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...
Wynton Marsalis
Born October 18, 1961, in New Orleans, LA
“Jazz is an art form,” trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has said, “that gives us a painless way of understanding ourselves.” Few contemporary jazz musicians have stated the case for jazz more articulately than Marsalis, and few have made their art more welcoming to audiences young and old...
Wayne
Shorter
Born August 25, 1933, in Newark, NJ
Wayne Shorter, Miles Davis remembered, was “the idea person. The conceptualizer of a whole lot of musical ideas we did.” One of the most influential composers in jazz, Shorter gave birth to musical ideas that helped change the landscape of jazz in the 1960s...
