Abdullah Ibrahim, a South African jazz pianist also known as Dollar Brand who brought a distinct and gentle spiritualism to his compositions and improvisation, died on June 15. He was 91. [Photo above of Abdullah Ibrahim, courtesy of the Kurland Agency]

In 2011, I interviewed Abdullah for JazzWax. In tribute to his passing, I’m reprising my interview with him here, along with clips down below:

***

The name Abdullah Ibrahim (also known as Dollar Brand) may or may not be familiar to you. The South African pianist comes to jazz from creative pressures that are different from most American jazz artists.

Ibrahim grew up in the 1940s and ‘50s under the African country’s brutal segregationist system of apartheid, which was in place from 1948 to 1993. His music celebrates American jazz but echoes his own cultural background and hardships in Africa.

As is evident on his latest album, Sotho Blue, Abdullah works from a rich and gentle spiritual tablet.

I was so moved by Abdullah’s album Sotho Blue with his band, Ekaya, that I wanted to reach out to tell him so. From South Africa, Abdullah generously took time out to answer my e-mailed questions.

JazzWax: You started playing professionally in South Africa in 1949 and began recording with the Tuxedo Slickers Orchestra in 1954, yes?
Abdullah Ibrahim: Yes. The Tuxedo Slickers was a big-band based in Cape Town’s District Six—one of the communities that the government later in the 1970s declared for whites only. Sixty-thousand life-long black residents were forcibly removed to townships. Back then, we played concerts and dance shows, with opening acts, vocal groups that were inspired by the Delta Rhythm Boys, and traditional choral music.

JW: What type of music did you play with the Tuxedo Slickers?
AI: We used Tuxedo Junction as our signature tune. We also played Tommy Dorsey’s Song of India, Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade and songs by Joe Liggins, Count Basie and Erskine Hawkins, who co-wrote Tuxedo Junction. Years later, I visited Hawkins’ home in Birmingham, Alabama, to pay my respects. We also played Xhosa and Zulu traditional music, and a keyboard style called Marabi that combined jazz, blues and ragtime with our music. I still play this form today. When the New York members of my band, Ekaya, visit, they call it South African r&b chord changes. Back in the early ‘50s, the Tuxedo Slickers’ arranger Caleb Ndimande wrote original African charts. He also wrote arrangements of jazz songs. I recall a very complex chart of pianist George Wallington’s Lemon Drop. We had heard Dizzy Gillespie’s recording.

JW: Given South Africa’s horrible apartheid policy back in the ‘50s, how did you perform there and record? Did the government try to prevent this?
AI: The apartheid regime was ruthless in controlling our daily movement. You’d need permits to travel anywhere and you always faced imminent arrest. We sneaked out of safe houses to jam with other musicians. We also organized our own community concerts. Then the white-owned recording companies would rip off naive and uninformed musicians and record their music without acknowledgment or compensation.

JW: How did you become familiar with American jazz in South Africa in the 1950s?
AI: We listened to Voice of America jazz programs hosted by Willis Conover. We also listened to local weekly jazz programs on the radio as well as LPs.

JW: Where was one of the most unusual places you heard American jazz in South Africa?
AI: The local ice-cream van blared Louis Jordan and his Tympani Five.

JW: How did you develop your style?
AI: Our local jazz hero, alto saxophonist Kippie Moketsi, was classically trained and played elaborate pieces such as Mozart’s clarinet concerto. On LP, I heard pianists Jimmy Yancey, Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. They inspired me to woodshed boogie-woogie, developing left-hand independence and synchronizing it with traditional rhythms, leaving my right hand free to fly anywhere.

JW: What is the origin of the name “Dollar Brand?”
AI: My original last name was Brand. I was given my nickname while hanging out in Cape Town Harbor as a teen. I’d befriend African-American sailors, who were manning merchant vessels. They gave me a few dollars and the name stuck. I changed my name in the mid-70s when I converted to Islam.

JW: When you moved to Europe in 1962, did you find audiences there more receptive to your style of jazz? How did you escape South Africa?
AI: In the aftermath of the Sharpville Massacre of March 1960, the regime became even more oppressive. We joined the wave of people, young and old, leaving the country in 1962. European audiences and musicians were very receptive to what I was playing. Some were hostile, especially when I became identified as an avant-garde musician. But it was the feeling of total creative liberation. It was a wonderful feeling to finally present music written in South Africa, without worrying about restrictions, the market and political and social pressures.

JW: Whose music did you relate to most?
AI: Duke Ellington’s. Duke, for us, was always the wise old man of the village. Our link with the African-American community started with our local African Methodist Episcopal church in South Africa, of which my grandmother was a founding member. Missionaries and bishops from Mother Bethel in Philadelphia had been sent there as missionaries. Duke’s music embodied for us our common struggle and experience.

JW: Ellington must have been viewed as more than a great musician, as a cultural hero.
AI: He was. Similarly, we also had celebrated Joe Louis’ victories. I recall listening over and over to King Joe, also known as the Joe Louis Blues, recorded by the Count Basie Orchestra in 1941, with Langston Hughes’ lyrics and Paul Robeson on vocals.

JW: Your new album [in 2011], Sotho Blue, has a beautiful, soulful feel. Where did you compose many of the songs?
AI: We try to be as sincere as possible in our daily lives and in our music. Compositions have no fixed location or time limits.

JW: Do you view the music you create as jazz or as a different form born in South Africa with South African traditions?
AI: In the words of our illustrious poet Rumi, “There is only one sound, everything else is echo.”

Here’s Abdullah Ibrahim playing Blue Bolero, Signal on the Hill and Once Upon a Midnight in 2022 as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series…

Here’s the complete Abdullah Ibrahim With Carlos Ward - Live At Sweet Basil Vol. 1. in 1983…

Here’s Abdullah and Max Roach on the full Streams of Consciousness album in 1977…

Here’s African Space in 1974…

Here’s Is Where It’s Happening from Abdullah’s Mannenberg album in 1974…

If you’re old enough to know the name Herbie Mann, you probably think first of the beatnik flutist at New York’s Village Gate in 1961. Or his 1962 and ‘63 bossa nova albums. Or his 1969 funk-fusion album Memphis Underground. Or the groovy shirtless guy on the cover of his 1971 album Push. Or his 1975 disco hit Hi-Jack.

Before all of that, way back in the…

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If asked to make a list of leading jazz photographers, most aficionados would probably miss including Steve Schapiro.

Best known for his photojournalism during the civil rights movement, his movie-star portraits and his on-set film stills for classics such as The Godfather, Chinatown and Taxi Driver, Schapiro also worked extensively for magazines. He took the famous cover portrait of Mia Farrow on the first issue of People in March 1974.

Schapiro admired Henri Cartier-Bresson, who pioneered street photography, and W. Eugene Smith taught him the technical side of photography, including film development and printing. Smith also helped him develop his own perspective. [Photo of Steve Schapiro in the 1960s]

Lesser known are the photographs Schapiro took of jazz legends at two New York performance venues—the Apollo Theater and the Village Vanguard—and in the studio during recording sessions for Riverside Records. Now, a stunning new book of his never-before-seen images has just been published by ACC Art Books with text by Richard Scheinin: Steve Schapiro: Jazz, Best of the Apollo, Village Vanguard and Riverside Sessions.

Schapiro took the images in 1961 and ‘62, just before his career took off. The ones in the book have never been seen before because there either wasn’t a market for them or because only one from the contact sheet was sold and the others remained in Schapiro’s archives. He apparently had to leaf through about 20,000 images to make selections for the book before he died in 2022.

Jazz’s golden years have been documented mostly through black-and-white images and occasional black-and-white shorts or films. Photos of musicians wound up on album covers and in jazz magazines, so we’ve been stuck with the same limited number of pictures of these artists over the decades.

What this means is we don’t really know these musicians beyond the iconic images with which we’re most familiar. Most fascinating about the new book is we get to see our favorite jazz artists in human situations—waiting, reading, napping, lifting weights and more. As Sonny Rollins says in the book’s introduction, “It’s hard for me to look through these pictures with anything but great feeling.” [Photo of Sonny Rollins by Steve Schapiro courtesy of ACC Art Books]

I felt the same way, and I know what he meant. In addition to the nostalgia Sonny must have felt, he was seeing a different side of artists he knew well and worked with. In this regard, he was meeting them for the first time through the photographs.

Why should we care? Because these artists were exceptional, and the images give us a finer sense of their personalities, who they were off stage and at rest. Every single image in this 315-page hardcover, coffee-table book offers a fresh perspective of artists we thought we knew well from photos on album covers.

