Nina SIMONE

⬇️ NINA SIMONE ⬇️

(Eunice Kathleen Waymon)

(February 21, 1933 - April 21, 2003)

DISCOGRAPHY 1957-2025 (162CD/DVD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Nina Simone (born Eunice Kathleen Waymon; February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003) was an American singer, songwriter, pianist, composer, arranger and civil rights activist. Her music spanned styles including classical, folk, gospel, blues, jazz, R&B, and pop.

The sixth of eight children born into a poor family in North Carolina, Simone initially aspired to be a concert pianist. With the help of a few supporters in her hometown, she enrolled in the Juilliard School of Music in New York City.

She then applied for a scholarship to study at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where, despite a well received audition, she was denied admission, which she attributed to racism. In 2003, just days before her death, the Institute awarded her an honorary degree.

To make a living, Simone started playing piano at a nightclub in Atlantic City. She changed her name to "Nina Simone" to disguise herself from family members, having chosen to play "the devil's music" or so-called "cocktail piano". She was told in the nightclub that she would have to sing to her own accompaniment, which effectively launched her career as a jazz vocalist.

She went on to record more than 40 albums between 1958 and 1974, making her debut with Little Girl Blue. She released her first hit single in the United States in 1958 with "I Loves You, Porgy". Her piano playing was strongly influenced by baroque and classical music, especially Johann Sebastian Bach, and accompanied expressive, jazz-like singing in her contralto voice .... (Wikipedia)

NEW!

1964-In Concert [LP-Verve) @FLAC24-192

1978-Baltimore (LP) @FLAC24-192

1998-The Very Best Of Nina Simone (1967-72) Sugar In My Bowl (2CD) @FLAC

2003-Anthology @FLAC

2003-Simply Simone (CD) @FLAC

2012-At the Village Gate (CD-14T) @FLAC

2013-Nina At Newport (Jazz & Blues) @FLAC24-96

2015-The Hits @FLAC24-96

2019-Feeling Good The Very Best Of Nina Simone @FLAC

2025-Nina at Newport (Remastered) @FLAC24

2025-The Best Of Nina Simone (Mississippi River Records) (3CD) @FLAC24

VERVE JAZZ MASTERS

VJM 17 - Nina Simone-Bad Habits @FLAC

Milt BUCKNER

⬇️ MILT BUCKNER ⬇️

(Milton Brent Buckner)

DISCOGRAPHY 1962-2023 (24CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Milton Brent Buckner (July 10, 1915 – July 27, 1977) was an American jazz pianist and organist, who in the early 1950s popularized the Hammond organ. He pioneered the parallel chords style that influenced Red Garland, George Shearing, Bill Evans, and Oscar Peterson. Buckner's brother, Ted Buckner, was a jazz saxophonist.

Milton Brent Buckner was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His parents encouraged him to learn to play piano, but they both died when he was nine years old. Milt and his younger brother Ted were sent to Detroit where they were adopted by members of the Earl Walton band: trombonist John Tobias, drummer George Robinson fostered Milt and reedplayer Fred Kewley (né Fred Cecil Kewley; 1889–1953) fostered Ted. Buckner studied piano for three years from the age 10, then at 15 began writing arrangements for the band, he and his brother going on to become active in the Detroit jazz world in the 1930s.

Buckner first played in Detroit with the McKinney's Cotton Pickers and then with Cab Calloway. In 1941, he joined Lionel Hampton's big band, and for the next seven years served as its pianist and staff arranger. Buckner was part of a Variety Revue of 1950 organized by Lionel Hampton at the Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles which was produced by Leon Hefflin, Sr. on June 25, 1950. He led a short-lived big band of his own for two years, but then returned to Hampton's in 1950.

In 1952, he formed his own trio and pioneered the use of the electric Hammond organ. He often played in Europe in the late 1960s. His last studio session took place in Paris on July 4, 1977. Milt Buckner is also known for the use of his song "The Beast" in the film Mulholland Drive and in the title menu of the video game Battlefield: Bad Company.

