Summary: Famous Band Leaders

With the installation of the Miles Davis Quintet, Davis picked up where his late forties sessions left off. Eschewing the rhythmic and harmonic complexity of the prevalent bebop, Davis was given space to play long, legato and essentially melodic lines, where he would begin to explore modal music, his lifelong obsession. Modal jazz is a new venture for jazz both harmonically and structurally, it no longer used the chord progressions of standard tunes as the basis for improvisation replaced by a succession of scales on which the performer improvised instead (Kingman, 1990:390). Davis had definitely gone a long way in his trumpet playing since collaborating with Parker. No longer dependant on bebop phrasing, he chose a minimalist approach instead. Ornate phrasing gave way to a smattering of tones. He was also utilizing a Harmon mute, sometimes adding reverb, which had a whisper effect and personalised his sound. Elements of texture and silence between notes were becoming more dominant (Kirker, 2005:2). By 1958, he had freed himself by using modal scales and slower moving harmonies. “Milestones” portrayed this example as

Louis, etc. playing with different musical groups as for musician that were needed but he could never stay long with one band. “He couldn’t stay long in one band too long because he was too irregular and emotional, and he was a one-man band himself,” bandleader George Morrison who Morton once played under said. Morton really wanted to stand out and be an over the top musician. After he left the groups he toured the south in a musician show for about a year and a half. In a bar somewhere in St. Louis where piano players hung out, Morton had to prove his skills by playing and reading music in

While in his early twenties, Sousa toured with several traveling music groups. One amateur group he worked with was so successful that it managed to become professional under his leadership. Sousa’s career was already off to an impressive

Duke Ellington did not stop making music because he loved inspiring many people to follow their dreams. He was a very talented musician who created a band and performed many times. Duke can be thought of as a creative, hardworking and a very helpful man. To begin with Duke was very creative. He once formed a band with many people and instruments of different styles to create a historical band named the Washingtonians.

The band members, including Gillespie, were weary of the predicaments present in Iran nevertheless they were eager to mingle and jam with foreign musicians to spread the word about jazz music. Gillespie wired over to President Eisenhower, “our trip through the Middle East proved that our

Leadership Jazz by Max De Pree is a treatise on what it means to be a leader and how to be a leader. Depending on the metaphor of a musical variety – jazz – he shares insight on how leaders ought to harness the different gifts, talents, abilities, and differences of team members to actualize goals. This means “that attracting and keeping talented performers/employees-all of whom, we must remember, are really volunteers – should be the chief concern of leaders in the profit and nonprofit worlds.” Drawing on the attributes of a jazz band, De Pree postulates that servant leadership is required to draw the best out of people. The success of which is dependent on the leader’s ability to connect voice and touch through gratitude, trust, respect, personal restraint, and the courage to be human. When this is done, the leader frees himself to experience incredible success ensuring that they are not hindered by their own failure to appreciate others. “Authors and leaders who see only a limited need for the gifts of followers limit themselves to their own talents.”

Band leader Dan Blackburn along with Major N. Clark Smith and Professor Charles T. Watts organized full-sized concert bands that would perform large amounts of difficult classical music. Bennie Moten and other first generation jazz musicians cut their teeth as members of Blackburn's kid band, for performing classical music was not what they were born to do. Students of Watts and Smith mastered their instruments and musical theory, learning all of the rules just so they knew how to break

     Before even hitting a year as a soloist, Miles Davis put out his first album as a soloist named Birth of the Cool. This was definitely something to be marked down on the timeline of Jazz. The album was accurately named, being responsible for the stardom of Cool Jazz, a movement that the very new to the Jazz movement, Miles Davis, invented within his first year of success. The Cool Jazz, which featured Gil Evans, first appeared in the latter days of 1949.

Duke Ellington managed his band for almost 50 years making prodigious music and using amazing instruments. He toured all over Europe, he managed to compose an orchestra without a baton, how amazing is that. In his whole music career, he composed about 2000 pieces and won 12 Grammy

On September 28, 1991, one year after receiving the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, Davis died at the young age of sixty-five from a stroke, pneumonia and respiratory failure. Davis’ music has been, and will continue to be popular and one of the most sought after names in American Jazz. His influence on other genres spans wider than most people realize because of the amount of techniques and styles that he experimented with. No audience is out of reach of Davis’ music because of his uses elements of rock, pop,

The liberating and enduring cultural power of music has proven to be as timeless as the sunsets in California. Even though Jazz has evolved into smooth melodies, the genre was initially written off as “colored people music”. While this is a foolish racial commentary, the brilliant minds behind the ragtime movement were certainly ahead of their time. Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, better known to the Jazz community as Jelly Roll Morton, was amongst one of these artists who helped shed a positive light on Jazz.

The trio was a talented group. From the second they played together, it was clear that these men performed with real chemistry, especially Nat and Oscar. Both men grew up listening to the same great jazz artists, including: Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines, Jimmy Noone and Art Tatum, all of whom had a profound influence on Nat’s and Oscar’s playing styles; yet there was something more when these

Born on May 26, 1926, Miles Davis is considered to be one of the most influential jazz musicians in history. Being a trumpeter, keyboardist, composer, and band-leader, Miles is responsible for the popularization of many styles of jazz throughout his long and prolific career.

Nps.gov states that some of the greatest musician in America History has come from the jazz side of the world. Artist such as Louis Armstrong, Billy Holiday and Jelly “Roll” Morton, pave the way for jazz to reach its height as it did in the early 20’s with the upbeat tempo and smooth classical sound. These artist brung a unique sound to jazz that was not there. Louis Armstrong contribute to jazz is so remarkable, he played the trumpet like no other. His sound was so soothing to the ears. When you think about jazz, Louis Armstrong is one of the first names most people relate to jazz. Jelly “Roll” Morton was probably the most influence artist there is. An innovative piano stylist and composer, began his odyssey outside of New Orleans as early as 1907. He continue his work throughout the 1920’s and was mainly consider the reason of the swing era.

Utilized almost exclusively for dancing, the music of the big bands borrowed heavily from the techniques introduced by Henderson. Among the most popular bands were those led by Goodman, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, the Dorsey brothers, and Artie Shaw. As a counterpart of the highly arranged orchestrations of these New York-based bands, a Kansas City swing style developed under the influence of Count Basie and Bennie Moten that emphasized a blues