One of Italy’s leading jazz pianists, Danilo Rea received a solid musical training, obtaining his degree from the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome. Among the artists he has worked with on-stage and in the recording studios are Chet Baker, Lee Konitz, Steve Grossman, Bob Berg, Michael Breker, Billy Cobam, Aldo Romano, Dave Liebman, Joe Lovano and others. In the field of pop music his peerless credentials include Mina, Pino Daniele, Claudio Baglioni, Fiorella Mannoia and many others. He has worked with Giovanni Tommaso’s quintet “Lingomania” (Top jazz 1987). He has given concerts in Italy ,France, England, US, India, Senegal and China. Together with percussionist Roberto Gatto he recorded Improvvisi (Gala Records). He is currently co-leader of the trio “DOCTOR 3”(with Enzo Pietropaoli and Fabrizio Sferra), one of the most highly-acclaimed groups in Italy. Under the “Via Veneto” label he has recorded the solo CD Lost in Europe which brings together the highlights of his year 2000 tour. He is also much sought-after as a performer in classical music settings. Noteworthy among these are Roberto De Simone’s Requiem for PierPaolo Pasolini under the direction of Zoltan Pesko at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. At the Teatro Rossini in Pesaro, in-ensemble , he performed in “Rossini, mon amour” production for the “Rossini Opera Festival”. He has also appeared with Roberto Gatto in the context of a jazz festival at the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome. In recent years he has dedicated himself to teaching and master classes in jazz and improvisation techniques.
Bill Evans was born in Plainfield, New Jersey on August 16, 1929 and began his music studies at age 6. Classically trained on piano; he also studied flute and violin as a child. He graduated with a degree in piano performance and teaching from Southeastern Louisiana College (now University) in 1950, and studied composition at Mannes College of Music in New York. After a stint in the Army, he worked in local dance bands, and with clarenetist Tony Scott, Chicago-area singer Lucy Reed and guitarist Mundell Lowe, who brought the young pianist to the attention of producer Orrin Keepnews at Riverside Records.
Evans’ first album was New Jazz Conceptions in 1956, which featured the first recording of his most loved composition, “Waltz for Debby”. It’s follow-up, Everybody Digs Bill Evans was not recorded for another two years; the always shy and self- deprecating pianist claiming he “had nothing new to say.” He gradually got noticed in the NYC jazz scene, for his original piano sound and fluid ideas, when in 1958, Miles Davis asked him to join his group (which also featured John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley) He stayed for nearly a year, touring and recording, and subsequently playing on the all-time classic Kind of Blue album — as well as composing “Blue in Green”, now a jazz standard. His work with Miles helped solidify Bill’s reputation, and in 1959,
When Horace Silver once wrote out his rules for musical composition (in the liner notes to the 1968 record, Serenade to a Soul Sister), he expounded on the importance of “meaningful simplicity.” The pianist could have just as easily been describing his own life. For more than fifty years, Silver has simply written some of the most enduring tunes in jazz while performing them in a distinctively personal style. It’s all been straight forward enough, while decades of incredible experiences have provided the meaning.
Silver was born in Norwalk, Connecticut on September 2, 1928. His father had immigrated to the United States from Cape Verde—and that island nation’s Portuguese influences would play a big part in Silver’s own music later on. When Silver was a teenager, he began playing both piano and saxophone while he listened to everything from boogie-woogie and blues to such modern musicians as Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. As Silver’s piano trio was working in Hartford, Connecticut, the group received saxophonist Stan Getz’s attention in 1950. The saxophonist brought the band on the road and recorded three of Silver’s compositions.
In 1951, Silver moved to New York City where he accompanied saxophonists Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and many other legends. In the following year, he met the executives at Blue Note while working as a sideman for saxophonist Lou Donaldson. This meeting led to Silver signing with the label where he would remain until 1980. He also collaborated with Art Blakey in forming the Jazz Messengers during the early 1950s (which Blakey would continue to lead after Silver formed his own quintet in 1956).
