Search Results

Sign in Modify your search

Narrow Your Choices

Format

Type

Articles containing

Sex

Life event

Date

Subject

Occupation

Era

Availability

 1-20 of 94 Results  for:

  • Percussionist x
  • 1929–1940: The Great Depression and the New Deal x
  • 1941–1954: WWII and Postwar Desegregation x
Clear all

Article

Algendones Farfan, Julio “Chocolate”  

Rocío del Águila

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born in El Carmen, Chincha (a province in the Ica region in southern Peru), on 13 January 1934. He is among the most famous of Peruvian musicians and earned a widespread reputation for his dexterity and speed in playing the Peruvian cajón, bongo, and conga, as well as for his participation in various ensembles. He experimented with different forms of traditional música criolla (music of the Creoles), Afro-Peruvian rhythms, and jazz. He is also well known for his contributions to fusion music.

He was a self-taught musician and this learning process started when he was very young. He moved to Lima and made his debut at El Ambassador Grill when he was 15 years old. Soon thereafter, he started playing the bongos for well-established international bands and performers like Yolanda Montes “La Tongolele” in nightclubs such as the Boite Embassy. In 1957 the Chilean showgirl Tamara ...

Article

Ali, Rashied  

Jim Miller

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

jazz drummer, was born Robert Patterson in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Poston Patterson. His talented pianist aunt was asked by the famous bandleader Lionel Leo Hampton to tour with him, but as she was not yet finished with school her grandmother would not allow it. However, Ali liked what he heard emanating from his aunt's living-room rehearsals with a local group, especially the sounds from the drummer. Although he did not graduate, Ali's high school dances provided him the opportunity to hear such luminaries as the saxophonist Charlie Parker and the big bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton. The young Rashied listened to the jazz drummers Max Roach and Art Blakey, but his earliest influences were his father's first cousins, the drummers Bernard and Charlie Rice Upon returning to Philadelphia after beginning his drumming career in the U S Army Ali briefly studied ...

Article

Allen, Tony  

Jeremy Rich

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
17 September 2020

was born in the Lafiaji neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria, on 20 July 1940 His father James Alabi Allen derived his surname from an ancestor who had been rescued from a slave ship and brought to Sierra Leone in the early nineteenth century James Alabi Allen worked as a mechanic and came from a fairly successful family He enjoyed playing guitar and mandolin and so his son Tony was exposed to indigenous Yoruba and Western music as a child While Allen s father did not belong to a church his mother Prudentia Anna Mettle was a devout Catholic She was of Ghanaian descent and Allen always thought of himself as both Ghanaian and Nigerian as a result Allen had five brothers and sisters and they all went on to have successful careers either in business or in the professions Tony Allen took a different path Uninterested in a formal education ...

Article

Baillargau, Raymond “Ti Roro”  

Lois Wilcken

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born somewhere in Haiti, probably in the mid-1910s. The names of his parents and their occupations are unknown, and documentation of his life prior to his rise to fame as a stage drummer is virtually nonexistent. During his lifetime his art form was transmitted exclusively through family and/or community lines organized around the rites of Vodou, an Afro-Haitian spiritual discipline. One might reasonably assume he received his training in a Vodou community.

Ti Roro was born sometime around 1915, the year the United States invaded Haiti. This first occupation lasted until 1934 Scholarship on the period has proposed multiple reasons for the operation but like other interventions in the region the invasion and occupation of Haiti served the United States aim of promoting its economic interests and expelling European influence Initially Haiti responded to the invasion with militant resistance but its resources were not equal to those ...

Article

Balbuena, Jorge Hugo  

Lea Geler

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

was born on 22 August 1928 in a conventillo, or tenement house (community housing where very poor people live), in the city of Buenos Aires. He was the youngest son of Lucía Teodolinda Obella and Salvador Balbuena, both Afro-Argentines. His first marriage was with Celia Catani, also of African descent, and together they had a son, Daniel Hugo. After being widowed, he married again, this time to Adelina Isabel Soto, also an Afro-Argentine and the daughter of Celina Posadas. They had three children: Silvia Noemí Balbuena, Lucio Omar, and Leandro Martín.

