News & Updates — jazz

The Boss of the Blues, Big Joe Turner was one of the strongest voices one could ever hear. A great blues shouter, he could be heard and felt unamplified over the brass and beat. A Kansas City icon, he got his start as a singing bartender before ripping up that city's famed music scene, singing in jazz big bands and with boogie-woogie pianists, such as his successful partnership with Pete Johnson. He started making appearances in NYC in the mid '30s and recorded sessions all over the country. In the '40s he spent some time in LA singing on/for films...

Alto saxophonist, educator and activist Jackie McLean had a long career of quality hard-bop and post-bop jazz. He also played in modal settings and his alto sound could be as commanding as a tenor at times. His run on Prestige and Blue Note in the '50s and '60s is as classic as any of the hard bop era. He also made several appearances on albums by other Blue Note artists. From NYC, his father was a professional guitarist with Tiny Bradshaw but he passed away while Jackie was a child. He soaked up the bebop scene, hanging with Charlie Parker,...

Great Texan saxophonist Dewey Redman is best known for his work with Ornette Coleman, the great "Birth" band (as I call it, after one of their great records) with Keith Jarrett, Old & New Dreams and his own fine output on Impulse!, Freedom, Actuel, ECM, Black Saint and others. He was self-taught and didn't lead a band until he was in his 30s. He was the nephew of famed pioneering swing jazz hornsmen/arranger Don Redman (known for his work with Fletcher Henderson and others). Dewey started as a kid on clarinet, playing in a church band, before picking up the...

One of the most inventive vocal stylists in all of jazz, Betty Carter not only brought a gift for radical improvisation, a "breathy" artful style at times and a hip scatting flow, but she also brought an independent spirit with her own Bet-Car record label, where she sold albums direct to fans and stores out of the trunk of her car. She grew up in Detroit and was singing in the nightclubs as a teenager, due to possessing a fake ID. Early experience with Dizzy Gillespie was a huge influence on her, as well as early encounters with Charlie Parker,...

One of the early solo stylists of jazz, Sidney Bechet ripped it up in his native New Orleans, marching in parade bands, playing parties and as clarinetist with the Eagle Band and others before joining King Oliver's band in 1913. That band did some heavy touring, including a residency in Chicago. In 1919 he joined the Syncopated Orchestra in NYC and that band went to Europe and became a sensation, even attracting positive attention from the classical music world. In London he started playing the soprano saxophone and became the early standard on that instrument (greatly influencing John Coltrane). His...