the musicians of SOLOS

Josephine Baker (1906-1975) Born in St. Louis, Baker worked in vaudeville and reviews before catching the eye of French music hall producers and becoming a massive and often scandalous hit in Paris. She was ragtime king Eubie Blake's girlfriend, owned her own nightclub, and was a member of the French resistance during WWII. Video   itunes

Count Basie (1904–1984) William James Basie, pianist, composer, bandleader, was Ellington's main competition in the heated battle of the big bands of the 1930s and 40s. He gave Billie Holiday her first job, and was open to new sounds such as jump jive and bebop. It was said that he avoided shaking hands for fear of germs. Video    itunes

Bunny Berigan (1908-1942) Virtuoso trumpeter Roland Bernard Berigan came to fame in the Benny Goodman big band that is credited with launching the "swing era". Sadly, he died of alcoholism at the age of 33. Video   itunes

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) Born Israel Baline in Eastern Russia, he escaped the violent state-run pogroms with his family in 1906 and emigrated to New York. Young Irving worked as a singing waiter as a kid, and went on to write more than 900 songs, 19 musicals and the scores of 18 movies. He never learned to read or write music. itunes

Buddy Bolden (1877–1931) Called the first jazz musician, Charles Joseph Bolden began playing in the streets of New Orleans in parade bands. Known as a brilliant cornet player, he revolutionized American music by adding the element of improvisation to ragtime and blues, a concept well known to European klezmer musicians, and may have created the first jazz big band. His influential career was brilliant and short; he was committed to the Louisiana State Insane Asylum in 1907 and spent the rest of his life there. There are no existing recordings of his legendary playing. Video

Coleman Hawkins (1904–1969) Discovered at the age of 17, tenor sax giant "The Hawk" spanned jazz from Kansas City swing to the wild styles of Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk. He gave Miles Davis one of his first jobs. Video    itunes

Billie Holiday (1915–1959) Born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia, "Lady Day" led a hard and abused early life, escaping to Harlem to play in clubs as early as 14 years old. Her early swing recordings, where she improvised the melody line in her inimitable style, were as revolutionary in their way as Armstrong's. She worked with Basie, Bennie Goodman and Artie Shaw before becoming a sensation with her own recordings. Released from prison on a narcotics charge in 1947, she played at Carnegie Hall that night, but a lifetime of dependence on drugs proved to be her downfall. Video  itunes
Glenn Miller (1904–MIA 1944) became a professional trombone player straight out of high school, becoming musical director for Tommy Dorsey's band in 1934. Topping the charts throughout the 30s and 40s, Miller also hit on the silver screen, starring with his band in several Hollywood films. His US Army transport plane, flying from England to France, disappeared and was never recovered. Video   itunes

Fats Waller (1904-1943) Stride piano and pipe organ player Thomas Wright Waller was discovered at a party given by George Gershwin. A reverend's son, he started working at 15, and was once kidnapped and forced to play at Al Capone's birthday party. Video   itunes

act one: 1939

Bix Beiderbecke (1903–1931) Leon Bismark Beiderbecke was kicked out of military school for skipping class to play music. He gained fame for his beautiful trumpet tone while playing with Paul Whiteman and Hoagy Carmichael, but spent the end of his short career alone in his house writing solo piano pieces which he never got to record. Video   itunes

Clifford Brown (1930-1956) The influential "Brownie" started playing trumpet at age 10 in Wilmington, Delaware. Brown was known as a hard working musician who led a clean life, escaping the almost mandatory drug-filled jazz existence, only to be killed in a car crash in between gigs when he was 25. Video   itunes

Cab Calloway (1907-1994): Cabell Calloway III was a regular performer at Harlem's Cotton Club, where he replaced Ellington as house band. Calloway went to law school, but show business held a bigger attraction. He was taught his famous "scat singing" style by Louis Armstrong in a club in Chicago. In 1952 Calloway played the role of Sportin Life in a Broadway revival of Porgy and Bess -- a role he claimed George Gershwin based on him. Video  itunes