In particular, I loved the series of Bill Evans images, which include alternate takes of his first trio in 1961 backstage at the Village Vanguard. Also captivating are Sonny Stitt playing the tenor with a leg bent and raised, and the one of him kissing his wife, Pamela; and a series of Billy Strayhorn images. [Photo of Sonny Stitt kissing his wife, Pamela, by Steve Schapiro, courtesy of ACC Art Books]

There are photos of Sonny Rollins lifting weights backstage at the Apollo in a T-shirt; candids of Count Basie; one of Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews pretending to throw a left jab at Red Garland, whose head has playfully snapped back; a rare photo of Frank Strozier and one of a young Ray Barretto; and a delightful image of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis grinning broadly with his tenor in his lap. [Photo of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis by Steve Schapiro, courtesy of ACC Art Books]

Leafing through the book was like looking at the images beamed back to earth by the astronauts who recently circled the moon. We know the moon is round and pocked with asteroid craters. But seeing the back side for the first time gave me chills. It didn’t look much different than the moon’s face we see all the time, but it was the moon without makeup on, the one napping in the back. As with the other side of the moon, this book shows us a new, unseen side of famed jazz musicians, and all provide us with a greater sense of their humanity.

The images also show us the love these musicians had for each other and the joy they felt playing this music. In many ways, Steve Schapiro was William Claxton East. All of the musicians he photographed were cool. His images make them even cooler. [Photo of Elvin Jones by Steve Schapiro courtesy of ACC Art Books]

Steve Schapiro died from pancreatic cancer at his home in Chicago, on January 15, 2022, at the age of 87.

You can buy the book here. If you’re remotely curious, spring for it. Just don’t wait until it’s out of print and selling for $1,000 on Ebay.

Sonny Rollins, who revolutionized the sound of the tenor saxophone in the early 1950s when most players modeled themselves after Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young, and the last living jazz musician from Art Kane’s “Great Day in Harlem” photographs for Esquire in 1958, died on Monday. He was 95. [Photo above of Sonny Rollins at home in early 2013 by Marc Myers]

Sonny was a complete artist and complex man. A deeply spiritual person who rolled up his sleeves to work hard and looked up to the heavens for guidance on how to live his life simply, Sonny knew he was special and among the best but couldn’t tell you why. Those things, he told me, were above his station in life.

Over the years, I had roughly 25 lengthy conversations with Sonny by phone. My first was in 2009, for a JazzWax interview (go here). Once we became friends, we spoke every month or two, and he was always effusive and supportive. I called him Mr. Rollins, and he called me Mr. Myers. He loved being old school.

In 2010, when I began writing for The Wall Street Journal, I had an idea for a profile. I approached Sonny’s publicist, Terri Hinte, with the concept. I wanted to hire a Town Car and take Sonny downtown to the locations of clubs still standing and long gone where he made a name for himself in the 1950s.

Terri had a better idea. “Why don’t you take him to his old neighborhood in Harlem,” she said. Sold. She reached out, he was overjoyed and I picked him up at his hotel on 57th St. on the appointed morning in August 2010. Away we went. For the next two hours, with my two tape recorders running, Sonny took me to the eight most important locations that shaped who he became.

We went from the apartment building where he was born to his public school where riots nearly broke out in the mid-1940s between black and Italian kids. The riots were averted thanks to Frank Sinatra, who showed up to lecture everyone in the assembly on togetherness. Then he sang, and the tension was eased. Sonny never forgot the singer’s efforts that day and always loved his voice and records. [Graphic above courtesy of The Wall Street Journal]

The headline on my WSJ piece (go here) said it all: Sonny Rollins Takes a Ride Uptown. Sonny loved it, and from then on he knew he could talk to me openly and emotionally. One day I’ll have them all transcribed. I also visited him at home in 2013 for my House Call column (go here). To read my remembrance of Sonny on WSJ.com today, go here.

Sonny was notorious for never listening to his recordings. He said he was rarely happy with what he heard (“You hear me; I hear mistakes”). But over the years, I would bring up recordings and he’d tell me whether he was happy with them or not:

Sonny Rollins Quartet—I Know (1951)…

Sonny Rollins with the Modern Jazz Quartet—Scoops (1951)

Miles Davis With Sonny Rollins—full 10-inch album in 1954. Three Sonny originals and a standard…

Sonny Rollins and Thelonious Monk in 1954—full 10-inch LP…

Sonny Rollins: Tour De Force—Two Different Worlds (1956), with Earl Coleman on vocal…

Sonny Rollins Plus 4—Pent-Up House (1956)…

Tenor Madness—Paul’s Paul (1956)…

Sonny Rollins Quintet—Plays for Bird (1956) full album…

Sonny Rollins: The Sound of Sonny (1957) full album…

And Sonny Rollins—Alfie: Original Music From the Score (1966)…

More Sonny Rollins? WKCR-FM will celebrate the life and career of Sonny in a 48-hour memorial tribute, all day Friday and Saturday. To listen to the radio station from anywhere in the world, go here.

Today is the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth. The trumpeter’s accomplishments are many, especially his ability to pioneer many of jazz’s post-war movements. [Photo above of Miles Davis and Charlie Parker in 1947 by William P. Gottlieb]

In the 1940s, Davis became an accomplished bebop trumpeter, joining the Charlie Parker Quintet in late 1945 and leaving the group in 1948. In 1949 and ‘50, he led a nonet of notable musicians that recorded 11 tracks that were later assembled on a landmark LP known as Birth of the Cool.

Davis was early to record cool jazz with Lee Konitz in 1951 and hard bop, with his rendition of Walkin’ in 1954. A string of albums followed on Prestige, showing off his refined, elegant trumpet style.

Producer George Avakian signed Davis to Columbia in 1955 after hearing him play Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight weeks earlier at the Newport Jazz Festival. After Davis’s first album for the label, ‘Round About Midnight, in 1957, he quickly became jazz’s first superstar.

In early 1958, Davis formed his second working quintet, extending it to a sextet and recording Kind of Blue, the first modal album to become a major hit. Then came the third great quintet in 1964, followed by his first explorations of electronic music on Miles in the Sky (1968) and In a Silent Way (1969). Abstract fusion was launched with Bitches Brew (1970).

During these years, we also had Miles Davis’s brand of stardom and drama—the fashion icon, the car enthusiast, the addict, the guy who turned his back on audiences and the musician envious of Sly Stone’s style and John Lennon’s fame. Despite his excesses and flaws, Davis is the most influential and dynamic force in the second half of the 20th century, and his impact is still felt today.

Davis died on Sept. 28, 1991, at age 65. The cause was attributed to the combined effects of a stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure.

Let’s dig into my 19 favorite tracks by Davis between 1947 and 1970.

Here’s Davis’s Milestones with the Charlie Parker All-Stars in 1947…

Here’s Budo, by Davis and Bud Powell, recorded by the Miles Davis Nonet and arranged by John Lewis in 1949…

Here’s Davis’s complete 10-inch album for Prestige called The New Sounds (1951), with Miles Davis (tp), Jackie McLean (as), Sonny Rollins (ts), Walter Bishop (p), Tommy Potter (b) and Art Blakey (d)…

Here’s Davis’s Plays the Compositions of Al Cohn in 1953, with Miles Davis (tp), Al Cohn and Zoot Sims (ts), Sonny Truitt (tb), John Lewis (p), Leonard Gaskin (b) and Kenny Clarke (d)…

Here’s George Russell’s Ezz-thetic, recorded by Davis with the Lee Konitz Sextet in 1951: Miles Davis (tp), Lee Konitz (as), Sal Mosca (p), Billy Bauer (g), Arnold Fishkin (b) and Max Roach (d)…

Here’s Davis playing Walkin’ in 1954, featuring Miles Davis (tp), J.J. Johnson (tb), Lucky Thompson (ts), Horace Silver (p), Percy Heath (b) and Kenny Clarke (d)…

Here’s Davis playing Will You Still Be Mine in 1955, for Musings of Miles on Prestige, with Miles Davis (tp), Red Garland (p), Oscar Pettiford (b) and Philly Joe Jones (d)…

Here’s Davis at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1955 playing ‘Round Midnight, a performance that motivated George Avakian to sign him to Columbia. Davis was backed by Zoot Sims (ts), Gerry Mulligan (bar), Thelonious Monk (p), Percy Heath (b) and Connie Kay (d)...

