Dick Hyman, jazz living legend

Richard “Dick” Hyman is an American jazz pianist/keyboardist and composer, best-known for his versatility with jazz piano styles. Over a 50 year career, he has functioned as pianist, organist, arranger, music director, and, increasingly, as composer. His versatility in all of these areas has resulted in well over 100 albums recorded under his own name and many more in support of other artists.

While developing a facility for improvisation in his own piano style, Hyman has also investigated ragtime and the earliest periods of jazz and has researched and recorded the piano music of Scott Joplin, Jelly Roll Morton, James P. Johnson, Zez Confrey, Eubie Blake and Fats Waller which he often features in his frequent recitals. Hyman recorded two highly regarded ragtime albums under the pseudonym "Knuckles O'Toole", and included two original compositions.

In the 1960s, he was regularly seen on NBC-TV's weekly musical series Sing Along with Mitch. Other solo recordings include the music of Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington. He recorded as a member of the 'Dick Hyman Trio', including a 78 RPM called 'Rolling the Boogie'. During the 1970s, he was also member of Soprano Summit

Hyman served as artistic director for the Jazz in July series at New York's 92nd Street Y for twenty years, a post from which he stepped down in 2004. (He was succeeded in that post by his cousin, Bill Charlap, a highly regarded jazz pianist.) He continues his Jazz Piano at the Y series as well as his post as jazz advisor to The Shedd Institute's Oregon Festival of American Music. In 1995, he was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and the New Jersey Jazz Society. Since then, he has received honorary doctorates from Wilkes University, Five Towns College, Hamilton College and the University of South Florida at Tampa, Florida.
Hyman has had an extensive career in New York as a studio musician and won seven Most Valuable Player Awards from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He acted as music director for such television programs as Benny Goodman's final appearance (on PBS) and for In Performance at the White House. For five years (1969-1974), he was the in-studio organist for the stunt game show Beat the Clock. He received an Emmy Award for his original score for Sunshine's on the Way, a daytime drama, and another for musical direction of a PBS Special on Eubie Blake. He continues to be a frequent guest performer with The Jim Cullum Jazz Band on the long-running public radio series Riverwalk Jazz, and has been heard on Terry Gross' Fresh Air. He has also collaborated with Ruby Braff extensively on recordings at Arbors Records.
Dick Hyman's Century Of Jazz Piano, an encyclopedic series of solo performances, has been released on Arbors Records. Other new recordings include Thinking About Bix and E Pluribus Duo with Ken Peplowski.
Classical
Hyman's concert compositions for orchestra include his Piano Concerto, Ragtime Fantasy, The Longest Blues in the World, and From Chama to Cumbres by Steam, a work for orchestra, jazz combo, and prerecorded railroad sounds. A cantata based on the autobiography of Mark Twain was premiered in 2004.

Film work
He has served as composer/arranger/conductor/pianist for the Woody Allen films Zelig, The Purple Rose of Cairo, Broadway Danny Rose, Stardust Memories, Hannah and Her Sisters, Radio Days, Bullets Over Broadway, Everyone Says I Love You, Sweet and Lowdown, The Curse of the Jade Scorpion and Melinda and Melinda.
Other scores include: Moonstruck, Scott Joplin, The Lemon Sisters and Alan and Naomi. His music has also been heard in The Mask, Billy Bathgate, Two Weeks Notice, and other films. He was music director of The Movie Music of Woody Allen, which premiered at the Hollywood Bowl.

Electronic/Pop
In the 1960s, Hyman recorded several innovative pop albums on Enoch Light's Command Records. At first, he used the Lowrey organ, on the albums Electrodynamics, Fabulous, Keyboard Kaleidoscope and The Man From O.R.G.A.N. He later recorded several albums on the Moog synthesizer which mixed original compositions and cover versions, including Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman, and The Age of Electronicus. The former has now been reissued on CD by Varese Sarabande with some, but not all, of the tracks from The Age of Electronicus.
The track "The Minotaur" from The Electric Eclectics charted in the US top-40, becoming the first Moog single hit. Some elements from the track, "The Moog And Me" (most notably the synthetic whistle that serves as the song's lead-in) on the same album were sampled by Beck for the track "Sissyneck" on his 1996 album Odelay.