During these years, Silver helped create the rhythmically forceful branch of jazz known as “hard bop” (chronicled in David H. Rosenthal’s 1992 book, Hard Bop: Jazz and Black Music, 1955-1965). He based much of his own writing on blues and gospel—the latter is particularly prominent on one of his biggest tunes, “The Preacher.” While his compositions at this time featured surprising tempo shifts and a range of melodic ideas, they immediately caught the attention of a wide audience. Silver’s own piano playing easily shifted from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic within just a few bars. At the same time, his sharp use of repetition was funky even before that word could be used in polite company. Along with Silver’s own work, his bands often featured such rising jazz stars as saxophonists Junior Cook and Hank Mobley, trumpeter Blue Mitchell, and drummer Louis Hayes. Some of his key albums from this period included Horace Silver Trio (1953), Horace Silver and the Jazz Messengers (1955), Six Pieces of Silver (1956) and Blowin’ The Blues Away (1959), which includes his famous, “Sister Sadie.” He also combined jazz with a sassy take on pop through the 1961 hit, “Filthy McNasty.”
But it was a few years later when Silver would record one of his most famous songs, the title track to his 1964 album, Song For My Father. That piece combined his dad’s take on Cape Verdean folk music (with a hint of Brazilian Carnival rhythms) into an enduring F-minor jazz composition. Over the years, it has become an American popular music standard, covered not only by scores of instrumentalists, but also such singers as James Brown.
As social and cultural upheavals shook the nation during the late 1960s and early 1970s, Silver responded to these changes through music. He commented directly on the new scene through a trio of records called United States of Mind (1970-1972) that featured the spirited vocals of Andy Bey. The composer got deeper into cosmic philosophy as his group, Silver ‘N Strings, recorded Silver ‘N Strings Play The Music of the Spheres (1979).
After Silver’s long tenure with Blue Note ended, he continued to create vital music. The 1985 album, Continuity of Spirit (Silveto), features his unique orchestral collaborations. In the 1990s, Silver directly answered the urban popular music that had been largely built from his influence on It’s Got To Be Funky (Columbia, 1993). On Jazz Has A Sense of Humor (Verve, 1998), he shows his younger group of sidemen the true meaning of the music.Now living surrounded by a devoted family in California, Silver has received much of the recognition due a venerable jazz icon. In 2005, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) gave him its President’s Merit Award. Silver is also anxious to tell the world his life story in his own words as he just completed writing his autobiography, Let’s Get To The Nitty Gritty (University of California Press, scheduled for fall 2006 release).
A thorough examination of Kenny Barron’s musical accomplishments over a span of 50 years necessitates a discography of more than 200 pages. That’s because in addition to a distinguished career as soloist and leader he has served as one of the most dependable sidemen in all of post-bop mainstream modern jazz. More than 40 albums have appeared under his name, and his presence on literally hundreds of recordings by other musicians paints a panoramic picture of Kenny Barron’s lifelong devotion to the music. Born in Philadelphia, PA, on June 9, 1943, he took on the piano at the age of 12, with a little help from Ray Bryant’s sister, known today as the mother of guitarist Kevin Eubanks. Three years later, on the recommendation of his own big brother saxophonist Bill Barron (1927-1989), he joined Mel Melvin’s rhythm & blues band. The aspiring pianist gained more experience while working with drummer Philly Joe Jones and saxophonist Jimmy Heath as well as multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef in Detroit. Lateef’s album The Centaur and the Phoenix (1960) was Kenny Barron’s first modern jazz recording project — not as a performer (Joe Zawinul was the pianist on this date) but as composer and arranger. His recording debut as an improvising artist took place shortly after he moved to New York in 1961 and cut the first of many albums with his brother, who often aligned himself with two graduates of the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop, trumpeter Ted Curson and saxophonist Booker Ervin. A session in 1962 found Barron working with trumpeter Dave Burns, onetime member of sax and flute man James Moody’s exciting bop orchestra. Moody himself played an important role in Barron’s career, first hiring him to perform at the Village Vanguard, then bringing him into Dizzy Gillespie’s band. Barron stuck with Diz and Moody until 1966, performing at clubs and festivals on both coasts and touring through France and England. Kenny Barron’s first great year of independent recording activity was 1967. In addition to co-leading a band with trumpeter Jimmy Owens, the pianist made records with trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and saxophonists Joe Henderson, Stanley Turrentine, Tyrone Washington, Booker Ervin, and Eric