Jimmy Winokur
My Favorite Musicians -Page 4
Mostly
Mainstream
Jazz
and some
personal background
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My favorite
Musicians:
Page 1
Page 2
Page 3
Over many years now, I've had the pleasure of listening to, and coming to love, many jazz musicians -- many of them mainstream jazz players, and some outside the main stream, or more unconventional (e.g., Oregon, Gary Burton, and the sort of music produced on the ECM label ).
The jazz artists most important to my musical life are interspersed throughout these 1st 3 pages of "My Favorite Musicians." This page is reserved for most of the mainstream artists I love, and promoters who introduced me to many of them..
Though I have always explored jazz and other music through browsing and acquiring a wide array albums of interest, a disproportionate part of my exposure to mainstream jazz has come through live performance at a few jazz festivals and the like -- notably, the Gibson Jazz Concerts (below), the Portland ("PDX) Jazz Festivals, the Newport Beach Jazz Parties, and The Jazz Cruise voyages (including the one-time-only North Sea Jazz Cruise).
Dick Gibson
('Gibson')
After the
concert series
wound down,
the Gibsons divorced,
and 'Gibson' --
who'd
injured his
hip in an early
Rose Bowl game --
died not long after
the concert series ended.
Denver
The Gibsons have been Denver's premiere Jazz impresarios. Dick Gibson assembled the line-ups and Maddie made it all happen logistically (while keeping 'Gibson' in line when possible). Among the great performers I saw play were Zoot Sims, Bob Haggart, Ray Brown, Doc Cheatham, Jake Hannah, Paul Smith, Phil Woods, Joe Newman, Sir Roland Hanna, Scott Hamilton, Joe Wilder, Benny Carter, Ray Brown , 'Sweets' Edison, 'Lockjaw' Davis, Bill Watrous, Emily Remler, Milt Hinton, Plas Johnson, Ross Tompkins, Warren Vache
Their 15 year Gibson Jazz concert series at Denver's Paramount Theater was the finest concert series I've heard of any kind (including, e.g., series of the world-renowned Philadelphia Orchestra ). Most of what I know of jazz I learned in the front row of these concerts, six times a year through the 70s and 80s. Each concert featured about 10 of the finest, often very senior, mainstream jazz players at each concert, often playing together for the 1st time, jamming in larger and smaller ensembles . On a grander scale, the Gibsons' Rocky Mountain Jazz Parties ran 'round the clock through Labor Day weekend for many years.
In buying my current Garfield St. townhouse, I had the privilege of having Maddie as my real estate broker. What good fortune! We would talk jazz while the sellers tried to show their houses! A lovely step up from the norm in the difficult real estate brokerage profession!
Click here for:
Gary Burton
Dave Holland
Manfred Eicher _ECM
Ella Fitzgerald
Billie Holiday
Listening to Live Jazz:
Other Great
Jazz Celebrations:
Along with Gerry Mulligan and Paul Desmond, Chet Baker was quintessentially West Coast Cool Jazz, from the '50s on. His rendition with Mulligan of My Funny Valentine is the classic version, and their best known number.
The "& Strings" album featured the late Zoot Sims) became a classic of the genre (of note), and was another of those choice morsels that mysteriously ended up in my boyhood home, was ignored by whoever had brought it in, and was pinched by me.
In liner notes to the terrible "Jerry Jeff Jazz," Jerry notes that - in an odd coincidence - he first came upon Chet's music in much the same way!
Anyway, "& Strings" holds special meaning for me as my 1st exposure to jazz (along with Ahmad Jamal's Poinciana, which since faded as a favorite).
Chet's style was as lyrical as any player in jazz, his tone exquisitely buttery, his trumpet sounding often like a flugelhorn, even when playing trumpet. He is one player whose music is accessible enough to become a wonderful entry point for those wanting to understand jazz better.
James Dean, Chet went on to tragic involvement in drugs.
Drugs ended up costing him his original front teeth and a badly broken jaw, destroyed in a mid-60s drug deal gone bad. Amazingly Baker fought his way back, redeveloping his embouchure to the point where he later created some of his most beautiful work. It has been speculated whether his 1988 fatal "fall" from a 2nd story Amsterdam hotel window was a drug induced fall, or suic cide; his body was loaded with cocaine and heroin at the time.
