Firsts in Jazz…
First published ragtime composition: William Krell, Mississippi Rag – 1897
First use of the word “jazz”: William and George Demarest’s vaudeville team from Our Three Sons – 1910
First jazz recording: Livery Stable Blues, Original Dixieland Jass Band (ODJB) – 1917
First classic blues recording: Crazy Blues, Mamie Smith – 1920
First recording by a black band: Ory’s Creole Trombone/Society Blues, Kid Ory’s Sunshine Orchestra – 1921
First recording by King Oliver (Gennett Records) – 1923
First jazz recordings in Washington (Ellington in NY) – 1924
First scat recording: Louis Armstrong, Heebie Jeebies – 1925
First recordings by Red Hot Peppers (Jelly Roll Morton) – 1926
First Boogie-Woogie recording: Meade Lux Lewis, Honky Tonk Train – 1927
First recordings by Benny Goodman and Jimmy Lunceford – 1934
First black vocalist with a major white jazz orchestra: Billie Holiday with Artie Shaw – 1938
First electric (amplified) guitar solo in jazz: Floyd Smith, Floyd’s Guitar Blues – 1939
First gold record in history: Glenn Miller, Chattanooga Choo-Choo – 1942
First jazz concert at Philharmonic Hall – 1943
First modal jazz composition: Miles Davis, Miles aka Milestones – 1958
First modal jazz album: Miles Davis, Kind of Blue – 1959
Beginnings of jazz fusion: Miles Davis, Bitches Brew – 1969
First jazz improviser: Louis Armstrong
First jazz composer: Jelly Roll Morton
First jazz center: New Orleans
First interracial jazz group: Benny Goodman Trio (Benny Goodman/Teddy Wilson/Gene Krupa)
First modern jazz bassist: Jimmy Blanton
First band to use five saxophones: Benny Carter
First jazz musician nominated for a Pulitzer Prize: Duke Ellington
Hall of Fame
Ahmad Jamal
Jazz Pianist, Composer, Band Leader, and Educator
93 years old
Born on July 2, 1930, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Ahmad Jamal began playing the piano at the age of three—the same age at which Erroll Garner, who would later become his classmate at the same elementary and high schools, also began playing. Jamal received formal training from Mary Cardwell Dawson, a prominent educator of the time, known for helping African American artists join the Metropolitan Opera Company.
By the age of 10, Jamal had composed, orchestrated, and performed works by Franz Liszt, while also exploring the music of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Nat Cole, Erroll Garner, and other notable musicians. He rigorously studied the American Songbook, quickly amassing an impressive repertoire. This caught the attention of his senior mentors in Pittsburgh, leading to his early employment and joining the American Federation of Musicians at the age of just 14, even though the minimum required age was 16.
At 17, Jamal began touring the country with the George Hudson Orchestra. The tour included performances at the major theaters of the United States, particularly the famous Apollo Theater in New York and The Howard Theater in Washington, D.C. Jamal graced the Apollo stage with the orchestra at the age of 18.
In 1951, he formed his own group, and with the support of John Hammond, he began recording extensively. His career spanned over six decades, resulting in one of the most successful instrumental recordings in music history, The Ahmad Jamal Trio, at The Pershing. His music has been chosen by Clint Eastwood, one of his most devoted fans, for the soundtrack of The Bridges of Madison County, and prominently featured in The Wolf of Wall Street. Dance companies worldwide have also choreographed performances to Jamal’s music.
Billie Holiday (“Lady Day”, Eleanora Fagan, Eleonora De Viese, Eleanora Fagan Gough)
Jazz Vocalist, Band Leader, Composer
(1915 – 1959)
Billie Holiday is considered the greatest jazz singer in the world—impossible to imitate yet extremely influential. Born into poverty, she worked at a young age in a brothel, where she listened to the recordings of Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, developing her own unique style of interpretation. Despite having a modest voice with a limited range, she could convey more emotion in a song and balance it with phrasing better than more naturally gifted singers. Her early recordings can make you cry, and even though her voice lost much of its elasticity as she aged prematurely due to heroin addiction, alcohol, and abusive relationships, she never lost her emotional depth.
Promoter John Hammond discovered her and recorded her alongside Benny Goodman in 1933 and Teddy Wilson in 1935. After a brief period with Basie’s band in 1937, in 1938 she toured the southern U.S. with Artie Shaw’s all-white band, personally experiencing the sting of racism. Holiday was a favorite vocalist among instrumentalists, attracting the best musicians, including Lester Young, with whom she had a remarkable stylistic affinity. They became lifelong friends—she called him “Pres,” short for “The President,” and he called her “Lady Day.”
