Fats Navarro, Trumpet, 1923, Key West, FL
While still very young, Fats studied the saxophone, piano and the trumpet, which finally became his instrument of choice. By the time he was in his late teens he was touring, as a trumpeter, with popular dance bands of the era. His first gig with a nationally known band was with Andy Kirk, in 1943. In 1945 Fats replaced Dizzy Gillespie as the first trumpeter in Billy Eckstines band. As the principal trumpet soloist in this important group, he was among the foremost players in the new bop idiom. Due to the onset of health problems in 1946, he left Eckstine, and for the remainder of his career he worked mostly in small bop ensembles in the New York area, where he died in 1950 of tuberculous exacerbated by herion addiction. Although Navarro did record a few things with Eckstine, his main legacy is the approximately 150 small-group recordings he cut as a sideman with various groups led by Coleman Hawkins, Bud Powell, Charlie Parker, and Tadd Dameron. These recordings reveal Navarro to be the rival of Dizzy Gillespie as the leading bop trumpeter of the 1940s. He had a style that many consider "sweeter" than Dizzy's, and he used fewer fast runs in the upper register of the horn. Even by today's standards, Navarro's recordings are of a consistently high quality, "Street Beat" and "Ornithology" made with Parker in 1950, are particularly intriguing and beautiful. They were cut only a few weeks before he died.
Jay Hoggard, Vibraphone, 1954, New York, NY
Like many musicians, Jay studied several instruments before finally settling on his primary axe, which in this case was the vibraphone. He studied at Wesleyan University as a philosophy major, but then transferred to the ethnomusicology department, and before long was professionally touring Europe in1973 with Jimmy Garrison and Clifford Thornton who were members of the faculty at Wesleyan. Jay next joined a group at Yale University, and during a summer of study in Tanzania he learned to play the balo, a West African xylophone. After finishing his studies at Wesleyan, he taught at the Educational Center for the Arts in New Haven. He made his home in New York in 1977 and recorded with Chico Freeman's group, and in 1978 began recording more commercially oriented albums in order to give himself a cash-flow. Hoggard still leads his own groups, and play and record with Sam Rivers, Cecil Taylor, James Newton and others.
Bill Connors, Guitar, 1949, Los Angeles, CA
During the mid '70s Bill played guitar with Steve Swallow and Mike Nock in the San Francisco area, before recording and touring with Return To Forever. Bill is equally at home with electric or acoustic guitar. His decision to leave Return To Forever ,to concentrate on acoustic guitar, was probably artistically satisfying, but probably hurt his chance at commercial success. He recorded his first solo album as an acoustic guitarist in Oslo (Theme To The Guardian), and after returning to the States, recorded with Stanley Clarke in New York. In 1977 Bill and Lee Konitz recorded some free jazz, and on another recording led a group that included Gary Peacock, Jack DeJohnette, and Jan Garbarek's group, again playing free jazz. . He next resumed working with the the electric guitar, and joined Garbareck's group that recorded a rock-oriented album. He disappeared from music for a while, resurfacing in 1985', this time with a return to fusion that highlighted a more legato approach. He recorded three well -received albums over the next three years before once again disappearing from the scene. During the following years Connors has continued to teach and study, and now he's back with an album that finds him in fine form with a completely unaffected and warm, big-boddied sound. His album, "Return" has enough energy and groove to appeal to fusion fans, but without the strong confrontational mood that is so often pegged with that genre. Bill's reputation has never been less than steller, even though he's never achieved the same level of stardom as some of his contemporaries.
John Carter, Clarinet, 1929, Fort Worth, TX
Herb Jeffries, Singer, 1916, Detroit, MI
