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The song soon became a popular and much-recorded jazz standard, described as “without doubt … one of the finest songs the composer ever wrote … Gershwin’s highly evocative writing brilliantly mixes elements of jazz and the song styles of blacks in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century”. Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim has characterized Heyward’s lyrics for “Summertime” and “My Man’s Gone Now” as “the best lyrics in the musical theater”.
Porgy and Bess
Gershwin began composing the song in December 1933, attempting to create his own spiritual in the style of the African American folk music of the period. Gershwin had completed setting DuBose Heyward’s poem to music by February 1934, and spent the next 20 months completing and orchestrating the score of the opera.
The song is sung several times throughout Porgy and Bess. Its lyrics are the first words heard in act 1 of the opera, following the communal “wa-do-wa”. It is sung by Clara as a lullaby. The song theme is reprised soon after as counterpoint to the crapsgame scene, in act 2 in a reprise by Clara, and in act 3 by Bess, singing to Clara’s now-orphaned baby after both its parents died in the storm. It was recorded for the first time by Abbie Mitchell on July 19, 1935, with George Gershwin playing the piano and conducting the orchestra (on: George Gershwin Conducts Excerpts from Porgy & Bess, Mark 56 667).
The 1959 movie version of the musical featured Loulie Jean Norman singing the song. That rendition finished at #52 in AFI’s 100 Years…100 Songs survey of top tunes in American cinema.
Lyrics
Heyward’s inspiration for the lyrics was the southern folk spiritual-lullaby “All My Trials“, of which he had Clara sing a snippet in his play Porgy.[7][8] The lyrics have been highly praised by Stephen Sondheim. Writing of the opening line, he says:
That “and” is worth a great deal of attention. I would write “Summertime when” but that “and” sets up a tone, a whole poetic tone, not to mention a whole kind of diction that is going to be used in the play; an informal, uneducated diction and a stream of consciousness, as in many of the songs like “My Man’s Gone Now”. It’s the exact right word, and that word is worth its weight in gold. “Summertime when the livin’ is easy” is a boring line compared to “Summertime and”. The choices of “ands” [and] “buts” become almost traumatic as you are writing a lyric – or should, anyway – because each one weighs so much.
Music
Musicologist K. J. McElrath wrote of the song:
Gershwin was remarkably successful in his intent to have this sound like a folk song. This is reinforced by his extensive use of the pentatonic scale (C–D–E–G–A) in the context of the A minor tonality and a slow-moving harmonic progression that suggests a “blues“. Because of these factors, this tune has been a favorite of jazz performers for decades and can be done in a variety of tempos and styles.
While in his own description, Gershwin did not use any previously composed spirituals in his opera, Summertime is often considered an adaptation of the African American spiritual “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child“, which ended the play version of Porgy.Alternatively, the song has been proposed as an amalgamation of that spiritual and the Ukrainian Yiddish lullaby Pipi-pipipee.The Ukrainian-Canadian composer and singer Alexis Kochan has suggested that some part of Gershwin’s inspiration may have come from having heard the Ukrainian lullaby “Oi Khodyt Son Kolo Vikon” (“A Dream Passes by the Windows”) at a New York City performance by Alexander Koshetz‘s Ukrainian National Chorus in 1929 (or 1926).
Other versions
Statistics for the number of recordings of “Summertime” vary by source; while older data is restricted to commercial releases, newer sources may include versions self-published online. The Jazz Discography in 2005 listed 1,161 official releases, ranking the song fourth among jazz standards.Joe Nocera in 2012 said there were “over 25,000” recordings.
Guinness World Records lists the website’s 2017 figure of 67,591 as the world record total.
Bill Evans (1929-1980), american jazz pianist and composer, Solo Sessions I-II Download the sheet music transcriptions here.
Bill Evans, William John Evans (August 16, 1929 – September 15, 1980) was an American jazz pianist and composer who mostly played in trios. His use of impressionist harmony, inventive interpretation of traditional jazz repertoire, block chords, and trademark rhythmically independent, “singing” melodic lines continue to influence jazz pianists today.
Born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1929, he was classically trained at Southeastern Louisiana University and the Mannes School of Music, where he majored in composition and received the Artist Diploma. In 1955, he moved to New York City, where he worked with bandleader and theorist George Russell. In 1958, Evans joined Miles Davis’s sextet, which in 1959, then immersed in modal jazz, recorded Kind of Blue, the best-selling jazz album of all time. During that time, Evans was also playing with Chet Baker for the album Chet.
In late 1959, Evans left the Miles Davis band and began his career as a leader, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian, a group now regarded as a seminal modern jazz trio. In 1961, ten days after finishing an engagement at the New York Village Vanguard jazz club, LaFaro died in a car accident.
After months of seclusion, Evans re-emerged with a new trio, featuring bassist Chuck Israels. In 1963, Evans recorded Conversations with Myself, a solo album using the unconventional technique of overdubbing over himself. In 1966, he met bassist Eddie Gómez, with whom he would work for eleven years. Many of Evans’s compositions, such as “Waltz for Debby”, have become standards, played and recorded by many artists.
Evans was honored with 31 Grammy nominations and seven awards, and was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
The Solo Sessions, Vol. 1 is an album by jazz pianist Bill Evans, released in 1989. Evans recorded The Solo Sessions, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 at the same session, on January 10, 1963 and the tracks were originally released as part of Bill Evans: The Complete Riverside Recordings in 1984. The Bill Evans Memorial Library states these sessions were never intended for release.
The Solo Sessions, Vol. 2 is an album by jazz pianist Bill Evans, released in 1992. Evans recorded The Solo Sessions, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 at the same session, on January 10, 1963. The Bill Evans Memorial Library states these sessions were never intended for release. Personnel: Bill Evans (p) Released: 1989, 1992 Recorded: January 24, 1963 Label: Milestone M-9170, MCD 9195-2 Producer: Orrin Keepnews.
Vol I: 0:00 “What Kind of Fool Am I?” [Take 1] (Bricusse, Newley) 6:17 “Medley: My Favorite Things/Easy to Love/Baubles, Bangles, & Beads” (Borodin, Wright, Forrest) 18:51 “When I Fall in Love” (Heyman, Young) 21:52 “Medley: Spartacus Love Theme/Nardis” (Alex North) 30:27 “Everything Happens to Me” (Adair, Dennis) 36:15 “April in Paris” (Duke, E. Y. Harburg)
Vol II: 42:06 “All the Things You Are” (Hammerstein II, Kern) 51:14 “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town” (Coots, Gillespie) 55:53 “I Loves You Porgy” (Gershwin, Gershwin, Heyward) 1:01:44 “What Kind of Fool Am I?” [Take 2] (Bricusse, Newley) 1:08:31 “Love Is Here to Stay” (Gershwin, Gershwin) 1:12:33 “Ornithology” (Harris, Parker) 1:18:08 “Medley: Autumn in New York/How About You?” (Duke, Freed, Lane) You can find many Bill Evans solo transcriptions and compositions sheet music in our open Library, including the great analysis book “The Harmony of Bill Evans”, by Jack Reilly.
