works with.
Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtXrKo8Btfc For more information on Bobby McFerrin please contact us at thehistoryofjazzmusic@gmail.com
Diva Nancy Wilson was among contemporary music's most stylish and sultry vocalists; while often crossing over into the pop and R&B markets -- and even hosting her own television variety program -- she remained best known as a jazz performer, renowned for her work alongside figures including Cannonball Adderley and George Shearing. Born February 20, 1937, in Chillicothe, OH, Wilson first attracted notice performing the club circuit in nearby Columbus; she quickly earned a growing reputation among jazz players and fans, and she was recording regularly by the late '50s, eventually signing to Capitol and issuing LPs including 1959's Like in Love and Nancy Wilson with Billy May's Orchestra. Her dates with Shearing, including 1960's The Swingin's Mutual, solidified her standing as a talent on the rise, and her subsequent work with Adderley -- arguably her finest recordings -- further cemented her growing fame and reputation.
In the years to follow, however, Wilson often moved away from jazz, much to the chagrin of purists; she made numerous albums, many of them properly categorized as pop and R&B outings, and toured extensively, appearing with everyone from Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan to Ruth Brown and LaVern Baker. She even hosted her own Emmy-winning variety series for NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show, and was a frequent guest performer on other programs; hits of the period included "Tell Me the Truth," "How Glad I Am," "Peace of Mind," and "Now, I'm a Woman." Regardless of how far afield she traveled, Wilson always maintained her connections to the jazz world, and in the 1980s, she returned to the music with a vengeance, working closely with performers including Hank Jones, Art Farmer, Ramsey Lewis, and Benny Golson. By the 1990s, she was a favorite among the "new adult contemporary" market, her style ideally suited to the format's penchant for lush, romantic ballads; she also hosted the Jazz Profiles series on National Public Radio.
In the early 2000s, Wilson recorded two albums with Ramsey Lewis for Narada (2002's Meant to Be and 2003's Simple Pleasures). Her 2004 album R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) was a blend of straight-ahead jazz and ballads, similar to her next record, 2006's Turned to Blue, which, like R.S.V.P., used a different instrumentalist for each track. In 2005, Capitol released a three-part series to pay tribute to Wilson's contributions to music in the '50s and '60s: Guess Who I Saw Today: Nancy Wilson Sings Songs of Lost Love, Save Your Love for Me: Nancy Wilson Sings the Great Blues Ballads, and The Great American Songbook. Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTU1xIMxMCI
Joe Sample Sample began playing the piano when he was five years old. Since the early 1980s, he has enjoyed a successful solo career and has guested on many recordings by other performers and groups, including Miles Davis, George Benson, Jimmy Witherspoon, B. B. King, Eric Clapton, Steely Dan, and The Supremes. Sample incorporates jazz, gospel, blues, Latin, and classical forms into his music. In high school in the 1950s, Sample teamed up with two friends, saxophonist Wilton Felder and drummer "Stix" Hooper, to form a group called the Swingsters. While studying piano at Texas Southern University, Sample met and added trombonist Wayne Henderson and several other players to the Swingsters, which became the Modern Jazz Sextet and then the Jazz Crusaders[1], in emulation of one of the leading progressive jazz bands of the day, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. Sample never took a degree from the university; instead in 1960, he and the Jazz Crusaders made the move from Houston to Los Angeles. The group quickly found opportunities on the West Coast, making its first recording, Freedom Sounds in 1961 and releasing up to four albums a year over much of the 1960s. The Jazz Crusaders played at first in the dominant hard bop style of the day, standing out by virtue of their unusual front-line combination of saxophone (played by Wilton Felder) and Henderson's trombone. Another distinctive quality was the funky, rhythmically appealing acoustic piano playing of Sample, who helped steer the group's sound into a fusion between jazz and soul[2] in the late 1960s. The Jazz Crusaders became a strong concert draw during those years. While Sample and his band mates continued to work together, he and the other band members pursued individual work as well. In 1969 Sample made his first recording under his own name; Fancy Dance featured the pianist as part of a jazz trio[1]. In the 1970s, as the Jazz Crusaders became simply the Crusaders and branched out into popular sounds, Sample became known as a L.A. studio musician, appearing on recordings by the likes of Joni Mitchell, Marvin Gaye, Tina Turner, B. B. King, Joe Cocker, Minnie Riperton and Anita Baker. In 1975 he went into the studios with jazz legends Ray Brown on bass, and drummer Shelly Manne to produce a then state-of-the-art recording direct to disc entitled The Three. About this time Blue Note reissued some of the early work by the Jazz Crusaders as “The Young Rabbits.” This was a compilation of their recordings done between 1962-68. The electric keyboard was fairly new at the time, and Sample became one of the instrument's pioneers. He switched to electric keyboard for his recordings with the Crusaders themselves, and the group hit a commercial high-water mark with the hit single "Street Life" and the album of the same name in 1979. In 1978 he did a joint session with guitarist David T. Walker, Swing Street Café, which had all the feel of a live set done in a back street joint in Texas. The Crusaders, after losing several key members, broke up after recording Life in the Modern World for the GRP label in 1987. Despite the disbanding of the Crusaders, the members would join each other to record periodically over the years; releasing Healing the Wounds in the early '90s. Felder, Hooper, and Sample recorded their first album, called Rural Renewal, as the reunited Crusaders group in 2003 and did a live concert in Japan in 2004. Since Sample's Fancy Dance (1969), he has recorded several solo albums, including the George Duke produced Sample This. GRP also released Joe Sample Collection, and a three disc Crusaders Collection, as testament to Sample's enduring legacy. The pianist's most recent recordings are The Song Lives On (1999), featuring duets with singer Lalah Hathaway, and The Pecan Tree (2002), a tribute to his hometown of Houston, where he relocated in 1994. His 2004 album on Verve, Soul Shadows, paid tribute to Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton, and pre-jazz bandleader James Reese Europe. In 2007 he recorded Feeling Good with vocalist Randy Crawford. Some of his works are featured on The Weather Channel's "Local On The 8s" segments and his song "Rainbow Seeker" is included in their 2008 compilation release, The Weather Channel Presents: Smooth Jazz II. Nicole Kidman sang his song "One Day I'll Fly Away" in the Baz Luhrmann film Moulin Rouge!. Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oi-U-lzvhgo For more information on Joe Sample please contact us at thehistoryofjazzmusic@gmail.com
As an artist who has flourished in the comfort of Jazz, the Top 40s, R&B, and Pop, pianist Brian O'Neal exudes the versatility of a uniquely upbeat, smooth style that compliments today’s "New Jazz”. He brings an exciting and uninhibited sound to the world of jazz, making it a creative challenge for many to categorize his music. O’Neal attracts an eager following and commands the respect of his listeners domestically and abroad. "I don't listen to the radio often out of respect for my craft. I don't want to taint my vision of music with that of which we hear everyday. By shutting myself out of the listening audience, I'm not apt to emulate any sound you've heard before." O'Neal says to WFSK 88.1FM's DJ Sharon Kay.
O’Neal was born July 5, 1965, in Detroit, MI. He first discovered his passion for music at the age of six when he took his first drum lesson. Although Brian (known to his friends as "Bean") learned to play many instruments, including the saxophone, bass, and trombone; he aspired to be a professional drummer. That is until his junior year in high school, when he was asked by his band teacher to fill in on the piano for the band’s performance. Brian instantly became mesmerized with the idea of mastering such a magnificent and gentle instrument. His grandmother, "Daisy O'Neal", noticed how excited he was about playing, then bought him his first piano. O'Neal's passion for the ivories increased as he experimented with various melodies and chords; resulting in the rapid maturing of his skill. As a self taught Pianist, he later received a full musical scholarship to Alcorn State University.