Hugo grew up in a very poor family For this reason he had to drop out of high school in order to work as a casual laborer to help improve his family s financial situation While his mother Lucía had worked extremely hard to earn a teaching degree the story within the family was that she had not ...

Article

Barreto, Ray  

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

Born in New York of Puerto Rican heritage, Barreto joined Tito Puente's big band in the 1950s. In the 1960s, he established the Ray Barreto Orchestra, which recorded under the Fania label. In 1992 he established the Jazz band, New World Spirit.

See also Salsa Music.

Article

Batiste, Lionel  

Caryn E. Neumann

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
31 May 2015

a bass drummer, vocalist, and leader of the New Orleans-based Treme Brass Band, is perhaps most famous as a New Orleans personality. He grew up as one of sixteen children of a blacksmith. As a child, he worked as a shoeshiner in the French Quarter and often entertained with his tap dancing performances at a whites-only club. He began playing rhythm sticks and bells at the age of eight. He later settled on the snare drum, noting that he wanted to avoid both damaging his lips from playing brass or developing a sore jaw from a reed instrument. Batiste learned his signature slide-and-hop dance from studying drummer Papa Knox. Batiste also played the banjo, piano, violin, washboard, and kazoo.

Throughout his career Batiste performed as a drummer with various bands including the Square Deal Social and Pleasure Club but earned steady income by working as a bricklayer ...

Article

Best, Denzil  

T. Dennis Brown

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

jazz drummer and composer, was born Denzil de Costa Best in New York City, the son of immigrant parents from Barbados; his mother was Josephine Best (his father's name is unknown). Denzil Best married Arline Riley (date unknown), with whom he had two daughters. Best began studying piano when he was six years old but later learned trumpet, which he played professionally in the mid‐1930s with the drummer Chris Columbus (Joe Morris). By the end of the decade Best became associated with several seminal bop musicians playing at Minton's nightclub in New York, including Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, and house bandleader Joe Guy. Because of a lung disorder, Best stopped playing trumpet in 1941, returned to the piano, and later played string bass and drums.

After having worked as a drummer with locally led New York City bands (Saxie Payne, Eddie Williams ...

Article

Best, Denzil  

T. Dennis Brown

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
21 January 1999
Published online:
01 December 2006

Best, Denzil (27 April 1917–25 May 1965), jazz drummer and composer, was born Denzil de Costa Best in New York City, the son of immigrant parents from Barbados; his mother was Josephine Best (his father’s name is unknown). Best married Arline Riley (date unknown), with whom he had two daughters. Best began studying piano when he was six years old but later learned trumpet, which he played professionally in the mid-1930s with drummer Chris Columbus (Joe Morris). By the end of the decade he became associated with several seminal bop musicians playing at Minton’s nightclub in New York, including Thelonious Monk, Kenny Clarke, and house bandleader Joe Guy. Because of a lung disorder Best stopped playing trumpet in 1941, returned to the piano, and later played string bass and drums.

After having worked as a drummer with locally led New York City bands Saxie Payne ...

Article

Bey, James Hawthorne  

Susan Richardson-Sanabria

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

musician, composer, educator, priest, and artist, was born James Hawthorne in Yamassee, South Carolina, to Mary Hugee and Roland Hawthorne. When he was still a boy he and his family moved to New Jersey, then to New York City—first to Brooklyn and later to Harlem. In Brooklyn James and his parents lived with his grandparents, and his grandfather encouraged him to join the church choir.

His musical talents became more evident after his move to Harlem, when he began to study dance and percussion with Isame Andrews, a specialist in African music and dance and a student of Asadata Dafora. Attracting notice with his vocal skills, Hawthorne was admitted to both the Eva Jessye and the Francis Hall Johnson choirs In the mid to late 1930s he studied African drum making and performance especially the ashiko drum with Moses Miannes Mianns a Nigerian who had come to ...

Article

Blakey, Art  

Lewis Porter

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
01 December 2006

(b Pittsburgh, Oct 11, 1919; d New York, Oct 16, 1990). American jazz drummer and bandleader. By the time he was a teenager he was playing the piano full-time, leading a commercial band. Shortly afterwards he taught himself to play the drums in the aggressive swing style of Chick Webb, Sid Catlett and Ray Bauduc, and he joined Mary Lou Williams as a drummer for an engagement in New York in autumn 1942. He then toured with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra (1943–4). During his years with Billy Eckstine’s big band (1944–7) Blakey became associated with the modern-jazz movement, along with his fellow band members Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro and others.