Here’s Jeanne Moreau in a scene from the 1957 French film Ascenseur Pour L’echafaud, featuring Miles Davis (tp), Barney Wilen (ts), Rene Urtreger (p), Pierre Michelot (b) and Kenny Clarke (d)…

Here’s Miles Davis playing John Carisi’s Springsville from Miles Ahead: Miles Davis + 19 in 1957…

Here’s Miles Davis and his first great working sextet in 1958 playing On Green Dolphin Street, with Miles Davis (tp), Cannonball Adderley (as)_, John Coltrane (ts), Bill Evans (p), Paul Chambers (b) and Jimmy Cobb (d)…

Here’s Miles Davis playing Freddie Freeloader in 1959 for Kind of Blue, with Miles Davis (tp), Cannonball Adderley (as), John Coltrane (ts), Wynton Kelly (p), Paul Chambers (b) and Jimmy Cobb (d)…

Here’s Miles Davis with his second great quintet in 1965 playing Wayne Shorter’s title track for E.S.P, with Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b) and Tony Williams (d)…

Here’s Miles Davis playing Wayne Shorter’s Footprints, from Miles Smiles (1967). with the same quintet…

Here’s Miles Davis playing Herbie Hancock’s title track The Sorcerer (1967), with the same personnel…

Here’s Miles Davis playing Wayne Shorter’s title track for Nefertiti (1968), with the same personnel…

Here’s Miles Davis playing his composition Stuff from Miles in the Sky (1968), with Davis on cornet, Herbie Hancock on electric piano and Ron Carter on electric bass…

Here’s Miles Davis playing his compositions Shhh and Peaceful from In a Silent Way (1969), with Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ss), John McLaughlin (g), Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock (el-piano), Joe Zawinul (el-piano,org) Dave Holland (upright bass) and Tony Williams (d)…

And here’s Miles Davis playing Wayne Shorter’s Sanctuary from Bitches Brew (1970), with Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ss), Chick Corea and Joe Zawinul (el-p), John McLaughlin (g), Dave Holland (b), Jack DeJohnette (d), Don Alias (cga) and Jim Riley ((shaker)…

One never thinks of Thelonious Monk as a pianist who accompanied vocalists. The very thought seems inconceivable, given how tough it would be for a singer to stay focused given his jagged, cubist keyboard style. But over the course of his recording career (from 1941 to 1975), Monk did indeed work behind vocalists. [Photo above of Thelonious Monk at Mint…

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In jazz circles, the name Juliette Gréco has almost always been followed by the name Miles Davis, the trumpeter and her one-time lover. Most jazz fans know almost nothing about her, her stardom in France or the astonishing quality of her voice and her captivating delivery. In France, she was as big a deal as Davis, perhaps bigger given her movie presence, and he knew it. [Photo above of Juliette Gréco, courtesy of Ebay]

I have a soft spot for all French singers of the 1950s. My parents had about two dozen records that they brought home from Paris after moving there in 1952. My father was born there in 1915 before his family continued their journey to New York from Poland. He also had spent time in the city in the Navy, during and after World War II,

My father, Lou, was a war artist with an uncanny gift for capturing likenesses. Before enlisting, he worked creating movie posters for 20th Century Fox, when studios had their business offices in New York. When he was in the Navy, the Army and Navy sent him around Europe just after D-Day to paint the portraits of top military brass on leave in Paris, Rome and other liberated cities.

In Paris, just after the war and while still in the Navy, he drew caricatures of stars at events for fun. In the photo above, Noël Coward takes a faux swing at my father for a Life magazine photographer as Marlene Dietrich looks on after he showed them his caricature of them in 1946.

My mother, Bernice, was 10 years younger than my father and an aspiring artist who was up for adventure. They had met while working at Columbia Pictures in New York. After the war, he returned to illustrating posters of stars put up outside theaters where the studio’s films were being shown. At the time, she was a model and the art department’s “photostat girl.” [Photo above of my mother in Paris in 1955 at Pont du Carrousel (Carrousel Bridge), with her back to the Louvre]

My parents left for Paris in 1952 and returned to the U.S. in 1956. My mother wanted me to be born in New York. Homesick for France, she stuck a “C” on the end of my name after I was born rather than the traditional “K.” I was a souvenir of sorts.

The covers of the French LPs they brought home were glossy—the male singers were ruggedly handsome and the women splendidly dressed and impeccably made up. The female singers seemed to crawl inside songs to express enormous joy, deep pain or regret. As with all things French, their interpretations were deeply personal, as if whatever they were singing about happened to them hours earlier.

My mother often reserved these records for her hours spent writing and illustrating children’s books, probably wishing she was still in Paris at a cafe with my father. In my adolescence, I couldn’t understand a word of what Edith Piaf, Patachou, Yves Montand, Maurice Chevalier, Line Renaud, Charles Aznavour, Cora Vaucaire, Catherine Sauvage or others were singing, but those records taught me to feel music and art in general.

Juliette Gréco was my favorite, and the finest. She was less about pop, though some of her recordings had a pop orchestration. Instead, there was a quality about her husky voice that compelled me to take notice. She seemed to be imparting a life lesson learned from a past event. She could be serious or wistful, dismissing bad luck with a shrug and treating it as a passing cloud. I miss Paris most when I listen to her records.

Gréco was born in Montpellier, France, in 1927, and endured a harsh childhood. Her mother lacked warmth toward her, largely because Gréco was unwanted, telling her she was the product of a rape, a fabrication. During World War II, the family moved to southwest France and became active in the Resistance. Her mother was arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, prompting Gréco and her older sister to return to Paris. En route, they, too, were arrested, tortured and imprisoned just south of Paris. Her mother and sister were subsequently were sent to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Gréco remained in prison until the end of the war.

Upon her release, she walked the eight miles to Paris to retrieve her belongings from what had been Gestapo headquarters. Her mother moved to Indochina, leaving Gréco and her sister behind. Gréco gravitated to the emerging bohemian scene on the Left Bank and studied acting with Solange Sicard and befriended intellectuals such as Jean-Paul Sartre, who said she had “millions of poems in her head.”

Her cabaret career began in 1949, and she befriended Albert Camus, Jacques Prévert and Boris Vian, resulting in her nickname, “La Muse de L’Existentialisme” (the Muse of Existentialism). Eventually, she was introduced to director Jean Cocteau and cast in one of his films, Orphée (1950). By then, Gréco had already been cast in films, starting in 1947 (her first was Louis Daquin’s The Bouquinquant Brothers). Her first 78 was released in 1950—Si tu t’imagines.

In addition to her relationship with Miles Davis in 1949, she had affairs with Albert Camus, French singer Sacha Distel, Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck, and Quincy Jones, when he was in Paris in the late 1950s. The Beatles were also smitten by her in the early 1960s, and Paul McCartney has said that his song, Michelle, was inspired by her. [Photo above of Gréco and Miles Davis by Jean-Philippe Charbonnie]

It’s gratifying to pull Gréco loose from Miles Davis’s shadow and shed light on what made her so special and heroic to the people of France. [Photo above of Gréco in the studio with Andre Popp in the late 1950s or early 1960s, courtesy of Ebay]

Gréco died in 2020 at age 93. Let’s give a look and listen:

Here’s a short documentary on Gréco and Miles Davis..

Here’s the trailer for Orphée (1950); you’ll see Gréco at 2:40…

Here’s Gréco singing Si tu t’imagine (1950)…

Here’s Gréco in the early 1960s singing Sous le ciel de Paris, her 1951 recording. Her rendition is credited for popularizing the song worldwide…

Here’s Gréco singing with the Andre Popp Orchestra in the late 1950s; she recorded several albums with Popp…

Here’s Gréco singing La Mer in 1963, (which became Beyond the Sea with English lyrics by Jack Lawrence)…

Here’s an hour of Gréco in concert in Tokyo in 1961. Her intimacy and grace were unrivaled...

And here’s Gréco on a French TV talk show in 1990 being surprised by guest Miles Davis, less than a year before his death…

Over the past several years, I posted a series on vital Brazilian female singers who have championed the bossa nova. Unfortunately, JazzWax readers haven’t been able to access these posts because they were scattered in time. Unless you remembered their names, you were out of luck.

Now, I have assembled a handy index to the series. When I post on addition…

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Last week, I received an email from Melodi Graf McCraine. She wrote that she was the daughter of tenor saxophonist Bob Graf and that she had researched her father and created a website to honor him. I said how about an interview? She said, Sure!” [Photo above of Bob Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

Melodi told me that Graf was the first tenor saxophonist in the Count Basie Septet in 1950, thanks to a recommendation by trumpeter Clark Terry. He was soon recruited to join Woody Herman’s Third Herd, and Wardell Gray replaced Graf in Basie’s group. Graf also pops up in recordings with the Chet Baker Big Band, leading a quartet backing jazz vocalist Bev Kelly and with Grant Green in 1960. [Photo above of Bob Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

Then the trail goes cold. I interviewed Mel by email and rounded up my favorite Bob Graf clips so you could have a listen:

JazzWax: How old were you when your father, Bob Graf, died?