Brian’s talents then soared into the world of jingles, working with companies such as the McDonald's Corporation®. His love for movies and children inspired him to compose film scores for youthful audiences around the country. In the (early/mid 80’s), as he explored his musical talent, Brian began touring with several Rock & Top 40 Bands, the Atlanta-based jazz band "Take Notes" and several Contemporary Jazz/R&B artists; some of which he served as their Assistant Music Director. O'Neal's love for music led him to share his talent by mentoring other aspiring artists, such as Universal/Motown® recording artist Kem, who has become a national Jazz/R&B sensation.
O'Neal has shared the stage with many great musicians over the past two decades including: Will Downing, Morris Day and the Time, India Arie, Ledisi, Fantasia, Angela Bofill, Stevie Wonder, Maze (featuring Frankie Beverly), Alex Bugnon, George Duke, Pieces of a Dream, Chaka Kahn, Najee, Kindred the Family Soul, and Jeff Lorber. He has also composed and produced music for several artists abroad; including UNV, Kathy Avalon, Eddie Oliver and a host of other upcoming talents.
Several of O’Neal’s accolades include being a Detroit Music Awards “Most Outstanding Composition” nominee, Mesmerized© won best song on OurStage.com, he has hailed the #1 spot on My Space charts for several months and most recently, two of his songs were selected for the play on the National Weather Channel. O'Neal's musical influences include such legends as Herbie Hancock, Pat Matheny, Prince and the great Stevie Wonder. These celebrated artists helped mold and guide his desire to pursue a career as a professional musician. As a writer, producer, composer and performer, he has a gentle and natural mastery for creating a musical oasis for his listeners.
Brian O'Neal is truly a talented (and humble) musician. He stimulates your inner appetite with melodic rhythms, and soothes your emotions with the vibrations of each instrument.
In a word … Genius.
Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xb04Jr7z0g
For more information on Brian O'Neal please contact us at thehistoryofjazzmusic@gmail.com
One of a handful of musicians who can be said to have permanently changed jazz, Charlie Parker was arguably the greatest saxophonist of all time. He could play remarkably fast lines that, if slowed down to half speed, would reveal that every note made sense. "Bird," along with his contemporaries Dizzy Gillespie and Bud Powell, is considered a founder of bebop; in reality he was an intuitive player who simply was expressing himself. Rather than basing his improvisations closely on the melody as was done in swing, he was a master of chordal improvising, creating new melodies that were based on the structure of a song. In fact, Bird wrote several future standards (such as "Anthropology," "Ornithology," "Scrapple from the Apple," and "Ko Ko," along with such blues numbers as "Now's the Time" and "Parker's Mood") that "borrowed" and modernized the chord structures of older tunes. Parker's remarkable technique, fairly original sound, and ability to come up with harmonically advanced phrases that could be both logical and whimsical were highly influential. By 1950, it was impossible to play "modern jazz" with credibility without closely studying Charlie Parker.
Born in Kansas City, KS, Charlie Parker grew up in Kansas City, MO. He first played baritone horn before switching to alto. Parker was so enamored of the rich Kansas City music scene that he dropped out of school when he was 14, even though his musicianship at that point was questionable (with his ideas coming out faster than his fingers could play them). After a few humiliations at jam sessions, Bird worked hard woodshedding over one summer, building up his technique and mastery of the fundamentals. By 1937, when he first joined Jay McShann's Orchestra, he was already a long way toward becoming a major player.
Charlie Parker, who was early on influenced by Lester Young and the sound of Buster Smith, visited New York for the first time in 1939, working as a dishwasher at one point so he could hear Art Tatum play on a nightly basis. He made his recording debut with Jay McShann in 1940, creating remarkable solos with a small group from McShann's orchestra on "Oh, Lady Be Good" and "Honeysuckle Rose." When the McShann big band arrived in New York in 1941, Parker had short solos on a few of their studio blues records, and his broadcasts with the orchestra greatly impressed (and sometimes scared) other musicians who had never heard his ideas before. Parker, who had met and jammed with Dizzy Gillespie for the first time in 1940, had a short stint with Noble Sissle's band in 1942, played tenor with Earl Hines' sadly unrecorded bop band of 1943, and spent a few months in 1944 with Billy Eckstine's orchestra, leaving before that group made their first records. Gillespie was also in the Hines and Eckstine big bands, and the duo became a team starting in late 1944.
Although Charlie Parker recorded with Tiny Grimes' combo in 1944, it was his collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945 that startled the jazz world. To hear the two virtuosos play rapid unisons on such new songs as "Groovin' High," "Dizzy Atmosphere," "Shaw 'Nuff," "Salt Peanuts," and "Hot House," and then launch into fiery and unpredictable solos could be an upsetting experience for listeners much more familiar with Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman. Although the new music was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the recording strike of 1943-1944 resulted in bebop arriving fully formed on records, seemingly out of nowhere.
Unfortunately, Charlie Parker was a heroin addict ever since he was a teenager, and some other musicians who idolized Bird foolishly took up drugs in the hope that it would elevate their playing to his level. When Gillespie and Parker (known as "Diz and Bird") traveled to Los Angeles and were met with a mixture of hostility and indifference (except by younger musicians who listened closely), they decided to return to New York. Impulsively, Parker cashed in his ticket, ended up staying in L.A., and, after some recordings and performances (including a classic version of "Oh, Lady Be Good" with Jazz at the Philharmonic), the lack of drugs (which he combated by drinking an excess of liquor) resulted in a mental breakdown and six months of confinement at the Camarillo State Hospital. Released in January 1947, Parker soon headed back to New York and engaged in some of the most rewarding playing of his career, leading a quintet that included Miles Davis, Duke Jordan, Tommy Potter, and Max Roach. Parker, who recorded simultaneously for the Savoy and Dial labels, was in peak form during the 1947-1951 period, visiting Europe in 1949 and 1950, and realizing a lifelong dream to record with strings starting in 1949 when he switched to Norman Granz's Verve label.
But Charlie Parker, due to his drug addiction and chance-taking personality, enjoyed playing with fire too much. In 1951, his cabaret license was revoked in New York (making it difficult for him to play in clubs) and he became increasingly unreliable. Although he could still play at his best when he was inspired (such as at the 1953 Massey Hall concert with Gillespie), Bird was heading downhill. In 1954, he twice attempted suicide before spending time in Bellevue. His health, shaken by a very full if brief life of excesses, gradually declined, and when he died in March 1955 at the age of 34, he could have passed for 64.
Charlie Parker, who was a legendary figure during his lifetime, has if anything grown in stature since his death. Virtually all of his studio recordings are available on CD along with a countless number of radio broadcasts and club appearances. Clint Eastwood put together a well-intentioned if simplified movie about aspects of his life (Bird). Parker's influence, after the rise of John Coltrane, has become more indirect than direct, but jazz would sound a great deal different if Charlie Parker had not existed. The phrase "Bird Lives" (which was scrawled as graffiti after his death) is still very true. Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkvCDCOGzGc
Birthdays
Birthdays Today
Birthdays Tomorrow
Forum
"A ROSE" AT "MY FATHER'S WILL"
A ROSE OF SHARON A LILLY OF THE FIELD COLORS ME DARKLY COVERS ME SOFTLY PEDALS OF LIFE WITH FRAGRANCE ENTICE BOTH DAY AND NIGHT I AM "A ROSE" I AM "A LILLY OF THE FIELD" I AM "MY FATHER'S CHILD"…
Tagged: MOTIVATION, EMPOWERING, INSPIRATION
Started by Ms. Felecia Jul 24.