Kloss. Barron seldom recorded with anyone just once. His discography is thickly woven with inspiring names that recur with the regularity of intricate and colorful patterns that invite further scrutiny. Examples of artists who made a lot of records with Barron during the 1970s are sax and flute men James Moody and Yusef Lateef and bassists Ron Carter and Buster Williams, with people like Earl and Carl Grubbs, Marion Brown, and Marvin “Hannibal” Peterson expanding the range of expression beyond perceived parameters of predictability and accessibility. This healthy combination of freedom and discipline would continue to bear fruit as Barron worked regularly with saxophonists Chico and Von Freeman, John Stubblefield, Nick Brignola, and Stan Getz (with whom he toured extensively during Getz’s twilight years). The stylistic range continued to widen as Barron sat in with violinists Michal Urbaniak and John Blake, drummer Elvin Jones, and singing trombonist Ray Anderson. During the ’80s, Kenny Barron composed the score for Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, appeared on multi-performer tribute albums honoring composers Nino Rota and Thelonious Monk, and became a founding member (with Charlie Rouse, Buster Williams, and Ben Riley) of the definitive Monk legacy band, known as Sphere. Later developments continued to illustrate Barron’s remarkable ability to blend with and complement a broad spectrum of artists, such as trumpeters Lee Morgan, Johnny Coles, Chet Baker, Woody Shaw, Eddie Henderson, Rebecca Coupe Franks, Terence Blanchard, and Wallace Roney; clarinetists Perry Robinson and Alvin Batiste; saxophonists Benny Carter, Gary Bartz, Lee Konitz, Eddie Harris, Bobby Watson, Frank Morgan, and Ernie Watts; guitarists George Freeman, Larry Coryell, Ted Dunbar, Jim Hall, and Joshua Breakstone; organist Jimmy McGriff; violinist Regina Carter; bassists Red Mitchell, Dave Holland, and Santi Debriano; vibraphonists Milt Jackson, Bobby Hutcherson, and Charlie Shoemake; drummers Louis Hayes, Roy Brooks, and Roy Haynes; percussionist Babatunde Lea; and bandleader Gerald Wilson. Barron’s history of collaborations with vocalists begins with nonchalant scatter Jackie Paris and includes Joe Lee Wilson, Michael Franks, Janis Siegel, Roseanna Vitro, Maria Muldaur, Sheila Jordan, Sathima Bea Benjamin, Teresa Brewer, Mark Murphy, Jimmy Scott, Roberta Flack, Jane Monheit, Jon Lucien, Abbey Lincoln, and Ann Hampton Callaway. A respected educator who has taught at Rutgers, Juilliard, and the Manhattan School of Music, Kenny Barron continues to create music of exceptionally high quality and substantial depth, something he has done for half a century, whether using the Fender Rhodes electromechanical keyboard, a plugged-in harpsichord, a synthesizer, or his lifelong companion, that fundamental jazz instrument, the piano.
Oscar Emmanuel Peterson, CC, CQ, O.Ont. (August 15, 1925 – December 23, 2007) was a highly regarded Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the “Maharaja of the keyboard” by Duke Ellington, “O.P.” by his friends and was a member of jazz royalty.[4] He released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, and received other numerous awards and honours over the course of his career. He is considered to have been one of the greatest pianists of all time,[5] who played thousands of live concerts to audiences worldwide in a career lasting more than 65 years.
Biography
Peterson grew up in the neighbourhood of Little Burgundy, Montreal. It was in this predominantly black neighbourhood that he found himself surrounded by the jazz culture that flourished in the early 20th century. At the age of five, Peterson began honing his skills with the trumpet and piano. However, a bout of tuberculosis aged seven prevented him from playing the trumpet again, and so he directed all his attention to the piano. His father, Daniel Peterson, an amateur trumpeter and pianist, was one of his first music teachers, and his sister Daisy taught young Oscar classical piano. Young Oscar was persistent at practising scales and classical etudes daily, and thanks to such arduous practice he developed his astonishing virtuosity.
As a child, Peterson also studied with Hungarian-born pianist Paul de Marky, a student of Istvan Thomán who was himself a pupil of Franz Liszt, so his training was predominantly based on classical piano. Meanwhile he was captivated by traditional jazz and learned several ragtimes and especially the boogie-woogie. At that time Peterson was called “the Brown Bomber of the Boogie-Woogie.”
At age nine Peterson played piano with control that impressed professional musicians. For many years his piano studies included four to six hours of practice daily. Only in his later years did he decrease his daily practice to just one or two hours. In 1940, at age fourteen, Peterson won the national music competition organized by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After that victory, he dropped out of school and became a professional pianist working for a weekly radio show, and playing at hotels and music halls.
Peterson resided in a two-storey house on Hammond Road in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, until his death in 2007 of kidney failure.