In 1947 Blakey organized the Seventeen Messengers a rehearsal band and recorded with an octet called the Jazz Messengers He then travelled in Africa probably for ...

Article

Blakey, Art  

James Sellman

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
07 April 2005
Published online:
01 December 2006

As a drummer and bandleader, Art Blakey had a profound impact on the shape of modern Jazz. During the late 1940s, along with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, he was one of the creators of modern jazz drumming. His long-standing group, the Jazz Messengers (1955–1990)—together with Miles Davis's quintet with John Coltrane, the Max Roach–Clifford Brown Quintet, and the Horace Silver Quintet—popularized the style known as hard bop. Hard bop draws equally on the harmonic and rhythmic complexity of bebop and on the visceral sounds and simpler rhythms that characterize the Blues and Gospel Music. In an interview published in The Black Perspective in Music, Blakey summed up his approach simply, declaring that he wanted to play music that would “wash away the dust of everyday life.”

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania born Blakey was also one of the great talent scouts of ...

Article

Blakey, Art  

T. Dennis Brown

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

jazz drummer and bandleader, was born Art William Blakey in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Burtrum Blakey, a barber, and Marie Roddericker. His father left home shortly after Blakey was born, and his mother died the next year. Consequently, he was raised by a cousin, Sarah Oliver Parran, who worked at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Mill in Pittsburgh. He moved out of the home at age thirteen to work in the steel mills and in 1938 married Clarice Stuart, the first of three wives. His other wives were Diana Bates and Ann Arnold. Blakey had at least ten children (the exact number is unknown), the last of whom was born in 1986.

As a teenager Blakey taught himself to play the piano and performed in local dance bands but he later switched to drums Like many of his contemporaries Blakey initially adapted the ...

Article

Blakey, Art  

Timothy J. O'Brien

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
09 February 2009
Published online:
01 December 2009

jazz musician. Arthur William Blakey was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was raised by relatives and a family friend. His father, Bertram, a barber, had left the family when Blakey was an infant, and his mother died when he was twenty-one months old. By age fourteen he was working as a pianist in a Pittsburgh nightclub. He switched to drums, learning to play a hard swinging style by listening to recordings of Chick Webb and Sid Catlett.

After a stint in the Mary Lou Williams combo in 1942, Blakey traveled with Fletcher Henderson's orchestra in 1943–1944. From 1944 to 1947 he played in Billy Eckstine's orchestra, a group that included the influential musicians John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie, Charlie “Bird” Parker, and Miles Davis. Blakey formed his own group, the Seventeen Messengers, in 1947 making the first recordings under his name for the ...

Article

Buckley, Francisco  

Peter Szok

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
30 September 2016

salsa percussionist and influential band leader nicknamed “Bush,” was born in Panama City, Panama, on 17 March 1940, to Clarence Buckley and Ethlyn Clarke. The grandson of Afro-Antillean immigrants, he lived in La Boca, a Panama Canal Zone town, until he was 10. As a child, Buckley spoke exclusively English but developed an appreciation for Cuban music, encouraged by an uncle, who played the saxophone and piano and who later directed a jazz orchestra in New York. The period’s radio programs were also influential. On local and short-wave stations, Buckley listened to Afro-Caribbean rhythms and became a fan of Celia Cruz, Benny Moré, Bebo Valdés, and other Cuban performers. In the 1940s and 1950s, many of these artists came to Panama, especially during the Carnival season, and the young Buckley and his friends gathered in the toldos the open air venues that were erected for their presentations and ...