Moving Your Life Toward Financial Success
http://dacenterprize.org/http://dacenterprize.org http://dacenterprize.org
Tagged: SEATS, LIMITED, CONTACT, NUMBER, 216-916-6568
Started by Ms. Felecia Jul 24.
LENA HORNE
THE LATE AND GREAT LENA HORNE HAS DIE AT 92......................JUNE 13.1917---MAY,9 2010 REST MY SIS
Started by DERRICK HUGHES May 10.
Pennsylvania Museum of Music and Broadcast History
Archives, Bios, Discographies, Photos needed to acknowledge Pennsylvania Aritists, Composers, Labels and Producers...Contact us If you can help Pennsylvania will soon embark on a massive project t…
Tagged: archives, photos, non-profit, ethnic, soul
Started by Bill Trousdale Apr 20.
The History of Jazz Music
Visit The Independent Artist Network
Find more music like this on The Independent Artist Network It Is Better To Be Alone Than In The Wrong Company Tell me who your best friends are, and I will tell you who you are. If you run with wolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, you will learn how to soar to great heights. A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by the kind of friends he chooses. The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom you closely associate for the good and the bad. The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve. Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. An important attribute in successful people is their impatience with negative thinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates will change. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want you to stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you to crawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those that don't increase you will eventually decrease you. Consider This: * Never receive counsel from unproductive people. * Never discuss your problems with someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those who never succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. * Not everyone has a right to speak into your life. * You are certain to get the worst of the bargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. * Don't follow anyone who's not going anywhere. * With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. * Be careful where you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. * Wise is the person who fortifies his life with the right friendships.
Change from Damian Steinberg on Vimeo.
Photos
Videos
A Weekly Jazz Sampler
It's A Jazz Family Affair
Summer is a time for family gatherings, and over the years, there have been some very notable families of jazz musicians. Hear five songs by some of those talented families -- songs selected to accompany your own family's backyard cookout.Ideal Bread: Josh Sinton On Steve Lacy
Baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton has a healthy obsession with the music of Steve Lacy, who remains an enduring figure in jazz. With the recent release of Transit, his second volume of Lacy originals, Sinton selects five key Lacy performances and explains why they're important.The Best New Jazz Of 2010 (So Far)
While the most curious jazz album of 2010 features robots playing the works of guitar wizard Pat Metheny, we're not ready just yet to cave into our new jazz robot overlords. Outside of the robotic army, we pick the best new jazz albums 2010 has had to offer.Jazz Is For The Birds
Springtime brings songbirds back to the sky. The first "bird" many think of when they think jazz is sax legend Charlie Parker (it was his nickname). This Take Five doesn't focus on Bird, Birdland or the many song titles that riff on that theme. Instead, this jazz ornithology lesson features songs of a different feather flocked together.Nat King Cole: Original Five-Tool Jazz Player
Over the course of his life, Nat King Cole became a jazz innovator and an icon of American popular music. Take Five celebrates Cole's birthday — he was born on March 17, 1919 — with a "five-tool" (that's baseball lingo, we'll explain) approach, highlighting the breadth of his work.Groups
-
The C.H.A.M.P. Within
2 members
-
Pennsylvania Museum of M…
3 members
-
Friends of WJZZ 105.9FM
9 members
-
The Making of the Musica…
2 members
-
Bass Players of the World
7 members
-
Metro Detroit Jazz Lovers
4 members
Latest Activity
This show is dedicated to the ladys of Jazz some of our own personel favourites.
Midnight Sun-Elizabeth Sheppherd Trio - Start To Move 2007
On The Street Where You Live-Sarah Deleo-I'm In Heaven Tonight 2008
Bell's (I'll Be waiting)-Idea 6 Ft Fra…
This show is dedicated to the ladys of Jazz some of our own personel favourites.
Midnight Sun-Elizabeth Sheppherd Trio - Start To Move 2007
On The Street Where You Live-Sarah Deleo-I'm In Heaven Tonight 2008
Bell's (I'll Be waiting)-Idea 6 Ft Fra…
Billboard
Ciara Pushes the Envelope on 'Basic Instincts'
Ciara is back with a vengeance thanks to the album's first single "Ride," which is at No. 5 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart at No. 42 on the Hot 100.Top 20 Tweets of the Week: 7/31/10
Here's our round-up of singers', rockers' and rappers' 20 coolest and funnest tweets from the past seven days. Be sure to tag @billboarddotcom to your favorite music retweets (and don't forget to follow us!)The Broadway Side of 'Family Guy' and 'The Cleveland Show'
Continued coverage from Comic Con, where we talk to the cast and crew of "Family Guy" and "The Cleveland Show" about the animated programs' musical numbers.Ask Billboard: Decade-Defining Artists & Songs
Does "Billie Jean" define the '80s? Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the '90s? Readers choose seminal songs, and acts, decade-by-decade.'Jersey Shore' Soundtrack Crashes Billboard 200
Our national obsession with the tanned, gelled, fist-pumping cast of MTV's "Jersey Shore" doesn't look like it will end anytime soon.Black Voices
Obama's Presidency Haunted by Consumer Confidence Problems
Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama
In case you're not aware, Consumer Confidence is a measure that captures the degree to which the American people feel good about their economic futures. It is studied by economists around the world, and is one of the most important indicators of an economy's direction.
You could be wondering why something as simple as confidence might play a role in the direction of the economy. After all, isn't confidence simply a psychological phenomenon? To some extent, it might be, since none of us truly knows what the future holds. However, confidence plays a role, not just in revealing what we expect from the future. It also plays a role in how we prepare for that future.
A confident consumer is one who spends money. He/she feels good about job prospects, job security and long-term earning potential. Confident consumers buy homes, refrigerators and the new car they've been wanting to get. Confident businesses make investments and hire additional workers. That's why confidence matters, and that's one of President Obama's biggest problems right now.
Americans are not feeling good about the economy. Consumer confidence dropped in July to its lowest level in nine months, according to The University of Michigan. Consumers are being most affected by the job market and high debt levels. They are also surprisingly affected by the lack of leadership in Congress, where jobs bills are delayed until the last minute due to Republican opposition.
"What changed in July was their recognition that the anticipated slowdown in the economy will keep jobs scarce for some time, while their uncertainties about future prospects were increased by the policies of the Obama administration," said Richard Curtin, director of the survey.
Only 14 percent of consumers say that the government is handling the economy effectively. Much of this falls onto President Obama, who is seen as the figure head of our government, although Congress plays a critical role in seeing that bills are passed.
Another huge problem for the president is that many Americans feel that his policies are not creating jobs. The American unemployment rate remains above nine percent, in spite of efforts to reduce it. He is also affected by the rising debt burden of the United States government, which serves as justification for Republican efforts to say "no" to jobs bills proposed by the Democrats.
What will be especially interesting is how the Obama Administration handles things after the mid-term elections. Should the Republicans make strong gains in the House of Representatives and the Senate, it will be even more difficult for the president to get his legislation passed, which will likely affect his bid for re-election.
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.
Depressed? Here's How to Get Help
In our depression series, we began with the sad story of Gary Coleman and what happens when depression goes untreated in our community.
The next segment of our series went on to tackle why we, as African American, don't get help.
In this final installment, we will explore the general symptoms of depression and how they are manifested specifically in African Americans. In addition, I address the importance of breaking through the stigma that allows depression to go untreated in our lives.