A version in 1977 by Grace Jones was also a successful international hit.”La Vie en rose” has been covered by many other artists over the years, including a 1993 version by Donna Summer. Harry James also recorded a version in 1950. Bing Crosby recorded the song again for his 1953 album Le Bing: Song Hits of Paris.
Louis Armstrong
Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed “Satchmo“, “Satch“, and “Pops“, was an American trumpeter, composer, vocalist, and actor who was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades, from the 1920s to the 1960s, and different eras in the history of jazz. In 2017, he was inducted into the Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame.
Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, Armstrong was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, he followed his mentor, Joe “King” Oliver, to Chicago to play in the Creole Jazz Band. In Chicago, he spent time with other popular jazz musicians, reconnecting with his friend Bix Beiderbecke and spending time with Hoagy Carmichael and Lil Hardin. He earned a reputation at “cutting contests“, and relocated to New York in order to join Fletcher Henderson‘s band.
With his instantly recognizable rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser, bending the lyrics and melody of a song. He was also skilled at scat singing. Armstrong is renowned for his charismatic stage presence and voice as well as his trumpet playing. By the end of Armstrong’s career in the 1960s, his influence had spread to popular music in general. Armstrong was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to “cross over” to wide popularity with white (and international) audiences.
He rarely publicly politicized his race, to the dismay of fellow African Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He was able to access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for black men.
Play Guitar with….ERIC CLAPTON “Tears in Heaven” (unplugged) with sheet music & audio track
Guitar Play Along series will assist players in learning to play their favorite songs quickly and easily. Just follow the tab, listen to the audio to hear how the guitar should sound, and then play along using the separate backing tracks.
The melody and lyrics are also included in the book in case you want to sing, or to simply help you follow along.
Acclaimed guitarist and singer-songwriter Eric Clapton is known for his contributions to The Yardbirds and Cream, as well as such singles as “Tears in Heaven” as a solo artist.
Who Is Eric Clapton?
Eric Clapton was a prominent member of The Yardbirds and Cream before achieving success as a solo artist. Considered one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll guitarists of all time, he is known for such classic songs as “Layla,” “Crossroads” and “Wonderful Tonight.”
Early Life
Eric Patrick Clapton was born March 30, 1945, in Ripley, Surrey, England. Clapton’s mother, Patricia Molly Clapton, was only 16 years old at the time of his birth; his father, Edward Walter Fryer, was a 24-year-old Canadian soldier stationed in the United Kingdom during World War II. Fryer returned to Canada, where he was already married to another woman, before Clapton’s birth.
As a single teenage mother, Patricia Clapton was unprepared to raise a child on her own, so her mother and stepfather, Rose and Jack Clapp, raised Clapton as their own. Although they never legally adopted him, Clapton grew up under the impression that his grandparents were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Clapton’s last name comes from his grandfather, Patricia’s father, Reginald Cecil Clapton.
Clapton grew up in a very musical household. His grandmother was a skilled pianist, and his mother and uncle both enjoyed listening to big-band music. As it turns out, Clapton’s absent father was also a talented pianist who had played in several dance bands while stationed in Surrey. Around the age of eight, Clapton discovered the earth-shattering truth that the people he believed were his parents were actually his grandparents and that the woman he considered his older sister was in fact his mother. Clapton later recalled, “The truth dawned on me, that when Uncle Adrian jokingly called me a little bastard, he was telling the truth.”
The young Clapton, until then a good student and well-liked boy, grew sullen and reserved and lost all motivation to do his schoolwork. He describes a moment shortly after learning the news of his parentage: “I was playing around with my grandma’s compact, with a little mirror you know, and I saw myself in two mirrors for the first time and I don’t know about you but it was like hearing your voice on a tape machine for the first… and I didn’t, I, I was so upset.
I saw a receding chin and a broken nose and I thought my life is over.” Clapton failed the important 11-plus exams that determine admission to secondary school. However, he showed a high aptitude for art, so at the age of 13 he enrolled in the art branch of the Holyfield Road School.
Musical Start
By that time, 1958, rock ‘n’ roll had exploded onto the British music scene; for his 13th birthday, Clapton asked for a guitar. He received a cheap German-made Hoyer, and finding the steel-stringed guitar difficult and painful to play, he soon set it aside. At the age of 16, he gained acceptance into the Kingston College of Art on a one-year probation; it was there, surrounded by teenagers with musical tastes similar to his own, that Clapton really took to the instrument.
Clapton was especially taken with the blues guitar played by musicians such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Alexis Korner, the last of whom inspired Clapton to buy his first electric guitar — a relative rarity in England.
It was also at Kingston that Clapton discovered something that would have nearly as great an impact on his life as the guitar: booze. He recalls that the first time he got drunk, at the age of 16, he woke up alone in the woods, covered in vomit and without any money. “I couldn’t wait to do it all again,” Clapton remembers. Clapton was expelled from school after his first year.
He later explained, “Even when you got to art school, it wasn’t just a rock ‘n’ roll holiday camp. I got thrown out after a year for not doing any work. That was a real shock. I was always in the pub or playing the guitar.” Finished with school, in 1963 Clapton started hanging around the West End of London and trying to break into the music industry as a guitarist. That year, he joined his first band, The Roosters, but they broke up after only a few months.
Next he joined the pop-oriented Casey Jones and The Engineers but left the band after just a few weeks. At this point, not yet making a living off his music, Clapton worked as a laborer at construction sites to make ends meet.
Already one of the most respected guitarists on the West End pub circuit, in October 1963 Clapton received an invitation to join a band called The Yardbirds. With The Yardbirds, Clapton recorded his first commercial hits, “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl” and “For Your Love,” but he soon grew frustrated with the band’s commercial pop sound and left the group in 1965. The two young guitarists who replaced Clapton in The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, would also go on to rank among the greatest rock guitarists in history.
Tears in Heaven
“Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven? Would it be the same, if I saw you in heaven?” asks the lyrics to “Tears in Heaven,” the emotionally wrought hit song by guitar idol Eric Clapton. Released in 1991 it charted in the top 10 in more than 20 countries and won Grammys for Song of the Year, Album of the Year (Unplugged) and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.
Though it achieved incredible international success, the creation of the song, like many adored ballads and laments, was heavily influenced by the emotional state of its creator. For Clapton, it arose out of the pain following the accidental death of his 4-year-old son Conor, and it is infused it with all the loss, heartache and longing of a grieving parent.
Making History
Later in 1965, Clapton joined the blues band John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, the next year recording an album called The Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, which established his reputation as one of the great guitarists of the age. The album, which included songs such as “What’d I Say” and “Ramblin’ on My Mind,” is widely considered among the greatest blues albums of all time. Clapton’s miraculous guitar-playing on the album also inspired his most flattering nickname, “God,” popularized by a bit of graffiti on the wall of a London Tube station reading “Clapton is God.”