Succes 2011: Lanny Morgan, jazz living legend

Lanny Morgan (b. March 30, 1934, Des Moines, Iowa) is an American jazz alto saxophonist chiefly active on the West Coast jazz scene.
Morgan was raised in Los Angeles. In the 1950s he played with Charlie Barnet, Si Zentner, Terry Gibbs, and Bob Florence, then did a stint in the U.S. military, for which reason he had to turn down an offer to play in the orchestra of Stan Kenton. From 1960-65 he played in Maynard Ferguson's orchestra; after a few years in New York City he returned to Los Angeles in 1969, where he played frequently in the studios, was a member of Supersax, and played in the big bands of Bill Berry, Bob Florence, and Bill Holman.
Countless critics and fans agree-in the U.S. and especially elsewhere-accounting for many repeat tours of the U.K. where he has been a frequent frontliner with British musicians.

As a leader of his own group and a solo performer, he has been on the scene here and abroad since 1960, playing every major jazz club and festival that exists and guesting as soloist/clinician at colleges and universities in nearly every state of the union.

Morgan first came to prominence in New York, as the young lead alto for Maynard Ferguson's Big Band of the sixties, as well as the MF Sextet of the same era, and clubbing with his own group in the Big Apple.
His signature sound has endured from his early years with Ferguson through decades in a career that has spanned an A-Z list of involvement with everyone notable in the recent history of jazz—Supersax, Bill Holman, Frank Capp’s Juggernaut, to name a few.

A significant endorsement of his earned respect was the prestigious guest spot in a 2004 program titled “Bird Lives,” a tribute to revered alto saxman Charlie Parker.

The program spotlighted Morgan in a performance with members of the Pasadena Symphony, reproducing the famous recording of “Charlie Parker with Strings,” and in a quartet setting, playing famous Parker tunes.

The most recent Morgan-led recording, "6" The Lanny Morgan Sextet, documents several of many Morgan-penned originals, “just waiting for the right opportunity to ‘go on record,’” he said. "6" features "the old master" (so-named by Hong Kong Press) with Bob Summers (trumpet), Doug Webb (tenor sax), Tom Ranier (piano), Chuck Berghofer (bass) and Steve Schaeffer (drums), fellow old masters -- some older than others, but all masters in their own right.

His other CDs include a project for Fresh Sound Records, A Suite for Yardbird, Lanny Morgan interprets the compositions of Charlie Parker; Pacific Standard (Contemporary), The Lanny Morgan Quartet (VSOP) and It’s About Time (Quicksilver Records QSCD2024, Palo Alto Jazz Masters).

Overall, credits include TV, movie soundtracks, more than 100 albums, regular guest appearances at major world festivals. Appearances at nearly 100 colleges and high schools coast-to-coast inspired “Lanny’s Licks,” a book for beginning jazz improv students (Rheuben Publications). And, he has been an instructor for several years at Idyllwild Jazz Camp.

Succes 2011: Sonny Rollins, jazz living legend

Theodore "Sonny" Rollins ((born in 1930) is a Grammy-winning American jazz tenor saxophonist. Rollins is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential jazz musicians. A number of his compositions, including "St. Thomas", "Oleo", "Doxy", and "Airegin", have become jazz standards.
Rollins received his first saxophone at age 13.
Rollins started as a pianist, changed to alto saxophone, and finally switched to tenor in 1946. During his high-school years, he played in a band with other future jazz legends Jackie McLean, Kenny Drew and Art Taylor. He was first recorded in 1949 with Babs Gonzales ( J.J Johnson was the arranger of the group). In his recordings through 1954, he played with performers such as Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.
Rollins began to make a name for himself in 1949 as he recorded with J.J Johnson and with Bud Powell (in a famous session that is regarded as one of the first example of what would be later called "Hard Bop"), with Miles Davis in 1951, with the Modern Jazz Quartet and Thelonious Monk in 1953 , but the breakthrough arrived in 1954 when he recorded his famous compositions "Oleo" "Airegin" and "Doxy" with a quintet led by Davis. Rollins then joined the Clifford Brown–Max Roach quintet in 1955 (recordings made by this group have been released as Sonny Rollins Plus 4 and Clifford Brown and Max Roach at Basin Street; Rollins also plays on half of More Study in Brown), and after Brown's death in 1956 worked mainly as a leader.