It is very important that we begin to understand the symptoms of depression in order to begin the first steps of diagnosis and recovery. They include:
o. Overall sad mood for at least a month
o. Crying
o. Anger
o. Appetite disturbance
o. Sleep disturbance, too much or too little
o. Headaches, stomach aches, and general pain
o. Chronic fatigue
o. A loss of interest in activities and things once considered enjoyable
o. Alcohol and or chemical abuse
If you have one or more of the above symptoms don't ignore them. See a treating clinician immediately to determine if you are depressed or suffering with some other mental and or physical illness.
Related Articles: Depression in the Black Community: Why We Don't Get Help
Perhaps the most important thing that we can all do when it comes to mental health issues and depression in the African-American community is lend support to one another and not judge. We must push the message that depression is not a weakness; it is a medical/psychological condition that can and must be treated.
Learn how you or your loved one can get help here:
Dr. Jeff Gardere, better known as America's psychologist is one of the most widely sought-after experts in the field of mental health. In addition to having a private practice in Manhattan, he has garnered a reputation as being a top motivational and keynote speaker, empowerment and media coach. He now appears as the relationship expert on VH-1's 'Dad Camp.'
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
… ContinueAuthorities Focus on Las Vegas in Search for Mitrice Richardson
Filed under: News, Race and Civil Rights
The Los Angeles County Sheriff's office believes there have been "credible sightings" of Mitrice Richardson in Las Vegas. The Cal State Fullerton graduate has been missing since September 2009 when she was released from police custody in a remote area without car keys, a wallet or cellphone.Richardson, who may be bipolar, was arrested for failing to pay an $89 bill at a Malibu restaurant. Witnesses said she was acting odd, despite having only one drink on her bill, telling staff and patrons she was from Mars and speaking gibberish.
After her arrest, Richardson, 25, was released from a remote substation without a purse, cell phone or car and vanished.
"You're not in trouble, you're not subject to arrest. We just want to know you're OK," Los Angeles County sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said in a plea to the woman. "Please contact police or a family member."
Amid criticism from Mitrice's father, Michael, police in Los Angeles County have conducted one of the biggest missing persons searches ever. They used drones to search the rugged Malibu hillside. Rep. Maxine Waters has requested the FBI's involvement because she said Mitrice Richardson's civil rights may have been violated. Police have said they followed the proper procedures before Richardson was released.
Both Mitrice's mother and father have filed suit against the Los Angeles County Sheriff's office.
Michael Richardson said police told them there may have been up to 80 sightings of the woman.
"They wouldn't be doing this if they didn't believe they had credible information of her whereabouts. They want to prove or disprove beyond a shadow of a doubt that these sightings are indeed fact or indeed not fact," Whitmore told the Los Angeles Times.
On his website, Richardson said he was on a plane to Las Vegas and believes he may have spotted his daughter there during a search in January.
Mitrice's father also said he spoke to Los Angeles police when he returned and drew a map of the area but felt they "brushed it off as if it was just probably my imagination," he wrote on his website.
According to reports, a former friend of Mitrice's spotted her at the Rio Las Vegas Hotel and Casino last month. The man tried to speak to Mitrice but she ignored him. Michael Richardson said on his website that the person who spotted Mitirice was a childhood friend who escorted her to a junior prom and knew her from church.
"The woman turned around and looked as if she didn't know him and then looked at him again," family friend Rhonda Hampton told CNN. "Then she ran off with some woman."
Richardson said he's holding out hope that this is his daughter. Let's hope that it is Mitrice so that her family may bring her to safety and help her regain a level of health and normalcy in her life.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
… ContinueDesiree Rogers Gives First Interview: 'Things Aren't Really Always About You'
Filed under: News, Politics, President Obama, Race and Civil Rights
Former White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers gave a rare interview to Fox-TV in Chicago recently.Asked what lessons she's learned, Rogers said:
"It really is not about me. I think that's the important lesson. Things aren't really always about you," Rogers said.
Some might say she didn't learn that lesson quickly enough. Rogers was criticized for being too much in the spotlight. One of the most high-profile social secretary's ever, Rogers was in Vogue Magazine and in the front row at Fashion Week.
Rogers resigned after infamous couple Michaele and Tareq Salahi made their way in to Obama's first state dinner.
"As much has been talked about me wanting to be in the public eye, I'd rather be in the background. I really do want to be in the background," she said.
But Rogers, looking as sharp and sounding as smart as ever, said she was proud of her service. She said she helped put on a record 370 events in the first year of the Obama White House and helped to make it a "people's house."
"How could we really make certain this was going to be different and reflective of the values and principles of the Obama administration...inclusion, different people being in the White House," Rogers said.Rogers said she's still working out what her role will be with Johnson Publishing but is, at the age of 50, starting to think about her legacy.
Despite whatever criticism you have of Rogers, that one event at the White House should not comprise the bulk of her legacy. Before she became social secretary, she was a well-regarded Harvard-trained businesswoman.
Luckily, she still has time to reshape it.
"I don't think any of us realized how much scrutiny would be on the first African-American social secretary," Rogers said.
She later added: "For me, it was about serving the president and first lady and service."
Check out her interview below:
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
… ContinueGov. Paterson: Please Exit Stage Right
Filed under: News, Politics, Race and Civil Rights
Will New York Gov. David Paterson ever stop torturing the people of the Empire State with his dopey actions and statements?
The latest example came this week when the "Accidental Governor" told a radio interviewer that he now regrets dropping out of the race for a full term as governor.
Paterson's new found bravado comes by way of a judge's decision earlier in the week to not charge Paterson with criminal wrongdoing, when he interfered in the domestic violence case of his former top aide.
Forget for a second the fact that the judge did find Paterson engaged in "inappropriate conduct" by contacting the abuse victim. Also forget that polls showed Paterson had virtually no base of support left when he decided to drop out of the race.
Now Paterson is staying he would like to have stuck around in office to fix the financial crisis that crippled his administration.
Paterson critics, especially New York's tabloids, are being unfair for blaming Paterson for the money mess that wrecked his administration. The seeds of New York's financial meltdown were planted long ago and unfortunately came to bloom under Paterson's watch.
But the man who took office only because Eliot Spitzer couldn't keep it zipped when he needed to has never showed he could lead the state back to fiscal health.
Paterson, the state's first black governor, spent most of his term ducking a stream of controversies and refilling his cabinet because several of his closest aides abandoned his administration.
Sadly, about the only right decision Paterson made in recent months was to drop out of the race for a full term and let a more able administrator take over the reins of government. Now he says he would undo that.
Incredible.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
… Continue2unes Loving 2
www.2unes.net
Musical History Comes Alive with the Discovery of Historic, Never Before Heard Live Recordings of American Legends from the Vaults of Tokyo’s Famed New Latin Quarter Club!
CD Compilation and Multi-Media Series Launches with the Release of “The Best Of New Latin Quarter, Jazz & Blues, Volume 1” Featuring Digitally Remastered Performances By Nat “King” Cole, Nancy Wilson, Keely Smith, Chubby Checker, Louis Armstrong, Patti Page, Julie London, Bobby Troup and Sammy Davis, Jr.
You can only receive a copy free of charge right here at The History of Jazz Music. Details coming soon, Stay tuned!
“We Are Preserving The Past and Presenting The Future”
Badge
WHO’S WHO IN BLACK MUSIC
WHO’S WHO IN BLACK MUSIC
rrosenthall@msn.com
Greetings:
It is with great pleasure that I extend to you an invitation to be included in the forth coming 2009-2010 Edition of Strathmore’s WHO’S WHO IN BLACK MUSIC.
Please e-mail your short BIO and picture to rrosenthall@msn.com
This unique volume recognizes those men and women who have achieved success in their respective fields. This special edition of the registry is designed as an outstanding networking source for the American marketplace as well as a worldwide source for the Who’s Who of global decision makers.