Holiday’s repertoire included numerous hugely successful songs such as “Easy Living” (1937), “Fine and Mellow” (1939), “God Bless the Child” (1941), and “Lover Man” (1944). Songs like “Good Morning Heartache” (1945) and “Don’t Explain” (1946) are also inseparably associated with her. A whole book has been written about a single song, “Strange Fruit,” with its macabre lyrics, the strongest indictment of racism ever written.
To understand the phenomenon that was Billie Holiday, one need only watch her 1957 television appearance on The Sound of Jazz alongside Lester Young, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, and Roy Eldridge.
Chick Corea (Armando Anthony Corea)
Jazz Pianist, Composer, and Band Leader with Classical Training
(1941 – 2021)
In the mid-1960s, Corea played with Blue Mitchell, Willie Bobo, Cal Tjader, and Herbie Mann, and by the late ’60s, with Stan Getz and Miles Davis. In the 1970s, Corea led his own bands called Circle and Return to Forever. His piano style, inspired by Bill Evans, Horace Silver, and McCoy Tyner and influenced by Paul Hindemith, became the primary model for most young jazz pianists in the ’70s. The quartal interval is prominent in his left-hand figures. Spanish musical flavor is found in much of his compositions and improvisations, with “Spain” and “La Fiesta” becoming highly popular, while his composition “Windows” became a jazz standard.
Combining his light, playful melodies with the use of synthesizers and various electric keyboard instruments and incorporating rock and Spanish rhythms, Corea attracted audiences beyond the jazz market. In the 21st century, he continued expanding his musical partnerships, collaborating with banjo virtuoso Béla Fleck and recruiting Bobby McFerrin for scat accompaniment to his classical pieces. Corea reunited with Return to Forever after more than two decades. Hot House, one of several albums from the ’70s featuring vibraphonist Gary Burton, earned Corea his 20th Grammy Award in 2012, and in 2019, he won another Grammy for Antidote, recorded with his Spanish Heart Band.
Dizzy Gillespie (John Birks Gillespie)
Trumpeter, Band Leader, Composer, Arranger, Conga Singer, Cultural Ambassador
(1917 – 1993)
Dizzy Gillespie was a giant in the world of jazz—a virtuoso, composer, arranger, bebop innovator, and precursor of Afro-Cuban music. Although he received musical training as a child, he taught himself to play the trumpet. In 1935, he joined a band in Philadelphia, where he earned the nickname “Dizzy” for his onstage antics.
Gillespie made his first recording with Teddy Hill Band in 1937, “King Porter Stomp,” joined Cab Calloway’s band in 1939, and began moving away from the traditional trumpet style he had learned from Louis Armstrong, Charlie Shavers, and Roy Eldridge. At that time, he met trumpeter Mario Bauza, who piqued his interest in Afro-Cuban music. By 1940, Gillespie participated in after-hours jam sessions with other musicians—Charlie Parker, Kenny Clarke, and Bud Powell—whose experiments would spark the bop revolution.
After leaving Calloway, he joined Earl Hines’ band, which included Parker, and composed “Interlude,” which later became “Night in Tunisia.” In 1946, Dizzy formed a star-studded band featuring Cuban percussionist Chano Pozo, and they composed the explosive piece “Manteca.”
In 1953, someone fell on Gillespie’s trumpet, bending its bell to a 45-degree angle. He liked playing it that way and had special trumpets made for him. In 1956, he led a U.S. State Department-sponsored big band on a world tour, and by the late 1980s, he led the United Nations Orchestra until his retirement in 1992. Other compositions that solidified his place in jazz repertory include “Groovin’ High,” “Birks Works,” “Con Alma,” “Anthropology” (with Walter Bishop Jr. and Charlie Parker), and “Salt Peanuts.”
Duke Ellington (Edward Kennedy Ellington)
Composer, Band Leader, Pianist
(1899 – 1974)
Duke Ellington is one of the most important musicians of the 20th century. Books have been written about him, his image appears on a U.S. postage stamp, he received honorary doctorates, and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The centennial of his birth was celebrated nationwide. His bands from the 1920s and 1930s introduced “jungle music,” incorporating African influences. He composed specifically for his musicians, relying on their talents both as soloists and ensemble players to create what Billy Strayhorn called the “Ellington effect.” He used instruments in unusual roles within the orchestra and rarely performed solo on piano, preferring to serve as an arranger.
