jazz top 100 albums (25-49)

Dinah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj2LLbnfH-s

When the band headed east, after nearly two months at the Palomar, they were famous. They played for seven months at the Congress Hotel in Chicago, where Teddy Wilson joined them to complete the Benny Goodman Trio. Back in New York Lionel Hampton made it the Benny Goodman Quartet, and the band was a sensation at the Hotel Pennsylvania's Madhattan Room.

Swingtime in the Rockies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPPGDtnmrdY

Superb arrangement by Jimmy Mundy.

SWINGTIME IN THE ROCKIES remains at the very apex of glowing inexhaustible swing. It is so reassuring to know that it was created and we can hear it again — to soothe and uplift and remind us of what is indeed possible.

Any Old Time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ks1v0M0RwXw

A tune Shaw composed for singer Billie Holiday—"Any Old Time," a melody and a performance that must rank among the highlights of Holiday's career, perfectly suited to her emotional temperament and musical range, as well as her unique elocution and sense of phrasing. In so completely subordinating his own talent to the special needs of his unique and sometimes temperamental vocalist, Shaw no doubt realized one of his finest hours and most noble accomplishments as both an artist and human being.

The Jeep is Jumpin'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUOFYj1AGJY

It was in the Central Avenue clubs that Wardell held his tenor battles with Dexter Gordon. These two were ideally matched: Wardell's light sound and swift delivery were more than a match for Dexter's big, blustering sound, and their tenor jousts became a kind of symbol for the Central Avenue scene. Gordon later recalled: "There'd be a lot of cats on the stand but by the end of the session it would wind up with Wardell and myself.... His playing was very fluid, very clean.... He had a lot of drive and a profusion of ideas". Their fame began to spread, and Ross Russell managed to get them to simulate one of their battles on "The Chase" ,which became Wardell's first nationally-known recording and has been assessed as "one of the most exciting musical contests in the history of jazz".

The Scene Changes
https://www.youtube.com/watch…

Along with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, Powell was a leading figure in the development of modern jazz, or bebop. His virtuosity led many to call him the Charlie Parker of the piano. Powell was also a composer, and he "greatly extended the range of jazz harmony."

Dinah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhVdLd43bDI

In October of 1933, Louis Armstrong and his “Harlem Hot Band” arrived in Copenhagen, Denmark for a series of eight shows at the Lyric Park theater. Thousands of fans mobbed the railway station, breaking through police barricades and climbing on top of train cars just to get a glimpse of the great jazz trumpeter as he stepped from his train.

Nowadays the Copenhagen visit is remembered because it was the first time Armstrong was ever filmed in concert. The Danish director Holger Madsen recruited Armstrong to appear in his feature film København, Kalundborg Og -?. Armstrong had made a cameo appearance in a 1931 film called Ex Flame, and on a sound stage the following year in two short films–a Paramount Pictures featurette and a Betty Boop cartoon–but the Copenhagen footage is the earliest of Armstrong playing live with his band.

Fascinating Rhythm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmD0wOY8VTA

The Hi-Lo's were an a cappella quartet formed in 1953, who achieved their greatest fame in the late 1950s and 1960s. The group's name is reportedly a reference to their extreme vocal and physical ranges (Bob Strasen and Bob Morse were tall, Gene Puerling and Clark Burroughs were short).

The group consisted of Gene Puerling (bass-baritone or 4th voice, arranger and leader), Bob Strasen (baritone or 3rd voice), Bob Morse (baritone or 2nd voice and occasional soloist) and Clark Burroughs (tenor or 1st voice/lead). In 1959, Don Shelton replaced Strasen.

They were occasionally supported by Frank Sinatra. Clare Fischer was their pianist for years and wrote some of their arrangements.

The Hi-Lo's recorded the theme song to the 1956 television series Noah's Ark. They were also featured on the soundtrack of the motion picture Everything's Ducky (1961), contributing three songs: "Everything's Ducky," "Moonlight Music" and "The Scuttlebutt Walk." They also made numerous appearances on television and had many live performances. Early on they even entered the contests of the newly formed Barbershop Harmony Society, finishing in the top ten in 1949, but soon decided their style was more the close harmony of many 1940s jazz vocal groups.

Super Chief
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZN6WqGZSlo

In that city in October 1936, the band had a recording session which the producer John Hammond later described as "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with". Hammond had heard Basie's band over short-wave radio and went to Kansas City to check them out. He invited them to record, in performances which were Lester Young's earliest recordings. Those four sides were released under the band name of Jones-Smith Incorporated; the sides were "Shoe Shine Boy", "Evening", "Boogie Woogie", and "Oh, Lady Be Good". Basie had already signed with Decca Records, but did not have his first recording session with them until January 1937.