Melodi Graf McCraine: He died when I was 15, in 1981, at age 54. For most of my life, his jazz years felt just out of reach. I knew that music filled our house. I knew that people lit up when he walked into a room. But the full extent of his career—who he played with, where he toured and the reputation he had built up before walking away from that life—is something I’m still piecing together through research.

JW: Where was your dad born?

MGM: My father was born in St. Louis in 1927. His mother, Emily, was a telephone operator for Southwestern Bell. His father, Otto, was an executive at a tool-and-die company that held patents on airplane parts. Bob was their only child, and his mother encouraged his love of music.

JW: What inspired him at the start?

MGM: I don’t know yet. What I can tell you is that something got into him early. Just this morning, I found a photograph of him at around age 7 already holding a saxophone. [Photo above of Bob Graf at age 7 courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: Who was his biggest Influence?

MGM: Zoot Sims. His mother had taken him to see Zoot play when Bob was around 13. That concert changed everything but I’m not sure where it took place. What I know is that Zoot was a stylistic influence. Since my father was born in 1927 and Zoot in 1925, they were almost exactly the same age, so it was likely a peer influence from Zoot’s recordings. Their paths crossed when my father was in the Woody Herman band from 1950 to 1951.

JW: How did your dad learn to play?

MGM: His mother got him a saxophone, and he began with formal lessons and learned to read music. He practiced in the bathroom for the acoustics. He loved hearing the sound of his King saxophone bouncing off the tile walls. But his true gift was his ear, which greatly helped his improvising.

JW: What did you learn through your research?

MGM: By digging through the Smithsonian Institution’s archives in Washington, D.C., I learned who he played with and how prominent he was. As for when he began playing professionally in St. Louis and with whom, I’m still piecing that together. What I do know is that he was deeply embedded in the local scene before his first big break.

JW: What was that break?

MGM: Trumpeter Clark Terry knew my father well enough that he recommended him to Count Basie in 1950, when he was forming a small group. My dad was 23. That level of trust between musicians doesn’t happen overnight. In his Smithsonian oral history transcript, Clark recalled recommending my father to Basie when Basie was looking for a tenor saxophonist. Clark said he described my dad as “a young Caucasian kid named Bob Graf.” Basie’s response, Clark said, was “Get the kid.” Bob joined, and the septet opened at the Brass Rail in Chicago.

JW: Who else talked about your dad in the Smithsonian oral histories?

MGM: Buddy De Franco named him directly as “Bobby Graf from St. Louis,” the original tenor saxophonist in Basie’s first group before Wardell Gray.

JW: Your dad must have left Basie pretty quickly, since his first recording with Woody Herman took place on May 5, 1950.

MGM: I suppose so. My dad was recruited at the Brass Rail in Chicago, where the Basie group was playing. Carlos Gastel, Woody Herman’s manager, kept coming into the club and hired him away for Woody’s band. We know the band was on the road in Nashville by June 25, 1950 because my dad and the band recorded in a studio there. This was Woody’s Third Herd, which recorded for Capitol. The late Steve Voce, a longtime BBC jazz broadcaster who wrote for Jazz Journal International for nearly 60 years, did an extensive study of the Herman bands. He identified my dad as the featured tenor saxophone soloist who follows trombonist Bill Harris on the Capitol track Sonny Speaks. Four more sides followed for MGM Records in January 1951. On this session, Bob was teamed with fellow tenor saxophonists Phil Urso and Jack DuLong.

JW: You dad’s jazz recording discography is silent until 1956. Do you know why he left Herman and what he did in between?

MGM: Not yet. I know he worked the West Coast circuit through the mid-50s, including with the Lighthouse All-Stars at Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse Cafe in Hermosa Beach. But he wasn’t working off his card to join Local 47. St. Louis was still his home. On Oct. 18 1956, he was in Los Angeles recording with the Chet Baker Big Band for Pacific Jazz. He played alongside Fred Waters on alto saxophone, Phil Urso on tenor and Bill Hood on baritone.

JW: What about his family life at this point in time?

MGM: My dad was married to his first wife, Helen. They had two sons—Bobby Jr. and Kirby, who, sadly, took his own life when he was young. Helen never recovered.

JW: What did your father do after his Chet Baker recording session?

MGM: He didn’t disappear from music. In January 1958, he performed at Westminster College and Peacock Alley in St. Louis with local musicians Ron Ruff (ts,fl), Jimmy Williams (p), Bob Maisel (b) and Al St. James (d). The gigs were recorded by Delmark Records, produced by label founder Robert Koester. His playing on Street of Dreams was singled out in the liner notes. [Photo above of Bob Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: In November 1959, his quartet backed vocalist Bev Kelly in St. Louis for VGM records.

MGM: Yes, that recording sat unreleased for more than 20 years before surfacing on VGM the year he died.

JW: His final jazz recording was with Grant Green.

MGM: In December 1959 and February 1960, he performed alongside guitarist Grant Green, organist Sam Lazar and drummer Chauncey Williams at the Holy Barbarian Coffee House in St. Louis. In 1963, Down Beat magazine mentioned that he was leading a bossa nova quartet at a St. Louis club called the Fallen Angel. The music never left him. It simply lived in smaller rooms.

JW: When did he meet your mom, Martha?

MGM: He met her at a St. Louis gig, around 1959. She was 12 years younger and completely unimpressed by the Hollywood stories. She told him flat out there was no future if he kept traveling. He had some obligations to finish but he chose her. My older sister, Vicki, was born in 1961. To make ends meet, he started taking gigs in St. Louis but soon went into business repairing instruments full time. He had contracts with local schools covering everything from clarinets to flutes. Occasionally, he played local gigs. That was their deal. [Photo above of Bob and Martha Graf courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: How was your parents’ relationship?

MGM: My parents were married for a couple of decades. My mother passed away nine years ago. She never remarried. He was the love of her life. They had their struggles, but they always found their way back to each other. He died of health complications just months after their last reconciliation. He had lived hard and the years caught up with him. [Photo above of Bob Graf with Melodi, left, and Vicki, courtesy of Melodi Graf McCraine]

JW: And his first wife?

MGM: I believe Helen passed away in the early 1980s, not long after my dad died.Their divorce wasn’t related to Kirby’s death. There was a long period of estrangement between my dad and his first family. I didn’t meet my half-brothers until I was around 8 or 9.

JW: How did your mother take his death?

MGM: It was hard. She talked about him until the end. I remember being in Best Buy with her years ago and coming across a Chet Baker CD. That opened up a whole conversation about those California years. I would show her YouTube clips of his recordings and she would watch quietly and then start talking.

JW: Do you feel now that you know your father better?

MGM: For sure. In a way, my research has given me an opportunity to get to know him through articles and oral history transcripts. I’ve built a full archive of recordings, photographs, personnel lists and source citations at BobGrafMusic.com (go here). He deserves to be remembered. It just took a daughter who wouldn’t let go. I only wish he were still around. I have a zillion questions.

Tracks with Bob Graf:

Here’s Graf in May 1950 with Woody Herman’s superb reed section playing Neal Hefti’s arrangement of Pennies From Heaven, with a vocal by Herman and the Alyce King Vokettes. The band: Conte Candoli, Bernie Glow, Paul Cohen and Don Ferrara (tp); Neal Hefti (tp,arr); Eddie Bert, Bill Harris and Jerry Dorn (tb); Woody Herman (cl,as,vcl); Al Cohn, Buddy Wise and Bob Graf (ts); Marty Flax (bar); Dave McKenna (p); Red Mitchell (b); Sonny Igoe (d); Milt Jackson (vibes) and Alyce King Vokettes (vcl)…

Here’s the Herman band on June 25, 1950 playing Al Cohn’s arrangement of Sonny Speaks. The band: Doug Mettome, Conte Candoli, Don Ferrara and Rolf Ericson (tp); Herb Randel, Bill Harris and Jerry Dorn (tb); Woody Herman (cl,as); Phil Urso, Buddy Wise and Bob Graf (ts); Marty Flax (bar); Dave McKenna (p); Red Mitchell (b) and Sonny Igoe (d)…

Here’s the Chet Baker Big Band on October 19, 1956 playing Phil Urso’s arrangement of Worrying the Life Out of Me. The band: Chet Baker (tp); Bob Burgess (tb); Fred Waters (as); Phil Urso (as,ts,bs); Bob Graf (ts); Bill Hood (bs); Bobby Timmons (p); Jimmy Bond (b) and James McKean (d). The tenor solo sounds like Graf…

Here’s Street of Dreams from Bob Graf at Westminster in St. Louis on Jan. 11, 1958…

Here’s singer Bev Kelly on Nov. 29, 1959 with the Bob Graf Quartet singing Detour Ahead. The fidelity is miserable but you do catch some terrific Bob Graf and a taste of Kelly…

And finally, here’s Bob Graf (ts), Sam Lazar (org), Grant Green (g) and Chauncey Williams (d) at the Holy Barbarian in St. Louis on December 25, 1959 or February 20, 1960 playing The Holy Barbarian Blues…

While hitchhiking through Europe alone in the second half of 1979, I spent a great deal of time in pubs, especially on rainy days when rides were spare. My first stop was London and then Wales, for a month. During my journey through the Welsh countryside, I received quite an education in Jamaican rocksteady. Jukeboxes were loaded with singles.