Rollins was elected to the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1973.

Donald Fagen can be seen playing Rollins' 1958 LP Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders on the cover of his 1982 LP The Nightfly, while Joe Jackson replicated the cover photo for his 1984 A&M album Body and Soul as homage to the 1957 Blue Note album Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2.

In The Simpsons episode 12 season 5, the jazz musician Bleeding Gums Murphy makes his appearance playing his saxophone on a bridge in the middle of the night. This is a homage to Sonny Rollins, who famously retired from public and was not seen for three years, until a journalist discovered him playing the saxophone alone on the Williamsburg Bridge.

Rollins provided the soundtrack to the 1966 version of Alfie. His 1965 residency at Ronnie Scott's legendary jazz club has recently emerged on CD as Live in London, a series of releases from the Harkit label; they offer a very different picture of his playing from the studio albums of the period.

Succes 2011: Stan Tracey, jazz living legend

Stanley William Tracey is a British jazz pianist and composer, most influenced by Duke Ellington and Thelonious Monk.

The Second World War meant that Tracey had a disrupted formal education, and he became a professional musician at the age of sixteen as a member of an ENSA touring group playing the accordion, his first instrument. He joined Ralph Reader’s Gang Shows at the age of nineteen, while in the RAF and formed a brief acquaintance with the comedian Tony Hancock. Later, in the early 1950s he worked in groups on the transatlantic cruise liners Queen Mary and Cardonia and toured the UK in 1951 with Cab Calloway. By the mid-‘fifties, he had also taken up the vibraphone, but later ceased playing it. At this time he worked widely with leading British modernists including drummer Tony Crombie, clarinettist Vic Ash, the saxophonist-arranger Kenny Graham and trumpeter Dizzy Reece.


The early 1970s were a bleak time for Tracey. Around 1970, he almost chose to retrain as a postman under pressure from the Unemployment Benefits’ office – “I would have quite a good pension by now” he quips – but his wife Jackie, formerly involved in public relations, took a more direct role in the development of Tracey's career.

He began to work with musicians of a later generation, who worked in a free or avant-garde style, including Mike Osborne, Keith Tippett and John Surman. Tracey continued to work in this idiom with Evan Parker at the UK’s Appleby Jazz Festival for several years, but this has always been more of a sideline for Tracey, who said that he "took more out of free music into the mainstream than I did from mainstream into free".

In the mid-seventies he formed his own record label, Steam and through it reissued Under Milk Wood (the major label which held the rights to it had allowed it to fall out of print). Over the next decade he also used the outlet to issue recordings of a number of commissioned suites. These included The Salisbury Suite (1978), The Crompton Suite (1981) and The Poets Suite (1984).

He led his own octet from 1976-85 and formed a sextet in 1979 (later called Hexad), touring widely in the middle east and India. In this context he had a longstanding performance partnership from 1978 with saxophonist (and physician) Art Themen, and his own son, the percussionist Clark Tracey, the latter continuing until this day. He was able to share the billing with arranger Gil Evans in a 1978 concert at the Royal Festival Hall, such was Tracey’s pre-eminence in the UK. In private, he played for Evans, Ellington recordings that he had not previously heard. He continued to record with American musicians on occasion as well, with dates taking place with Sal Nistico in 1985 and Monk associate, Charlie Rouse in 1987.