Despite the record’s success, Clapton soon left the Bluesbreakers as well; a few months later, he teamed up with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker to form the rock trio Cream. Performing highly original takes on blues classics such as “Crossroads” and “Spoonful,” as well as modern blues tracks like “Sunshine of Your Love” and “White Room,” Clapton pushed the boundaries of blues guitar. On the strength of three well-received albums, Fresh Cream (1966), Disraeli Gears (1967) and Wheels of Fire (1968), as well as extensive touring in the United States, Cream achieved international superstar status. Yet they, too, broke up after two final concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall, citing clashing egos as the cause.
Hard Times
After the breakup of Cream, Clapton formed yet another band, Blind Faith, but the group broke up after only one album and a disastrous American tour. Then, in 1970, he formed Derek and the Dominos, and went on to compose and record one of the seminal albums of rock history, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. A concept album about unrequited love, Clapton wrote Layla to express his desperate affection for Pattie Boyd, the wife of the Beatles’ George Harrison. The album was critically acclaimed but a commercial failure, and in its aftermath a depressed and lonely Clapton deteriorated into three years of heroin.
Clapton finally kicked his drug habit and reemerged onto the music scene in 1974 with two concerts at London’s Rainbow Theater organized by his friend Pete Townshend of The Who. Later that year he released 461 Ocean Boulevard, featuring one his most popular singles, a cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff.” The album marked the beginning of a remarkably prolific solo career during which Clapton produced notable album after notable album. Highlights include No Reason to Cry (1976), featuring “Hello Old Friend”; Slowhand (1977), featuring “Cocaine” and “Wonderful Tonight”; and Behind the Sun (1985), featuring “She’s Waiting” and “Forever Man.”
Despite his great musical productivity during these years, Clapton’s personal life remained in woeful disarray. In 1979, five years after her divorce from George Harrison, Pattie Boyd finally did marry Eric Clapton. However, by this time Clapton had simply replaced his heroin addiction with alcoholism, and his drinking placed a constant strain on their relationship. He was an unfaithful husband and conceived two children with other women during their marriage.
A yearlong affair with Yvonne Kelly produced a daughter, Ruth, in 1985, and an affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo led to a son, Conor, in 1986. Clapton and Boyd divorced in 1989. In 1991, Clapton’s son Conor died when he fell out of the window of his mother’s apartment. The tragedy took a heavy toll on Clapton and also inspired one of his most beautiful and heartfelt songs, “Tears in Heaven.”
New Beginnings
In 1987, with the help of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, Clapton finally quit drinking and has remained sober ever since. Being sober for the first time in his adult life allowed Clapton to achieve the kind of personal happiness he had never known before. In 1998, he founded the Crossroads Centre, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility, and in 2002, he married Melia McEnery. Together they have three daughters, Julie Rose, Ella Mae and Sophie.
Clapton, who published his autobiography in 2007, was ranked the second greatest guitarist of all time by Rolling Stone in 2015. An 18-time Grammy Award winner and the only triple inductee of the Rock and Roll of Fame (as a member of The Yardbirds, as a member of Cream and as a solo artist), he continued to record music and tour through his 60s, while also performing charity work.
In 2016, Clapton revealed that he had been diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy three years earlier, a condition that left him with back and leg pain. In early 2018, he admitted in an interview that he was also dealing with tinnitus, a ringing in the ears caused by noise-induced hearing loss. Despite the ailments, the guitar legend said he intended to continue performing that year.
was an American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, and composer. He was one of the first important soloists in jazz, beating trumpeter Louis Armstrong to the recording studio by several months. His erratic temperament hampered his career, and not until the late 1940s did he earn wide acclaim.
Sidney Bechet was the first important jazz soloist on records in history (beating Louis Armstrong by a few months). A brilliant soprano saxophonist and clarinetist with a wide vibrato that listeners either loved or hated, Bechet’s style did not evolve much through the years but he never lost his enthusiasm or creativity. A master at both individual and collective improvisation within the genre of New Orleans jazz, Bechet was such a dominant player that trumpeters found it very difficult to play with him. Bechet wanted to play lead and it was up to the other horns to stay out of his way.
Sidney Bechet studied clarinet in New Orleans with Lorenzo Tio, Big Eye Louis Nelson, and George Baquet and he developed so quickly that as a child he was playing with some of the top bands in the city. He even taught clarinet, and one of his students (Jimmie Noone) was actually two years older than him. In 1917, he traveled to Chicago, and in 1919 he joined Will Marion Cook’s orchestra, touring Europe with Cook and receiving a remarkably perceptive review from Ernst Ansermet.
While overseas he found a soprano sax in a store and from then on it was his main instrument. Back in the U.S., Bechet made his recording debut in 1923 with Clarence Williams and during the next two years he appeared on records backing blues singers, interacting with Louis Armstrong and playing some stunning solos. He was with Duke Ellington’s early orchestra for a period and at one point hired a young Johnny Hodges for his own band. However, from 1925-1929 Bechet was overseas, traveling as far as Russia but getting in trouble (and spending jail time) in France before being deported.
Most of the 1930s were comparatively lean times for Bechet. He worked with Noble Sissle on and off and had a brilliant session with his New Orleans Feetwarmers in 1932 (featuring trumpeter Tommy Ladnier). But he also ran a tailor’s shop which was more notable for its jam sessions than for any money it might make. However, in 1938 he had a hit recording of “Summertime,” Hugues Panassie featured Bechet on some records and soon he was signed to Bluebird where he recorded quite a few classics during the next three years.
Bechet worked regularly in New York, appeared on some of Eddie Condon’s Town Hall concerts, and in 1945 he tried unsuccessfully to have a band with the veteran trumpeter Bunk Johnson (whose constant drinking killed the project). Jobs began to dry up about this time, and Bechet opened up what he hoped would be a music school. He only had one main pupil, but Bob Wilber became his protégé.
Sidney Bechet’s fortunes changed drastically in 1949. He was invited to the Salle Pleyel Jazz Festival in Paris, caused a sensation, and decided to move permanently overseas. Within a couple years he was a major celebrity and a national hero in France, even though the general public in the U.S. never did know who he was. Bechet’s last decade was filled with exciting concerts, many recordings, and infrequent visits back to the U.S. before his death from cancer. His colorful (if sometimes fanciful) memoirs Treat It Gentle and John Chilton’s magnificent Bechet biography The Wizard of Jazz (which traces his life nearly week-by-week) are both highly recommended. Many of Sidney Bechet’s recordings are currently available on CD.
“Petite Fleur” is an instrumental written by Sidney Bechet and recorded by him in January 1952, first with the Sidney Bechet All Stars and later with Claude Luter and his Orchestra.
In 1959, it was an international hit as a clarinet solo by Monty Sunshine with Chris Barber’s Jazz Band.[1] This recording, which was made on October 10, 1956, peaked at No. 5 on the US Hot 100 and No. 4 in the UK charts.Outside UK Chris Barber’s version was extremely big in Sweden topping the Swedish best selling chart for no less than 12 weeks according to the branch paper Show Business. Their version was in A♭ minor, in contrast to Bechet’s, which was in G minor.
