Jazz Dancing

Quincy Jones: When he became vice-president at Mercury Records in 1961, Quincy became the first high-level black executive of an established major record company. Toward the end of his association with the label, Quincy turned his attention to another musical area that had been closed to blacks–the world of film scores. In 1963, he started work on the music for Sidney Lumet’s The Pawnbroker and it was the first of his 33 major motion picture scores. In 1985, he co-produced Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, which won eleven Oscar nominations, introduced Whoopi Goldberg and Oprah Winfrey to film audiences, and marked Quincy’s debut as a film producer. In 1991 Quincy helped launch NBC-TV’s hit series, The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air, for which he acts as an executive producer.

Donal Byrd @ Soulwalking : By 1981, Donald had teamed up with Isaac Hayes for two album releases, the first of which was ‘Love Byrd’. This album contained, probably, his most commercial dancer to date in the form of ‘Love Has Come Around’, which proved hugely popular on the dancefloors, although the more subdued ‘I Feel Like Loving You Today’ received a great deal of attention from those on the Modern Soul Circuit.

Nat Adderley@ JazzTrumpetSolos.com : Cannonball Adderley had made an early mark in New York when he sat in with bassist Oscar Pettiford at the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village in 1955, but that did not translate into immediate success when the brothers joined forces in Cannonball’s Quintet the following year. He broke up the group in 1957, and Nat worked with trombonist J. J. Johnson and bandleader Woody Herman before reuniting with his brother in 1959.

Joe Henderson @ Hardbop : In the late summer of 1962, a bearded young 25 year old tenor saxophonist, slight of build, with might in his fingers, rolled into New York town in a sleek black Mercedes-Benz. He was just discharged from the United States Army in Maryland where he had concluded a two year hitch.

Shirley Scott @ jazzhouse.org : Shirley Scott was a leading figure in one of the most popular of all jazz movements, the off-shoot of hard bop known as soul jazz. The style was led by Hammond organ players like Jimmy Smith and Jack McDuff, and although her initial ambition was to succeed on piano, Scott established her reputation on the Hammond B3 alongside these titans.

Barney Kessel @ swingmusic.net : In the summer of 1944 Barney Kessel joined the Charlie Barnet big band appearing on the August 3rd smash hit recording of Skyliner. Later the same month jazz impresario Norman Granz cast Kessel in the innovative Jammin’ the Blues, a classic 1944 short feature that was nominated for an Academy Award. A music video before the genre existed, the artistic black-and-white film required Kessel, as the only white musician in the all-black cast, to dye his hands black and perform in the shadows.

Charlie Haden : He has contributed his virtuosity to many of the most compelling records in jazz and since 1958 has recorded many hundreds of albums with numerous innovative musicians including John Coltrane, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Keith Jarrett, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Hank Jones, Joe Henderson, Lee Konitz, Michael Brecker, Brad Mehldau, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny and many others.

Horace Silver : When Horace Silver once wrote out his rules for musical composition (in the liner notes to the 1968 record, Serenade to a Soul Sister), he expounded on the importance of “meaningful simplicity.” The pianist could have just as easily been describing his own life. For more than fifty years, Silver has simply written some of the most enduring tunes in jazz while performing them in a distinctively personal style. It’s all been straight forward enough, while decades of incredible experiences have provided the meaning.

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