Influences
Henry “Hank” Jones (born July 31, 1918) is an American jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer. Critics and musicians have described Jones as eloquent, lyrical, and impeccable.
In 1989, The National Endowment for the Arts honored Hank Jones with its highest honor in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters Award. He was also honored in 2003 with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) Jazz Living Legend Award. In 2008, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. On April 13th, 2009, the University of Hartford presented Hank Jones with a Doctorate Degree for his musical accomplishments.
Hank Jones has recorded over sixty albums under his own name, and countless others as a guest.
Biography
Born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, Henry “Hank” Jones moved to Pontiac, Michigan, where his father, a Baptist deacon and lumber inspector, bought a three-story brick home. One of seven children, Jones was raised in a musical family. His mother sang; his two older sisters studied piano; and his two younger brothers—Thad, a trumpeter, and Elvin, a drummer—also became world famous jazz musicians. He studied piano at an early age and came under the influence of Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum. By the age of 13 Jones was performing locally in Michigan and Ohio. While playing with territory bands in Grand Rapids and Lansing in 1944 he met Lucky Thompson, who invited Jones to work in New York City at the Onyx Club with Hot Lips Page.
In New York, Jones regularly listened to leading bop musicians, and was inspired to master the new style. While practicing and studying the music he worked with John Kirby, Howard McGhee, Coleman Hawkins, Andy Kirk, and Billy Eckstine. In autumn 1947 he began touring in Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic package, and from 1948 to 1953 he was accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald, and accompanying her in England in the Fall of 1948, developed a harmonic facility of extraordinary taste and sophistication. During this period he also made several historically important recordings with Charlie Parker, which included “The Song Is You”, from the Now’s the Time album, recorded December 1952, with Teddy Kotick on bass and Max Roach on drums.
Engagements with Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman followed, and recordings with such artists as Lester Young, Cannonball Adderley and Wes Montgomery, as well as being for a time, ‘house pianist’ on the Savoy label. From 1959 through 1975 Jones was staff pianist for CBS studios. This included backing such guests as Frank Sinatra on The Ed Sullivan Show. With his rare combination of talents as a strong soloist, sensitive accompanist, and adept sight-reader, Jones has always been in great demand for recording sessions of all kinds, and may be heard on thousands of albums. By the late 1970s his involvement as pianist and conductor with the Broadway musical Ain’t Misbehavin’ (based on the music of Fats Waller) had informed a wider audience of his unique qualities as a musician.
During the late 1970s and the 1980s Jones continued to record prolifically, as an unaccompanied soloist, in duos with other pianists (including John Lewis and Tommy Flanagan), and with various small ensembles, most notably the Great Jazz Trio. The group took this name in 1976, by which time Jones had already begun working at the Village Vanguard with its original members, Ron Carter and Tony Williams (it was Buster Williams rather than Carter, however, who took part in the trio’s first recording session in 1976); by 1980 Jones’ sidemen were Eddie Gomez and Al Foster, and in 1982 Jimmy Cobb replaced Foster. The trio has also recorded with other all-star personnel, such as Art Farmer, Benny Golson, and Nancy Wilson. In the early 1980s Jones held a residency as a solo pianist at the Cafe Ziegfeld and made a tour of Japan, where he performed and recorded with George Duvivier and Sonny Stitt. Jones’ versatility has been more in evidence with the passage of time. He collaborated on recordings of Afro-pop with an ensemble from Mali and on an album of spirituals, hymns and folksongs with Charlie Haden called Steal Away (1995).
Some of his recent recordings are For My Father (2005) with bassist George Mraz and drummer Dennis Mackrel, a solo piano recording issued in Japan under the title Round Midnight (2006), and as a side man on Joe Lovano’s Joyous Encounter (2005). Jones has recently made his debut on Lineage records, recording with Frank Wess and with guitar player Eddie Diehl, but also appears on West of 5th (2006) with Jimmy Cobb and Christian McBride on Chesky Records. He has also accompanied Diana Krall for “Dream a Little Dream of Me” on the album compilation, “We all Love Ella” (2007 Verve Music Group). He’s one of the musicians who test and talk about the piano in the documentary Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, released in November 2007.
Early 2000 saw the Hank Jones Quartet accompanying jazz singer Salena Jones at the Lionel Hampton Jazz Festival in Idaho, and in 2006 at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival with both jazz singer Roberta Gambarini and the Oscar Peterson Trio.