By then, Basie's sound was characterized by a "jumping" beat and the contrapuntal accents of his own piano. His personnel around 1937 included: Lester Young and Herschel Evans (tenor sax), Freddie Green (guitar), Jo Jones (drums), Walter Page (bass), Earle Warren (alto sax), Buck Clayton and Harry Edison (trumpet), Benny Morton and Dickie Wells (trombone).Lester Young, known as "Prez" by the band, came up with nicknames for all the other band members. He called Basie "Holy Man", "Holy Main", and just plain "Holy".

"A Walkin' Thing"
https://www.youtube.com/watch…

Bennett Lester "Benny" Carter (August 8, 1907 – July 12, 2003) was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader. He was a major figure in jazz from the 1930s to the 1990s, and was recognized as such by other jazz musicians who called him King. In 1958, he performed with Billie Holiday at the Monterey Jazz Festival - but, then, really, he performed with every major artist of several many jazz generations, and at every major festival you could possibly care to name.

The National Endowment for the Arts honored Benny Carter with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award for 1986. He was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1987, and both won a Grammy Award for his solo "Prelude to a Kiss" and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1994. In 2000 awarded the National Endowment for the Arts, National Medal of Arts, presented by President Bill Clinton

Moanin'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__OSyznVDOY

"Moanin'" is a composition by Bobby Timmons, first recorded by Art Blakey's band on the 1958 album of the same title.

"Moanin'" has been recorded numerous times and has become a jazz standard.[3] Gary Giddins stated that the song "set the music world on its ear" and that it was "part of the funky, back to roots movement that Horace Silver, [Charles] Mingus, and Ray Charles helped, in different ways, to fan.

It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-t0dX3l68Hc

The Boswell Sisters were a close harmony singing group, consisting of sisters Martha Boswell (June 9, 1905 – July 2, 1958), Connee Boswell (original name Connie, December 3, 1907 – October 11, 1976), and Helvetia "Vet" Boswell (May 20, 1911 – November 12, 1988), noted for intricate harmonies and rhythmic experimentation. They attained national prominence in the USA in the 1930s.

Blue N' Boogie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDcnPPdhwME

Patterson played piano from childhood and was heavily influenced by Erroll Garner in his youth. In 1956, he switched to organ after hearing Jimmy Smith play the instrument. In the early 1960s, he began playing regularly with Sonny Stitt, and he began releasing material as a leader on Prestige Records from 1964 (with Pat Martino and Billy James as sidemen). His most commercially successful album was 1964's Holiday Soul, which reached #85 on the Billboard 200 in 1967. Patterson's troubles with drug addiction hobbled his career in the 1970s, during which he occasionally recorded for Muse Records and lived in Gary, Indiana. In the 1980s he moved to Philadelphia and made a small comeback, but his health deteriorated over the course of the decade, and he died there in 1988.

Number 37

Melancholia DUKE ELLINGTON

DESIGN for BLUE

Like "Blue Ghost" ("Adventures in Blues" album), this Roland design is yet another piece dedicated to that mysterious young lady dressed in blue, who never failed to appear when the orchestra played in Ohio. Recorded in concert during the Tropicana Hotel engagement, this track offers some contrapuntal writing in the swing idiom as an introduction to inspired solo contributions, notably that by trumpeter Jack Sheldon.

Design for Blue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAcGuFgw6I8

Nancy With the Laughing Face
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4G3hhCRbTM

He moved to New York in 1976 at the age of twenty-two, and through Roy Eldridge, with whom he had played a year previously in Boston, got a six-week gig at Michael’s Pub. Roy also paved the way for him to work with Anita O’Day and Hank Jones. Although it was the tail-end of the of old New York scene, a lot of the greats were still playing and he got to work and learn from people like Eldridge, Illinois Jacquet, Vic Dickenson and Jo Jones. Eldridge was Scott’s champion, but pulled no punches, and could be extremely critical, something for which Scott has always been grateful. In December of the same year John Bunch got Scott his first recording date, for Famous Door, and was also responsible for him joining Benny Goodman. He continued to work with Goodman at different times until the early 1980s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD6k2E61ABY

James Stanley Hall (December 4, 1930 – December 10, 2013) was an American jazz guitarist, composer and arranger. Premier Guitar magazine stated that "It could be argued that the jazz guitar tree is rooted in four names: Django [Reinhardt, Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, and Jim Hall".

Number 32

Just Friends CHARLIE PARKER