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THE JAZZ AGE
MILES DAVIS
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An original, lyrical soloist and a
demanding group leader, Miles
Davis was the most consistently
innovative musician in jazz from
the late 1940s through the 1960s.
Davis grew up in East St. Louis,
and took up trumpet at the age of
13; two years later he was already
playing professionally. He moved to
New York in September 1944,
ostensibly to enter the Institute of
Musical Art but actually to locate
his idol, Charlie Parker. He joined
Parker in live appearances and
recording sessions (1945-8), at the
same time playing in other groups
and touring in the big bands led by
Benny Carter and Billy Eckstine.
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http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/a
rtist_id_davis_miles.htm
DUKE ELLINGTON
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Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was the most
prolific composer of the twentieth century in
terms of both number of compositions and
variety of forms. His development was one of the
most spectacular in the history of music,
underscored by more than fifty years of
sustained achievement as an artist and an
entertainer. He is considered by many to be
America's greatest composer, bandleader, and
recording artist.
The extent of Ellington's innovations helped to
redefine the various forms in which he worked.
He synthesized many of the elements of
American music — the minstrel song, ragtime,
Tin Pan Alley tunes, the blues, and American
appropriations of the European music tradition
— into a consistent style with which, though
technically complex, has a directness and a
simplicity of expression largely absent from the
purported art music of the twentieth century.
Ellington's first great achievements came in the
three-minute song form, and he later wrote
music for all kinds of settings: the ballroom, the
comedy stage, the nightclub, the movie house,
the theater, the concert hall, and the cathedral.
His blues writing resulted in new conceptions of
form, harmony, and melody, and he became the
master of the romantic ballad and created
numerous works that featured the great soloists
in his jazz orchestra.
http://www.pbs.org/jazz/biography/artist_id_ellin
gton_duke.htm
LOUIS ARMSTRONG
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The early 1920s saw Armstrong's
popularity explode as he left New
Orleans for Chicago to play with "King"
Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, and then
moved on to New York, where he
influenced the Fletcher Henderson
Orchestra with improvisation and a new
musical vocabulary.
When he returned to Chicago in 1926, he
was a headliner on records and radio,
and in jazz clubs, wowing audiences with
the utter fearlessness and freedom of his
groundbreaking trumpet solos. His "scat"
singing transformed vocal tradition and
musicians studied his recordings to hear
what a horn could do. It has been said
that Armstrong used his horn like a
singer's voice and used his voice like a
musical instrument.
http://www.npg.si.edu/exh/armstrong/ind
ex.htm