We believe your accomplishments, as a highly respected professional in your field
Of entertainment, merit very earnest and intense consideration for inclusion.
Kindly respond to this invitation, now while it is convenient, by proving a short BIO and picture e-mail to rrosenthall@msn.com.
On behalf of WHO’S WHO IN BLACK MUSIC and The Boogie Report, we wish you continued success.
Sincerely,
Robert Rosenthall
Executive Director
Jerry Mason Editor
E-mail - rrosenthall@msn.com
http://coredjradio.ning.com/forum/topics/who-who-in-black-music
http://www.whoswhoinblackmusic.com
http://www.southernsoulmusic.net/introwhoswhointro/id3.html
http://www.theboogiereport.net/jboogiemasononline/
rrosenthall@msn.com OR Amazinmace@aol.com
Margaret Ball-Giles
(248) 799-9442
www.BodyResizers.biz
If you've been in the record business at least two months or thirty years, it's almost certain that you've heard the name, or communicated with, or received correspondence from or even been called on the phone by Paulette De Suzia. Awhspr2scrm@aol.com
http://www.peepinthescene.com/index.html
Neo-soul singer/songwriter/producer Dwele grew up on Detroit's west side, listening to soul music from Motown visionaries Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye as well as jazz on the radio. Born Andwele Gardner, he began writing songs at the age of ten, after his father was murdered outside his home, and attended Cody High in Detroit. Dwele spent a year studying music at Wayne State but then opted for an informal education, making music at his home while living in Dearborn and working for AAA. His demo tape, 1998's The Rize, made waves around the Motor City, and he spent time collaborating with Detroit hip-hop group Slum Village and Philadelphia rapper Bahamadia. Signed to Virgin on the strength of his songwriting and performance skills, Dwele released Subject in mid-2003 and cemented his appeal with European audiences (he was a favorite on Gilles Peterson's influential Radio 1 program) with a tour that summer. His second album, Some Kinda..., followed in 2005 and reached the Top 10 of the R&B chart. A couple years later, he provided the hook on Kanye West's hit single "Flashing Lights." Released in 2008, Sketches of a Man (number seven R&B) and 2010's W.W.W. (featuring sociopolitical themes, a slight change of pace) found him on the Koch label.
Brian's current project is his new weekly late night talk show, “The Brian McKnight Show”, which premiered in September 2009 in over 200 markets. The show is a one-hour entertainment showcase featuring the hottest celebrities and personalities from the world of sports, acting, popular culture and music. Guests have included Stevie Wonder, Kobe Bryant, Justin Timberlake, Dr. Phil, Smokey Robinson Carmelo Anthony, Jesse Jackson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Seth Green, Hill Harper, and Vivica A Fox, just to name a few.
In addition; Brian has co-hosted "The Brian McKnight Morning Show" on KTWV the Wave Smooth Jazz radio station in LA for 2 years. A second radio show launched in 2008, as “The Brian McKnight Show” took to the evening air and is syndicated through Citadel (formerly ABC Radio) in 47 markets coast to coast.
The newest album “Evolution of A Man” released October 2009. The album features the first single “What I’ve Been Waiting For” which reveals a reggae sound that McKnight has never done before. Upon release it quickly hit #1 on I Tunes R&B, as well as breaking into the top 10 at Urban Contemporary Radio. The album is a treat for McKnight fans; featuring the ballads that he is best known for. “Evolution Of A Man” is distributed on E1 Entertainment (formerly Koch).
With seemingly endless talent; Brian has used his vast industry knowledge as a red carpet host for Extra!, He has seen success in musical theatre and is currently staring in “Cheaper To Keep Her” opposite Vivica A. Fox. In 2007 McKnight was on Broadway with a run as Billy Flynn in "Chicago”. In 2006 McKnight scored "Daddy's Little Girls" for Tyler Perry, the same year he released the album TEN. In 2005 McKnight toured with the production of “Cheaters”.
Bill Withers was working as an airline mechanic, installing toilets on 747s, when his song "Ain't No Sunshine" was released. It was the first in a string of simple, soulful hits, which also included "Lean on Me," "Lovely Day" and "Just the Two of Us." Though his music is still heard everywhere, Withers himself retreated to a private life more than two decades ago. A new documentary explores what happened to the hit maker when he stepped off the stage. Damani Baker and Alex Vlack spent eight years making the film, which shares a title with one of Withers' albums: Still Bill. All Things Considered host Michele Norris recently sat down with Baker and Vlack to ask what drew them to the project.
"You just have to listen to his music to know why Bill Withers," Vlack says. "We had spent so much time with his music, so much time with his hits, as well as his whole catalog. ... You really start loving this man."
The DVD is a portrait of a man who is part performer, part philosopher. In an interview for the film, Withers describes the wisdom that he once shared with his kids.
"One of the things I always tell my kids is that it's OK to head out for wonderful, but on your way to wonderful, you're gonna have to pass through all right," Withers says. "When you get to all right, take a good look around and get used to it, because that may be as far as you're gonna go."
According to Baker, Withers is talking both about his kids and about himself.
"He started in the business very late in life," Baker says. "He had this life before becoming a soul icon. On his way to wonderful, he didn't know what that was yet."
The Fame Game
Once Withers became a soul icon, he was faced with the reality of what he called the "fame game." His celebrity status came at a great cost.
"I became very interested [in the question], can I still stay in this business and be effective and make a living, and not have to play this fame game? I wasn't any good at it. The fame game was kickin' my ass," Withers says in the film.
For Withers, music needed to be genuine, and so when he was asked to lip-sync for audiences, he became visibly disgruntled while onstage.
"For him, he likes connecting with people," Vlack says. "If he's gonna play music, he wants to play it and enjoy it, and he's fine if there's only 10 people listening to it, as long as it's genuine."
The film follows Withers to his home in the lush town of Slab Fork, W.Va., where he and his daughter, Kori, sit down for an impromptu duet. It was the first time that Vlack and Baker had heard Withers sing after two years of working with him.
"The two of them have the most intimate moment, completely out of the blue," Baker says.
The staying power of Withers' music is a testament to its repeatable simplicity.
"They're very good, simple pieces of music," Baker says. "And whatever you're going through in that moment in your own life, all of a sudden you have this Bill Withers soundtrack that's attached to love, relationships, loss ... it's the soundtrack to so many pieces of who we are."
Barbra Streisand's status as one of the most successful singers of her generation was remarkable not only because her popularity was achieved in the face of a dominant musical trend — rock & roll — which she did not follow, but also because she used her vocal skills as a mere stepping stone to other careers, as a stage and film actress and as a film director. Born in 1942 and raised in Brooklyn, NY, she struggled briefly as an actress and nightclub singer in New York during the early '60s before landing her first part in a Broadway show, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, in 1962. The cast album for that show, as well as a subsequent appearance on a studio revival of Pins and Needles, were her first recordings. Signed to Columbia Records, she released her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album, in 1963. It became a Top Ten, gold-selling record, thus paving the way for Streisand's status as one of the best-selling recording artists of the early '60s.
But despite three successful albums by early 1964, Streisand turned her back on potentially lucrative concert bookings in favor of a starring role in the Broadway show Funny Girl, in which she appeared for more than two years. "People" from that show became her first Top Ten single, and the People album her first chart-topping LP. She turned to television in 1965 with My Name Is Barbra, the first of five network specials. In 1967, Streisand went to Hollywood to film Funny Girl, for which she would win an Academy Award. But by 1970, with her second and third films flops and her recording career flagging in the face of rock, she seemed consigned to Las Vegas before turning 30. Instead, she returned to hit-making with a Top Ten cover of Laura Nyro's "Stoney End" and a successful non-singing performance in the comedy The Owl and the Pussycat.
