Louis Armstrong
Born August 4, 1901, in New Orleans, LA
Died July 6, 1971, in New York City
“My whole life has been happiness,” Louis Armstrong liked to say, and he managed to make everyone who heard him feel that no matter how bad things got, everything was bound to turn out all right...
Count
Basie
Born August 21, 1904, in Red Bank, NJ
Died April 26, 1984, in Hollywood, FL
“I’ve always played happy music,” William “Count” Basie once said. “Music that people can tap their feet to... That’s what I intend to keep on playing.” He kept that pledge for nearly fifty years...
Sidney Bechet
Born May 14, 1897, in New Orleans, LA
Died May 14, 1959, in Paris, France
“There’s this mood about the music, a kind of need to be moving,” Sidney Bechet wrote. No jazz musician was more restless – or played more memorable music – than this master of the clarinet and soprano saxophone...
Buddy Bolden
Born September 6, 1877, in New Orleans, LA
Died November 4, 1931, in Jackson, LA
The growls and shouts that attended the birth of jazz came, by most accounts, from New Orleans cornet king Buddy Bolden. Though he was never recorded, he remains among the most revered of all jazz musicians...
Dave
Brubeck
Born December 6, 1920, in Concord, CA
“Dave Brubeck “plays ... like where the blues was born,” said stride legend Willie “the Lion” Smith. “You could put [his music] on at anybody’s house, and they’d dance all night.”...
Betty
Carter
Born May 16, 1930, in Flint, MI
Died September 26, 1998, in New York City
“It was very important in those days for a musician or a singer to become an individual,” Betty Carter once said. “You had to be yourself if you were going to succeed.” Born Lillie Mae Jones in 1930, the vocalist was an iconoclast from the start...
Ornette
Coleman
Born March 9, 1930, in Fort Worth, TX
“The theme you play at the start of the number is the territory,” Ornette Coleman said, “and what comes after, which may have very little to do with it, is the adventure.” Coleman relished the adventure as few had before him...
John Coltrane
Born September 23, 1926, in Hamlet, NC
Died July 17, 1967, in New York City
“My music,” John Coltrane said, “is the spiritual expression of what I am’Äîmy faith, my knowledge, my being...” The grandson of ministers, he began his career in the blues clubs of Philadelphia...
