Horace Silver “Senor Blues”
Horace Silver was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on September 2, 1928. His father was from Cape Verde and his mother was half Irish and half African. Silver’s mother died when he was nine and his father raised him alone. He was a sickly child who suffered from scoliosis among other childhood ailments. Silver was [...]
Clifford Brown “Lady Be Good”
Clifford Brown was born in Wilmington, Delaware on October 30, 1930. He started playing the trumpet when he was 13. He also studied some piano. He played in the high school band. In his late teens, Brown started doing gigs in Philadelphia where he caught the attention of fellow trumpet players Dizzy [...]
Charlie Parker “Celebrity”
Charlie Parker was born to Charles Sr. and Addie Parker on August 29, 1920. He grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. Parker had no formal training in music and started playing the saxophone at 11. He didn’t have his own saxophone so he used rented school instruments. He played baritone with the school band [...]
Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker “Hot House”
John Birks Gillespie was born in Cheraw, South Carolina in 1917. His father was a band leader who encouraged his children to learn to play musical instruments. Gillespie could play the piano by age 4 and taught himself to play the trombone. He switched to playing trumpet when he was 12.
Gillespie got his first [...]
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers “Night in Tunisia”
Before I start this post, I wanted to say that I realized last night that I’d already put up a performance of “Donna Lee” this week. Sorry about that. Maybe I should change the name of the blog to “Stop and Hear Donna Lee”.
Art Blakey was born in 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Raised by [...]
Bud Powell “Blues in the Closet”
Born on September 27, 1924, Bud Powell came from a musical family. His father was a stride pianist and band leader. His grandfather played flamenco guitar. His older brother played the trumpet, and his younger brother played piano. Powell studied classical piano, but from a young age loved to play stride piano. When he [...]
Don Byas “Perdido”
Don Byas was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma in 1912. He was trained in classical music. He played the violin and later the clarinet. He played the alto sax through his teens. When he was about twenty he switched to playing the tenor.
Byas lived much of his life in Europe were he gained popularity and [...]
Art Tatum “Yesterdays”
Art Tatum was mostly self taught. When he was little he used to play the piano rolls of his mother’s player piano. Sometimes the songs the piano played were duets. He didn’t realize that and learned how to play all the parts at once. Maybe this how he learned how to play so fast. Blind [...]
Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker
I don’t what the relationship between Charlie Parker and Coleman Hawkins was but I would say from looking at the body language in this video that they didn’t like each other. Maybe they had a little bit of a disagreement before this was shot.