In the 1970s, Streisand successfully married her musical and film acting interests, first in The Way We Were, a hit film with a theme song that became her first number one single, and then with A Star Is Born, which featured her second number one single, "Evergreen," a song she co-wrote. From that point on, every album she released sold at least a million copies. In the late '70s, she found recording success in collaboration: her duet with Neil Diamond, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," hit number one, as did "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)," a dance record sung with Donna Summer. She had her biggest-selling album in 1980 with Guilty, which was written and produced by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and contained the number one hit "Woman in Love." In 1983, Streisand's first directorial effort, Yentl, became a successful film with a Top Ten soundtrack album. In 1985, The Broadway Album returned her to the top of the charts. 1991 saw the release of Just for the Record..., a boxed set retrospective, and her second film as a director, The Prince of Tides. Streisand returned to the concert stage in 1994, resulting in the Top Ten, million-selling album The Concert. In 1996, she directed her third film, The Mirror Has Two Faces, and in 1999 she released A Love Like Ours.
Timeless: Live in Concert, which was recorded at her Las Vegas show on New Year's Eve 1999, was released on both CD and DVD in 2000. A year later, the new holiday album Christmas Memories arrived, followed in 2003 by a sequel to The Broadway Album entitled The Movie Album. A deluxe CD/DVD reissue of the original Guilty appeared in 2005 and was followed a month later by Guilty Pleasures, a new album that reunited Streisand with Gibb. She returned to the concert stage in 2006, a move that was documented in the 2007 Sony release Live in Concert. For her final release of the decade, Streisand turned her attention to jazz standards, and Love Is the Answer found her singing such songs as "Here's to Life" and "In the Wee Small Hours." Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-KPGh3wysw
In the '60s, when John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were defining the concept of a jazz avant-garde, few knowledgeable observers would have guessed that in another 30 years the music's mainstream would virtually bypass their innovations, in favor of the hard bop style that free jazz had apparently supplanted. As it turned out, many listeners who had come to love jazz as a sophisticated manifestation of popular music were unable to accept the extreme esotericism of the avant-garde; their tastes were rooted in the core elements of "swing" and "blues," characteristics found in abundance in the music of the Jazz Messengers, the quintessential hard bop ensemble led by drummer Art Blakey. In the '60s, '70s, and '80s, when artists on the cutting edge were attempting to transform the music, Blakey continued to play in more or less the same bag he had since the '40s, when his cohorts included the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Fats Navarro. By the '80s, the evolving mainstream consensus had reached a point of overwhelming approval in regard to hard bop: this is what jazz is, and Art Blakey — as its longest-lived and most eloquent exponent — was its master.
The Jazz Messengers had always been an incubator for young talent. A list of the band's alumni is a who's who of straight-ahead jazz from the '50s on — Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Donald Byrd, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Benny Golson, Joanne Brackeen, Billy Harper, Valery Ponomarev, Bill Pierce, Branford Marsalis, James Williams, Keith Jarrett, and Chuck Mangione, to name several of the most well-known. In the '80s, precocious graduates of Blakey's School for Swing would continue to number among jazz's movers and shakers, foremost among them being trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis became the most visible symbol of the '80s jazz mainstream; through him, Blakey's conservative ideals came to dominate the public's perception of the music. At the time of his death in 1990, the Messenger aesthetic dominated jazz, and Blakey himself had arguably become the most influential jazz musician of the past 20 years.
Blakey's first musical education came in the form of piano lessons; he was playing professionally as a seventh grader, leading his own commercial band. He switched to drums shortly thereafter, learning to play in the hard-swinging style of Chick Webb and Sid Catlett. In 1942, he played with pianist Mary Lou Williams in New York. He toured the South with Fletcher Henderson's band in 1943-1944. From there, he briefly led a Boston-based big band before joining Billy Eckstine's new group, with which he would remain from 1944-1947. Eckstine's big band was the famous "cradle of modern jazz," and included (at different times) such major figures of the forthcoming bebop revolution as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. When Eckstine's group disbanded, Blakey started a rehearsal ensemble called the Seventeen Messengers. He also recorded with an octet, the first of his bands to be called the Jazz Messengers. In the early '50s, Blakey began an association with Horace Silver, a particularly likeminded pianist with whom he recorded several times. In 1955, they formed a group with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham, calling themselves "Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers." The Messengers typified the growing hard bop movement — hard, funky, and bluesy, the band emphasized the music's primal rhythmic and harmonic essence. A year later, Silver left the band, and Blakey became its leader. From that point, the Messengers were Blakey's primary vehicle, though he would continue to freelance in various contexts. Notable was a 1963 Impulse record date with McCoy Tyner, Sonny Stitt, and Art Davis; a 1971-1972 world tour with "the Giants of Jazz," an all-star venture with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Al McKibbon; and an epochal drum battle with Max Roach, Elvin Jones, and Buddy Rich at the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. Blakey also frequently recorded as a sideman under the leadership of ex-Messengers.
Blakey's influence as a bandleader could not have been nearly so great had he not been such a skilled instrumentalist. No drummer ever drove a band harder; none could generate more sheer momentum in the course of a tune; and probably no drummer had a lower boiling point — Blakey started every performance full-bore and went from there. His accompaniment style was relentless, and woe to the young saxophonist who couldn't keep up, for Blakey would run him over like a fullback. Blakey differed from other bop drummers in that his style was almost wholly about the music's physical attributes. Where his contemporary Max Roach dealt extensively with the drummer's relationship to melody and timbre, for example, Blakey showed little interest in such matters. To him, jazz percussion wasn't about tone color; it was about rhythm — first, last, and in between. Blakey's drum set was the engine that propelled the music. To the extent that he exhibited little conceptual development over the course of his long career, either as a player or as a bandleader, Blakey was limited. He was no visionary by any means. But Blakey did one thing exceedingly well, and he did it with genius, spirit, and generosity until the very end of his life.
Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfGDTGBHM9M&feature=player_embedded
For more information on The Jazz Messengers please contact us at: thehistoryofjazzmusic@gmail.com
http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/193.html
rrosenthall@msn.com
Greetings:
It is with great pleasure that I extend to you an invitation to be included in the forth coming 2009-2010 Edition of Strathmore’s WHO’S WHO IN BLACK MUSIC.
Please e-mail your short BIO and picture to rrosenthall@msn.com
This unique volume recognizes those men and women who have achieved success in their respective fields. This special edition of the registry is designed as an outstanding networking source for the American marketplace as well as a worldwide source for the Who’s Who of global decision makers.
We believe your accomplishments, as a highly respected professional in your field
Of entertainment, merit very earnest and intense consideration for inclusion.
Kindly respond to this invitation, now while it is convenient, by proving a short BIO and picture e-mail to rrosenthall@msn.com.
On behalf of WHO’S WHO IN BLACK MUSIC and The Boogie Report, we wish you continued success.
