News & Updates — Chicago

Pete Cosey is a Chicago guitar legend, a heavy man with a heavy sound. He is best known for his mid-'70s work for Miles Davis. Despite having never recorded as a leader, he has gotten on many sessions and had a notable career as a Hendrix-esque sonic poet. He was born into a jazz family in Chicago, his father played sax with Sidney Bechet, Louis Jordan, Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, Big Bill Broonzy and Josephine Baker, and his mother was a composer. He spent his teenage years in Tucson but came back to Chicago for some session work at Chess. He...

By comparison to some of his other fellow Chicagoan jazz brothers and sisters, the music of Von Freeman is fairly traditional sounding--that is to say blues, ballads, bossa, bop and a touch of soul-jazz, although his phrasing and mentoring was influential to a rising avant-garde in the city. He may have been less well-known than his funky guitarist brother George and son Chico (there was a less-well-known drummer brother Bruz as well), but he continued with his creative outlet until the end. He was born in Chicago, the son of a cop. Louis Armstrong was a good friend of the...

Happy birthday to tenor saxophone hero John Gilmore. A long-time member of Sun Ra's Arkestra, a major influence on John Coltrane and an icon Blowing Out Of Chicago. Gilmore started playing clarinet at 14 and tenor sax at 17 and he played with Earl Hines before joining Sun Ra's fledgling Arkestra in '53. He stayed with Ra for over forty years, recording on every single Arkestra record until '95 (including most of the legendary Ra-produced doo-wop sides). He brought a gifted and harmonically advanced style and could play sweet to ferocious, but bop & blues was always his main language....

The great jazz bassist Wilber Ware was born on this day. He only made one album as a leader but his unique style can be heard on many records, not the least of which are by Thelonious Monk. The Chicago native was largely self-taught as a bassist of unique and unorthodox talent. He dabbled with drums and banjo and sang gospel. He played in local swing bands in the '40s, as well as bebop. Some Chicago experience early on included work with Sonny Stitt, Roy Eldridge, Stuff Smith and he played on some early '50s recordings with Johnny Griffin and...

Happy birthday to the great blues pianist/singer/songwriter icon John Chatman aka Memphis Slim. With his permanent move to France in 1963 he may very well have been the first truly international blues superstar. The son of a musician in Memphis, he made his first records at 25 for Okeh under his father's name Pete Chatman. He toured around the South before hitting Chicago in '39, hooking up in a duo with Big Bill Broonzy and working as a session pianist for Bluebird Records. In the mid '40s he started using saxophone and drumkit in his band, now called The House...