Beginning in around 2000, Charlie Haden has become perhaps my favorite jazz musician -- clearly the most lyrical, which is amazing considering his pedigree.
He has played most notably with sax player Ornette Coleman, including on Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come in 1959 -- a foundation nor the 'free jazz' the early avant garde jazz of the 1960s --where the improvisation was not based on chord structure.
Always politically active, he also led The Liberation Music Orchestra with Carla Bley - and was arrested in Portugal for playing his Song for Che. A magnificent compilation of interviews is here: Charlie Haden remembered - Terri Gross, Fresh Air-NPR:
IN 2010,
But by the time I was exposed to Charlie haden's music, in the process of seeking performers for my Cafe Communique, he had formed Quartet West, which has been presenting lush romantic music ever since. This is the music I came to adore!
In 2010, Keith Jarrett reuinited with Charlie Haden for a simple duet album, Jasmine, which attracted attention throughout the jazz world as one of the top albums of the year. It is exquisite, and I recommend it to all! Jasmine was followed soon after with Haden's final recording, drawn from the same recording sessions.: The Last Dance
A Jazz Cruise discovery, Israeli wunderkind Anat Cohen has swiftly ascended to the top rank of Jazz Clarinetists. (She also plays Tenor Sax. One special evening, standing and cheering after Anat's magnificent set, I spied an older woman looking on with extra-special pride. Instinctively, I called out to her: "Ima!" Hebrew for Mother. She shouted back, "Ima", and we were soon wrapped up in conversation, which Anat briefly joined.
Here is Anat's Ima.
2016 Jazz
Cruise
Clarinet Summit,
with Paquito D'Rivera
and Ken Peplowski
Anat and Paquito play beautifully on this video of And the World Weeps
--The Clayton Hamilton Extended Family--
Jeff Hamilton
John
Clayton
Jeff Clayton
Tamir Hendelman
Christopher Luty
Clayton Hamilton Jazz Orchestra
Gerald Clayton
John & Jeff
Horace Silver
r
Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan
Roy Hargrove
Having come up as part of Horace Silver's great quintet, Blue Mitchell was somewhat of an obscure mainstream jazz player. But for me, he was the turn of a corner. I'd stopped listening to jazz -- mostly Chet Baker (also noted in these pages)-- early in college, and remained oblivious to this great musical realm for almost 20 years.
When I thought of returning to the exploration of jazz, I had the good fortune to attend a Blue Mitchell concert in support of his Stratosonic Nuances album (also featuring tenor sax player, Harold Land, in a real jazz supper club ...on Leetsdale Ave. in Denver/Glendale, of all places.
(The Leetsdale Ave. club was
closed within
months of its opening.
I can relate!)
From that special
night, I
recall the tenderloin, and
too much Jack Daniels. But mostly I
recall
sitting real
close up to
Blue Mitchell, and reveling in the
'funkadelic' music of "Blues
for Thelma"
and the
like.
I was hooked
(on the music,
not the booze.)
Milt 'Bags' Jackson
and The Modern Jazz Quartet.
Benny
Carter...et al.
Herbie
Hancock 
Freddie Hubbard
Zoot Sims
Zoot Sims & Al Cohn
Paul
Desmond
Scott Hamilton
Art Blakey
Doc Cheatham
Nicki Parrott
Benny Green
Kristin Korb
protégé of
Ray Brown
Ray Brown
Harry "Sweets" Edison
Eddie
"Lockjaw
Davis
Ben Webster
tenor sax balladeer
extraordinaire
Ben Webster (w/ hat) and Billie Holiday, Gerry Mulligan, Lester Young,
Carl Fontana
Joe Newman & Joe Wilder
trumpet balladeers
Houston Person
Bob Haggart
(friend of
my mom
in her San Miguel de Allende days)
Jake Hanna
Paul Smith
Jay "Hootie" McShann
Sir Roland Hanna
Eubie
Blake
Al Grey
"Slide" Hampton
Ross "the Phantom" Tompkins
Plas Johnson
Bill Evans
"Slide" Hampton and Bill Watrous
Nick Brignola