The Steam label ceased trading in the early ‘nineties, reportedly because of difficulties caused by the retail trade's need for its inventory to carry the barcode. However, in 1992 he benefited from Blue Note’s brief interest in UK musicians, leading to the Portraits Plus album and the commercial issue of the BBCs recording of the concert commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Tracey’s first professional gig, as well as Under Milk Wood’s debut on CD.

In 1995 his new quartet featuring Gerard Presencer recorded the For Heaven’s Sake album and also performed gigs together. In 2003 Tracey was the subject of a BBC Television documentary Godfather of British Jazz, a rare accolade nowadays for any jazz musician, let alone one from Britain. Tracey's catalogue from the LP era is being reissued on ReSteamed Records.

Already an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.

Succes 2011: Nancy Wilson, jazz living legend

Nancy Wilson is an American singer with more than 70 albums, and three Grammy Awards. She has been labeled a singer of blues, jazz, cabaret and pop; a "consummate actress"; and "the complete entertainer." The title she prefers, however, is song stylist. She has received many nicknames including "Sweet Nancy", "The Baby", "Fancy Miss Nancy" and "The Girl With the Honey-Coated Voice".

Nancy’s debut single, "Guess Who I Saw Today", was so successful that between April 1960 and July 1962 Capitol Records released five Nancy Wilson albums. Her first album, Like in Love, displayed her talent in Rhythm and Blues, with the hit R&B song "Save your Love for Me." Adderley suggested that she should steer away from her original pop style and gear her music toward jazz and ballads. In 1962, they collaborated and produced an album Nancy Wilson/Cannonball which propelled her to national prominence. Between March, 1964 and June, 1965 four of Wilson's albums hit the Top 10 on Billboard's Top LPs chart. In 1963 "Tell Me The Truth" became her first truly major hit, leading up to her performance at the Coconut Grove in 1964 – the turning point of her career garnering critical acclaim from coast to coast. It was covered in Time magazine, She is, all at once, both cool and sweet, both singer and storyteller.[10] In 1964 Nancy released what became her most successful hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am" which peaked at #11. From 1963 to 1971 Wilson logged eleven songs on the Hot 100, including two Christmas singles. However, "Face It Girl, It's Over" was the only remaining non-Christmas song to crack the Top 40 for Wilson (#29, in 1968).
After doing numerous television guest appearances, Wilson eventually got her own series on NBC, The Nancy Wilson Show (1967–1968), that won an Emmy in 1975. Over the years she has appeared on many popular television shows from I Spy (more or less playing herself as a Las Vegas singer in the 1966 episode "Lori"); Room 222, Hawaii Five-O, Police Story, The Jack Paar Program, The Sammy Davis, Jr. Show (1966), The Danny Kaye Show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Kraft Music Hall, The Sinbad Show,[4] The Cosby Show, The Andy Williams Show, The Carol Burnett Show, Soul Food, New York Undercover, and recently Moesha, and The Parkers. She also appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, The Merv Griffith Show, The Tonight Show, The Arsenio Hall Show and The Flip Wilson Show.She was in the 1993 Robert Townsend's The Meteor Man and in the film, The Big Score. She also appeared on The Lou Rawls Parade of Stars and the March of Dime Telethon. She was signed by Capitol records in the late 70s and in an attempt to broaden her appeal she cut the album Life, Love and Harmony an album of soulful, funky dance cuts that included the track "Sunshine" which was to become one of her most sought after recordings be it amongst supporters of the rare soul scene for whom she would not usually register.
In the 1980s, she recorded five albums for Japanese labels because she preferred recording live, and American labels frequently didn’t give her that option. She gained such wide popularity that she was selected as the winner of the annual Tokyo Song Festivals.
In 1982 she recorded with Hank Jones and the Great Jazz Trio. In that same year she recorded with Griffith Park Band whose members included Chick Corea and Joe Henderson. In 1987 she participated in a PBS show entitled Newport Jazz ‘87 as the singer of a jazz trio with John Williams and Roy McCurdy.
In 1982 she also signed with CBS, her albums here including The Two Of Us (1984), duets with Ramsey Lewis produced by Stanley Clarke; Forbidden Lover (1987), including the title track duet with Carl Anderson; and A Lady With A Song, which became her 52nd album release in 1989. In 1989 Nancy Wilson in Concert played as a television special.
In the early 1990s, Nancy recorded an album paying tribute to Johnny Mercer with co-producer Barry Manilow entitled With My Lover Beside Me. In this decade she also recorded two other albums, Love, Nancy and her sixtieth album If I had it My Way. In the late 1990s, Nancy teamed up with MCG Jazz, a youth education programs of the Manchester Craftsmen’s Guild nonprofit, minority-directed, arts and learning organization located in Pittsburgh, PA.
In 1995, Nancy Wilson performed at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the San Francisco Jazz Festival in 1997. In 1999, Wilson hosted a show in honor of Ella Fitzgerald entitled Forever Ella on the A & E network.
All the proceeds from 2001's A Nancy Wilson Christmas, went to support the work of MCG Jazz. Wilson was the host on NPR's Jazz Profiles,from 1996 to 2005. This series profiled the legends and legacy of jazz through music, interviews and commentary. Wilson and the program were the recipients of the George Foster Peabody Award in 2001.[18]
Wilson's second and third album with MCG Jazz, R.S.V.P. (Rare Songs, Very Personal) (2005), and Turned to Blue (2007), both won the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album.