Roy Eldridge (1911-1989) "Little Jazz" had difficulty translating his success as a swing musician into the bebop era, yet remained a vital and original artist. He began his career in circus bands, and soon became one of the top trumpeters of the late 30s. His career flagged while other, flashier players overtook his somewhat dated style, but gained new fans in the 50s and 60s. Video  itunes

Dizzy Gillespie (1917-1993) John Birks Gillespie was one of the originators of bebop, bringing an original style and sense of humor that was unequaled. Diz taught himself to play trombone, trumpet and cornet when he was 12, and was touring Europe by the time he was 20. Playing in Cab Calloway's band, he began a lifelong fascination with Cuban rhythms. His iconic bent-bell trumpet was the result of an accidental fall. Video  itunes

Thelonious Monk (1917–1982) Monk's music was so original, so outside the accepted rules of jazz, that his style never changed from 1947 until he stopped playing. Monk fully accepted inspiration, improvisation and mistakes as part of his process (his favorite saying was "wrong is right"), his technique often mistaken for lack of talent.  In 1964, Monk became one of four jazz musicians ever to grace the cover of Time Magazine. Video   itunes

Fats Navarro (1923–1950) Theodore Navarro remains virtually unknown to the modern jazz audience, yet his contributions to the bebop era are undeniable. A native of Key West, Florida, he joined a band in Orlando at 18 that took him across the country and inducted him into the touring life, adding weight to his frail form and earning him the name "Fats". Like other players, Navarro grew addicted to heroin and eventually developed tuberculosis, and ironically played his last date at Birdland with fellow addict Charlie Parker, dying two months later at the age of 26. Video  itunes

King Oliver (1885-1938) Joe "King" Oliver developed the style called "hot" jazz, a collective improvisation that became the precursor to everything we know as jazz. Blind in one eye, Oliver ruled the New Orleans music scene, and toured with several bands that introduced Louis Armstrong to the world. He turned down the house gig at the Cotton Club that propelled Ellington to fame, and by the 1930s he had fallen so far behind the modern scene that he finished his life in Georgia working as a poolroom janitor. Video   itunes

Tito Puente (1923-2000) Bandleader and percussionist Ernest Anthony Puente, born in Harlem, served in the Navy and went to Juilliard on the GI Bill. Tito brought Afro-Cuban rhythms and the mambo and cha-cha-cha to mainstream audiences, and became the most well-known Puerto Rican musician in jazz. Video  itunes

Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967) Born William Thomas Strayhorn, the introspective and quiet Billy wrote the standard "Lush Life" while still in high school. As a young, openly gay black man, his desire to be a classical composer was doomed from the start, and Strayhorn turned to developing a modern romantic form of jazz. He met Duke Ellington in 1938, after a performance in Pittsburgh, where he showed the band leader how he would have arranged one of Duke's own pieces. Over their 25 year relationship, Strayhorn composed and arranged many of Duke's most famous tunes, yet received sporadic recognition, and sometimes no credit at all. His brilliantly lyrical tunes still stand as genius. Video   itunes

Lester Young (1909-1959) Nicknamed "Pres" by Billie Holiday, Young formed the sound known as West Coast jazz and inspired musicians as diverse as John Coltrane and Stan Getz. The tenor saxophonist toured with Count Basie before being drafted into the Army, where his experiences with racism set him back emotionally. His continued influence on sax players did nothing to offset his growing emotional problems and his life ended tragically, while his music continues to inspire. The Charles Mingus tune, "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat", is an elegy to Young. Video   itunes

act two: 1949

Ornette Coleman (1930-present) The great Ornette arrived in New York in 1957 with a plastic saxophone and a method of playing based on emotion and discordance that frightened and angered some staid jazz lovers. In 1960 he recorded the album Free Jazz, naming the genre and, at nearly 40 minutes, the lengthiest continuous jazz recording to date. He's won the Macarthur Genius Grant, a Pulitzer Prize for music and a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Video  itunes