There was also another recording by Bob Crosby and the Bobcats. Following the Chris Barber instrumental recording, lyrics were added by Fernand Bonifay and Mario Bua in the same year. A different set of lyrics was written by Paddy Roberts and the song was recorded by Teddy Johnson and Pearl Carr in 1959.
Petula Clark recorded the song in French and it was included in her album Hello Paris (1962).
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, CC, CQ, OOnt, jazz pianist, composer, educator (born 15 August 1925 in Montréal, QC; died 23 December 2007 in Mississauga, ON). Oscar Peterson is one of Canada’s most honoured musicians. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time. He was renowned for his remarkable speed and dexterity, meticulous and ornate technique, and dazzling, swinging style.
He earned the nicknames “the brown bomber of boogie-woogie” and “master of swing.” A prolific recording artist, he typically released several albums a year from the 1950s until his death. He also appeared on more than 200 albums by other artists, including Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, who called him “the man with four hands.” His sensitivity in these supporting roles, as well as his acclaimed compositions such as Canadiana Suite and “Hymn to Freedom,” was overshadowed by his stunning virtuosity as a soloist.
Also a noted jazz educator and advocate for racial equality, Peterson won a Juno Award and eight Grammy Awards, including one for lifetime achievement. The first recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the International Jazz Hall of Fame. He was also made an Officer and then Companion of the Order of Canada, and an Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters in France, among many other honours.
Childhood, Family and Education
Oscar Peterson was the fourth of five children. He was raised in the poor St. Henri neighbourhood of Montreal, also known as Little Burgundy. His parents hailed from St. Kitts and the British Virgin Islands. (See alsoCaribbean Canadians.) His mother, Kathleen, was a domestic worker. His father, Daniel, was a boatswain in the Merchant Marines who became a porter with the Canadian Pacific Railway.
A self-taught amateur organist and strict disciplinarian, he led the family band in concerts at churches and community halls. He insisted that all of the Peterson children learn piano and a brass instrument. Each in turn taught the next youngest child.
Oscar began playing trumpet and piano at age five. He focused solely on piano at age eight following a year-long battle with tuberculosis. (The disease claimed the life of his eldest brother, Fred, at age 16.) Oscar’s first instructor was his sister, Daisy. She became a respected piano teacher in Montreal’s Black community. Her later pupils included the jazz musicians Oliver Jones, Joe Sealy and Reg Wilson. Peterson’s brother, Chuck, became a professional trumpet player. His other sister, May, taught piano. She also worked for a time as Oscar’s personal assistant.
Peterson studied piano during his youth and teens with teachers of widely different backgrounds. At the age of 12, he briefly took piano lessons from Louis Hooper, a classically trained Canadian veteran of the Harlem jazz scene of the 1920s. Later, Peterson attended the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal. At 14, he studied with Paul de Marky, a Hungarian concert pianist in the 19th-century tradition of Franz Liszt. Peterson was also a classmate of trumpet player Maynard Ferguson. They played together in a dance band led by Maynard’s brother, Percy.
Early Career
At age 14, Peterson entered an amateur contest sponsored by radio personality Ken Soble. (He was encouraged to enter by his sister Daisy, who also helped pay for his studies.) Oscar won the $250 first prize. Shortly thereafter, he began his own weekly radio show, Fifteen Minutes Piano Rambling, on the Montreal station CKAC. In 1941, he was featured on CBM’s Rhythm Time. By 1945, he was heard nationally on the CBC’s Light Up and Listen and The Happy Gang.
Peterson’s growing command of the keyboard reflected his classical background. However, the influence of the popular American pianists Nat King Cole, Teddy Wilson and especially his idol, Art Tatum, steered him towards a future in jazz. Even a chronic case of arthritis, which first became apparent in his teens, could not slow his progress. During his teen years, he received offers from Jimmie Lunceford and Count Basie to move to the US and join their bands. His parents felt he was too young and wouldn’t allow it.
Oscar Peterson emerged as a celebrity in Montreal’s music scene in the early 1940s. He dropped out of high school at age 17 to play as a featured soloist in Johnny Holmes’s popular (and otherwise white) dance band from 1943 to 1947. Peterson’s father was skeptical of letting his son leave school to pursue a career in music. He reportedly told Oscar, “If you’re going to go out there and be a piano player, don’t just be another one. Be the best.”
Canada’s First Jazz Star
Peterson made his first recordings for RCA Victor in March 1945. These early releases, notably “I Got Rhythm” and “The Sheik of Araby,” reveal the talent for boogie-woogie that earned him the nickname “the brown bomber of boogie-woogie.” They also reveal the extraordinary technique that would characterize his playing throughout his career. Peterson made sixteen 78s (32 songs in total) for RCA Victor between 1945 and 1949, The last of these suggest the influence of bebop. These songs were compiled on CD by BMG France in 1994; they were repackaged by BMG Canada in 1996 as The Complete Young Oscar Peterson (1945–1949).
The popularity of these records established Peterson as the first jazz star that Canada could truly call its own. His exposure on CBC Radio and his two tours of Western Canada in 1946 also contributed to his growing fame. By 1947, he was headlining Montreal’s Alberta Lounge with his own trio. It consisted of Austin “Ozzie” Roberts on bass and Clarence Jones on drums. (Guitarist Ben Johnson occasionally subbed in for Jones.) The trio was heard on Montreal radio station CFCF in broadcasts from the lounge. The other recorded document of Peterson’s Montreal years is the soundtrack for Norman McLaren’s innovative and award-winning National Film Board short, Begone Dull Care (1949).
By the end of the 1940s, Peterson had all but exhausted the limited jazz market in Canada. Word of his talent had spread to the US. Following a tour to Montreal, Dizzy Gillespie told composer and record producer Leonard Feather, “There’s a pianist up here who’s just too much. You’ve never heard anything like it! We gotta put him in concert.”
However, Feather took no action. Similarly, American jazz impresario and record producer Norman Granz heard about Peterson through Coleman Hawkins and Billy Strayhorn. But Granz also failed to reach out to the Canadian pianist until a 1949 visit to Montreal. Granz was on his way to the airport to leave the city when he heard Peterson playing on the radio from the Alberta Lounge. He told the cab driver to take him there immediately.
American Introduction
Granz became Peterson’s manager. He decided to introduce Peterson to American audiences at a Jazz at the Philharmonic (JATP) performance at New York’s Carnegie Hall on 18 September 1949. The lineup for the show included such jazz greats as Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich, Roy Eldridge and Lester Young. Granz couldn’t secure Peterson a work visa in time for the show. So, he planted him in the audience and brought the six-foot-three, 240-pound 24-year-old onstage as a surprise guest.