Succes 2011: Toots "Buba" Thielemans, jazz living legend. Muzician cu o influenţă decisivă asupra lui John Lennon şi Beatles

Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans, known as Toots Thielemans, is a Belgian jazz musician well known for his guitar and harmonica playing as well as his whistling. Thielemans is credited as one of the greatest harmonica players of the 20th century. In 2009 he became NEA Jazz Master, the highest honour for a jazz musician in the United States.

Thielemans started his career as a guitar player. In 1949 he joined a jam session in Paris with Sidney Bechet, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and others. In 1949 and 1950 he participated in European tours with Benny Goodman, making his first record in Paris with fellow band member, tenor saxophonist Zoot Sims. In 1951 he went on tour with Bobbejaan Schoepen.
He moved to the US in 1952 where he was a member of Charlie Parker's All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington. He played and recorded with names like Ella Fitzgerald, Jaco Pastorius, Peggy Lee, The George Shearing Quintet, Quincy Jones, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, The Happenings, Astrud Gilberto, Shirley Horn, Elis Regina and others.
A jazz standard by Toots Thielemans is "Bluesette" where he used whistling and guitar in unison. First recorded by Toots in 1962, with lyrics added by Norman Gimbel the song became a major worldwide hit. His harmonica playing can also be heard in movie scores such as Midnight Cowboy, Jean de Florette, Sugarland Express, The Yakuza, Turkish Delight, The Getaway, French Kiss, Dunderklumpen, and in various TV programs, including Sesame Street, the Belgian TV series Witse, and the Dutch TV series Baantjer. He composed the music for the 1974 Swedish film Dunderklumpen! in which he also voiced the animated character Pellegnillot.
His whistling and harmonica playing can be heard on Old Spice radio and TV commercials that have been made over the years. During the 1980s he performed with bassist and composer/bandleader Jaco Pastorius in ensembles ranging from duet to the Word of Mouth Big Band. In 1983 he contributed to Billy Joel's album An Innocent Man, and his trademark harmonica can be heard on "Leave a Tender Moment Alone." A year later, he appeared on the Julian Lennon song "Too Late For Goodbyes" from the album Valotte. In 1984, he recorded the final album of Billy Eckstine (I Am A Singer), featuring very beautiful ballads and standards arranged and conducted by Angelo DiPippo. In the 1990s Thielemans embarked on theme projects that included world music. In 1998 he released a French flavoured album titled "Chez Toots" that included the Les Moulins De Mon Coeur (The Windmills of Your Mind) featuring guest singer Johnny Mathis. Apart from his popularity as an accomplished musician, he is well liked for his modesty and kind demeanor. In his native Belgium, he is also popular for describing himself as a Brussels "ket", which means "street kid" in old Brussels slang. He received a joint honorary doctorate from the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) and in 2001 Thielemans was ennobled a baron by King Albert II of Belgium.