Gene Lees, in his book Meet Me at Jim & Andy’s: Jazz Musicians and Their World, said of Ellington: “I think he was a much more interesting man, with more complex dimensions, than the hagiography of jazz has made him seem… He accepted the world as he found it, both in life and music, tolerating the discrepancies and contradictions between people and circumstances. That’s how he made a functional unity out of such disparate sounds and personalities.”
Ellington’s band gained notoriety at Harlem’s Cotton Club in 1927, and in 1930 they went to Hollywood to make the film Check and Double Check. That same year, Duke was recognized as a composer for his work Mood Indigo.
In 1959, Ellington composed the soundtrack for the film Anatomy of a Murder, where he also played the role of a pianist named Pie Eye. In his later years, he focused on composing “sacred concerts,” complex works requiring orchestras, choirs, soloists, and dancers.
Some of his memorable compositions include: “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Sophisticated Lady,” “In A Sentimental Mood,” “Prelude To A Kiss,” “I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good),” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” “I’m Beginning To See The Light,” and “Satin Doll.”
Ella Fitzgerald (Ella Jane Fitzgerald, Lady Ella)
Vocalist, Band Leader, Composer
(1917 – 1996)
Ella Fitzgerald grew up in poverty and was orphaned at a young age. Born in Newport News City, Virginia, she moved to Yonkers, New York, where she initially dreamed of becoming a dancer. But in January 1935, her career path was decided when she won the Amateur Hour singing contest at Harlem’s Apollo Theater. By May, she was already performing with the popular drummer Chick Webb’s band, who took her under his wing. In 1939, Ella and Webb’s band scored a huge hit with “A-Tisket, A-Tasket,” which became a million-selling sensation over the years.
Both the public and critics adored her, and she became the top vocalist in Down Beat magazine’s readers’ poll for over thirty years, starting in 1937. She paired well with other popular artists of the time, including The Ink Spots and Louis Armstrong, and embraced bebop in the mid-1940s. In 1945, Ella recorded “Flying Home” with Vic Schoen Orchestra, a scat-singing tour de force and a landmark in her career. In 1948, she joined Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonicseries, which brought her together with top creative jazz instrumentalists.
As Gary Giddins wrote in Faces in the Crowd: Players and Writers, “Fitzgerald’s long career is a tangle of paradoxes.” He pointed out: “She’s resolutely a jazz singer but can’t sing blues… She’s an impeccable ballad artist but doesn’t have much histrionic talent… She’s a product of the Swing Era… yet is associated in the public mind with scat singing, bebop-influenced…”
Dubbed the “First Lady of Song,” Fitzgerald became an international star and won 14 Grammy Awards, in both the pop and jazz vocal categories. Since 2007, her image has been featured on a U.S. postage stamp.
Etta James
Blues, Rock and Roll, Soul, Jazz, Gospel, and R&B Vocalist
(1938 – 2012)
Etta James was raised by foster parents until her biological mother (who was 14 when James was born) took her 12-year-old daughter to San Francisco. There, James formed a doo-wop girl trio called the Creolettes, which was later renamed the Peaches after bandleader Johnny Otis discovered them when James was just 14. In 1960, after signing with Chess Records, James became the label’s first major female star, with hits like “All I Could Do Was Cry,” “Trust in Me,” “At Last,” and “Something’s Got a Hold on Me.” In 1967, she returned to the charts with the soul classic “Tell Mama.” James left Chess Records in 1976 and began recording for other labels and touring. She even opened for the Rolling Stones in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Heroin addiction, which began in the 1960s, contributed to James’s rocky career, and although she kicked heroin in the 1970s, she turned to cocaine. After a seven-year hiatus, she released Seven Year Itch in 1988, followed by Stickin’ to My Guns in 1990, 12 Songs of Christmas in 1998, Let’s Roll in 2003, and her final album, The Dreamer, in 2011. Over the years, James’s voice became rougher and deeper, making her one of the first women to sing in what would later become known as soul music. She continued performing into the early 21st century.
James’s artistry was recognized with four Grammy Awards, including one for lifetime achievement in 2003, and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Blues Hall of Fame, and the Grammy Hall of Fame. Her autobiography, Rage to Survive, co-written with David Ritz, was published in 1995.