Rocksteady was a popular home-grown Jamaican style that cropped up in 1966 and continues today. It appeared in the wake of Jamaica’s horn-dominated ska of the late 1950s and early ‘60s and before the bass-heavy reggae emerged in the late 1960s.

The lilting rocksteady merged Jamaica’s rhythms with American romantic soul capped with a beckoning Jamaican vocal. The laid-back genre was perfect for slow-dancing and a welcome alternative to the fast-paced, celebratory ska. In jazz, a parallel would be Lester Young’s tenor saxophone playing American songbook ballads.

Rocksteady was romantic, jazzy and hypnotic, music that let dancers rock to a steady beat. In many instances, the rocksteady versions of American soul were equal to the originals. Overall, the music is tranquil and locks into a seductive groove.

Yesterday, I spent the day listening to rocksteady while writing. Today, I’m sharing 10 tracks plus bonus videos that will likely make you fall in love with the music, if you aren’t already a fan.

Here’s Hopeton Lewis’s Take It Easy (1967), which is widely considered rocksteady’s first release…

Here’s Alton Ellis and the Flames’ Rock Steady (1967), the namesake of the genre…

Here are the Paragons’ The Tide Is High (1967), which was covered by Blondie in 1980…

Here’s Phillis Dean, known as the “Queen of Rocksteady,” singing Perfidia in 1967…

Here’s Alton Ellis, known as the “Godfather of Rocksteady,” singing You’ve Made Me So Very Happy, a 1970 cover of the Blood, Sweat & Tears 1969 hit…

Here’s Freddie McGregor singing Sitting in the Park in 1979, a cover of Billy Stewart’s 1965 hit…

Here’s Johnny Osborne’s 1972 cover of Ready or Not Here I Come, a 1968 Delfonics hit…

Here’s Claudia Fontaine’s 1981 cover of Bloodstone’s 1973 hit Natural High…

Here’s Alton Ellis singing his 1993 cover of the Delfonics’ 1968 hit La La Means I Love You…

And here’s Bitty McLean’s 2004 cover of David Ruffin’s 1975 hit Walk Away From Love…

Bonus: Here’s a concert by rocksteady all-stars at the 2009 Montreal International Jazz Festival…

Here’s Freddie McGregor followed by John Holt in concert in London with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003…

And here’s a documentary on rocksteady…

We listen to jazz today and just assume that because the music wound up on records, everyone in the country took it seriously. That was hardly the case. Jazz was ignored for large chunks of time or viewed despairingly as the music of alcoholics, prostitutes, drug addicts and gangsters. Not until 1957 did jazz achieve a high level of respect nationwide, on par with classical, and that golden era lasted only eight years. [Photo above, from left, Goddard Lieberson, president of Columbia Records; trumpeter Miles Davis, Columbia producer Teo Macero and pianist Dave Brubeck in the early 1960s]

Jazz was first performed in American classical concert halls as early as May 2, 1912, when James Reese Europe and his Clef Club Orchestra played New York’s Carnegie Hall. On Feb. 12 1924, George Gershwin played piano in a performance of his composition Rhapsody in Blue, while Paul Whiteman conducted his Palais Royal Orchestra at New York’s Aeolian Hall.

With the arrival of Prohibition between 1920 and 1933, jazz became the music of speakeasies, sex workers, rum-running mobsters, boozing musicians and privileged college students. In other words, jazz became exotica and music of the underworld and underground.

Big bands adapted jazz for the swing syncopation needed to fill dance halls in the 1930s. Many of the major bandleaders were formally trained on the clarinet, so the works of classical composers were familiar to them. Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn and others recorded classically inspired jazz pieces. On Jan.16, 1938, jazz was performed at Carnegie Hall when Benny Goodman was recorded there with his small group and big band before a packed house.

The big band era gave jazz a much-needed post-Prohibition rehabilitation, but it was happening mostly in New York and a few other cities. With the rise of bebop in 1946, jazz went into clubs, where it became the music of soldiers on leave, smokers, drinkers, hipsters on a first date and college students in the know.

Then three things happened in the 1950s: the affordability of home phonograph consoles housed in living rooms, the widespread popularity of rock ‘n’ roll and the acquisition of television sets.

The phonograph allowed adults to explore different types of music through mail-order record clubs like Columbia House. The music could be consumed at their leisure from their sofas. Rock ‘n’ roll was viewed by parents as corrosive to their relationship with their kids; and the television set established national standards of humor, musical enjoyment and behavior that fed advertising’s American Dream.

How did all of these trends help to boot jazz’s reputation? One could order jazz LPs that were easy for the average ear to absorb and understand at home—including records by Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Miles Davis.

With the music of Elvis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and others playing adversarial roles in households, parents began looking for music with an edge that made them feel young outside of the classical and pop realms. That was motive enough to begin acquiring a taste for jazz.

And the appearance of TV sets in more households by 1957 led to network television broadcasts that not only entertained but also educated viewers.

Such programming was driven by the wives of executives who ran TV networks, ad agencies and consumer goods companies. Many collected modern art, knew the names of famed architects, attended the opera and ballet and understood the value and excellence of high culture. When it came to the arts, these spouses had no patience for racial discrimination.

NBC aired the Nat King Cole Show (1956-‘57) and the Steve Allen Show (1956-’60), exposing a national audience to jazz and jazz-pop singers and musicians. CBS broadcast Patti Page hosting The Big Record (1957-’58), which often featured jazz-pop singers. The network also broadcast the Ed Sullivan Show, which routinely showcased jazz-pop artists.

But the TV show that allowed jazz to be universally thought of as high culture was CBS’s airing of The Sound of Jazz, the December 8, 1957 edition of the CBS television series The Seven Lively Arts. Also significant was Robert Herridge’s The Sound of Miles Davis, on April 2, 1959.

Jazz was finally invited to the high-brow table, and seeing the genius of Billie Holiday, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Count Basie and others on TV made the greatness of these artists impossible to ignore, putting them in the same league as the symphony and chamber group musicians.

Also vital to jazz’s transition from low-culture to high culture was Leonard Bernstein, whose songs for Broadway’s West Side Story (1957) wound up on jazz albums, making those LPs more appealing. By then, Bernstein had already composed works paying homage to jazz, including Prelude, Fugue and Riffs and Symphony No. 2: The Age of Anxiety (both in 1949). He also explored jazz in his Young People's Concerts (Jazz in the Concert Hall in 1964) on CBS and his famous What Is Jazz episode.

Others vital to helping jazz become high culture were Nat Hentoff, whose album liner notes, books, album and TV show production helped develop a high-brow taste for and understanding of the music.

Jule Styne and Stephen Sondheim, whose score for Gypsy (1959) fine-tuned the ear for jazz. Norman Granz, whose Jazz at the Philharmonic tours brought jazz all-stars into concert halls in the U.S. and abroad.

George Wein, who in 1954 launched the Newport Jazz Festival, which created a daytime and evening space for jazz outdoors.

Columbia Records jazz head George Avakian signed Miles Davis to the label and was instrumental in helping to release major recordings by jazz artists in the 78 and 10-inch and 12-inch LP eras.

And radio DJs including “Symphony Sid” Torin, Fred Robbins, Holmes “Daddy-O” Daylie and Arthur “Turntable” Pearce who supported live jazz and played jazz records on the air.

As kids exposed to jazz entered their teens in the 1960s, there was no holding them back from the pop-rock appeal of the Beatles and Rolling Stones and hard-rock lure of Led Zeppelin and the Who. Jazz-rock fusion of the 1970s appealed to college students. And those kids who had been captivated by jazz in the early ‘60s moved on to light pop, soul-jazz and even rap.