Peterson’s performance with bassist Ray Brown caused a sensation. DownBeat magazine wrote that it “stopped the concert dead cold in its tracks.” The appearance was a watershed moment for Peterson. It marked the beginning of an international career of remarkable productivity and distinction.
Career Highlights
Norman Granz became a close friend and was Peterson’s manager until 1988. Under his guidance, Peterson toured with Jazz at the Philharmonic from 1950 to 1952. His bravura performances, both in concert and on record, immediately captured the imagination of the American public. The growth and persistence of Peterson’s popularity was reflected in his first-place standing in the piano category of DownBeat magazine’s readers’ poll 15 times in 23 years: in 1950–54, 1958–63, 1965–67 and 1972. He also won the magazine’s critics’ poll in 1953, in addition to many other such polls.
Peterson made his first American recordings for Granz’s label, Verve, in 1950 with Ray Brown as his bassist. Their version of “Tenderly” was especially popular. In 1951, Peterson formed a trio with Brown (who would be a stalwart of Peterson’s groups for the next 15 years) and drummer Charlie Smith. Smith was soon replaced by the guitarists Irving Ashby (formerly of the Nat King Cole Trio), Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis, who joined in 1953.
The Peterson-Brown-Ellis trio was regarded by many as the best piano-bass-guitar trio of all time. It became renowned for its passionate and spontaneous soloing, as well as its ability to play at breakneck tempos and to tackle complex arrangements.
Peterson toured Europe with JATP in 1952, 1953 and 1954. He returned annually with his trio for many years. They often accompanied the singer Ella Fitzgerald. In 1953, Peterson made the first of many appearances in Japan. In the early 1950s, while playing at a club in Washington, DC, Peterson met his idol, Art Tatum. The two became good friends. Peterson performed at the Montreal, Stratford, Shaw and Vancouver International festivals, and appeared often in Canadian nightclubs. His trio recorded a celebrated LP at Stratford — Oscar Peterson at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival (1956). It also recorded the acclaimed On the Town (1958) at Toronto’s Town Tavern.
Throughout his career, Peterson made Canada his home base. In 1958, he moved from Montreal to Toronto, and later to nearby Mississauga. Also in 1958, Ellis left the trio. In 1959, Peterson changed its composition to piano, bass and drums by adding drummer Ed Thigpen, famous for his sensitivity and meticulous brushwork. The Peterson trio of this period was celebrated for its seemingly telepathic sense of interplay and its virtuosity.
Night Train (1962), recorded with his trio, proved to be one of Peterson’s most commercially successful albums. Canadiana Suite (1964) was one of his most acclaimed. Between 1963 and 1968, he recorded a series of solo albums for MPS called Exclusively for my Friends. Following the departure of Brown and Thigpen in 1965, Peterson added bassist Sam Jones and drummer Louis Hayes. Hayes was replaced in 1967 by Bobby Durham. During the years 1967–71, Peterson recorded for the most part in Villingen, West Germany, for the Saba label (later MPS).
In 1970, Oscar Peterson began to perform solo almost exclusively. He returned to the small ensemble format in 1972 with guitarist Joe Pass and bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen. The success of this trio rivaled that of the Peterson-Brown-Ellis group. The band expanded to a quartet in 1974 with the addition of drummer Martin Drew. In the 1970s, Peterson recorded with such artists as Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Stéphane Grappelli on many of his own albums for the Pablo label.
The mid-1970s saw Peterson achieve a high degree of critical acclaim and industry recognition. He had four Grammy Award-winning albums: The Trio (1973), The Giants (1974), Oscar Peterson and the Trumpet Kings – Jousts (1974) and Montreux ’77 (1977). He also released live records of concerts in Tokyo, Amsterdam, Paris, London, Tallinn, The Hague and New York.
His album If You Could See Me Now (1983), recorded with the quartet of Pass, Ørsted Pedersen and Drew, won a 1987 Juno Award for Best Jazz Album. However, by decade’s end, his arthritis had become increasingly severe. As a result, he reduced his performance schedule to a matter of weeks each year in Europe, Japan and the US.
In 1990, he reunited with the Brown-Ellis trio, producing several acclaimed albums of their performances at the Blue Note club in New York. Live at the Blue Note (1990) and Saturday Night at the Blue Note (1990) won a total of three Grammy Awards. Last Call at the Blue Note (1990) received a Juno Award nomination.
In 1993, several months after having hip replacement surgery, Peterson had a stroke while performing at the Blue Note. His left side was especially affected. He withdrew from commitments and resumed performing gradually after a two-year recovery. A restricted ability in his left hand became noticeable; it greatly reduced the strong contrapuntal quality that he had always played with. Yet he continued to tour, compose and record. According to broadcaster Ross Porter, “What he was able to achieve, playing with half of what most other pianists had, he was still light years ahead of everyone else.”
Peterson appeared at Carnegie Hall in 1995 and at a tribute to him at New York’s Town Hall in 1996. His album Oscar Peterson Meets Roy Hargrove and Ralph Moore (1996) was nominated for a Juno Award in 1997. He played Massey Hall and Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto, and occasionally at jazz festivals, such as Toronto’s 2001 JVC festival and various European festivals. Also in 2001, he toured Seattle, Los Angeles and San Francisco. By that time, he had completed more than 130 albums under his own name, mainly for the labels Verve (1950–64), MPS (1967–71), Pablo (1972–86) and Telarc (beginning in 1990).
In 2002, Peterson published his memoir, A Jazz Odyssey: The Life of Oscar Peterson. A tribute concert held at Carnegie Hall on 8 June 2007, as part of the Fujitsu Jazz Festival, featured performances by Wynton Marsalis, Marian McPartland, Hank Jones and Clark Terry. Peterson was originally scheduled to appear but bowed out due to frail health. He died of kidney failure in his Mississauga home in December that year.
Compositions
As a composer, Peterson wrote and recorded a variety of his own jazz themes. His popular “Hymn to Freedom” (from Night Train, 1962) became an anthem of the US civil rights movement during the 1960s. Versions of “Hymn to Freedom” were recorded in the 1980s by Oliver Jones and Doug Riley.
Peterson’s most significant and best-known composition was Canadiana Suite (1964). It is an eight-part programmatic survey of Canada’s distinguishing features, including “Wheatland” (the Prairies), “Hogtown Blues” (Toronto) and “Land of the Misty Giants” (the Rocky Mountains). Described by Peterson as “a musical portrait of the Canada I love,” Canadiana Suite was nominated for a Grammy Award as best jazz composition of 1965. It has been arranged for big band by both Phil Nimmons and Ron Collier, and for orchestra by Rick Wilkins, who served on several occasions as Peterson’s orchestrator.
Peterson wrote City Lights (1977), a waltz about the City of Toronto, for the Ballets Jazz de Montreal. He also composed The African Suite (1979), A Royal Wedding Suite (1981, for the wedding of Prince Charles and Princess Diana) and Easter Suite (1984).