Buckner died of a heart attack in July 1977, in Chicago, Illinois, at the age of 62.  (Wikipedia)

Jelly Roll MORTON

⬇️ JELLY ROLL MORTON ⬇️

(Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe)

DISCOGRAPHY 1975-2024 (74 LP/CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (September 20, c. 1890 – July 10, 1941), known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Morton was jazz's first arranger, proving that a genre rooted in improvisation could retain its essential characteristics when notated. His composition "Jelly Roll Blues", published in 1915, was one of the first published jazz compositions. He also claimed to have invented the genre.

Morton also wrote "King Porter Stomp", "Wolverine Blues", "Black Bottom Stomp", and "I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say", the last being a tribute to New Orleans musicians from the turn of the 20th century.

Morton's claim to have invented jazz in 1902 was criticized. Music critic Scott Yanow wrote, "Jelly Roll Morton did himself a lot of harm posthumously by exaggerating his worth...Morton's accomplishments as an early innovator are so vast that he did not really need to stretch the truth." Gunther Schuller says of Morton's "hyperbolic assertions" that there is "no proof to the contrary" and that Morton's "considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation".

Morton was born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe into the Creole community in the Faubourg Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans around 1890, and he claimed to have been born in 1885. Both parents traced their Creole ancestry four generations to the 18th century. Morton's birth date and year of birth are uncertain, given that no birth certificate was ever issued for him. The law requiring birth certificates for citizens was not enforced until 1914.

His parents were Edward Joseph (Martin) Lamothe, a bricklayer, and Louise Hermance Monette, a domestic worker. His father left his mother when Morton was three (they were never married). When his mother married William Mouton in 1894, Ferdinand adopted his stepfather's surname, anglicizing it to Morton.

At the age of fourteen, Morton began as a piano player in a brothel. He often sang smutty lyrics and used the nickname "Jelly Roll", which was African-American slang for female genitalia. While working there, he was living with his churchgoing great-grandmother. He convinced her that he worked as a night watchman in a barrel factory. After Morton's grandmother found out he was playing jazz in a brothel, she disowned him for disgracing the Lamothe name.

"When my grandmother found out that I was playing jazz in one of the sporting houses in the District, she told me that I had disgraced the family and forbade me to live at the house...She told me that devil music would surely bring about my downfall...." The cornetist Rex Stewart recalled that Morton had chosen "the nom de plume 'Morton' to protect his family from disgrace if he was identified as a whorehouse 'professor'." ... (Wikipedia)

NEW!

1991-Blues and Stomps from Rare Piano Rolls @FLAC

2002-Saga Jazz- Originator of Jazz @FLAC

2004-Classic Jazz Archive (2CD) @FLAC

2019-After You've Gone @FLAC

2020-Hot Jazz @FLAC

2020-Jazz The Essential Collection Vol.2 @FLAC

2020-The Hot Jazz of Jelly Roll Morton (Remastered) (3CD) @FLAC

2022-Jazz Notes @FLAC

2023-Crazy Cords @FLAC

2023-The Glory of Love @FLAC

2024-A Career Anthology Vol.2 (1929-40) (3CD) @FLAC

2024-The Jelly Roll Blues @FLAC

BD JAZZ

Jelly Roll Morton @FLAC

CHRONOGICAL CLASSICS

Jelly-Roll Morton-Chronogical Classics (1928-29) @FLAC+

Jelly-Roll Morton-Chronogical Classics (1929-30) @FLAC

Diana KRALL

⬇️ DIANA KRALL ⬇️
(Diana Jean Krall)
DISCOGRAPHY 1993-2017 (42CD/DVD)

 BIOGRAPHY 
       

Diana Jean Krall, OC, OBC (born November 16, 1964) is a Canadian jazz pianist and singer, known for her contralto vocals.

She has sold more than 6 million albums in the US and over 15 million worldwide.

On December 11, 2009, Billboard magazine named her the second Jazz artist of the 2000–09 decade, establishing her as one of the best-selling artists of her time. She is the only jazz singer to have eight albums debuting at the top of the Billboard Jazz Albums.

To date, she has won two Grammy Awards and eight Juno Awards. She has also earned nine gold, three platinum, and seven multi-platinum albums......