Thomas Lee Flanagan (16 March 1930, – † 16 November 2001, New York City) was an American jazz pianist born in Detroit, Michigan, particularly remembered as an accompanist of Ella Fitzgerald. He played on a number of critically acclaimed recordings, such as John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Sonny Rollins’ Saxophone Colossus, The Incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery, and Art Pepper’s Straight Life.
The Tommy Flanagan Trio (with bassist Wilbur Little and drummer Elvin Jones) released their first album, Tommy Flanagan Trio Overseas, in 1957. As an accompanist, Flanagan worked with Ella Fitzgerald from 1963–65 and 1968–78. But beginning in 1975, Flanagan began once again to perform and record as a leader. He continued to work with other players, however, forming a trio with Tal Farlow and Red Mitchell, among other projects.
Flanagan’s style was both modest and exceptionally musical. He embodied many of the most important qualities associated with jazz: swing, harmonic sophistication, melodic invention, bluesy feel and humour. Interestingly, he appeared on a number of highly innovative albums. (His awkward solo on the extremely fast and harmonically complex title-track of Giant Steps is a rare [if famous] instance on record of the usually unflappable pianist being caught off-guard.)
Tommy Flanagan is mentioned by Japanese Author Haruki Murakami in the short story, Chance Encounter, he describes his experiences at a Tommy Flanagan performance.
During his career, Flanagan was nominated for four Grammy Awards — two for Best Jazz Performance (Group) and two for Best Jazz Performance (Soloist). He died on November 16, 2001, of an arterial aneurysm.
Horace Parlan has overcome physical disability and thrived as a pianist despite it. His right hand was partially crippled by polio in his childhood, but Parlan’s made frenetic, highly rhythmic right hand phrases part of his characteristic style, contrasting them with striking left-hand chords. He’s also infused blues and R&B influences into his style, playing in a stark, sometimes somber fashion. Parlan has always cited Ahmad Jamal and Bud Powell as prime influences. He began playing in R&B bands during the ’50s, joining Charles Mingus’ group from 1957 to 1959 following a move from Pittsburgh to New York. Mingus aided his career enormously, both through his recordings and his influence. Parlan played with Booker Ervin in 1960 and 1961, then in the Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis-Johnny Griffin quintet in 1962. Parlan played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk from 1963 to 1966, and had a strong series of Blue Note recordings in the ’60s. He left America for Copenhagen in 1973, and gained international recognition for some stunning albums on Steeplechase, including a pair of superb duet sessions with Archie Shepp. He also recorded with Dexter Gordon, Red Mitchell, and in the ’80s Frank Foster and Michal Urbaniak. He also has recorded extensively for SteepleChase, Enja, and Timeless. ~ Ron Wynn, All Music Guide
Pianist, composer and arranger, Enrico Pieranunzi was born in Rome (Italy) in 1949.
When he was only five and half years old, he began studyng piano.
At the same time, his father started introducing him to the wonders and challeriges of jazz improvisation as well. From then on Enrico kept on following a double road in music. In fact he developed his jazz style while studying classical piano.
When he was nineteen, he began his professional career in Italy and since then he worked with an abundance of bands, both italian units and groups led by Americans.
He rremarkably wide-ranging experiences include collaborations with jazz luminaries such as Johnny Griffin, Chet Baker, Art Farmer, Lee Konitz, Jim Hall.
Since 1975, Pieranunzi has led his own groups, mostly trios, with wich he has played clubs and festivals all over Europe (Zurich, Ravenna, Berlin, Umbria Jazz, Madrid, Copenhagen, Montreal, Jerusalem).
He also used to perform as unaccompanied pianist and still does to this very day.
In 1984, Pieranunzi formed an american Trio with Marc Johnson and Joey Baron.
After their first album together (New Lands, Timeless), McCoy Tyner described Pieranunzi as “a new addition to the top-jazz pianoworld”. In 1986, another highly aprreciated album (Deep Down, Soul Note) was recorded by them.
No Man’s Land (1989 with Marc Johnson and Steve Houghton) and First Song (1990 with Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins), both for Soul Note, made Pizeranunzi?s experience with american trios even richer and wider. As a close to his liner notes of the latter, well-know jazz writer Nat Hentoff stated “these three have created music here that will last long beyond trends and fads because it is basic as your life”.
Voted Musician of the Year in the Musica Jazz critics poll (1989), Pieranunzi has been said “to reveal himself as a very original musician and a talented composer, able to travel the high road with his own ideas and remarkable musical sensitivity”.