He composed and performed works for jazz trio and orchestra on commission from Bach 300 (premiered with the National Arts Centre Orchestra at Toronto’s Roy Thomson Hall in 1984) and for the 1988 Olympic Winter Games in Calgary. His Trail of Dreams: A Canadian Suite, inspired by the Trans Canada Trail, was commissioned by Music 2000 and premiered that year at Roy Thomson Hall.
Peterson’s compositions have been recorded by such jazz greats as Count Basie, Ray Brown, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Roy Eldridge, Marian McPartland, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson. His other works for jazz group over the years included “Hallelujah Time,” “Blues for Big Scotia,” “The Smudge,” “Bossa Beguine,” “A Little Jazz Exercise,” “Tippin’,” “Mississauga Rattler,” “Samba Sensitive” and a variety of informally conceived blues works. Parts of Peterson’s suites (e.g., “Nigerian Marketplace” from African Suite) have been played and recorded as independent pieces.
For film, Peterson wrote and recorded “Blues for Allan Felix,” heard in the Woody Allen comedy Play It Again Sam (1972). He composed scores for the feature film The Silent Partner (1977), which won a Canadian Film Award in 1978, and the documentaries Big North and Fields of Endless Day. The latter was a National Film Board/Ontario Educational Communications Authority-produced history of Black Canadians. His score for the biographical documentary In the Key of Oscar received a Gemini Award in 1993.
Style and Approach
Through his studies with Paul de Marky, Peterson followed in the pianistic tradition of Franz Liszt. Impressionist and late-Romantic influences were also detected in his playing. After a concert in Toronto in 1950, Hugh Thompson observed in the Daily Star, “His version of ‘Tenderly’ leans heavily on Debussy and Ravel in its harmonies, and his ‘Little White Lies’ had definite echoes of Rachmaninoff.”
In jazz, Peterson acknowledged the influence of Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Hank Jones and Nat King Cole (whom Peterson resembled especially on the rare occasions he sang). Peterson’s style can be heard as the product of a transitional period in jazz, the 1940s. Even in his later years he moved freely from stride to bebop.
Gene Lees, writing in Maclean’s in 1975, quoted the Argentine composer-pianist Lalo Schifrin as saying, “Oscar is a true romantic in the 19th-century sense, with the addition of the 20th-century Afro-American jazz tradition. He is a top-class virtuoso.” Lees added, “This response is common. Peterson has astounding speed. Only Phineas Newborn and the late Art Tatum, one of his idols and mentors, have equaled him. And he has a power of direct swing that Tatum never equaled.
His ideas are not always original; on a poor night, he falls back on his own highly identifiable phrases of musical vocabulary and some he got from others, such as a curious spinning chromatic figure of Dizzy Gillespie’s. But these alone can be electrifying — the brilliantly clear and perfectly balanced runs, like streams of sparks, the great chords whacked into perfect place in the swing with the left hand that plays tenths effortlessly and could, I suppose, if he wanted, encompass twelfths, the dizzying passages in octaves that utilize a left hand as proficient as the right.”
Criticism and Praise
Paradoxically, Peterson’s greatest strength, his technique, brought him his greatest criticism: that his performances, for all their facility, were an overwhelming mélange of style over substance and lacked emotional warmth. In 1973, Times of London music critic John S. Wilson wrote, “For the last 20 years, Oscar Peterson has been one of the most dazzling exponents of the flying fingers school of piano playing.
His performances have tended to be beautifully executed displays of technique but woefully weak on emotional projection.” The New York Times noted in his obituary that, “many critics found Mr. Peterson more derivative than original, especially early in his career. Some even suggested that his fantastic technique lacked coherence and was almost too much for some listeners to compute.” JazzTimes critic Thomas Conrad described Peterson’s achievements as “more athletic than aesthetic.” He claimed that songs which should have been occasions for self-revelation became, in Peterson’s hands, “elegant, flawless and detached.”
Noted musicologist Max Harrison and New Yorker columnist Whitney Baillett found Peterson’s style to be glib and superficial. No less a figure than Miles Davis criticized Peterson’s ability for interplay, saying that, “nearly everything he plays, he plays with the same degree of force. He leaves no holes for the rhythm section.”
The Toronto Star’s Peter Goddard once observed that, “wowing audiences with flash fingering bothered critics who thought speed was all he had… In the 1950s hailed as ‘the greatest living jazz pianist,’ by 1961 it was an opinion that ‘would not be considered in serious jazz circles,’ snapped British critic Burnett James.”
However, Peterson’s champions typically outnumbered his critics. Duke Ellington nicknamed him “the Maharaja of the keyboard” and said he was “beyond category.” In the early 1990s, esteemed American pianist Hank Jones said, “Oscar Peterson is head and shoulders above any pianist alive today. Oscar is the apex. He is the crowning ruler of all the pianists in the jazz world. No question about it.” Acclaimed pianist Marian McPartland described him as “the finest technician that I have seen,” and pianist and conductor André Previn called him “the best” among jazz pianists.
Following Peterson’s death, the Independent described him as “an explosion of talent” who “could overwhelm any style of jazz piano and… swing harder than any other player. In fact, the best way to define the elusive quality of ‘swing’ might be to use a Peterson performance as an illustration. He had a deep knowledge of jazz history and could play two-fisted stride, or complex and intricate bebop. His timing and imagination also made him one of the great ballad players. He had everything, with only an occasional penchant for rococo decoration to detract from his achievements.”
Influence on Other Pianists
Peterson’s influence on his fellow musicians is difficult to estimate. His extraordinary level of skill made his playing difficult to emulate directly, as did his lack of affiliation with a particular style or idiom. However, he was an early inspiration to many pianists. Herbie Hancock once wrote, “Oscar Peterson redefined swing for modern jazz pianists for the latter half of the 20th century… I consider him the major influence that formed my roots in jazz piano playing. He mastered the balance between technique, hard blues grooving, and tenderness.” Nanaimo, BC, native Diana Krall once called Peterson “the reason I became a jazz pianist. In my high school yearbook it says that my goal is to become a jazz pianist like Oscar Peterson.”
Career as Educator
Peterson operated the Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto from 1960 to 1962 with Phil Nimmons, Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen. The school was closed after only three years due to the demands of Peterson’s performance schedule. But it drew jazz students from cities throughout North America. The faculty grew to include Erich Traugott (trumpet), Jiro “Butch” Watanabe (trombone) and Ed Bickert (guitar). Peterson’s own pupils included Skip Beckwith, Carol Britto, Brian Browne, Wray Downes and Bill King.
Peterson also wrote four volumes of his Jazz Exercises and Pieces for the Young Jazz Pianist, which were published in the mid-1960s. He was also present at the inception of the Banff Centre for the Arts Jazz Workshop in 1974. He returned to an academic setting in 1985 as adjunct professor of music at York University. He also served as chancellor there from 1991 to 1994 and became an honorary governor in 1995. He also assisted in establishing the Oscar Peterson Jazz Research Centre at Winters College, York University’s school of fine arts.