All of this left jazz without a young core audience, and the music began its slow shift toward cultural oblivion. This isn’t a jazz obit or an essay on who killed jazz. Nor is it a long attempt to point out again that the New York Times Sunday Magazine doesn’t think jazz was worthy enough to include at least Sonny Rollins or Herbie Hancock in its “30 Greatest Living American Composers” list.

Rather, it’s merely to point out that between 1957 and 1964, jazz became high-culture after winning the respect of Fifth Avenue socialites and Main Street TV-watchers. It was a golden time for jazz, when the color of a jazz musician’s skin was meaningless and integrated jazz groups proved to America that race didn’t matter at all when it came to musical excellence and exceptionalism.

I’ll leave you with this: Here’s Nat King Cole in 1957 singing Tenderly on his TV show backed by Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Herb Ellis. What’s not to love?…

Manny Albam was a New York jazz orchestral master. Today, sadly, his name and the popularity of his standout leadership albums are fading, which is unfortunate. They swing and are superb.

The musicians who who made their living recording primarily in New York remembered Albam fondly when I interviewed them in the 2000s. Hal McCusick, Bob Brookmeyer, So…

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Today marks the 102nd birth anniversary of Shorty Rogers, who, with Gerry Mulligan, helped launch West Coast jazz in the early 1950s. The sound was airy, punchy and catchy and came to represent a new movement that captured the relaxed and idyllic lifestyle and temperate weather of Southern California.

Rogers, like Mulligan, was a master of contrapuntal composing and arranging, He also was a veteran of two superb post-war big bands—Woody Herman and Stan Kenton. Tired of cross-country tours and months away from his family, Rogers left Kenton to start his own all-star band, Shorty Rogers and His Giants, and settled in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley.

Less explored by jazz writers was Rogers’s influence on the composers of TV show themes in the 1960s. All knew they had just a minute to grab and hold viewers and then send them off with the theme stuck in their heads at the end so they’d return the following week. Rogers’s swinging approach in the 1950s was the perfect model for television a decade later.

Rogers was the first to bring the jazz sound to Hollywood’s film noirs in 1953 with his arrangements of jazz themes for The Wild One, and in 1955 with the score for Man With the Golden Arm. Johnny Mandel’s score for I Want to Live wouldn’t appear until 1958 and Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn arrived that same year.

Rogers’s upbeat, tight arranging style had a big influence on Hoyt Curtin (The Flintstones, The Jetsons), Sid Ramin (The Patty Duke Show), Richard Wess (I Dream of Jeannie), Jack Keller (Bewitched, Gidget), Lionel Newman (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis) and many others. All were fully aware of Rogers’s dramatic jazz style and Basie-esque approach.

Rogers is credited as providing the end theme for The Partridge Family sitcom and served as the show’s initial music director. He also was brought in as a score doctor for The Mod Squad, Starsky and Hutch, Fantasy Island, The Rookies, Vega$, Tabitha and Viva Valdez.

Here are clips of Rogers’s music in the 1950s, which served as a model for a generation of TV-show composers. As you listen, you can hear the essence of the style used for opening and closing themes:

Here’s Powder Puff (1953)…

Here’s Coup de Graas (1953)…

Here’s Rogers’s arrangement for The Wild One, from the film The Wild One (1953)…

Here’s Cool Sunshine from East Coast-West Coast Scene (1954)…

Here’s Isn’t It Romantic from The Swinging Mr. Rogers (1955)…

Here’s Audition from Man With the Golden Arm (1955)…

Here’s A Ship Without a Sail from Shorty Rogers Plays Richard Rodgers (1957)…

Here’s A Geophysical Ear from Portrait of Shorty (1957)…

Here’s No Such Luck from Chances Are It Swings (1958)…

And here’s If I Only Had a Brain from The Wizard of Oz and Other Harold Arlen Songs (1959)…

Bonus: Here’s Shorty Rogers and His Giants at Japan’s Aurex Jazz Festival in 1983 playing Infinity Promenade, with Shorty Rogers (flhrn), Bud Shank (as), Jimmy Giuffre (ts), Bob Cooper (ts), Bill Perkins (bs), Pete Jolly (p), Monty Budwig (b) and Shelly Manne (d)…

Thanks to Todd Selbert for the Shorty reminder.

Seventeen years ago, the BBC aired 1959: The Year That Changed Jazz. The documentary was a somewhat forced argument that jazz had changed dramatically with the release of four albums that year—the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s Time Out, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, Charles Mingus’ Ah Um and Ornette Coleman’s The Shape of Jazz to Come. While these albums were important, I’d argue that 1965 was a much bigger deal for jazz—and all popular music, for that matter.

In 1965, jazz was changing rapidly due to several significant external events. Live jazz was under pressure from television’s surging appeal with stay-at-home adults, the vitality of folk music’s socially conscious grip, and Beatlemania, which all but invented the youth culture and stimulated it. The arrival of the Beatles opened the gates in America to an influx of British folk-rock and blues-rock bands. The result was fewer domestic touring and recording opportunities for jazz musicians on both coasts as labels shifted their focus and budgets to AM-oriented pop-rock.

During the British Invasion and rise of Motown and Stax, the economic squeeze forced many top white and black jazz artists who could sight-read to relocate to Los Angeles where there was plenty of work recording for advertising agencies and TV shows and movies. Those jazz musicians who remained touring and recording focused their music on standing out through originality, political messaging and attempted hybrids with rock and soul.

In 1965 alone, an extraordinary number of exceptional jazz albums were recorded and released—not just four. In effect, 1965 was a banner year when jazz shifted to a much more individualistic expression, as musicians were given greater leeway by labels to do their own thing. Much of it was modal, abstract and exciting.

That year saw the release of Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage, a deeply poetic modal quintet album; Horace Silver’s Song for My Father, a jazz-funk masterpiece; John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, arguably his most significant recording; and Miles Davis’s E.S.P., the first studio LP by his second great quintet.

Jazz also saw the release of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers’ Free for All, with two originals by Wayne Shorter, one by Freddie Hubbard and another by Clare Fischer; Bobby Hutcherson’s Dialogue, his first leadership album; and Grant Green’s Idle Moments, one of the guitarist’s best recordings.

In rock, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, with Like a Rolling Stone, was issued, and so were the Beatles’ Help! and transformative Rubber Soul; the Who’s My Generation; the Rolling Stones’ Out of Our Heads, featuring early signs of a brilliant songwriting career by Keith Richards and Mick Jagger with The Last Time and (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction; and the Byrds’ Mr. Tambourine Man and Turn Turn Turn, which launched the California folk-rock movement.

In addition, Paul Butterfield Blues Band was a blues-rock milestone; the Beach Boys’ Summer Days (and Summer Nights) promoted the virtues of Southern California’s beaches as a teenage Shargri-La; the Lovin’ Spoonful’s Do You Believe in Magic was their first album and in some ways established the sunshine pop genre, with John Sebastian’s gentle love songs casting the group as the East Coast Beach Boys; Here Are the Sonics launched serious garage rock; and Introducing the Beau Brummels proved that the U.S. group’s debut album, produced by Sly Stone with 12 original songs, could Americanize the new British sound.

In soul in 1965, Motown shifted into high gear. Chart-topping LPs included More Hits by the Supremes, The Temptations Sing Smokey, and Four Tops Second Album. These LPs produced six #1 singles and ignited Motown’s massive success. Also hot were Ramsey Lewis’s The In Crowd; Otis Redding’s Otis Blue, The Righteous Brothers’ You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling; Martha & The Vandellas’ Dance Party; Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ Going to a Go-Go; The Impressions’ People Get Ready; and James Brown and the Famous Flames’ Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag, to name just a handful.

So, 1965 clearly was a breathtaking year for jazz as well as rock and soul, dwarfing 1959 or any other year for that matter. For the first time, jazz, rock and soul were going off in original directions with mass-market success, making it possible for anyone with a radio and few bucks for vinyl to enjoy them all.

A shame this world of inclusive, upbeat and intellectual music no longer exists. I can tell you that the music of 1965 was electrifying to listen to on AM radio and in record stores and it was exciting for any kid to be in the middle of that year’s cultural lurch forward. You had no clue what your favorite artists would release next but you couldn’t wait to find out.

Let’s listen to a handful of important jazz albums from 1965:

Here’s Herbie Hancock’s title track from Maiden Voyage…

Here’s Bobby Hutcherson’s Jasper from Dialogue…

Here’s Grant Green’s Jean de Fleur from Idle Moments…

Here’s the title track, by Wayne Shorter, for Miles Davis’s E.S.P….