Herbie Hancock (Herbert Jeffrey Hancock)
Keyboardist, Composer, and Band Leader
83 years old
Born on April 12, 1940, in Chicago, Illinois, Herbie Hancock became widely popular as the leader of electric jazz-rock bands. At the age of 11, Hancock performed the first movement of a Mozart concerto with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He formed his own band in high school, and after graduating from Grinnell College in Iowa in 1960, he joined trumpeter Donald Byrd’s group and moved to New York. There, his ingenious accompaniments and precise solos with bebop groups led him to tour with Miles Davis from 1963 to 1968. The rhythmic and harmonic freedom explored by Davis’s quintet in the mid-1960s inspired some of Hancock’s boldest harmonic and rhythmic innovations.
In the 1970s, after participating in Davis’s early jazz-rock experiments, Hancock began leading fusion bands, playing electronic keyboards, electric pianos, and synthesizers. He released jazz-funk hits like “Chameleon” from his Headhuntersalbum, his best-selling record. Later dance hits from Hancock included “You Bet Your Love” and “Rockit.” Meanwhile, he composed music for commercials, television, and films, such as Blow-Up, Death Wish, and Round Midnight—for which he won an Oscar.
In 2001, Hancock released Future 2 Future, teaming up with jazz legend Wayne Shorter and prominent names from the techno world to create a fusion of jazz rhythms and electronic music. His next project, Possibilities (2005), ventured into pop music, featuring guest appearances by Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Santana. Throughout his career, Hancock has earned 14 Grammy Awards and 34 nominations.
John Coltrane (John William Coltrane)
Saxophonist, Composer, Band Leader
(1926 – 1967)
John Coltrane passed away at only 40 years old but had already become one of the most influential figures in 20th-century jazz. His early career gave no indication of the spark he would ignite in the genre. After serving in the Navy from 1945 to 1946, he returned to play with various jazz groups, transitioning from alto to tenor saxophone in 1947. He began to gain critical attention when he joined Miles Davis’s quintet in 1955, and in 1957, he released the controversial Blue Train as a band leader. He overcame his addictions and experienced a spiritual awakening, which he celebrated in his landmark 1964 session, A Love Supreme.
In 1958, Coltrane rejoined Davis’s group, appearing on Milestones and Kind of Blue, which introduced Davis’s modal concept and Coltrane’s improvisational technique known as “sheets of sound,” a term coined by writer and critic Ira Gitler. He recorded Giant Steps in 1960 and, in 1961, released two highly contrasting albums: the experimental Live at the Village Vanguard and the commercially successful My Favorite Things. In 1963, he recorded three albums representing the more conservative side of his music: Ballads, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, and John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman.
Coltrane’s mastery of his instrument allowed him to intertwine his spiritual quest with his compulsive musical exploration. The two became one, and although his music was inspired, some found it difficult to comprehend.
In 1982, Coltrane received a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Solo Performance. In 1991, a street at Universal Studios was named after him. He received a Lifetime Achievement Grammy Award in 1992, and a postage stamp featuring his image was issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 1995. In 1971, the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church was founded in his honor in San Francisco, which thrived and helped the homeless until 2000 when real estate development forced the congregation to relocate. The church is still active in a shared space today.
Lee Morgan
Jazz Improviser and Composer, Lyrical Trumpet Artist
(1938 – 1972)
Lee Morgan was the most expressive trumpet virtuoso in the bop idiom and one of its most popular representatives. A prodigy, Morgan became a professional musician at 15 and, by 18, was a soloist in Dizzy Gillespie’s big band. He began leading his own recording sessions in the late 1950s, initially displaying a style influenced by Clifford Brown’s trumpet playing. However, even then, his phrasing and expression showed idiosyncratic elements that evolved into a personal style during his first period with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (1958-1961). Morgan recorded the hit The Sidewinder before rejoining Blakey (1964-1965), after which he led his own groups for the rest of his career. He faced periods of decline, struggling with heroin addiction, and was tragically killed in a nightclub.
Extroverted works like The Sidewinder highlighted Morgan’s blues-inflected playing and compositional style. His emotional complexity, ranging from exuberance to darker moods, was typical of his improvisations, demonstrating both melodic intricacy and rhythmic prowess. Morgan benefited from deep empathy and professional support in his recurring associations with drummer Blakey and tenor saxophonists Wayne Shorter and Hank Mobley, as evidenced by albums like Lee-Way (1960), Search for the New Land (1964), The Gigolo (1965), and his singles Speedball and Cornbread (1965), as well as the ballad Ceora and the Jazz Messengers’ album Witch Doctor (1961).