Sincerely,
Robert Rosenthall
Executive Director
Jerry Mason Editor
E-mail - rrosenthall@msn.com
http://coredjradio.ning.com/forum/topics/who-who-in-black-music
http://www.whoswhoinblackmusic.com
http://www.southernsoulmusic.net/introwhoswhointro/id3.html
http://www.theboogiereport.net/jboogiemasononline/
rrosenthall@msn.com OR Amazinmace@aol.com
Margaret Ball-Giles
(248) 799-9442
www.BodyResizers.biz
If you've been in the record business at least two months or thirty years, it's almost certain that you've heard the name, or communicated with, or received correspondence from or even been called on the phone by Paulette De Suzia. Awhspr2scrm@aol.com
http://www.peepinthescene.com/index.html
Neo-soul singer/songwriter/producer Dwele grew up on Detroit's west side, listening to soul music from Motown visionaries Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye as well as jazz on the radio. Born Andwele Gardner, he began writing songs at the age of ten, after his father was murdered outside his home, and attended Cody High in Detroit. Dwele spent a year studying music at Wayne State but then opted for an informal education, making music at his home while living in Dearborn and working for AAA. His demo tape, 1998's The Rize, made waves around the Motor City, and he spent time collaborating with Detroit hip-hop group Slum Village and Philadelphia rapper Bahamadia. Signed to Virgin on the strength of his songwriting and performance skills, Dwele released Subject in mid-2003 and cemented his appeal with European audiences (he was a favorite on Gilles Peterson's influential Radio 1 program) with a tour that summer. His second album, Some Kinda..., followed in 2005 and reached the Top 10 of the R&B chart. A couple years later, he provided the hook on Kanye West's hit single "Flashing Lights." Released in 2008, Sketches of a Man (number seven R&B) and 2010's W.W.W. (featuring sociopolitical themes, a slight change of pace) found him on the Koch label.
Brian's current project is his new weekly late night talk show, “The Brian McKnight Show”, which premiered in September 2009 in over 200 markets. The show is a one-hour entertainment showcase featuring the hottest celebrities and personalities from the world of sports, acting, popular culture and music. Guests have included Stevie Wonder, Kobe Bryant, Justin Timberlake, Dr. Phil, Smokey Robinson Carmelo Anthony, Jesse Jackson, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Seth Green, Hill Harper, and Vivica A Fox, just to name a few.
In addition; Brian has co-hosted "The Brian McKnight Morning Show" on KTWV the Wave Smooth Jazz radio station in LA for 2 years. A second radio show launched in 2008, as “The Brian McKnight Show” took to the evening air and is syndicated through Citadel (formerly ABC Radio) in 47 markets coast to coast.
The newest album “Evolution of A Man” released October 2009. The album features the first single “What I’ve Been Waiting For” which reveals a reggae sound that McKnight has never done before. Upon release it quickly hit #1 on I Tunes R&B, as well as breaking into the top 10 at Urban Contemporary Radio. The album is a treat for McKnight fans; featuring the ballads that he is best known for. “Evolution Of A Man” is distributed on E1 Entertainment (formerly Koch).
With seemingly endless talent; Brian has used his vast industry knowledge as a red carpet host for Extra!, He has seen success in musical theatre and is currently staring in “Cheaper To Keep Her” opposite Vivica A. Fox. In 2007 McKnight was on Broadway with a run as Billy Flynn in "Chicago”. In 2006 McKnight scored "Daddy's Little Girls" for Tyler Perry, the same year he released the album TEN. In 2005 McKnight toured with the production of “Cheaters”.
Bill Withers was working as an airline mechanic, installing toilets on 747s, when his song "Ain't No Sunshine" was released. It was the first in a string of simple, soulful hits, which also included "Lean on Me," "Lovely Day" and "Just the Two of Us." Though his music is still heard everywhere, Withers himself retreated to a private life more than two decades ago. A new documentary explores what happened to the hit maker when he stepped off the stage. Damani Baker and Alex Vlack spent eight years making the film, which shares a title with one of Withers' albums: Still Bill. All Things Considered host Michele Norris recently sat down with Baker and Vlack to ask what drew them to the project.
"You just have to listen to his music to know why Bill Withers," Vlack says. "We had spent so much time with his music, so much time with his hits, as well as his whole catalog. ... You really start loving this man."
The DVD is a portrait of a man who is part performer, part philosopher. In an interview for the film, Withers describes the wisdom that he once shared with his kids.
"One of the things I always tell my kids is that it's OK to head out for wonderful, but on your way to wonderful, you're gonna have to pass through all right," Withers says. "When you get to all right, take a good look around and get used to it, because that may be as far as you're gonna go."
According to Baker, Withers is talking both about his kids and about himself.
"He started in the business very late in life," Baker says. "He had this life before becoming a soul icon. On his way to wonderful, he didn't know what that was yet."
The Fame Game
Once Withers became a soul icon, he was faced with the reality of what he called the "fame game." His celebrity status came at a great cost.
"I became very interested [in the question], can I still stay in this business and be effective and make a living, and not have to play this fame game? I wasn't any good at it. The fame game was kickin' my ass," Withers says in the film.
For Withers, music needed to be genuine, and so when he was asked to lip-sync for audiences, he became visibly disgruntled while onstage.
"For him, he likes connecting with people," Vlack says. "If he's gonna play music, he wants to play it and enjoy it, and he's fine if there's only 10 people listening to it, as long as it's genuine."
The film follows Withers to his home in the lush town of Slab Fork, W.Va., where he and his daughter, Kori, sit down for an impromptu duet. It was the first time that Vlack and Baker had heard Withers sing after two years of working with him.
"The two of them have the most intimate moment, completely out of the blue," Baker says.
The staying power of Withers' music is a testament to its repeatable simplicity.
"They're very good, simple pieces of music," Baker says. "And whatever you're going through in that moment in your own life, all of a sudden you have this Bill Withers soundtrack that's attached to love, relationships, loss ... it's the soundtrack to so many pieces of who we are."
Barbra Streisand's status as one of the most successful singers of her generation was remarkable not only because her popularity was achieved in the face of a dominant musical trend — rock & roll — which she did not follow, but also because she used her vocal skills as a mere stepping stone to other careers, as a stage and film actress and as a film director. Born in 1942 and raised in Brooklyn, NY, she struggled briefly as an actress and nightclub singer in New York during the early '60s before landing her first part in a Broadway show, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, in 1962. The cast album for that show, as well as a subsequent appearance on a studio revival of Pins and Needles, were her first recordings. Signed to Columbia Records, she released her first album, The Barbra Streisand Album, in 1963. It became a Top Ten, gold-selling record, thus paving the way for Streisand's status as one of the best-selling recording artists of the early '60s.
But despite three successful albums by early 1964, Streisand turned her back on potentially lucrative concert bookings in favor of a starring role in the Broadway show Funny Girl, in which she appeared for more than two years. "People" from that show became her first Top Ten single, and the People album her first chart-topping LP. She turned to television in 1965 with My Name Is Barbra, the first of five network specials. In 1967, Streisand went to Hollywood to film Funny Girl, for which she would win an Academy Award. But by 1970, with her second and third films flops and her recording career flagging in the face of rock, she seemed consigned to Las Vegas before turning 30. Instead, she returned to hit-making with a Top Ten cover of Laura Nyro's "Stoney End" and a successful non-singing performance in the comedy The Owl and the Pussycat.
In the 1970s, Streisand successfully married her musical and film acting interests, first in The Way We Were, a hit film with a theme song that became her first number one single, and then with A Star Is Born, which featured her second number one single, "Evergreen," a song she co-wrote. From that point on, every album she released sold at least a million copies. In the late '70s, she found recording success in collaboration: her duet with Neil Diamond, "You Don't Bring Me Flowers," hit number one, as did "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)," a dance record sung with Donna Summer. She had her biggest-selling album in 1980 with Guilty, which was written and produced by Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees and contained the number one hit "Woman in Love." In 1983, Streisand's first directorial effort, Yentl, became a successful film with a Top Ten soundtrack album. In 1985, The Broadway Album returned her to the top of the charts. 1991 saw the release of Just for the Record..., a boxed set retrospective, and her second film as a director, The Prince of Tides. Streisand returned to the concert stage in 1994, resulting in the Top Ten, million-selling album The Concert. In 1996, she directed her third film, The Mirror Has Two Faces, and in 1999 she released A Love Like Ours.