Here’s Andrew Hill’s Refuge from Point of Departure…

And here’s Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers playing Clare Fischer’s Pensativa from Free for All…

Billie Holiday is jazz’s finest and most meaningful singer. Born 111 years ago today, she revolutionized jazz vocalizing with a style that was all her own. She embodied the sound and emotionalism of jazz, the way Armstrong did before her on the trumpet, and you know it’s her the moment you hear her voice. [Photo above of Billie Holiday and Lester Young]

Today, I thought I’d assemble five major reasons why Holiday remains significant and why her voice best exemplifies the spirit and soul of jazz:

1. Songbook pioneer—While Ella Fitzgerald is commonly referred to as the First Lady of Song and most closely identified with jazz interpretations of the American songbook, Holiday began the trend in November 1933—a year earlier than Fitzgerald’s career-launching win on Amateur Night at Harlem’s Apollo Theater.

Age 14 at the time, Holiday recorded Your Mother’s Son-in-Law with Benny Goodman for Columbia producer John Hammond. The song was written by Alberta Nichols and her husband, Mann Holiner, and the recording was Holiday’s first. Her 78 of Love Me or Leave Me (Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson), also with Goodman, followed in December.

Here’s Holiday singing Your Mother’s Son-in-Law in 1933…

2. Courage—Billie Holiday was fearless in the face of the racial climate in the 1930s and ‘40s. Not only did she record with Goodman in the early 1930s but she also recorded with Artie Shaw and His Orchestra in July 1938, after he hired her in March as his lead female vocalist.

With Any Old Time a huge hit, the Shaw band and Holiday hit the road. She became one of the first black female vocalists to tour the South with an all-white band. Before long, Holiday left as pressure from Shaw’s nervous management team increased and Shaw himself kept her off the bandstand to avoid problems with audiences.

Here’s what Holiday told writer Dave Dexter in Down Beat magazine in 1939:

“At first, we worked together OK. Then his managers started belly-aching. Pretty soon it got so I would sing just two numbers a night. When I wasn’t singing, I had to stay backstage. Artie wouldn’t let me sit out front with the band.

“Last year [1938], when we were at the Lincoln Hotel, the hotel management told me I had to use the back door. That was all right. But I had to ride up and down in the freight elevators, and every night Artie made me stay upstairs in a little room without a radio or anything all the time.

“Finally it got so I would stay up there, all by myself, reading everything I could get my hands on, from 10 to nearly 2 in the morning, going downstairs to sing just one or two numbers. Then one night ... Artie said he couldn’t let me sing. I was always given two shots on each program.

“The real trouble was this: Shaw wanted to sign me to a five-year contract and when I refused, it burned him. He was jealous of the applause I got when I made one of my few appearances with the band each night.”

In April 1939, just months after leaving Shaw, Holiday recorded Strange Fruit for Commodore. The song protested the lynching of blacks, with lyrics likening the dead bodies to fruit hanging from the trees. Ahmet Ertegun, co-founder of Atlantic Records, called the song “the beginning of the civil rights movement.”

Here’s Any Old Time (1938), featuring Billie Holiday…

3. Emotional—Holiday was jazz’s first vocal storyteller. Her singing style was so impassioned and heartfelt that the narrative’s events in songs sounded as if they had actually happened to her. The approach was so personal and touching that she caused jazz musicians to drop their machismo and deliver their music more emotionally.

Here’s Billie Holiday live in 1957 on CBS’s The Sound of Jazz singing Fine and Mellow, with solos, in order, by Ben Webster, Lester Young, Vic Dickenson, Gerry Mulligan, Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge. They may have been on network TV reaching millions but the musicians had an audience of one—Holiday…

4. Inspiring—Generations of jazz singers and musicians have credited Holiday’s vocal phrasing and her coming in behind or ahead of the beat as being ahead of the curve.

As Frank Sinatra noted in a July 1958 essay he wrote for Ebony magazine:

“From the days of my childhood I’ve been listening to sounds and singers, both colored and white, and absorbing a little bit here and a little bit there. But it is Billie Holiday, whom I first heard in 52nd Street clubs in the early 1930s, who was and still remains the greatest single musical influence on me. It has been a warm and wonderful influence, and I am very proud to acknowledge it.”

Singer Helen Merrill revered Holiday, particularly her depth of feeling and how she interpreted songs. The feeling was mutual. Here are Merrill and Holiday in November 1956 at a party at writer-producer-pianist Leonard Feather’s New York apartment singing a duet on You Go to My Head, with Feather on piano. Dig Merrill’s reverence for space and air…

5. Struggle—From Holiday’s battle with drug and alcohol addiction to her miserable romantic relationships and wrenching 1956 memoir Lady Sings the Blues, written with William Dufty, she lived the music and gave it everything she had. What every jazz musician and singer respects about Holiday was her commitment and determination.

In February 1958, in one of her final recording sessions before her death on July 17, 1959, she recorded The End of a Love Affair, a song she didn’t know but managed to feel her way along. From my 2009 post on Lady in Satin:

“Billie admitted on-mic that she didn’t know The End of a Love Affair, and she needed multiple retakes. Finally, arranger-conductor Ray Ellis decided to record the orchestra alone, with Billie adding her vocal later using a headset to hear the playback. The arrangement is so powerful and so perfectly matched to Billie’s voice that the treatment breaks your heart.”

Here are composite takes 1 through 4 of The End of a Love Affair—including the orchestral take…

Here are composite takes 5 through 7 overdubbed to the orchestral recording…

And here’s the master (take 8) that appeared on the stereo LP…

In 1963, guitarist João Gilberto and his wife, Astrud, stayed with Stan Getz and his wife, Monica, in their New York apartment. It’s the same apartment where Getz would cut a tendon in his leg in 1965 when he slipped on the floor and his right foot went through a glass door. Stan and Monica wouldn’t buy their Shadowbrook estate in Irvington, N.Y., until 1966. [Photo above of Astrud Gilberto courtesy of Brazil’s Acervo UH]

The Gilbertos had been in New York since late 1962, when João appeared at the famed Brazilian Guitar/Bossa Nova concert held at Carnegie Hall on Nov. 21, 1962. The event marked the first time the laid-back Brazilian music was performed live for an American audience in the U.S.

Monica told me that while the Gilbertos were staying with the Getzs in early 1963, Astrud, João and Stan rehearsed The Girl From Ipanema using Norman Gimbel’s English-language lyrics (and Corcovado with Gene Lees’s English-language lyrics). This was in advance of their recording of Getz/Gilberto in March 1963.

Creed Taylor had asked Gimbel to come up with lyrics for Ipanema after Gimbel penned English words for Insensatez (How Insensitive), recorded by Maria Toledo on Getz’s Jazz Samba Encore! in February 1963.

So when Astrud and João joined Antônio Carlos Jobim (p), Sebastião Neto (b) and Milton Banana (d,pandeiro) at New York’s A&R Recording in March, she had already rehearsed it and was good to go. Astrud died in 2023 at 83.

Today, I have a treat for you: a bunch of new videos of Astrud on TV or in concert:

Here’s Take Me to Aruanda at the jazz festival Newport à Paris on August 11, 1968…

Here she is singing Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes’s Canto de Ossanha (Let Go) in 1970…

Here’s Marcos Valle’s So Nice (Summer Samba) at the Jazz Summit Hollabrunn in Austria on July 5, 1985…

Here’s Gilberto on the same tour, this time in Switzerland at Estival Lugano in 1985…

Here she is performing on Spanish TV’s Angel Casas Show on March 25, 1985…

Here she is for an hour in 1987 in at The Hague in the Netherlands on July 11, 1987…

And here she is in Leonberg, Germany, in 1988…

Bonus: Here’s a throwback, featuring Gilberto with Pim Jacobs (p), Wim Overgaauw (g), Ruud Jacobs (b) and Dom Um Romão (d), with Ruud Brink (ts) on Dutch TV in July 1965…

In the first part of this series, I posted about records that were gateways to jazz between 1928 and 1959. In each case, the 78s, 10-inch LPs and 12-inch LPs I selected helped turn listeners into jazz fans.

Recorded jazz has been around since 1917 and each generation was seduced differently—some by electrifying soloists, some by dance music, some by gif…

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Marion Evans, who turns 100 in May, is still one of jazz and pop’s finest big-band and orchestral jazz arrangers. Over the course of his long career, he could do it all—scoring sensitively when the recording session called for a ballad feel and ferociously when a big band was needed to kick like a swinging mule. [Photo above of Marion Evans in 2015 by J…

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People have been falling in love with jazz for the past 126 years, but for many different reasons. Over the decades, the musicians, playback technology and even the music have changed and evolved. So have the reasons why jazz seduced listeners.