Louis Armstrong (Louis Daniel Armstrong)
Musician, Trumpeter, Composer, and Jazz Singer
(1901-1971)
Louis Armstrong is arguably the most important figure in the development of jazz. His popularity was not just significant musically but also had cultural and political implications. Despite growing up in unimaginable poverty and racial segregation, Armstrong was able to present his music in a generous way that captivated and won over audiences. At a time when jazz was politically and religiously denounced as primitive, unskilled, immoral, and even degenerate, Armstrong used his extraordinary personality to calm fears and neutralize dissent. America had never experienced anything like him before.
Before Armstrong, jazz was generally perceived as urban popular music, more closely associated with ragtime and military bands, and less with the rhythms we now link with jazz or swing dance music. It was primarily ensemble music, tailored for social functions and played at dance halls and funerals, using a fixed repertoire and a communal aesthetic. Without Armstrong, jazz’s progression as a distinctive art form—rooted in improvisation—would have been slower and less decisive.
Armstrong transformed jazz into a music that values individual expression. His creative spirit was too powerful for the traditional confines of music. To match Armstrong’s level, a musician had to do more than master their instrument; they had to turn it into an extension of themselves.
In his youth, Armstrong adopted the scat singing style—using nonsensical syllables instead of words—with the same improvisational success and expressiveness as an instrumentalist. By 1926, however, when he recorded Heebie Jeebies, few people had ever heard scat singing before.
Perhaps Armstrong’s greatest contribution was teaching the world what swing really was. He introduced a new rhythmic energy that eventually became second nature to people around the globe. As the most celebrated Black artist in Western music history at the time, born just two generations after slavery, Armstrong embodied the promise of a new era where American music could rival that of Europe and Russia.
Miles Davis (Miles Dewey Davis III)
Trumpeter, Band Leader, Composer, Artist
(1926 – 1991)
Miles Davis was born in Alton, Illinois, into a wealthy African American family. His grandfather was a landowner in Arkansas, and his father, a prominent dental surgeon and pillar of their St. Louis community. This comfortable upbringing gave Davis an unshakable confidence, nurtured by his father’s education and prosperity and his mother’s beauty and strong personality, with a passion for fashion. When Billy Eckstine’s orchestra visited St. Louis in 1944, Davis sat in with the band’s dynamic soloists Dizzy Gillespie (who advised him to learn piano and harmony) and Charlie Parker. Later that same year, Davis’s father sent him to New York to study at Juilliard School.
Davis’s work involved a continual rethinking of the four primary elements that define jazz and most other types of music: harmony, melody, rhythm, and instrumentation. But his importance extended beyond his musical explorations. His personality—often combative, always independent, and sometimes reclusive—impressed both musicians and the public. He became an inevitable symbol of his time and a magnet for artists both in and outside of music. With his extremely charismatic persona, Davis emerged as the archetype of the modern jazz musician (distant, unattractive, romantic) and the Black man of the civil rights era (autonomous, candid, unparalleled in talent). Imitated for both his personal and musical attributes, including his style of dress and directness, Davis earned a series of nicknames such as “Prince of Darkness” and “The Sorcerer.”
Davis composed the music for the 1957 French film L’Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud and appeared in the 1991 Australian film Dingo.
He was also a recognized visual artist, with his paintings and sketches blending the bold and masculine styles of Kandinsky, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Picasso, and African tribal art. Davis’s artwork appears on some of his album covers, such as the 1989 album Amandla.
Sarah Vaughan
Vocalist, Pianist, Organist
(1924 – 1990)
Sarah Vaughan was a natural talent whose extraordinary vocal range, which she navigated with ease, allowed her to reach operatic heights and rich, deep tones. She earned the nickname “The Divine One” for her musical prowess and was affectionately called “Sassy” by her friends.
Vaughan was trained in piano and organ and sang in the church choir she attended. At the age of 18, she won the famous Amateur Night singing contest at the Apollo Theater, which led to her joining Earl Hines’ band as a vocalist and second pianist, alongside vocalist Billy Eckstine. When Eckstine formed his own bop-oriented band in 1944, he brought Sarah with him. Collaborations with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Art Blakey, and other bebop pioneers influenced her ability to improvise like an instrumentalist. She was the first to record Dizzy’s Night in Tunisia, then known as Interlude, performed at ballad tempo. The following year, Vaughan caught the attention of the jazz world with East of the Sun(recorded with Gillespie) and Lover Man (with Gillespie and Parker). Her first major hit was Tenderly in 1947.