Timeless: Live in Concert, which was recorded at her Las Vegas show on New Year's Eve 1999, was released on both CD and DVD in 2000. A year later, the new holiday album Christmas Memories arrived, followed in 2003 by a sequel to The Broadway Album entitled The Movie Album. A deluxe CD/DVD reissue of the original Guilty appeared in 2005 and was followed a month later by Guilty Pleasures, a new album that reunited Streisand with Gibb. She returned to the concert stage in 2006, a move that was documented in the 2007 Sony release Live in Concert. For her final release of the decade, Streisand turned her attention to jazz standards, and Love Is the Answer found her singing such songs as "Here's to Life" and "In the Wee Small Hours." Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-KPGh3wysw
In the '60s, when John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman were defining the concept of a jazz avant-garde, few knowledgeable observers would have guessed that in another 30 years the music's mainstream would virtually bypass their innovations, in favor of the hard bop style that free jazz had apparently supplanted. As it turned out, many listeners who had come to love jazz as a sophisticated manifestation of popular music were unable to accept the extreme esotericism of the avant-garde; their tastes were rooted in the core elements of "swing" and "blues," characteristics found in abundance in the music of the Jazz Messengers, the quintessential hard bop ensemble led by drummer Art Blakey. In the '60s, '70s, and '80s, when artists on the cutting edge were attempting to transform the music, Blakey continued to play in more or less the same bag he had since the '40s, when his cohorts included the likes of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Fats Navarro. By the '80s, the evolving mainstream consensus had reached a point of overwhelming approval in regard to hard bop: this is what jazz is, and Art Blakey — as its longest-lived and most eloquent exponent — was its master.
The Jazz Messengers had always been an incubator for young talent. A list of the band's alumni is a who's who of straight-ahead jazz from the '50s on — Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Donald Byrd, Bobby Timmons, Cedar Walton, Benny Golson, Joanne Brackeen, Billy Harper, Valery Ponomarev, Bill Pierce, Branford Marsalis, James Williams, Keith Jarrett, and Chuck Mangione, to name several of the most well-known. In the '80s, precocious graduates of Blakey's School for Swing would continue to number among jazz's movers and shakers, foremost among them being trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis became the most visible symbol of the '80s jazz mainstream; through him, Blakey's conservative ideals came to dominate the public's perception of the music. At the time of his death in 1990, the Messenger aesthetic dominated jazz, and Blakey himself had arguably become the most influential jazz musician of the past 20 years.
Blakey's first musical education came in the form of piano lessons; he was playing professionally as a seventh grader, leading his own commercial band. He switched to drums shortly thereafter, learning to play in the hard-swinging style of Chick Webb and Sid Catlett. In 1942, he played with pianist Mary Lou Williams in New York. He toured the South with Fletcher Henderson's band in 1943-1944. From there, he briefly led a Boston-based big band before joining Billy Eckstine's new group, with which he would remain from 1944-1947. Eckstine's big band was the famous "cradle of modern jazz," and included (at different times) such major figures of the forthcoming bebop revolution as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, and Charlie Parker. When Eckstine's group disbanded, Blakey started a rehearsal ensemble called the Seventeen Messengers. He also recorded with an octet, the first of his bands to be called the Jazz Messengers. In the early '50s, Blakey began an association with Horace Silver, a particularly likeminded pianist with whom he recorded several times. In 1955, they formed a group with Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham, calling themselves "Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers." The Messengers typified the growing hard bop movement — hard, funky, and bluesy, the band emphasized the music's primal rhythmic and harmonic essence. A year later, Silver left the band, and Blakey became its leader. From that point, the Messengers were Blakey's primary vehicle, though he would continue to freelance in various contexts. Notable was a 1963 Impulse record date with McCoy Tyner, Sonny Stitt, and Art Davis; a 1971-1972 world tour with "the Giants of Jazz," an all-star venture with Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Stitt, and Al McKibbon; and an epochal drum battle with Max Roach, Elvin Jones, and Buddy Rich at the 1964 Newport Jazz Festival. Blakey also frequently recorded as a sideman under the leadership of ex-Messengers.
Blakey's influence as a bandleader could not have been nearly so great had he not been such a skilled instrumentalist. No drummer ever drove a band harder; none could generate more sheer momentum in the course of a tune; and probably no drummer had a lower boiling point — Blakey started every performance full-bore and went from there. His accompaniment style was relentless, and woe to the young saxophonist who couldn't keep up, for Blakey would run him over like a fullback. Blakey differed from other bop drummers in that his style was almost wholly about the music's physical attributes. Where his contemporary Max Roach dealt extensively with the drummer's relationship to melody and timbre, for example, Blakey showed little interest in such matters. To him, jazz percussion wasn't about tone color; it was about rhythm — first, last, and in between. Blakey's drum set was the engine that propelled the music. To the extent that he exhibited little conceptual development over the course of his long career, either as a player or as a bandleader, Blakey was limited. He was no visionary by any means. But Blakey did one thing exceedingly well, and he did it with genius, spirit, and generosity until the very end of his life.
Please enjoy the link provided by Phatsak1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfGDTGBHM9M&feature=player_embedded
For more information on The Jazz Messengers please contact us at: thehistoryofjazzmusic@gmail.com
http://www.jazzonthetube.com/page/193.html
Blog Posts
Ketch A Vibe Show 7 New Series.
This show is dedicated to the ladys of Jazz some of our own personel favourites.
Midnight Sun-Elizabeth Sheppherd Trio - Start To Move 2007
On The Street Where You Live-Sarah Deleo-I'm In Heaven Tonight 2008
Bell's (I'll Be waiting)-Idea 6 Ft
… Continue Posted by Aja on July 31, 2010 at 9:09am
PROMOTER
TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN,I'M A VERY SERIOUS JAZZ ARTIST,WRITER,BASSIST,KEYBOARDIST,AND PRODUCER IN NEED OF A VERY SERIOUS PROMOTER! I CURRENTLY HAVE A CD ON THE MARKET ENTITILED,WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS,AND IN THE PROCESS OF RELEASING MY NEWEST PROJECT,MIND THERAPY! 22 VIDEOS OF MY WORK AND MUSIC CAN BE LOCATED RIGHT HERE ON THIS SITE!
I NEED WORK! SERIOUS WORK!!
I NEED WORK! SERIOUS WORK!!
Posted by RONNIE'SPORTCOAT'OVERTON on July 28, 2010 at 7:11pm
Please visit the GEQ Jazz Blog
Posted by Guymon Ensley on July 27, 2010 at 1:43pm
Sylvia Fedrick Singer Songwriter Nominated For Black Essence Award
Posted by Sylvia Fedrick on July 22, 2010 at 12:07am
IDLEWILD MUSIC FEST
RONNIE'SPORTCOAT'OVERTON AND ATTITUDE WILL PERFORM JULY,10,2010, AT THE ILDEWILD MUSIC FEST ON WILLIAMS ISLAND,IN IDLEWILD,MI! THE EVENT FOR THAT DAY STARTS AT 2:00PM AND RUNS UNTIL 11:30PM! ESTIMATED SHOWTIME FOR RONNIE'SPORTCOAT'OVERTON AND ATTITUDE IS ABOUT 10:00PM.
Posted by RONNIE'SPORTCOAT'OVERTON on June 29, 2010 at 5:59am
© 2010 Created by Frank Lovejoy.
Powered by 
.