Thielemans may have had a significant impact on The Beatles, (John Lennon in particular), during the group's pre-fame formative years. While performing in a 1959 Hamburg Germany with the pre-fame Beatles, John Lennon (sometimes with fellow Beatle George Harrison in tow) would often go over to the club where Toots was performing (at a noontime venue) as a member of The George Shearing Quintet. Lennon evidently was taken with Toots' harmonica playing and for Thielemans' guitar selection: an electric American made Rickenbacker with a short scale neck.Based on the sound Lennon heard, he decided to purchase a natural alder wood "alderglo" colored three pickup Rickenbacker 1958 model 325 Capri guitar with a short scale as former Beatle and friend, George Harrison would recall to various interviewers many years later. This iconic famous guitar often fondly referred to as the "Holy Grail" of all guitars, which was customized and tinkered with many times over the years by Lennon including being re-painted to jetglo black in September 1962, is the very same guitar that he played on The Beatles first and third appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show during February 1964. A photo even exists of Thielemans at a Rickenbacker trade show, with the guitar that would become Lennon's in the background.In 1983 he contributed to Billy Joel's album An Innocent Man, and his trademark harmonica can be heard on "Leave a Tender Moment Alone." A year later, he appeared on the Julian Lennon song "Too Late For Goodbyes" from the album Valotte.

Succes 2010: Ahmad Jamal, jazz living legend

Ahmad Jamal is an American jazz pianist, composer, arranger, teacher, and jazz theoretician. According to Stanley Crouch, Jamal is second in importance in the development of jazz after 1945 only to Charlie Parker. For five decades, he has been one of the most successful small-group leaders in jazz.
Since the 1980s Jamal has been regularly touring the major clubs of the United States and the large European jazz festivals. He is generally accompanied by bassist James Cammack and drummer Idris Muhammad. He has also performed regularly with saxophonist George Coleman.

Ahmad Jamal is an acclaimed virtuoso jazz pianist and keyboardist, composer, and innovative trio leader. He was born Freddy "Fritz" Jones, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Jamal attended George Westinghouse High School. He began playing piano at the age of three, when his uncle Lawrence challenged him to duplicate what he was playing on the piano.[3] Jamal began formal piano training at the age of seven with Mary Cardwell Dawson, whom he describes as greatly influencing him. He converted to Ahmadiyya Islam in 1952, officially changing his name at that time. On joining Musicians Union Local 208 in Chicago, he was referred to as Fritz Jones in the minutes of the local's Board meetings until his name change. His first OKeh record was credited in advertisements to the Fritz Jones Trio, but it did not see release until after the name change, so the name Ahmad Jamal appears on all of his released recordings. He is a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community.
Jamal began touring with George Hudson's Orchestra. He joined another touring group known as The Four Strings, which was soon disbanded. He moved to Chicago in 1950, and made his first sides in 1951 for the Okeh label with The Three Strings; the other members were guitarist Ray Crawford and a bassist (at different times, Eddie Calhoun, Richard Davis, and Israel Crosby). Jamal subsequently recorded for Parrot (1953–1955) and Epic (1955) using the piano-guitar-bass lineup. The trio's sound changed significantly when Crawford was replaced with drummer Vernel Fournier in 1957, and the group worked as the "House Trio" at Chicago's Pershing Hotel. The trio released the live album But Not for Me which stayed on the Ten Best-selling charts for 108 weeks. Jamal's well known song "Poinciana" was first released on this album. The financial success of the album allowed Jamal to open a restaurant and club called The Alhambra.
Jamal typically plays with a bassist and drummer; his current trio is with bassist James Cammack and drummer Idris Muhammad. At the Toronto Jazz Festival (June 2008) and perhaps elsewhere, Jamal's group included innovative percussionist Manolo Badrena. Jamal has also recorded with saxophonist George Coleman on the album The Essence; with vibraphonist Gary Burton on the recording "In Concert"; with the voices of the Howard A. Roberts Chorale on the recordings "Bright, Blue and Beautiful" and "Cry Young"; with brass, reeds, and strings celebrating his hometown of "Pittsburgh"; and with "The Assai Quartet", among other non-trio achievements.

