JAZZ NETWORK FOUNDATION - Key Persons
Aretha Louise Franklin (born March 25, 1942) is an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Although known for her soul recordings and referred to as The Queen of Soul, Franklin is also adept at jazz, blues, R&B, gospel music, and rock.
Rolling Stone magazine ranked her atop its "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" list, as well as the ninth greatest artist of all time. She has won 18 competitive Grammys and two honorary Grammys. She has 20 No.1 singles on the Billboard R&B Singles Chart and two No.1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100: "Respect" (1967) and "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" (1987), a duet with George Michael. Since 1961, she has scored a total of 45 Top 40 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Between 1967 and 1982 she had 10 No.1 R&B albums-more than any other female artist. In 1987, Franklin became the first female artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Donald Walden grew up in Clarksville (Tennessee) and from 1946 in Detroit on; as a youngster he played saxophone.
Eddie Harris - Listen Here (live Montreux)
Harris was born and grew up in Chicago. His father was originally from Cuba, and his mother from New Orleans.
Like other successful Chicago musicians, such as Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Clifford Jordan, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons,Julian Priester, and Bo Diddley (among others), young Eddie Harris studied music under Walter Dyett at DuSable High School. He later studied music at Roosevelt University, by which time he was proficient on piano, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone. While in college, he performed professionally with Gene Ammons.
After college, he was drafted into the United States Army and while serving in Europe, he was accepted into the 7th Army Band, which also included Don Ellis,Leo Wright, and Cedar Walton.
Leaving military service, he worked in New York City before returning to Chicago where he signed a contract with Vee Jay Records. His first album for Vee Jay,Exodus to Jazz included his own jazz arrangement of Ernest Gold's theme from the movie Exodus. A shortened version of this track, which featured his masterful playing in the upper register of the tenor saxophone, was heavily played on radio and became the first jazz record ever to be certified gold.
The single climbed into the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and reached #16 in the U.S.R&B chart. Some jazz critics, however, regarded commercial success as a sign that a jazz artist had sold out and Harris soon stopped playing "Exodus" in concert. He moved to Columbia Records in 1964 and then to Atlantic Records the following year where he re-established himself. In 1965, Atlantic released The In Sound, a bop album which won back many of his detractors.
Over the next few years, he began to perform on electric piano and the electric Varitone saxophone, and to perform a mixture of jazz and funk which sold well in both the jazz and rhythm and blues markets. In 1967, his album The Electrifying Eddie Harris reached second place on the R&B charts. The album's lead track, "Listen Here" was issued as a single, climbing to #11 R&B and #45 on the Hot 100. Harris released several different versions of his composition over the years, including both studio and live concert recordings.
In 1969, he performed with Les McCann at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Although the musicians had been unable to rehearse, their session was so impressive that a recording of it was released by Atlantic as Swiss Movement. This became one of the best-selling jazz albums ever, also reaching second place on the R&B charts.
Harris also came up with the idea of the reed trumpet, playing one for the first time at The Newport Jazz Festival of 1970 to mostly negative critical feedback. From 1970 to 1975, he experimented with new instruments of his own invention (the reed trumpet was a trumpet with a saxophone mouthpiece, the saxobone was a saxophone with a trombone mouthpiece, and the guitorgan was a combination of guitar and organ), with singing the blues, with jazz-rock (he recorded an album with Steve Winwood, Jeff Beck, Albert Lee, Ric Grech, Zoot Money, and other rockers). He also started singing and to perform comic R&B numbers like "That is Why You're Overweight" and "Eddie Who?".
In 1975, however, he alienated much of his audience with his album The Reason Why I'm Talkin' S**t, which consisted mainly of stand-up comedy. Interest in subsequent albums declined. He was a member of Horace Silver's Quintet in the early 1980s, and continued to record regularly well into the 1990s, sometimes in Europe where he enjoyed a loyal following, but his experimentation ended and he mainly recorded hard bop. He had moved from Chicago to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, and was responsible for much of the music on the hit TV series, The Bill Cosby Show.
Whitaker is professor of double bass and director of jazz studies at Michigan State University's College of Music. He has presented master classes at such institutions as Duke University, Howard University, University of Iowa, University of Michigan, the New School (NY), Lincoln Center, and the Detroit International Jazz Festival, and at the conferences of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE). He has also worked with Detroit Symphony Orchestra to develop a jazz education department, and conducts their Civic Jazz Orchestra, as well as being on the faculties of University of Michigan and Juilliard School.
As a small boy he received a clarinet as a gift for Christmas but could only think about one instrument, the piano. According to Flanagan "we always had a piano in our house" and he began playing it at the age of five.
The Tommy Flanagan Trio (with bassist Wilbur Little and drummer Elvin Jones) released their first album, Tommy Flanagan Trio Overseas, in 1957. As an accompanist, Flanagan worked with Ella Fitzgerald from 1963 to 1965 and 1968 to 1978. Beginning in 1975, Flanagan began once again to perform and record as a leader. He continued to work with other players, however, forming a trio with Tal Farlow and Red Mitchell, among other projects.
Flanagan's style was both modest and exceptionally musical. He embodied many of the most important qualities associated with jazz: swing, harmonic sophistication, melodic invention, bluesy feel and humour. Interestingly, he appeared on a number of highly innovative albums. (His awkward solo on the fast and harmonically complex title-track of Giant Steps is a rare [if famous] instance on record of the usually unflappable pianist being caught off-guard.)
Tommy Flanagan is mentioned by Japanese Author Haruki Murakami in the short story, Chance Traveller, in which he describes his experiences at a Tommy Flanagan performance.
During his career, Flanagan was nominated for four Grammy Awards - two for Best Jazz Performance (Group) and two for Best Jazz Performance (Soloist).
He died on 16 November 2001, of an arterial aneurysm.