Radio and TV Broadcasts
After his early career on CBC Radio, Peterson was not heard with any regularity on the network, save for his recordings. That changed in the 1970s, when Jazz Radio-Canada broadcast concert performances, and That Midnight Jazz and The Entertainers offered profiles. Peterson himself was host for the short series Oscar Peterson’s Jazz Soloists (1984) and Jazz at the Philharmonic (1990).
He was seen in several specials on CBC TV, including: Oscar Peterson Inside (1967); A Very Special Oscar Peterson (1976); Oscar Peterson’s Canadiana Suite (1979), a performance with a 37-piece orchestra of his Canadiana Suite with corresponding scenic footage; and the 13-episode series, Oscar Peterson and Friends (1980). He was also host in the mid-1970s of CTV’s Oscar Peterson Presents (1974), and BBC TV’s Piano Party (1976) and Oscar Peterson Invites… (1977). CBC Radio presented a seven-part documentary on him in 1994. The CBC TV biography series Life and Times featured him in the 2003 episode “Oscar Peterson: Keeping the Groove Alive.”
Canadian Sidemen
Although most of Oscar Peterson’s groups were US-based, he periodically employed Canadians as his sidemen. Among them were bassists Michel Donato, Steve Wallace and David Young; drummers Terry Clarke, Jerry Fuller, Stan Perry and Ron Rully; and guitarist Lorne Lofsky.
Personal Life
Peterson was married four times, first to Lillian Fraser (1944–58), with whom he had two sons and three daughters. After his marriage to Sandra King (1966–76), he had one daughter with his third wife, Charlotte Huber (1977–87). His marriage to Kelly Peterson (née Green), with whom he had one daughter, lasted from 1990 until his death in 2007.
Honours
Peterson received a multitude of honours and awards, from international recognition of the highest order to schools and scholarships named in his honour. During the 1976 Olympic Summer Games in Montreal, he was awarded a key to the city. In 1978, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. In 1990, the Festival international de jazz de Montréal established the annual Oscar Peterson Award to recognize “a performer’s musicianship and exceptional contribution to the development of Canadian jazz.” In 1993, he was awarded the Glenn Gould Prize. That award’s namesake is considered Peterson’s only rival among Canadian pianists.
Concordia University named a concert hall in Peterson’s honour in 1998; it also created the Dr. Oscar Peterson Jazz Scholarship with Verve Music Group Canada in 2000. In 1999, Peterson became the first Canadian and the first jazz musician to receive the Praemium Imperiale Award, the arts equivalent of the Nobel Prize, from the Japan Art Association.
In 1991, Peterson began to deposit his papers at the National Library of Canada (now Library and Archives Canada). It curated a major exhibition about him titled Oscar Peterson: A Jazz Sensation. It opened on Canada Day 2000 and ran until September 2001.
In 2000, Peterson received the UNESCO International Music Prize and a citation from US President Bill Clinton recognizing his achievements. Also that year, his album, The Trio, was designated a Masterwork by the Government of Canada’s AV Preservation Trust. In 2001, the cities of San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco, California, declared the week of 28 August to 2 September “Oscar Peterson Week.” The US House of Representatives presented him with a commendation in recognition of his contributions to society.
In 2002, Peterson became the first person inducted into the Canadian Jazz and Blues Hall of Fame. He also received a lifetime achievement award that year from the Urban Music Association of Canada. In 2003, Mississauga named a street Oscar Peterson Boulevard, and the government of Austria issued a stamp in his honour. In 2005, a public school in Mississauga was named after him, and Canada Post made him the first living person other than a reigning monarch to appear on a stamp. In 2008, “Hymn to Freedom” was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 2010, York University’s Department of Music created the $40,000 Oscar Peterson Entrance Scholarship. In 2013, Peterson was posthumously inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame. A life-sized sculpture of Peterson, unveiled on 30 Jun 2010 by Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh, sits permanently outside the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
Bennie Carter originally composed and arranged this famous melody for the Count Basie band, who recorded it in 1961. In 1982 Benny revised his earlier arrangement to be used for concerts and master classes he was giving. In 1987 this arrangement was recorded by the American Jazz Orchestra. The melody remains largely the same as the 1961 chart; however, he added additional ensemble choruses and gave the brass a larger role throughout. Benny considered this arrangement to be the definitive version of this song. Bennett Lester Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. With Johnny Hodges, he was a pioneer on the alto saxophone. From the beginning of his career in the 1920s he was a popular arranger, having written charts for Fletcher Henderson’s big band that shaped the swing style. He had an unusually long career that lasted into the 1990s. During the 1980s and ’90s, he was nominated for eight Grammy Awards, which included receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Bennie Carter’s life
Born in New York City in 1907, he was given piano lessons by his mother and others in the neighborhood. He played trumpet and experimented briefly with C-melody saxophone before settling on alto saxophone. In the 1920s, he performed with June Clark, Billy Paige, and Earl Hines, then toured as a member of the Wilberforce Collegians led by Horace Henderson. He appeared on record for the first time in 1927 as a member of the Paradise Ten led by Charlie Johnson. He returned to the Collegians and became their bandleader through 1929, including a performance at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City.
In his early 20s, Carter worked as arranger for Fletcher Henderson after that position was vacated by Don Redman. He had no formal education in arranging, so he learned by trial and error, getting on his knees and looking at the existing charts, “writing the lead trumpet first and the lead saxophone first—which, of course, is the hard way. It was quite some time that I did that before I knew what a score was.”
He left Henderson to take Redman’s former job as leader of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers in Detroit. In 1932 he formed a band in New York City that included Chu Berry, Sid Catlett, Cozy Cole, Bill Coleman, Ben Webster, Dicky Wells, and Teddy Wilson. Carter’s arrangements were complex. Among the most significant were “Keep a Song in Your Soul”, written for Henderson in 1930, and “Lonesome Nights” and “Symphony in Riffs” from 1933, both of which show Carter’s writing for saxophones.
By the early 1930s, Carter and Johnny Hodges were considered the leading alto saxophonists. Carter also became a leading trumpet soloist, having rediscovered the instrument. He recorded extensively on trumpet in the 1930s. Carter’s short-lived Orchestra played the Harlem Club in New York but only recorded a handful of records for Columbia, OKeh and Vocalion. The OKeh sides were issued under the name The Chocolate Dandies. Carter stands with Robert Goffin, Louis Armstrong, and Leonard Feather in 1942.
In 1933 Carter participated in sessions with British band leader Spike Hughes, who went to New York City to organize recordings with prominent African American musicians. These 14 sides plus four by Carter’s big band, titled at the time Spike Hughes and His Negro Orchestra, were initially only issued in England. The musicians were from Carter’s band and included Red Allen, Dicky Wells, Wayman Carver, Coleman Hawkins, J. C. Higginbotham, and Chu Berry.
