Miles Davis
Trumpeter / Jazz Musician
Born: 26 May 1926
Died: 28 September 1991
Birthplace: Alton, Illinois
Best known as: Composer/performer of Kind of Blue
Name at birth: Miles Dewey Davis, Jr.
In the 1940s, Miles Davis went off to New York City to study music at Julliard. He ended up playing jazz with
Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie instead, soon playing trumpet behind some of the biggest bandleaders of the
era. Davis became a dominant force in jazz trumpet. As a bandleader himself during the 1950s and '60s, his
influence led to "cool" jazz and the emergence of the musician as composer and arranger. He recorded many
classic albums, including Relaxin' With Miles Davis, and Birth of the Cool. Unlike many trumpeters of his era,
Davis relied on tone rather than speed, often using a mute with his horn. He is considered one of the most
influential musicians of the past century.
John Coltrane
Saxophonist / Bandleader / Jazz Musician
Born: 23 September 1926
Died: 17 July 1967
Birthplace: Hamlet, North Carolina
Best known as: Innovative sax player and composer
American jazz great John Coltrane emerged in the 1950s, playing tenor and soprano sax with Dizzy Gillespie,
Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk. Coltrane gained wide respect and fame for his stylistic innovations. He
became a leader of the New Wave jazz movement. In the 1960s he led his own groups and changed the face of
jazz with experimentation and improvisation. Coltrane displayed a dazzling technical brilliance in his playing.
His style was influenced by the rhythms and tonal structure of African and Asian music. Coltrane, sometimes
called simply 'Trane," made a number of influential recordings, among them the modal-jazz classics My
Favorite Things (1961). From the late 1950s until his death he was considered the outstanding tenor and
soprano saxophonist of the jazz avant-garde, and his music continues to be a strong source of inspiration to jazz
and pop musicians.
William James "Count" Basie
Pianist / Bandleader / Jazz Musician
Born: 21 August 1904
Died: 26 April 1984
Birthplace: Red Bank, New Jersey
William "Count" Basie was a Grammy Award-winning jazz pianist, composer and bandleader known for his
powerful, rhythmic sound and his dominant-right-hand piano style. He played in New York and Kansas City
bands in the 1920s and 1930s before forming his own band in 1935, which he performed with for 40 years.
During the 1940s and '50s, Basie and his orchestra were one of the most popular big bands in the U.S., with hits
like "One O'Clock Jump" and "Jumpin' at the Woodside." Even after the bop era of jazz had overwhelmed
swing, Basie had success with smaller bands, continuing to perform and record up to his death in 1984.
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie
Trumpeter / Composer
Born: 21 October 1917
Died: 6 January 1993
Birthplace: Cheraw, South Carolina
Best known as: The bebop trumpeter with the upturned horn
Name at birth: John Birks Gillespie
Gillespie was one of the key figures in the birth of "bebop" jazz. Nicknamed "Dizzy" because of his comical
antics, Gillespie played trumpet in the 1930s in bands led by Teddy Hill and Lionel Hampton. Throughout the
'40s and '50s Gillespie led his own bands, both big and small, and toured the world playing his complex and
upbeat music. With Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Miles Davis, Gillespie ushered in the era of brash,
speedy, lopsided jazz known as bebop. In the 1950s he began using a trumpet with the bell angled upward at 45
degrees, a quirk which became his signature. He toured and performed right up to his death in 1993. Among his
most popular tunes were "A Night in Tunisia" and "Salt Peanuts."
Charlie "Bird" Parker
Saxophonist / Bandleader / Jazz Musician
Born: 29 August 1920
Died: 12 March 1955
Birthplace: Kansas City, Kansas
Best known as: Influential alto saxophone player
Name at birth: Charles Christopher Parker, Jr.
Charlie Parker began playing alto saxophone in 1933, and after shifting from one band to another he met Dizzy
Gillespie in New York City. They formed a quintet, which in 1945 made the first bop (or bebop) records and
thus became the leaders of the bop movement in jazz. Parker's brilliant improvisations, noted for their power
and beauty, soon earned the admiration of innumerable musicians who nicknamed him "Yardbird" ("Bird" for
short). He composed several instrumental quartets and made many recordings.
Billie Holiday
Jazz Singer / Blues Singer
Born: 7 April 1915
Died: 17 July 1959
Birthplace: Baltimore, Maryland
Best known as: The popular jazz singer known as "Lady Day"
Name at birth: Eleanora Fagan
Billie Holiday was one of the first and greatest of American jazz singers. Holiday began singing in Harlem
clubs as a teenager, and first recorded (with Benny Goodman) in 1933. She was a sensation at New York's
famous jazz club, The Apollo, and sang with the bands of Artie Shaw and Count Basie, among others. Holiday
was nicknamed "Lady Day" during this era by saxophonist Lester Young, with whom she often recorded. She
was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the year 2000.
Duke Ellington
Jazz Musician / Composer / Bandleader / Pianist
Born: 29 April 1899
Died: 24 May 1974 (cancer)
Birthplace: Washington, D.C.
Best known as: Performer of "Take the 'A' Train"
Name at birth: Edward Kennedy Ellington
Duke Ellington started as a pool hall piano player and grew to become one of the great figures in American jazz
performance. One of the first to use classical themes in jazz, Ellington is considered one of the its most
innovative composers as well. (Many of his later numbers were written with his longtime collaborator Billy
Strayhorn, who wrote Ellington's signature tune "Take the 'A' Train.") At the height of his career Ellington
toured the world with his orchestra and composed many standards. His best known numbers include "Mood
Indigo," "In A Sentimental Mood," and "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing."