Two tracks closely associated with her, After Hours and Street of Dreams, were recorded in ’51 and ’52. She signed with Mercury Records in 1954, allowing her to maintain a dual career, recording popular material for the main label and working with top jazz names for its EmArcy subsidiary. These sessions produced some of her best work: In the Land of Hi-Fi with Cannonball Adderley and Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown.
A 1961 session with the Basie band showcased her vocal acrobatics. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, she continued collaborating with renowned jazz artists, recorded two albums of Brazilian music, and musically interpreted the poetry of Pope John Paul II. In 1982, Vaughan won a Grammy Award for Gershwin Live! and was honored with a Grammy for Lifetime Achievement in 1989.
Wayne Shorter
Composer, Jazz Saxophonist, One of the Most Influential Hard-Bop and Modal Musicians, Pioneer of Jazz-Rock Fusion
Age 90
Born on August 25, 1933, in Newark, New Jersey, Shorter studied at New York University and served in the U.S. Army from 1956 to 1958. He had brief stints with Horace Silver’s quintet and Maynard Ferguson’s big band before his major association with Art Blakey’s hard-bop Jazz Messengers. In 1964, Shorter joined Miles Davis’ modal jazz quintet as a tenor saxophonist and remained with him through Davis’ early fusion experiments, leaving the group in 1970.
Throughout the 1970s and much of the 1980s, Shorter and keyboardist Joe Zawinul co-led the fusion band Weather Report, which explored a wide variety of sonic textures. Shorter returned frequently to the tenor sax and led his own fusion groups in the following years.
Shorter’s improvisations were always characterized by sophisticated harmonies and rhythms. His early tenor sax solos, inspired by Sonny Rollins, displayed rare formal unity, often employing thematic improvisation techniques with a sense of drama and humor (Afrique, High Modes). A growing emphasis on lyricism led to a significant stylistic shift and more diffuse forms by the mid-1960s, with much of his playing reflecting a reinterpretation of John Coltrane’s style. His early soprano saxophone work, notably on the 1969 album Super Nova, stands out for its melodic flow. A prolific composer, Shorter wrote many of his best-known pieces for Blakey’s and Davis’ groups, including Lester Left Town, Ping Pong, Children of the Night, and Footprints.
Shorter continued performing into the 21st century, with later albums such as Atlantis (1985), High Life (1995), Without a Net (2013), and Emanon (2018). The latter two featured his quartet with Danilo Pérez (piano), John Patitucci (bass), and Brian Blade (drums). Shorter received more than 10 Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. He was named an NEA Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts in 1998 and was celebrated with a Kennedy Center Honor in 2018.
Robert Glasper
Jazz Pianist
Age 44
Originally from Houston, Texas, Glasper’s compositions are relaxed, smooth, yet harmonically complex, with subtle hip-hop influences. Inspired to play the piano by his mother, a gospel pianist and vocalist, Glasper attended Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts. After graduation, he studied music at the New School University in Manhattan, where he worked with figures like bassist Christian McBride and saxophonist Kenny Garrett. After college, Glasper collaborated with various artists, including trumpeter Roy Hargrove, vocalist Carly Simon, and rapper Mos Def. Glasper released his debut album, Mood, on Fresh Sound New Talent in 2004. Canvas (2005) and In My Element (2007) followed on Blue Note Records.
In 2009, Glasper released the avant-garde album Double Booked, which blended modal post-bop with funky elements inspired by Herbie Hancock’s 1980s music. Three years later, his group, Robert Glasper Experiment, with numerous guest vocalists, released their debut album Black Radio on Blue Note, aiming to blur the lines between jazz, hip-hop, R&B, and rock & roll. The album topped the jazz charts and won a Grammy Award for Best R&B Album. The following year, the Robert Glasper Experiment returned with a second album, winning another Grammy, this time for Best Traditional R&B Performance for their cover of Stevie Wonder’s Jesus Children of America.
Alongside bassist Derrick Hodge and drummer Damion Reid, they recorded the album Covered (2015) live at Capitol Studios. The pre-release single was a cover of Radiohead’s Reckoner. Glasper also played on Kendrick Lamar’s celebrated To Pimp a Butterfly and Maxwell’s blackSUMMERS’night. For Don Cheadle’s 2016 Miles Davis biopic Miles Ahead, Glasper curated the soundtrack and composed original music featuring contributions from Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Gary Clark Jr. Glasper also recorded Everything’s Beautiful, a tribute album to Davis, marking the trumpet legend’s 90th birthday.