Patricia BARBER

⬇️ PATRICIA BARBER ⬇️

DISCOGRAPHY 1989-2013 (30CD/DVD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

        

Patricia Barber (born November 8, 1955) is an American jazz and blues singer, pianist, songwriter, and bandleader. She was awarded Guggenheim Fellowship in 2003 in Creative Arts – Music Composition field.

Barber was born in Chicago, Illinois to parents who were both professional musicians. Her father, Floyd "Shim" Barber, was a former member of Glenn Miller's band. Barber was raised in South Sioux City, Nebraska.

Her music is centered on her singing, in a fairly low register and a traditional blues-jazz style, and her piano playing, which is technically accomplished. Her repertoire includes original compositions and standards drawn mostly from classic rock, including "Ode to Billie Joe", "A Taste of Honey", and "Black Magic Woman".

Her 2006 album, Mythologies, is a set of songs based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. In 2007, Premonition Records presented The Premonition Years: 1994–2002, a three-CD box set of Barber recordings divided into originals, standards, and pop. The set includes unreleased tracks and selected songs previously released on Cafe Blue, Modern Cool, Companion, Nightclub and Verse. Those five albums have been reissued by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab on SACD and limited edition 45 rpm half speed mastered, 180 gram audiophile vinyl.

In September 2008, she released The Cole Porter Mix, a collection of her unique takes on the classic Cole Porter songbook, as well as three original compositions.

Clarence WILLIAMS

⬇️ CLARENCE WILLIAMS ⬇️

DISCOGRAPHY 1923-1998 (24CD)

 BIOGRAPHY 

Clarence Williams (October 8, 1898 – November 6, 1965) was an American jazz pianist, composer, promoter, vocalist, theatrical producer, and publisher.

Williams was born in Plaquemine, Louisiana, ran away from home at age 12 to join Billy Kersand's Traveling Minstrel Show, then moved to New Orleans. At first Williams worked shining shoes and doing odd jobs, but soon became known as a singer and master of ceremonies.

By the early 1910s he was a well regarded local entertainer also playing piano, and was composing new tunes by 1913. Williams was a good businessman and worked arranging and managing entertainment at the local African-American vaudeville theater as well as at various saloons and dance halls around Rampart Street, and at clubs and houses in Storyville.

Williams started a music publishing business with violinist/bandleader Armand J.Piron in 1915, which by the 1920s was the leading African-American owned music publisher in the country. He toured briefly with W.C. Handy, set up a publishing office in Chicago, then settled in New York in the early 1920s. In 1921, he married blues singer and stage actress Eva Taylor with whom he would frequently perform.

He was one of the primary pianists on scores of blues records recorded in New York during the 1920s. He supervised African-American recordings (the 8000 Race Series) for the New York offices of Okeh phonograph company in the 1920s in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. He recruited many of the artists who performed on that label. He also recorded extensively, leading studio bands frequently for OKeh, Columbia and occasionally other record labels.

He mostly used "Clarence Williams' Jazz Kings" for his hot band sides and "Clarence Williams' Washboard Five" for his washboard sides. He also produced and participated in early recordings by Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bessie Smith, Virginia Liston, Irene Scruggs, and many others. King Oliver played cornet on a number of Williams's late 1920s recordings. He was the recording director for the short-lived QRS Records label in 1928.

Most of his recordings were songs from his publishing house, which explains why he recorded tunes like "Baby Won't You Please Come Home", "Close Fit Blues" and "Papa De-Da-Da" numerous times. Among his own compositions were "Shout, Sister, Shout" (1929), which he recorded in 1931 and was covered by the Boswell Sisters in the same year.

In 1933, he signed to the Vocalion label and recorded quite a number of popular recordings, mostly featuring washboard percussion, through 1935.

In 1943 Williams sold his extensive back-catalogue of tunes to Decca Records for $50,000 and retired, but then bought a bargain used-goods store. Williams died in Queens, New York City in 1965 and was interred in Saint Charles Cemetery in Farmingdale, Long Island, New York. On her death in 1977, his wife, Eva Taylor was interred next to him.

Clarence Williams is the grandfather of actor Clarence Williams III.