Miles Davis, Randy Weston, Keith Jarrett, Jack DeJohnette, and Gary Peacock all cite Jamal as a major influence in use of rhythm and space as well as his innovative use of multi-tonal melodic lines and his unique extended 'vamps'. The element of surprise is an important part of Jamal's improvisations to them all. John Coltrane must have also been influenced by Jamal. His composition "Impressions", bears a striking resemblance to a small section of the song "Pavanne" which Ahmad Jamal recorded in 1955 with Israel Crosby and guitarist Ray Crawford. Halfway through the song there is a vamp on the same harmonic progression as "So What" (by Miles Davis) and "Impressions" (John Coltrane). During this vamp Ray Crawford improvises a line which is practically identical to the melody of "Impressions", including the harmonic shift.
At the Pershing: But Not for Me (1958) is considered a jazz classic. The Ahmad Jamal trio played on it and featured Jamal on piano, Israel Crosby on bass, and Vernel Fournier on drums.
Jamal's style has changed steadily over time - from the lighter, breezy style heard on his 1950s recordings to the Caribbean stylings of the 1970s and onto the large open voicings and bravura-laden playing of the nineties. Jamal has always been distinctive however for his use of space, his dramatic crescendos, and for a very staccato orientation with chords.
Clint Eastwood featured two recordings from Jamal's But Not For Me album — "Music, Music, Music" and "Poinciana" — in the 1995 movie The Bridges of Madison County.
The French government has inducted Ahmad Jamal into the prestigious Order of the Arts and Letters by French Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, naming him Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres on June 2007. At age 80, Mr Jamal still continues to tour extensively with his trio.
In 1994, Jamal received the National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Masters award and was also named a Duke Ellington Fellow at Yale University.

Succes 2010: Ramsey Lewis, jazz living legend

Ramsey Emmanuel Lewis, Jr. is an American jazz composer, pianist and radio personality. Ramsey Lewis has recorded over 80 albums and has received five gold records and three Grammy Awards so far in his career.

Ramsey Lewis was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ramsey Lewis, Sr. and Pauline Lewis. Lewis began taking piano lessons at the age of four. At 15 he joined his first jazz band, The Cleffs. The seven-piece group provided Lewis his first involvement with jazz; he would later join Cleffs drummer Isaac "Redd" Holt and bassist Eldee Young to form the Ramsey Lewis Trio.
The trio started as primarily a jazz unit and released their first album, Ramsey Lewis And The Gentlemen of Swing, in 1956. Following their 1965 hit "The In Crowd" (the single reached #5 on the pop charts, and the album #2) they concentrated more on pop material. Young and Holt left in 1966 to form the Young-Holt Trio and were replaced by Cleveland Eaton and Maurice White. White was replaced by Maurice Jennings in 1970. Later, Frankie Donaldson and Bill Dickens replaced Jennings and Eaton; Felton Crews also appeared on many 1980's releases.
By 1966, Lewis was one of the nation’s most successful jazz pianists, topping the charts with "The In Crowd", "Hang On Sloopy", and "Wade in the Water". All three singles each sold over one million copies, and were awarded gold discs. Many of his recordings attracted a large non-jazz audience. In the 1970s, Lewis often played electric piano, although by later in the decade he was sticking to acoustic and using an additional keyboardist in his groups.
In addition to recording and performing, Lewis hosted a morning show on Chicago "smooth jazz" radio station WNUA (95.5 FM) until May 22, 2009. His weekly syndicated radio program Legends of Jazz, created in 1990, features recordings from artists such as David Sanborn, George Duke, Herbie Hancock, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Kurt Elling, Al Jarreau and Miles Davis. The show can be heard in 60 U.S. cities and overseas. In 1994, Lewis appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool, alongside other prominent jazz artists, Herbie Hancock and Roy Ayers. The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time Magazine.
On December 4, 2006, the Ramsey Lewis Morning Show became part of Broadcast Architecture's Smooth Jazz Network, simulcasting on other Smooth Jazz stations across the country for the first time. However, the show was still based in Chicago until it was cancelled when WNUA switched over to a Spanish format.
In 2006, a well-received 13-episode Legends of Jazz television series hosted by Lewis was broadcast on public TV nationwide and featured live performances by a variety of jazz artists including Larry Gray, Lonnie Smith, Joey Defrancesco, Dave Brubeck, Chick Corea, Kurt Elling, Benny Golson, Pat Metheny and Tony Bennett.


