GREAT JAZZ AND ITS PERFORMERS

Jazz is always changing, and it does not have only one king. Begun in late 19th - early 20th centuries as combination of some musical styles and authentic cultures, the core is the union of blues and ragtime. Jazz was born as emotional splash of African American against discrimination and includes such features as improvisation, polyrhythm, syncopated rhythms based on and a unique set of techniques perform rhythmic textures - swing.


Further you can find persons who have made major input into development of this music genre. But it is not full list of great jazzmen and jazzwomen, it can go on and on...

    

Eric Dolphy

Alto saxophonist, flutist, and bass clarinetist Dolphy was a key figure on New York's early avant-garde scene, and he made formative contributions to the musics of John Coltrane and Charles Mingus. He was born on June 20th, 1928 in Los Angeles California. His earliest musical experiences came when he attended the local church with his mother, who was a choir member. Dolphy played with Coltrane in the early 1960's. Also the great Charles Mingus said that Dolphy probably didn't know how good he really was. You can hear a lot of Dolphy in the Modern music of today, which tells how far ahead Dolphy was before he died. 

“Eric Dolphy was like an angel that came down to Earth, played his saxophone incredibly and passed too quickly”  - Clifford Jordan

Billie Holiday

American jazz singer and songwriter who sang "Strange Fruit," "Easy Living," and "Lady Sings the Blues." Holiday was born in 1915, Philadelphia. Her birth name was Eleanora Fagan. She has been the recipient of numerous awards, including being a Grammy Award Hall of Fame inductee. Billie Holiday died penniless after a short and tumultuous life. When Holiday sang, she injected herself into her music, singing with such emotional clarity that today she is remembered as a jazz icon.

Billy Holiday

 Louis Armstrong 

One of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, who even did not know clearly own date of born, Louis Armstrong was responsible for innovations that filtered down through popular music to rock and roll. Armstrong himself put it like this: “If it hadn’t been for jazz, there wouldn’t be no rock and roll.” If it hadn’t been for Armstrong, popular music of all kinds – from jazz and blues to rock and roll – would be considerably poorer. As a trumpet player, Armstrong was a pioneering soloist and one of the first true virtuosos in jazz. As a singer, he was one of the originators of scat singing, and his warm, ebullient vocal style had a big impact on the way all pop music was sung. 

Louis Armstrong

Jimmie Lunceford

James Melvin "Jimmie" Lunceford  was born in 1902, Mississippi, an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era. No one who saw it in performance could ignore the group's infectious attitude and enthusiastic presence. Many of the era's top bandleaders openly borrowed from Lunceford's showmanship.

Jimmie Lunceford

Ella Fitzgerald

Known to her fans simply as Ella, Ella Fitzgerald was one of the single most influential American singers of the twentieth century, born in 1917, Virginia. Through the course of her more than sixty-year-long career, Fitzgerald made hundreds of recordings and won no less than fourteen Grammy awards. Her simple and direct singing style was popular with audiences all over the world, and Fitzgerald is often credited with gaining countless new fans for jazz music with her performances and recordings of standards from the 1930s and 1940s.

Ella Fitzgerald

Oliver King

Joseph Nathan Oliver, born in 1881 Louisiana and better known as King Oliver or Joe Oliver, was an American jazz cornet player and bandleader. He was a vital link between the semi mythical prehistory of jazz and the firmly documented history of jazz proper. He is also remembered for choosing as his protégé the man generally considered to have been the greatest of all New Orleans musicians, Louis Armstrong. King is a founder of the one most popular jazz direction - traditional jazz. Plagued by dental trouble and outflanked by rapidly evolving jazz styles, he died in obscurity while working as a poolroom marker.

Joseph "King" Oliver

Stan Getz

Stan Getz was born on February 2, 1927 in Philadelphia. His parents were Ukrainian-Jews who immigrated from the Kiev area in the Ukraine in 1903. Usually known by his stage name Stan Getz, was an American jazz saxophone player. Known as "The Sound" because of his warm, lyrical tone, Getz's prime influence was the wispy, mellow tone of his idol, Lester Young. In 1986, however, Getz said: "I never consciously tried to conceive of what my sound should be..." 

"The Sound"... Stan Getz