Ella Fitzgerald
Jazz Singer
Born: 25 April 1918
Died: 15 June 1996
Birthplace: Newport News, Virginia
Best known as: Jazz vocalist known for scat singing
Ella Fitzgerald was a pop and jazz singer who had her first hit record in 1938 with the Chick Webb Band's "ATisket, A-Tasket." Raised in New York City, she began recording with bands in 1935 and embarked on a solo
career in 1942. Known primarily for her jazz-oriented approach in phrasing and rhythm -- she's easily the most
famous woman scat singer in history -- Fitzgerald became a mainstream popular success on the strength of her
Songbook recordings, a series of interpretations of American songwriters. Her first in the series was a 1956
release of Cole Porter songs; she went on to record songs by Duke Ellington, George Gershwin and others.
Around the same time she popped up on television and in the movies, most memorably in a highlight of the film
Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Later in her career she recorded and performed with orchestras as well as small
combos, and by the time she retired in 1992 she had assumed the role of America's grande dame of popular jazz.
In nearly sixty years of recording she was the recipient of just about every major award, including more than a
dozen Grammys and a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. Despite ill health, Fitzgerald continued
performing into the early 1990s.
Louis Armstrong
Jazz Musician
Born: 4 August 1901
Died: 6 July 1971 (heart attack)
Birthplace: New Orleans, Louisiana
Best known as: The charismatic jazz trumpeter who recorded "Hello Dolly"
Louis Armstrong was the most famous jazz trumpeter of the 20th century. Like Jelly Roll Morton, Armstrong
began playing in New Orleans clubs in his early teens. By the 1920s Armstrong was touring the country and
leading his own band, the Hot Five (later the Hot Seven). He continued to tour and record throughout his life
and was particularly famous for his innovative, loose-limbed improvisations; some call him the first great jazz
improvisor. His gravelly voice and sunny persona were a hit with the non-jazz public, and later in his career he
became a sort of cheerful ambassador of jazz, even appearing as himself (more or less) in movies like High
Society (1956, with his good friend Bing Crosby and starlet Grace Kelly) and Hello, Dolly! (1969, with Barbra
Streisand). The theme song from the latter film became his most widely-known recording. Armstrong's
nickname Satchmo was an abbreviation of "satchelmouth," a joke on the size of his mouth..Armstrong was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an "early influence" in 1990... In 2001 the city of New Orleans
renamed its airport as Louis Armstrong International Airport... Armstrong is credited with influencing
trumpeters as diverse as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis.
Jelly Roll Morton
Jazz Musician
Born: 20 October 1890
Died: 10 July 1941 (heart failure)
Birthplace: Gulfport, Louisiana
Best known as: The composer of Jelly Roll Blues
Name at birth: Ferdinand Joseph La MenthePiano player Jelly Roll Morton was a pioneer of modern American
jazz. He grew up in New Orleans and began playing in saloons when he was still a boy. In later years he
performed solo and with his band, the Red Hot Peppers, and he is particularly remembered for a series of
recordings he made in Chicago for RCA Victor in the 1920s. Morton is often credited with mixing individual
improvisation within rehearsed group arrangements, a format which became a staple of jazz. His best-known
tunes included Jelly Roll Blues, King Porter Stomp, and Black Bottom Stomp. Morton was inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998.
Cannonball Adderley
Saxophonist /Jazz Musician/Teacher
Born: 15 September 1928
Died: 8 August 1975
Birthplace: Tampa, Florida
Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley was a jazz alto saxophonist of the small combo era of the 1950s and
1960s. Originally from Tampa, Florida, he moved to New York in the mid 1950s. Cannonball first gained
national attention as a member of the Miles Davis sextet, appearing with Davis, John Coltrane, and other jazz
giants on Kind of Blue, one of the best-selling jazz albums in history.
The Cannonball Adderley Quintet featured Cannonball on alto sax and his brother Nat Adderley on cornet. The
Quintet and other combos included such noted musicians as pianist Joe Zawinul, Art Blakey, and Yusef Lateef.
The nickname "Cannonball" is an apt name for the portly saxophonist. An articulate speaker with an easy
manner, Cannonball educated, amused, and informed his audiences in clubs and on television about the art and
moods of jazz (he was a music teacher before beginning his jazz career).
Arthur "Art" Blakey
Jazz Musician / Drummer / Bandleader /Pianist
Born: 11 October 1919
Died: 16 October 1990
Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
By the time he was a teenager, Blakey was playing the piano full-time and leading a commercial band. Shortly
afterwards, he taught himself to play the drums andMary Lou Williams as a drummer for an engagement in
New York in autumn 1942. He then toured with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1943–4). During his years
with Billy Eckstine’s big band (1944–7) Blakey became associated with the modern-jazz movement, along with
his fellow band members Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro and others. Along with Kenny Clarke and
Max Roach, he was one of the inventors of the modern bebop style of drumming. He is known as a powerful
musician and his brand of bluesy, funky hard bop was and continues to be profoundly influential on mainstream
jazz. For more than 30 years his band, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers included many young musicians
who went on to become prominent names in jazz. The band's legacy is thus not only known for the often
exceptionally fine music it produced, but as a proving ground for several generations of jazz musicians.
Blakey's groups are matched only by those of Miles Davis in this regard.