Lewis is artistic director of Jazz at Ravinia (an annual feature at the Ravinia Festival in Highland Park, Illinois) and helped organize Ravinia's Jazz Mentor Program. Ramsey also serves on the Board of Trustees for the Merit School of Music, a Chicago inner-city music program and The Chicago High School for the Arts, the new public arts high school in Chicago. Early in 2005, the Ramsey Lewis Foundation was created to help connect at-risk children to the world of music. As an offshoot of that foundation, Lewis plans to form a Youth Choir and Youth Orchestra. In January 2007, the Dave Brubeck Institute invited Lewis to join its Honorary Board of Friends at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. Lewis is an Honorary Board member of the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. Lewis is a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Inc. In May 2008, Lewis received an honorary doctorate from Loyola University Chicago upon delivering the keynote address at the undergraduate commencement ceremony.

Succes 2010: Ron Carter, jazz living legend. Most-recorded bassists in jazz history

Ron Carter is an American jazz double-bassist. His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar. Carter is also an acclaimed cellist who has recorded numerous times on that instrument.

His first jobs as a jazz musician were with Jaki Byard and Chico Hamilton. His first records were made with Eric Dolphy (another former member of Hamilton's group) and Don Ellis, in 1960. His own first date as leader, Where?, with Dolphy and Mal Waldron and a date also with Dolphy called Out There with George Duvivier and Roy Haynes and Carter on cello; its advanced harmonics and concepts for 1961 were reminiscent of the then current third stream movement. Carter came to fame via the second great Miles Davis quintet in the early 1960s, which also included Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams.
Carter joined Davis's group in 1963, appearing on the album Seven Steps to Heaven and the follow-up E.S.P., the latter being the first album to feature only the full quintet. It also featured three of Carter's compositions (the only time he contributed compositions to Davis's group). He stayed with Davis's regular group until 1968 (when he was replaced by Dave Holland), and participated in a couple of studio sessions with Davis in 1969 and 1970. Although he played electric bass occasionally during this period, he has subsequently eschewed that instrument entirely, and now plays only acoustic bass. Carter was close to Davis and even revealed to an interviewer in 1966 that the famous trumpeter's favorite color was fuchsia.
Carter also performed on some of Hancock, Williams and Shorter's recordings during the sixties for Blue Note Records. He was a sideman on many Blue Note recordings of the era, playing with Sam Rivers, Freddie Hubbard, Duke Pearson, Lee Morgan, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, Horace Silver and others.
After leaving Davis, Carter was for several years a mainstay of CTI Records, making albums under his own name and also appearing on many of the label's records with a diverse range of other musicians. Notable musical partnerships in the 70's and 80's included Joe Henderson, Houston Person, Hank Jones, and Cedar Walton. During the 1970s he was a member of the New York Jazz Quartet.
He appears on the alternative hip-hop group A Tribe Called Quest's influential album The Low End Theory on a track called "Verses from the Abstract". He also appears as a member of the jazz combo The Classical Jazz Quartet.
In 1994, Carter appeared on the Red Hot Organization's compilation album, Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool. The album, meant to raise awareness and funds in support of the AIDS epidemic in relation to the African American community, was heralded as "Album of the Year" by Time Magazine.