Kamasi Washington
Saxophonist, Composer, and Bandleader
Age 42
Washington is considered the future of modern jazz with the release of his triple album, The Epic. His sound bridges the fine line between modal jazz, soul-jazz, funk, hip-hop, and electronic music.
He picked up the saxophone at 13, but had already been playing several other instruments by then. That’s when he found his calling. Within a few years, he became the lead tenor saxophonist at Hamilton High School Academy of Music in Los Angeles, his hometown. After graduation, he attended UCLA to study ethnomusicology. While at UCLA, he recorded an album with Young Jazz Giants, a quartet he formed with Cameron Graves and brothers Ronald Bruner Jr. and Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, which was released in 2004.
From that point on, Washington continuously performed and recorded with a wide range of significant artists across various genres, including Snoop Dogg, Raphael Saadiq, Gerald Wilson, McCoy Tyner, George Duke, and PJ Morton. He released several solo albums between 2005 and 2008, while also playing and recording with Throttle Elevator Music. In 2014, Washington appeared on albums like After the Disco by Broken Bells, Chameleon by Harvey Mason, Up by Stanley Clarke, and You’re Dead! by Flying Lotus, among others, spanning indie rock, contemporary jazz, progressive, and experimental electronic music.
The following year, Washington contributed to Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly and released The Epic on Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label, a nearly three-hour long triple album that reached number three on the Billboard Jazz chart.
In September, Harmony of Difference explored philosophical possibilities of counterpoint, composed as a suite with five distinct movements and a sixth, “Truth,” as the finale, incorporating principles and themes from the previous ones. Washington returned in 2018 with the double album Heaven & Earth, featuring contributions from Thundercat, Patrice Quinn, and Miles Mosley, with singles like “Fists of Fury” and “The Space Travelers” released ahead of the album. Two years later, Washington returned with Becoming, the original score for director Nadia Hallgren’s documentary, which accompanied Michelle Obama’s 2018 memoir.
Gregory Porter
Singer, Composer, and Actor
Age 51
Born in Los Angeles in 1971, Porter grew up in Bakersfield, California, where his mother was a minister. Through his mother’s record collection, he fell under the spell of Nat King Cole, learning early on how to emulate him. In addition to singing, he was also a talented athlete, leaving high school with a football scholarship to San Diego State University. However, after a shoulder injury derailed his sports career, he moved to Brooklyn, where he worked day jobs as a chef while singing in local jazz clubs. During this time, he met saxophonist, composer, and pianist Kamau Kenyatta.
In 2010, Porter released his debut album, Water, on Motéma Music. It was highly successful and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album. His second album, Be Good, followed two years later, further highlighting Porter’s confidence. Known for his warm baritone voice, Porter became famous for his cross-genre style blending jazz, soul, and gospel, drawing comparisons to his idols Nat King Cole, Donny Hathaway, and Stevie Wonder.
In September 2013, Porter released his third album on Blue Note, Liquid Spirit. Produced by Brian Bacchus, the album was a huge success, reaching number two on the Billboard Top Jazz Albums chart and winning the Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album in 2014. It also became one of the most streamed jazz albums of all time, with over 20 million streams.
Although Porter’s compositions are his main focus, he often returns to his roots, as seen in his 2017 tribute album Nat King Cole & Me.
JAZZ DECADES
1800s
In the 16th century, many Africans from West Africa were sold as slaves to the wealthy plantation owners in the southern United States, bringing with them their traditional African music, which they blended with church hymns and influences from Caribbean slave music. The emancipation of slaves in 1865 opened many opportunities for African Americans. Many learned to play European musical instruments, allowing them to perform in clubs, brothels, and bars.
1900s
Jazz was born at the beginning of the 20th century, with its origins in New Orleans. A cultural melting pot, “The Big Easy” was famous for its free-spirited, laid-back atmosphere, described by jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton as “everything being hilarious.” Situated along the Mississippi River, the main waterway connecting the South to the North, New Orleans became a hub for various musical styles, particularly ragtime from Missouri and the blues from Mississippi.
1910s
Shortly before and during World War I, The Creole Band, a group of Black musicians from New Orleans, spread jazz across many parts of America. Although they had the chance to record the first jazz records in 1916, it wasn’t until 1917 that the white New Orleans group, Original Dixieland Jazz Band, recorded the first pieces of jazz in the New Orleans style.