Article

Catlett, Big Sid  

Barry Kernfeld

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
21 January 1999
Published online:
01 December 2006

Catlett, Big Sid (17 January 1910–25 March 1951), drummer, was born Sidney Catlett in Evansville, Indiana, the son of John B. Catlett, a chauffeur. His mother (name unknown) was a cook. He briefly studied piano before playing drums in school, an activity he continued at Tilden Technical High School after the family moved to Chicago. There he studied under theater orchestra drummer Joe Russek. He worked with lesser-known bands and on occasion substituted for Zutty Singleton in Carroll Dickerson’s band, which included Louis Armstrong, at the Savoy in 1928. Late that year he joined Sammy Stewart’s orchestra at the Michigan Theater. In 1930 the band toured from Chicago to New York, picking up tenor saxophonist Leon “Chu” Berry along the way. Catlett left Stewart in New York and began working with banjoist Elmer Snowden at Smalls Paradise He joined Benny Carter s big band ...

Article

Cavero Velásquez, Arturo “Zamba”  

Marino Martínez and Mónica Rojas

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
01 June 2016
Published online:
31 May 2017

was born on 29 November 1940 in Lima, Peru. He was the son of Juan Cavero from Huaral and Digna Velásquez from Cañete. Cavero spent his childhood living in an old alley located near downtown Lima and blocks away from two important musical centers, the Tipuani Musical Center and Felipe Pinglo Musical Center, the latter named after the most influential criollo (Creole) music composer of the twentieth century. Cavero started his music career as a percussionist at the age of 16 as a member of the Capri band founded by the Peruvian singer-songwriter and soccer player Juan Criado. He also worked with the Camagüey orchestra playing drum kit and timbales, and singing. At the age of 21, he graduated as an elementary schoolteacher from the National Pedagogic Institute.

The callejones alleys in Lima were spaces of intense exchange of both musical expressions and customs among the popular sectors in ...

Article

Clarke, Kenny  

Barry Kernfeld

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
15 March 2013
Published online:
31 May 2013

jazz drummer and bandleader, was born Kenneth Clarke Spearman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Charles Spearman and Martha Grace Scott. His birth date is almost always given as 9 January, but the writer Ursula Broschke Davis maintains that the actual date is 2 January His mother played piano and at a young age Kenny learned to play both this instrument and in church pump organ Biographers concur that his boyhood was miserable and he hid the experience behind rosy and contradictory memories His father abandoned the family When Kenny was around five years old his mother died Her companion a Baptist preacher placed him in the Coleman Industrial Home for Negro Boys in Pittsburgh where he tried a few brass instruments before taking up drums At about age eleven or twelve he resumed living with his stepfather He attended several elementary schools and Herron Hill Junior ...

Article

Clarke, Kenny  

Barry Kernfeld

Article

Publication History:

Published in print:
21 January 1999
Published online:
01 December 2006

Clarke, Kenny (?9 Jan. 1914–26 January 1985), jazz drummer and bandleader was born Kenneth Clarke Spearman in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania the son of Charles Spearman and Martha Grace Scott His birth date is almost always given as 9 January but writer Ursula Broschke Davis maintains that the actual date is 2 January His mother played piano and at a young age he learned to play both this instrument and in church pump organ Biographers concur that his boyhood was miserable and he hid the experience behind rosy and contradictory memories His father abandoned the family When he was around five years old his mother died Her companion a Baptist preacher placed him in the Coleman Industrial Home for Negro Boys in Pittsburgh where he tried a few brass instruments before taking up drums At about age eleven or twelve he resumed living with his stepfather He attended several ...

Article

Cobb, Jimmy  

Scott Yanow

Article

Publication History:

Published online:
30 September 2012

jazz drummer born in Washington, D.C. Mostly self-taught as a teenager, Cobb began his career in the District of Columbia, working with local musicians and also such visiting artists as baritone Leo Parker, tenor-saxophonists Charlie Rouse and Frank Wess, Billie Holiday and Pearl Bailey. Cobb toured with Earl Bostic's popular rhythm-and-blues band in 1950 and 1951, making his recording debut on the alto-saxophonist's hit record “Flamingo.” After moving to New York, he was singer Dinah Washington 's musical director and regular drummer on and off from 1952 to 1956.

After his association with Dinah Washington ended, Cobb freelanced for two years. He was a member of the early Cannonball Adderley Quintet during 1957 and 1958 and played briefly with a quintet coled by Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. In 1958 he joined the Miles Davis Sextet as the replacement for Philly Joe Jones.

Jimmy Cobb ...