Red Garland, piano1923 Dallas TX
While in his early teens, Red took up the clarinet and saxophone, and it wasn't until he was in high school that he decided that the piano was for him. His earliest influences on the piano were Nat "King" Cole and Count Basie, and later he discovered Art Tatum and Bud Powell when he first heard them play in New York during the late '40s. Between the mid '40s and mid '50s Red worked mainly in the N.Y. and Philadelphia areas with famous players such as Billy Eckstine, Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Fats Navarro, and Roy Eldridge. It was as a member of Miles Davis's quintet, however, that Garland attracted an international audience. He remained with Miles for three years (1955 to 1958).. The group included a star-studde rhythm section with Philly Joe Jones on drums and Paul Chambers playing bass. After he left Miles, Red had his own trio which stayed together for several years. When his mother passed away in 1968, he returned to Dallas where he remained in obscurity until the latter part of the 1970s, when he managed a brief, but successful performing and recording period. Red Garland died in 1984.
Gil Evans arranger 1912 Toronto Ontario
Gil was one of the most important musicians to come out of his era. A self-taught musician, Evans led his own band in the Stockton, Cal. region through most of the '30s. Eventually his band was taken over by the singer, Skinnay Ennis, and Gil stayed with the band as the primary arranger. In the early '40s he went with Claude Thornhill's group in the same capacity, working such classics as "Anthropology", "Donna Lee", "Yardbird Suite", and "Robbins' Nest", tunes that became jazz standards. In these charts and others of the period, Gil used two french horns and a tuba, in addition to the regular dance-band instrumentation. This instrumentation produced a "cool", rich, dark-textured orchestral sound that was heard only in the bands of Duke Ellington and Eddie Sauter. The arrangements emphasized strong ensemble playing over improvised solos. Evans's writing for the Thornhill band was far from being straight-forward arranging. He took improvisations and worked them into entire section playing. From 1948 to 1950 Gil contributed many charts to the Miles Davis's nonet. This work eventually evolved into the "Birth Of The Cool". In his memorable scores, "Boplicity" and "Moon Dreams", Evans was able to capture the essential rich sound and texture of the Thornhill band, only with a smaller group. Oddly, the wonderful work Gil did with Davis and Thornhill was generally ignored by critics and jazz audiences alike. After a long period of relative obscurity, while he worked in radio and television, Gil returned to the jazz scene in 1960 with three notable albums, all written for and featuring Miles Davis: "Miles Ahead", "Porgy and Bess", and "Sketches of Spain". The cluster-like voicings in all of these works, are strictly the sound of Gil Evans. All three were milestone albums for Evans and Davis. In the late '70s, Gil devoted most of his efforts to composing, doing works of his own, and some with Miles. Some critics feel that most of Gil's work always remained "moody or poignant and introverted". This may well be the case, but it certainly worked for Miles Davis The sound of a Gil Evans chart can never be mistaken for anyone else. Gil Evans died in 1988.
Stevie Wonder, Vocalist/Piano, 1950, Saginaw, MI
As a young child, Stevie taught himself to play the harmonica before learning the piano with private teachers. At the age of 12 Stevie actually recorded his first hit, singing and playing the harmonica and doing blues riffs on , "Fingertips-Part 2". Everything on the session was improvised, and at one point you can actually hear one of the musicians shouting "What key?". When he was 17 years old he performed with Jimi Hendrix on the BBC. On this date he was actually playing drums. In 1988, at the height of his popularity, he announced his interest in running for mayor of Detroit, but never followed through with a campaign. His awards during his career are numerous. He won 21 Grammy Awards (a record), he was voted the 15th Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Artist of all time by Rolling Stone. Stevie won an Oscar for Best Song in 1984, donating his award to imprisoned civil rights leader Nelson Mandela. The South African government promptly banned Wonder's music from the country. In 1971 Stevie became the first Motown Recording artist to gain complete artistic control of his records. In 1985 he collobrated on the smash hit "We Are The World", (USA for Africa). He joined friends Dionne Warwick, Gladys Knight, and Elton John in 1986 to record the hit "That's What Friends Are For", the proceeds of which were donated to AIDS research. Some of Stevie's other hits were "Isn't She Lovely?", "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life", "I Feel For You" (with Chaka Kahn, on which he played the the harmonica ), and "Superstition". Stevie, who has been blind since birth, was once referred to as "Little Stevie Wonder", although he is really over 6 feet tall.