Lorraine Gillespie, Frances Davis, Nellie Monk, Edna Ellington - the women behind the geniuses
Lena Horne (1917-2010) Horne started her career as a movie actress in Hollywood, struggling against race and gender barriers while making a name for herself as a sultry and expressive singer. Moving to the nightclub circuit in the 1950s, her album, Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria, became the best-selling album by a female singer in RCA Victor’s history. Video  itunes

Melba Liston (1926-1999) Trombonist and composer Liston joined the pit band at Los Angeles's Lincoln Theatre when she was 16. In 1943 she joined Jimmy Lunceford's house band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. She played with Dizzy Gillespie, Coltrane and Quincy Jones, and arranged for everyone from Count Basie to Tony Bennett. Video  itunes

Charles Mingus (1922-1979) In 1959, the bassist released Mingus Ah Um, one of several records released that year that are said to have changed jazz forever. Angry, forceful, volatile, the sounds coming from his bass and his composer's pen were a clear break with structured song form. Mingus focused on collective improvisation, similar to the old New Orleans jazz styles, and many notable musicians are Mingus alumni. His last recording was the eponymous Mingus with Joni Mitchell. Video   itunes

Marilyn Monroe (1926-1962) Aside from portraying sax player Sugar Kane Kowalczyk in 1959's Some Like It Hot, Monroe changed the face of jazz by forcing the management of the popular Macambo nightclub in Los Angeles to hire young singer Ella Fitzgerald, breaking the color line. Monroe sat at a front row table every night of Fitzgerald's engagement, ensuring that the press would notice. Video

Ma Rainey (1886-1939) Gertrude Pridgett, born into a family that worked in minstrel shows, began performing at 14. The "Mother of the Blues" (she claimed to have invented the term), Rainey worked with Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins in the 1920s and recording 100 songs between 1923 and 1928. Rainey was arrested several times in New York for her openly bisexual lifestyle. Video  itunes

Bessie Smith (1894-1937) A protege of Ma Rainey, the "Empress of Blues" had a profound effect on jazz vocalists, including Billie Holiday, with her phrasing and sense of time. The highest paid entertainer of the early 1920s, Smith recorded much during the swing era, using many well-known backup musicians including Benny Goodman. Like Rainey, Smith had wide-ranging sexual tastes and a healthy appetite for food and alcohol. Video   itunes

Cecil Taylor (1929-present) A thunderous improviser and champion of limitless avant-garde jazz, Taylor epitomizes atonal, percussive and audacious original work. Screaming into the piano, attacking the strings with his hands or hitting so many notes that it sounds like he's pressing the entire keyboard at once, Taylor's music is both masterful and perplexing. Video   itunes

Billy Tipton (1914-1989) Born Dorothy Lucille Tipton, Billy spent an entire musical career as a man. The talented pianist began playing in 1936, getting jobs with radio station bands and Dixieland shows touring the Midwest, presenting herself as a man to get jobs and even to several women who lived with her. Tipton's career in and around Spokane, Washington, kept his various trios and quartets busy, but it wasn't until paramedics were called to Tipton's home that her adopted son, and soon the general public, learned that Tipton was actually female. Video

act three: 1959

coda: and beyond ...

Booker Little (1938-1961) A graduate of the Chicago Conservatory of Music, Little was a protege of the great Sonny Rollins, who encouraged him to create a distinctive sound. Little replaced Kenny Dorham in drummer Max Roach's group in 1958 when the trumpeter was just 20. He recorded a great deal in the next four years, with the likes of Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, Ron Carter and John Coltrane, before his career was cut short when Little died at 23. Video  itunes

 

Max Roach (1924-2007) Drummer extraordinaire Roach thought nothing of playing with avant-garde Cecil Taylor one night, and the Alvin Ailey dance company the next. From his dates with Charlie Parker in his teens to his reformation of the very concepts of jazz drumming, Roach brought new rhythms, ideas and combinations to jazz, recording with Mingus, Miles Davis, Rollins, Kenny Dorham, rappers, poets and an entire orchestra of percussionists. Video  itunes