Hackensack

Art Farmer has long been admired for his lyrical playing. He started on trumpet, then switched to flugelhorn, helping to popularize the instrument. Eventually , Art played the Flumpet, a Flugelhorn-Trumpet combination that was especially designed for him. He played professionally since the 1940s, and started recording in bands at 19 years of age in 1948, when he played in the bands of Jay McShann, Benny Carter, Gerald Wilson and others.

Daryl Johns was born in the Bronx and began playing bass at age seven with encouragement from his father, drummer Steve Johns, and his mother, saxophonist Debbie Keefe. Johns has studied with Chip Jackson and Dave Santoro. He has attended the Jazz in July program, the Vermont Jazz Center, and the Litchfield Jazz Camp. Johns sits in regularly around the New York area with musicians including Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, and Randy Brecker. He also performs throughout New York and New Jersey with a trio of his peers. Johns was featured on a Fox television segment called “12-Year-Old Jazz Prodigy."

Dick Garcia first picked up the guitar at age nine, teaching himself the instrument and the jazz language well enough to begin working professionally at nineteen with clarinetist Tony Scott.

Known for his deep baritone, Earl Coleman worked with many of the greatest musicians in jazz. Earl’s first documented recording session was one in which he led; on this 1946 date, he was accompanied by none other than Miles Davis and Art Blakey. His next session was no less impressive: at this 1947 date, he sang This Is Always and Dark Shadows with the Charlie Parker Quartet. These songs went on to become some of his biggest hits. During the 1950s and 1960s, Earl worked with Gene Ammons, Art Farmer, Gigi Gryce, Elmo Hope, and Sonny Rollins. His last recording session was with Etta Jones in 1989.

An imaginative pianist who valued subtlety over virtuosity in the landscape of bebop, Elmo Hope never achieved the fame that his close friends did, perhaps because he so rejected stylistic norms of the time. Elmo was a classically trained pianist with technique rivaling that of his childhood friend Bud Powell and a composer of music whose inventiveness and complexity approaches that of Thelonious Monk. In fact, Elmo, Thelonious and Bud used to hang out so much together they became known as "The Three Musketeers."

A versatile jazz-blues singer, Ernestine Anderson has been a well-loved vocalist over the course of her 50-year career. Ernestine's career began at age 18 when she toured for two years with the Johnny Otis band. In 1952, she joined Lionel Hampton's band, which at the time included Russell Jacquet, Milt Jackson, and Quincy Jones. In 1955, she collaborated with Gigi Gryce on his album "Nica's Tempo." Ernestine's debut album in the US was recorded in Sweden and released in 1958 on Mercury under the title "Hot Cargo," and soon after her career was in motion: in 1959 she was heralded as Down Beat Magazine's "Best New Vocal Star."

Gigi Gryce was a fine altoist in the 1950s, but it was his writing skills, both composing and arranging (including composing the standard Minority) that were considered most notable. After growing up in Hartford, CT, and studying at the Boston Conservatory and in Paris, Gryce worked in New York with Max Roach, Tadd Dameron, and Clifford Brown. He toured Europe in 1953 with Lionel Hampton and led several sessions in France on that trip.

In 1953, Hank Mobley started his jazz recording career with dates for Dizzy Gillespie and Max Roach. He continued playing and recording with Dizzy Gillespie through most of 1954. November 13, 1954, marked the first recording session of a new co-operative quintet called "The Jazz Messengers." The founding members of "The Jazz Messengers" were Kenny Dorham (trumpet), Hank Mobley (tenor sax), Horace Silver (piano), Doug Watkins (bass) and Art Blakey (drums). Horace Silver had the record deal with Blue Note records at the time, so the first 10" issue of this session came out as the Horace Silver Quintet. On February 6, 1955, the group did another 10" session which was first was issued as the Horace Silver Quintet, Volume 2.

Herbie Nichols is a classic example of a visionary jazz composer whose music was way ahead of its time. His life story and music have some parallels to those of Thelonious Monk, whom he knew well. Like Monk, Nichols wrote music in the 1940s and '50s that was much more advanced and idiosyncratic than the mainstream of jazz at the time. However, whereas Monk's music became widely known later in his life, Nichols did not live long enough to see such recognition.

Horace Silver is the pianist on the recordings of the songs shown above. We've written out Piano Comping Voicings á la Horace Silver for these titles. Click on the song title then on the Piano Corner tab to see details.

Born to a musical family, Joe Puma came of age during the advent of the bebop era, and first found work in 1949 in the band of vibraphonist Joe Roland. Puma recorded prolifically as a session player in the '50s and '60s, accompanying the likes of Carmen McRae, Herbie Mann, Artie Shaw, Lee Konitz and Eddie Bert.

Kanoa Mendenhall was born in Yokohama, Japan and raised in Monterey, California. She grew up listening to jazz in the household, and was highly influenced by her father, jazz pianist Eddie Mendenhall. Kanoa started playing jazz and classical cello at age ten and the upright bass at age twelve. By age thirteen, she was playing regularly in the Monterey and San Francisco Bay areas, and has recorded and/or performed with musicians such as Lew Soloff, Allison Miller, the SFJAZZ Collective, Mark Sherman, Bruce Forman, Pheeroan akLaff, and Antonio Hart.

Trumpeter/composer Kenny Dorham was very much on the jazz scene from the mid-1940s through most of the 1960s. He worked and recorded with all the major figures in the modern jazz movement, which includes the legendary Billy Eckstine big band, Dizzy Gillespie, Art Blakey, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and Max Roach as well as Kenny Clarke, Sonny Stitt, Fats Navarro, J.J. Johnson and many other giants of that period.

Malcolm Earl Waldron was born in NYC. He studied classical piano starting at age eight. He switched to alto saxophone, but as he said, "when I first heard Charlie Parker I decided to go back to the piano." He was drafted into the Army for two years starting in 1943. He then earned a bachelor of arts degree in composition at Queens College in New York. He made his professional debut in 1950 as a member of Ike Quebec's combo at Café Society in New York City, and recorded with him in 1952.

A forward-leaning yet strongly swinging modern pianist, Cochrane studied with the noted Boston-based piano teacher Madame Margaret Chaloff (mother of Serge Chaloff) and the inimitable Jaki Byard. In a fruitful career, he has performed and/or recorded with saxophonists Michael Brecker, Sonny Fortune, Oliver Lake, David Schnitter and Chico Freeman and trumpeters Clark Terry, Valery Ponomarev, Jack Walrath and Ted Curson; also bassist Eddie Gomez, as well as many others.

Bassist Paul Chambers was a leading rhythmic force in the 1950s and 1960s. He became one of the signature bassists in jazz history. Born in Pittsburgh but raised in Detroit, Chambers initially took up the baritone horn as a child. He followed suit with the tuba and didn't become interested in the string bass until 1949. Listening to Charlie Parker and Bud Powell and studying under a bassist of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Chambers began making headway in small bars of Hastings Street area and doing club jobs with Kenny Burrell, Thad Jones and Barry Harris. He did classical work in a group called the Detroit String Band, a rehearsal symphony orchestra.

A remarkable composer and pianist whose special touch and articulation makes him instantly recognizable at the piano, Sonny (Conrad Yeatis Clark) was born in Herminie, PA, a small mining town 60 miles from Pittsburgh. He started piano at four, and at six was featured playing boogie-woogie on several amateur hour radio programs. He spent his teenage years in Pittsburgh, playing vibes and bass in high school as well as being featured on piano. He went to California in 1951 with his older brother, also a pianist, and worked in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, starting his recording career at age 22 in February, 1953, with Teddy Charles.