1920s
Prohibition and the rise of speakeasies in the early 1920s created numerous opportunities for musicians to perform in small cabarets, dance halls, and ballrooms, especially in Chicago and the Midwest. From the mid-1920s to the end of the decade, Chicago’s importance as a jazz hub began to decline, while New York, already the epicenter of the music industry, became a magnet attracting musicians from all over America.
1930s
In the early 1930s, America was engulfed in the Great Depression. The entertainment industry, like the rest of the economy, was hit hard. In 1932, record sales in the U.S. hit an all-time low of 6 million, compared to the peak of 140 million in 1927. While there were still jobs, especially for the top musicians in New York, those in other parts of the country struggled to survive.
1940s
The 1940s marked several important technological changes that affected the music industry. First, vinyl replaced shellac as the material for record pressing, and 78 rpm records were gradually replaced by 45 rpm and then 33 1/3 rpm longplay records. Small groups led by musicians like Art Tatum, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Coleman Hawkins were exploring the harmonic boundaries of traditional jazz, a new style that came to be known as “bebop.”
1950s
A new generation of musicians, including Clifford Brown, Sonny Stitt, Cannonball Adderley, Charles Mingus, and Art Blakey, built upon the foundations laid by bebop innovators, creating what is now known as “hard bop.” Another offshoot of bebop was introduced by Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool session, a style now known as “cool jazz.” During this time, John Coltrane also began to explore a more avant-garde jazz style.
1960s
In the 1960s, John Coltrane recorded one of his landmark works, A Love Supreme, solidifying his place as one of the most influential jazz musicians of the decade. Around the same time, Antonio Carlos Jobim began gaining recognition for his music, a blend of jazz and Brazilian rhythms, which became known as samba. Stan Getz’s collaboration with Jobim and João Gilberto achieved great success with the track The Girl from Ipanema, a style later known as bossa nova.
1970s
The free jazz performers who gained prominence in the previous decade, such as Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, continued to explore jazz from a perspective that incorporated world music influences. Meanwhile, crossover/fusion artists like George Benson and Herbie Hancock approached music from a more pop-oriented perspective. This style eventually led to what is now called “smooth jazz,” a simple, easy-listening form of jazz.
1980s
The 1980s saw a renewed public interest in traditional jazz, with most jazz musicians adopting a post-bop approach. Established jazz-rock performers such as Freddy Hubbard, Herbie Hancock, and Chick Corea partially returned to more traditional jazz performances and recordings, while Wynton Marsalis won two Grammy Awards in the same year—one for Best Classical Album and one for Best Jazz Recording.
1990s
Jazz continued to develop steadily throughout the 1990s, partly due to the Young Lions movement, which brought acoustic jazz back into the public eye. For some, this was seen as a marketing gimmick, but for many young Black musicians emerging on the scene, it was their chance to leave their mark on acoustic jazz with their own experiences. Much of what defines jazz today has its roots in the 1990s.
2000s
The 2000s, also known as “the aughts,” were a highly creative decade for jazz, marked by a shift away from smooth jazz (a radio format that began to fade commercially around 2003) and a release from the increasingly irrelevant debate between the “Marsalis camp,” which emphasized jazz tradition, and the avant-garde camp, which viewed neo-traditionalism as a creative straitjacket.
2010s
While veteran musicians continued to impress and inspire, a revival of the cool jazz style led to a massive increase in young jazz audiences. Spotify revealed that 40% of jazz listeners were under 30, thanks to the bold genius of artists like Esperanza Spalding, Vijay Iyer, Nubya Garcia, Ezra Collective, Mansur Brown, Snarky Puppy, Portico Quartet, and The Comet Is Coming.
2020s
The COVID-19 pandemic canceled all live performances, the lifeblood of jazz music, but a series of remarkable albums and debuts helped the industry move forward, offering hope for a comeback. Despite the losses caused by the pandemic, it’s hard to be pessimistic about the future of jazz, given the way the genre has historically overcome adversity. Jazz survived a pandemic once, and it will certainly survive others.
2024
When we think of jazz, the image of Miles Davis in the 1950s or 60s might come to mind—impeccably dressed in a custom Italian suit, playing Kind of Blue on the trumpet. However, today jazz is more popular than it has been in decades, thanks to a new generation of musicians who are infusing modern influences into the genre, creating new global scenes and ushering in a new golden age for jazz.