Carter moved to London and spent two years as arranger for the BBC Big Band. In England, France, and Scandinavia he recorded with local musicians, and he took his band to the Netherlands. In these settings Carter played trumpet, clarinet, piano, alto and tenor saxophone, and provided occasional vocals. In 1938 he returned to America. He found regular work leading his band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem through 1941. The band included Shad Collins, Sidney De Paris, Vic Dickenson, and Freddie Webster. After this engagement he led a seven-piece band which included Eddie Barefield, Kenny Clarke, and Dizzy Gillespie. Portrait of Benny Carter, Apollo Theatre, New York City, c. October 1946
In the middle 1940s, he made Los Angeles his home, forming another big band, which at times included J. J. Johnson, Max Roach, and Miles Davis. But these would be his last big bands. With the exception of occasional concerts, performing with Jazz at the Philharmonic,[3] and recording, he ceased working as a touring big band bandleader. Los Angeles provided him many opportunities for studio work, and these dominated his time during the decades. He wrote music and arrangements for television and films, such as Stormy Weather in 1943. During the 1950s and ’60s, he wrote arrangements for vocalists such as Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, and Sarah Vaughan. On something of a comeback in the 1970s,Carter returned to playing saxophone again and toured the Middle East courtesy of the U.S. State Department. He began making annual visits to Europe and Japan. Carter performs at the North Sea Jazz Festival in 1985.
In 1969, Carter was persuaded to spend a weekend at Princeton University by Morroe Berger, a sociology professor at Princeton who wrote about jazz. This led to a new outlet for Carter’s talent: teaching. For the next nine years he visited Princeton five times, most of them brief stays except for one in 1973 when he spent a semester there as a visiting professor. In 1974 Princeton gave him an honorary doctorate. He conducted teaching at workshops and seminars at several other universities and was a visiting lecturer at Harvard for a week in 1987. Morroe Berger wrote Benny Carter – A Life in American Music (1982), a two-volume work about Carter’s career.
Time had little effect on Carter’s abilities. During the 1980s he wrote the long composition Central City Sketches which was performed at Cooper Union by the American Jazz Orchestra. Another long composition, Glasgow Suite, was performed in Scotland. Lincoln Center commission him to write “Good Vibes” in 1990. The National Endowment for the Arts gave him a grant that led Tales of the Rising Sun Suite and Harlem Renaissance Suite. This music was performed in 1992 when he was 85 years old.
Carter had an unusually long career. He was perhaps the only musician to have recorded in eight different decades. Another characteristic of his career was its versatility as musician, bandleader, arranger, and composer. He helped define the sound of alto saxophone, but he also performed and recorded on soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, clarinet, and piano. He helped establish a foundation for arranging as far back as 1930 when he arranged “Keep a Song in Your Soul” for Fletcher Henderson’s big band. His compositions include the novelty hit “Cow-Cow Boogie” recorded by Ella Mae Morse, and the expansive Central City Sketches, written when he was 80 years old and recorded with the American Jazz Orchestra.
Carter died at the age of 95 in Los Angeles at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on July 12, 2003 from complications of bronchitis.
On June 25, 2019, The New York Times Magazine listed Benny Carter among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Sant Andreu Jazz Band
Sant Andreu Jazz Band is a youth jazz band from Barcelona, featuring 7- to 20-year-old children and teenagers. The bandleader is Joan Chamorro.
The band was founded in 2006 at Escola Municipal de Música de Sant Andreu. The band has performed at numerous concerts and festivals in Catalonia and other regions of Spain as well as in neighbouring countries. They released their first live CD/DVD Jazzing: Live at Casa Fuster in 2009, featuring alongside established jazz musicians, the precocious 14-year-old, Andrea Motis among other young talents.
2010 was a breakthrough year for the band, with appearances at more than 20 festivals including Valls, Terrassa, Girona, Barcelona, Platja d’Aro, and legendary venues like el Jamboree, Palau de la Música Catalana, JazzSi, Hotel Casa Fuster, featuring international performers like Dick Oatts, Ken Peplowski, Bobby Gordon, Perico Sambeat, Ignasi Terraza, Matthew Simon, and Esteve Pi. The band also released their second recording Jazzing vol.2.
In 2012 the film director Ramón Tort made the documentary A film about kids and music based on the band’s work and efforts. The film was awarded best feature film at the Lights. Camera. Help. festival in Austin, Texas, in 2013.
Ready to Jazz your Christmas up? Now you can do using our large variety of piano & guitar sheet music books in our Library.
Piano Solo version (with sheet music):
Ella Fitzgerald sings White Christmas
Sheet Music Lyrics
I’m dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where the tree tops glisten And children listen To hear sleigh bells in the snowI’m dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days, may your days, may your days Be merry and bright And may all your Christmas’ be whiteI’m dreaming of a white Christmas Just like the ones I used to know Where the tree tops glisten And children listen To hear sleigh bells in the snowI’m dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days, may your days, may your days Be merry and bright May all your Christmas’ be whiteI’m dreaming of a white Christmas With every Christmas card I write May your days, be merry and bright And may all your Christmas’ be white
Irving Berlin (born Israel Beilin; May 11, 1888–September 22, 1989) was an American composer and lyricist, widely considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. His music forms a great part of the Great American Songbook. Born in Imperial Russia, Berlin arrived in the United States at the age of five. He published his first song, “Marie from Sunny Italy”, in 1907, receiving 33 cents for the publishing rights,and had his first major international hit, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band“, in 1911. He also was an owner of the Music Box Theatre on Broadway. It is commonly believed that Berlin could not read sheet music, and was such a limited piano player that he could only play in the key of F-sharp using his custom piano equipped with a transposing lever.
“Alexander’s Ragtime Band” sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin’s native Russia, which also “flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania.” Over the years he was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his stated aim being to “reach the heart of the average American,” whom he saw as the “real soul of the country.” In doing so, said Walter Cronkite, at Berlin’s 100th birthday tribute, he “helped write the story of this country, capturing the best of who we are and the dreams that shape our lives.”
Berlin died in 1989 at the age of 101. Composer Douglas Moore sets Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters, and includes him instead with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman, and Carl Sandburg, as a “great American minstrel”—someone who has “caught and immortalized in his songs what we say, what we think about, and what we believe.” Composer George Gershwin called him “the greatest songwriter that has ever lived”,and composer Jerome Kern concluded that “Irving Berlin has no place in American music—he is American music.”
Ella Jane Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917–June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer, sometimes referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz, and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, timing, intonation, and a “horn-like” improvisational ability.
After a tumultuous adolescence, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Her rendition of the nursery rhyme “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” helped boost both her and Webb to national fame. After taking over the band when Webb died, Fitzgerald left it behind in 1942 to start her solo career.
Her manager was Moe Gale, co-founder of the Savoy,until she turned the rest of her career over to Norman Granz, who founded Verve Records to produce new records by Fitzgerald. With Verve she recorded some of her more widely noted works, particularly her interpretations of the Great American Songbook.
In 1993, after a career of nearly 60 years, she gave her last public performance. Three years later, she died at the age of 79 after years of declining health. Her accolades included fourteen Grammy Awards, the National Medal of Arts, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