People won over in 1928 were likely brought into the fold by Duke Ellington, Paul Whiteman, Bix Beiderbecke and Louis Armstrong—either heard live or on 78s spinning on a phonograph. By the 1950s, the 12-inch LP had arrived, there were better record players and TV sets were surging. The most influential jazz was less about dance and more about musicianship, solos and small groups.

Today, I’m going to take a shot at creating a timeline showing highly influential recordings in different eras that attracted listeners to jazz, between 1928 and 1959. I’ll feature Part 2 on another day:

Late 1920s—Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke.

Here’s Bix Beiderbecke’s Singin’ the Blues (1927)…

Here’s trumpeter Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five’s West End Blues (1928)…

Mid-1930s—Fats Waller and Benny Goodman.

Here’s Fats Waller’s Truckin’ (1935)…

Here’s Benny Goodman’s Stompin’ at the Savoy (1936)…

Late 1930s—Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Charlie Barnet, Glenn Miller and Coleman Hawkins.

Here’s Count Basie’s One O’Clock Jump (1937)…

Here’s Artie Shaw’s Begin the Beguine (1938)…

Here’s Charlie Barnet’s Cherokee (1939)…

Here’s Glenn Miller’s In the Mood (1939)…

Here’s Coleman Hawkins’s Body and Soul (1939)…

Early 1940s—Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday.

Here’s Duke Ellington’s Take the “A” Train (1941)…

Here’s Billie Holiday’s Solitude (1941)…

Mid-1940s—Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.

Here’s Charlie Parker’s Ko-Ko, based on the chord changes to Cherokee (1945)…

Here’s Dizzy Gillespie’s Night in Tunisia (1946)…

Late 1940s—Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton and Thelonious Monk.

Here’s the Nat King Cole Trio’s (Get Your Kicks on) Route 66 (1946)…

Here’s Stan Kenton’s Intermission Riff (1946)…

Here’s Thelonious Monk’s ‘Round Midnight (1947)…

Early 1950s—Charlie Parker, Horace Silver, Chet Baker and Stan Kenton.

Here’s Charlie Parker’s Just Friends with strings (1950)…

Here’s Horace Silver’s Ecaroh (1952)…

Here’s Stan Kenton’s Invention for Guitar and Trumpet (1953)…

Mid-1950s—Chet Baker, Clifford Brown and Dave Brubeck.

Here’s Chet Baker’s But Not for Me (1954)…

Here’s Clifford Brown and Max Roach’s Joy Spring (1954)…

Here’s the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s The Duke (1955)…

Late 1950s—Miles Davis, Count Basie and Henry Mancini.

Here’s Miles Davis's All of You (1957)…

Here’s Count Basie’s Cute (1958)…

And here’s Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn (1959)…

Last weekend, I went to Manhattan’s Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum to see the new Art of Noise exhibit. On display were music posters; an evolution of listening devices, from Thomas Edison’s wax-cylinder phonograph to iPhone earbuds; a jukebox and much more illustrating how design shaped the way we’ve experienced music over the past 125 years.

While at the museum, my wife and I ran into a friend who was there with his wife and their two grandsons. The 7-year-old is passionate about jazz. But not just loves jazz. The kid has amazing taste: Roy Eldridge, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, etc. Obviously, he’s too young to know the music’s history or what the different jazz styles are called and why, but he has an astonishing innate gravitational pull to the good stuff.

As we were talking, I looked at his grandson and said, “I know why you love jazz so much. You listen through here,” patting my chest over my heart. “Me, too.” His grandson smiled and nodded in full agreement.

In the days that passed, I thought about our chance meeting and his reply. The encounter made me realize why some people get jazz and others don’t. I also realized there is one thing that makes jazz special and connects with some but sails over the heads of others: beauty.

American popular music has a long history, dating back to the 1840s. Before the invention of the phonograph and radio, before pianos became affordable household additions and before concerts, families sat around in living rooms and sang together. Most of the songs were traditional Americana folk melodies by composers such as Stephen Foster or originated from a family’s country of origin prior to immigrating to the U.S.

The next big shift in popular music was the mass production of sheet music in the late 1800s. The proliferation of upright pianos and the printing and distribution of sheet music offered the public a greater variety of popular-music options that could be heard instantly if someone could play them. Sheet music also boosted the popularity of theatrical musicals and gave rise to Tin Pan Alley, which provided stage shows with catchy tunes and lyrics.

The mass production of the phonograph at the turn of the 20th century followed by radio’s popularity in the late 1920s allowed the public to hear professionals play and sing popular songs. Broadway surged in the 1920s, and Hollywood musicals took off in the 1930s and ‘40s with the advent of talkies and more sophisticated recording technology.

Jazz surfaced following the popularity of the blues and ragtime at the dawn of the 20th century. The first jazz 78 was recorded in New York in 1917. From the start, jazz was frantic, syncopated dance music, growing more sophisticated with the arrival of stride and boogie-woogie in the 1920s. and then swing in the 1930s.

By the end of World War II, popular music began to splinter into subcategories. These categories multiplied thanks largely to the rise of independent record labels, the use of magnetic tape and recorders in studios, and the growing use of unbreakable vinyl in record production, all in the late 1940s. The new tape technology made recording music much less expensive, so genres that would have been ignored were suddenly documented and marketed to specific audiences.

On the jazz side, bebop in the mid-1940s not only revolutionized jazz by popularizing improvisation but also radically transformed popular music. The faster jazz form made stars of spectacular players and forced audiences to listen rather than dance. Even more important, jazz was the first form of popular music to make beauty a key component. By beauty, I don’t mean catchy melodies or pretty music.

Beauty, here, is the creation of art that purposefully sets out to make listeners swoon and admire what they’re hearing. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. Many people lack the emotional capacity to appreciate beauty, which isn’t a knock. Most people can’t throw a baseball with speed and accuracy, run fast for long stretches or speak off the top of their head without a written script. One either is able to feel beauty or one can’t, and learning to do so requires desire and determination.

If one has the capacity to feel beauty, then one can pick up on what jazz musicians are trying to get across. It’s my contention that all jazz musicians of any value prize beauty and want others to feel the beauty of what they are transmitting.

Starting in the 1940s, major record companies recognized that jazz, like classical, wasn’t for everyone, so they invented pop and easy listening, which weren’t as complex or demanding on the ear.

The jazz musician who first incorporated beauty into his music was Duke Ellington, in the late 1920s. Every leading jazz musician who followed made beauty a centerpiece experience. In fact, jazz is the only form of popular music where its musicians consciously make beauty an essential aspect of their compositions and improvisations.

As jazz became jump blues in the 1940s, and jump blues became R&B in the early 1950s and then rock ‘n’ roll in the second half of the decade, these back-beat forms of popular music weren’t focused on beauty but on creating a steady dance beat. Beauty wasn’t primary for Motown, the Beatles, soul, folk, pop rock, disco or hard rock—forms more concerned with chart success and raw excitement.

My feeling is it’s impossible to feel jazz unless you can hear the beauty in the music . As readers of JazzWax know well, jazz is heard through the heart. Whether it’s Dizzy Gillespie’s big bands of the 1940s, Charlie Parker’s blues, Lester Young’s relaxed tenor saxophone, Count Basie’s swing, Miles Davis’s respect for space, John Coltrane’s sheets of sound or Bill Evans’s contemplative, conversational approach, beauty is always high on the agenda. Without beauty, jazz is worthless.

One could argue that only free jazz of the 1960s and fusion of the 1970s were less about beauty and more about making a statement and showing off one’s technique. Others might insist these forms do indeed have beauty built into their expression. I suspect the latter is more accurate, though I would say that beauty in free jazz and fusion was often processed as dynamic energy.

If you’ve ever wondered why you love jazz but are puzzled that friends can’t seem to get into it, even after you play them great recordings, it’s likely because they can’t hear the beauty. This isn’t a failing or a crime. Jazz appreciation begins with feelings.

Which leaves us with a fundamental question: Can someone learn to feel beauty? The answer is yes, if it’s something they want to accomplish. As that 7-year-old proves, the key to jazz appreciation is to be in touch with your emotions and to think about what you’re feeling as the music unfolds. You also must be passionate about beauty.

Here are a few jazz tracks that require the listener to feel and appreciate beauty:

Here’s Duke Ellington’s Sophisticated Lady in 1933…

Here’s Charlie Parker playing Another Hair-Do in 1947…

Here’s Lester Young and Teddy Wilson playing Louise in 1956…

Here’s the Dave Brubeck Quartet playing Nomad in 1958…

Here’s Miles Davis playing Stella by Starlight in 1958…

Here’s John Coltrane playing Central Park West in 1964…