No more mysterious man ever played jazz than Thelonious Sphere Monk. And few created more memorable music ... He was a big reticent man. Who played with splayed fingers in a unique percussive style ... He had his own way of dressing. He often went for days without speaking to anyone. He used his elbows on the keys from time to time. And sometimes got up in mid performance to dance in apparent ecstasy ... After fifteen years of obscurity and refusal to compromise Thelonious Monk was at last hailed as a giant of jazz. ibid.
Like Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday had lost her cabaret equity card because of a narcotics conviction. For most of the 1950s she was barred from singing in New York City clubs. But she was still able to sing in other cities. And on the concert stage. Her audience grew and year after year even in the bebop era critics named her the Best Vocalist in Jazz. ibid.
When Brubeck released the album Time Out it would sell more than a million copies – something no ever jazz LP had ever done ... No-one understood better than Dave Brubeck himself the debt he owed to earlier generations of black musicians. ibid.
In March of 1954 Charlie Parker was playing the Oasis club in Hollywood. He was temporarily off drugs, but bloated and chronically dishevelled. His health undermined by the vast quantities of alcohol he was now consuming. Then he got a telegram from Chan in New York – their two-year-old daughter Pree had died of pneumonia. The night he got the news Parker send four telegrams from Los Angeles to Chan, each more incoherent than the last ... ‘Chan, Help’ ... He managed to get through the funeral but now seemed unable to hold himself together ... He tried to kill himself by swallowing iodine. Ambulance workers saved him. His drinking got worse. He began riding the subways all night. He seemed frightened now. On a panic, he called it. Suspicious even of his admirers. ibid.
One evening he made his way into a New York club where his old friend Dizzy Gillespie sat listening to the band. Parker was rumbled, overweight, disoriented. ‘Why don’t you save me, Diz?’ he said over and over again. ‘Why don’t you save me?’ I didn’t know what to do, Gillespie remembered. I just didn’t know what to say. Parker stumbled back out on to the street. ibid.
On March 9th 1955 Parker was scheduled to take the train to Boston for an engagement. On the way he dropped by the Stanhope Hotel on Upper Fifth Avenue. It has the home of his friend the Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, a member of the Rothschild family and a generous patron of jazz. Parker was clearly ill and she called a doctor. Parker agreed to stay with the Baroness until he felt better. Three days later on Saturday March 12th Charlie Parker turned on the Dorsey Brothers’ Variety Show. He’d always liked the sound of Jimmy Dorsey’s saxophone. The first act was a juggler. Parker laughed, choked, then collapsed. By the time the doctor got there he was dead. The official cause was pneumonia complicated by sclerosis of the liver. But he had simply worn himself out. The coroner estimated his age at between fifty-five and sixty. He was really just thirty-four years old. ibid.
When Parker was finally buried in his home town of Kansas City his mother ordered that no jazz was to be played during the services. By then his avid followers had already covered walls in Greenwich Village with the slogan Bird Lives. ibid.
Jazz of every kind survived. But it struggled to find an audience. Benny Goodman played Jazz only occasionally now, preferring to perform classical music. Duke Ellington, and Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie were still on the road but they found work harder and harder to come by. Meanwhile, against formidable odds and in the face of withering criticism a handful of young innovators would emerge. They pushed the boundaries of the music far beyond even where Parker and the Beboppers had gone. Ken Burns, Jazz: The Gift 1956-1960
One of [Sonny] Rollins’s best albums was Saxophone Colossus. And he seemed the living embodiment of that word. ibid.
After Miles Davis had kicked his heroin habit he resolved to make up for lost time ... No second takes were ever needed. ibid.
Kind of Blue is the best kind of jazz album of all time. ibid.
Sarah Vaughan saw herself as a musician rather than a singer. She was a gifted pianist in her own right. And when she closed her eyes on stage she said she could see and sing lines that might have been improvised on the piano. Musicians loved her for her perfect pitch, and rhythmic sense; her sophisticated ear for chord changes and her astonishing voice. She could sing everything. ibid.
John William Coltrane like all great jazz innovators sought to take the music to places it had never been, and became in the process to some of his admirers something like a saviour and an inspiration to a whole generation of young musicians. ibid.
In 1957 while playing with Thelonious Monk, Coltrane underwent what he called a spiritual awakening. ibid.
Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Sonny Rollins and Miles Davis, and John Coltrane, had made their individual statements while working within established rhythm and harmony and sequences of chords. One man rejected all of that. Jazz he said must be free. His name was Ornette Coleman: ‘The theme you play at the start of the number is the territory,’ he said, ‘and what comes after may have very little to do with it is the adventure.’ ibid.
The turbulent age had no more turbulent symbol than the bass player Charles Mingus ... Second only to Ellington in the breadth and complexity of his compositions Mingus was one critic said: Jazz’s most persistently apocalyptic voice. Ken Burns, Jazz: The Gift 1960 – Present
Over the next two years Coltrane put out ten more albums, each one more experimental than the last ... John Coltrane forty-years old died of cancer on July 16th 1967. ibid.
Miles Davis had always been sceptical about the avant-garde. But now he edged towards it, creating some of the most intricate and imaginative jazz ever played ... Davis discarded the jazz standards which had made him famous and replaced traditional instruments with electronic ones. ibid.
By helping to fuse Jazz with Rock Miles Davis had created a vast new audience for his music. ibid.
But by the very nature of the music no individual artist has ever been the sole focus of jazz in America. Dozens of supremely talented musicians now feed the many tributaries of jazz. ibid.
The musical journey that began in the dancehalls and saloons and street parades of New Orleans in the early years of the twentieth century continues and shows no sign of slowing down. Jazz remains gloriously inclusive, a proudly mongrel American music, still brand-new every night, the voices of the past still its greatest teachers. ibid.
With its roots deeply entrenched in West Africa, jazz draweth its strength, vitality and colours from many cultures. And it has been doing it for close to a century. The story of jazz is the story of creative artists who invented a new music, and the new process of what it is today. Masters of American Music: The Story of Jazz, 1996
But first it led to Ragtime. Gottschalk’s reflections of what he heard in Congo Square profoundly affected Scott Joplin, the African-American composer some fifty years later. ibid.
Jazz perfectly complemented the social upheaval that made the ’20s roar. ibid.
Listening to Louis Armstrong taught Billie Holiday the value of transforming the human voice into an instrument. She became an integral part of the accompanying band, and like Armstrong, moulded her songs into personal statements. Another major inspiration for Billie Holiday was Bessie Smith. Masters of American Music: Louis Armstrong
By 1945 a generation of modernists was in place including three of Parker’s most steadfast collaborators. Masters of American Music: Celebrating Bird
The medical examiner estimated his age at 55 to 60 ... Charlie Parker was 34 years old. ibid.
Lester’s voice-like horn, Billie’s horn-like voice: the most perfectly matched instruments in jazz. Masters of American Music: Lady Day
John Coltrane created a world of sound. A world that has influenced not only jazz but contemporary classical music, rock, pop and funk. Masters of American Music: John Coltrane
In 1955 and 1959 Coltrane played in the popular and innovative bands of trumpeter Miles Davis, taking time out to work with Thelonious Monk as well as organising his own record dates. ibid.
Sarah Vaughan’s voice was one of the most remarkable instruments in the annals of song: it spanned almost three octaves. Her career spanned five decades. Her art transcended such categories as jazz and pop. Masters of American Music: Sarah Vaughan
For six years running from 1947-1952 she [Sarah Vaughan] won both the Downbeat and Metronome polls. During this period she moved from the ... Craft small record label to big-time Columbia records, who saw her as a potential pop star. ibid.
Ray Charles full name is Ray Charles Robinson. He was born in 1930 in Albany Georgia, but he grew up during the Depression ... By the time he was seven Ray was in total darkness ... It was their mutual love of jazz that brought Ray and fifteen-year-old Quincy Jones together ... At twenty-nine Ray hit the big time. Masters of American Music: Ray Charles
Ray pursued music and women with equal passion ... Between 1950 and 1976 Ray fathered nine children with seven different women. ibid.
Anchoring the group was one of the most distinctive rhythm sections in jazz. With its steadily pulsing beat, it became known as the All American Rhythm Section. Masters of American Music: Count Basie
They were called the Swingest Band in the Land. ibid.
Some of this demand for music was met by local orchestras known as territory bands that operated out of every region of the country. ibid.
Whatever Basie played was considered to be a major influence on mainstream jazz. ibid.
The band continued to evolve, but in spite of personnel changes the Basie orchestra that established its reputation ... remained essentially the same for more than a decade. This is the band whose outstanding soloists are enshrined as if they were Old Testament apostles striding the Kansas City gospel, and whose recordings are now regarded as books in the Old Testament of the Basie bible. ibid.