His main influences come from jazz, from classical composers and from his very deep italian roots: Charlie Parker, Chet Baker, McCoy Tyner, Chick Corea, Bill Evans, Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Darius Milhaud, Aaron Copland, Johannes Brahms, Paul Himdemith, roman and mediteranean popular music.
He has written more than 150 compositions, including “Night Bird” recorded several times by Chet Baker and performed by many others.
Musician of the Year by italian Jazz revue Musica jazz, in 1989
* The album “The Night Gone by” received a Choc JazzMan 1996, as the best international
jazz album
* Django d’Or Prize in 1997, as the Best european Jazz musician
The highly regarded bebop and hard-bop pianist Hampton Hawes was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. His father, Hampton Hawes, Sr., was minister of Westminster Presbysterian Church, and the first African-American to be voted into the National Presbyterian Senate. His mother, Gertrude, was the church pianist.
Hawes’ first experience with the piano was as a toddler sitting on his mother’s lap while she practiced; he was reportedly able to pick out fairly complex tunes by the age of two. Entirely self-taught, by his teens Hawes was playing with some of the leading jazz musicians on the West Coast, including Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Art Pepper, Shorty Rogers, and Sonny Criss. His second professional job, at 19, was playing for eight months with the Howard McGhee Quintet at the Hi De Ho club, in a group that included Charlie Parker.After serving in the U.S. army in Japan from 1952-1954, Hawes formed his own trio, with the bassist Red Mitchell and drummer Chuck Thompson. The three-record Trio sessions made by this group in 1955 on Contemporary Records were considered some of the finest records to come out of the West Coast at the time. The next year, Hawes added guitarist Jim Hall for the All Night Sessions – three records made during a non-stop recording session at the Contemporary Studios in Los Angeles. After a six-month national tour in 1956, Hawes won the ‘New Star of the Year’ award in a Down Beat magazine poll, and ‘Arrival of the Year’ in Metronome. The following year, Hawes would record in New York with Charles Mingus, on the album Mingus Three (1957, Roulette.)Struggling for many years with a heroin addiction, Hawes was arrested in 1958 on his 30th birthday, after being coerced by an undercover federal agent to sell a small amount of heroin. Despite pleading guilty, Hawes was sentenced to 10 years – twice the mandatory minimum – in a federal prison hospital. In the months between his arrest and sentencing, Hawes recorded an album of spirituals and gospel songs, The Sermon, for Contemporary Records. After three years at Fort Worth Federal Medical Facility, in 1961 Hawes was watching President Kennedy’s inaugural speech on television when he became convinced that Kennedy would pardon him. In an almost miraculous turn, Kennedy in fact granted Hawes Executive Clemency in 1963, the 42nd of only 43 such pardons issued in the final year of Kennedy’s presidency.After his release, Hawes resumed playing and recording. During a world tour in 1967-68, he was surprised to discover that he had become a legend among jazz listeners in Europe and Japan. During a ten-month period overseas Hawes recorded nine albums, including two duo records with the virtuoso French pianist Martial Solal. In the 1970s, Hawes experimented with electronic music (Fender-Rhodes made a special instrument for him), although eventually he returned to making acoustic music.Raise Up Off Me, Hawes’ autobiography (written with Don Asher) was published in 1974, and shed light on his heroin addiction, the bebop movement, and his friendships with some of the best jazz musicians of his time. The book won the prestigious ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award for music writing in 1975; the Penguin Guide to Jazz calls Raise Up Off Me, “one of the most moving memoirs ever written by a musician, and a classic of jazz writing.” A 128-page Hampton Hawes biography/discography was published in England in 1987, co-authored by Roger Hunter and Mike Davis.As a pianist Hawes’s style is instantly recognizable – for its almost unparalleled swing, complex and distinctive approach to harmony, and range of emotional expression, particularly in a blues context. Hawes influenced a great number of other pianists including André Previn, Oscar Peterson, Claude Williamson, Pete Jolly, Toshiko Akiyoshi and others. Hawes’ own influences came from a number of sources, including the spirituals he heard in his father’s church as a child, and the boogie-woogie piano of Earl Hines. He also learned much from pianists Bud Powell and Nat King Cole among others; his principal source of influence though, was his friend Charlie Parker.Hampton Hawes died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage in 1977, at only 48 years old. In 2004, the City Council of Los Angeles passed a resolution declaring November 13th ‘Hampton Hawes Day’ throughout the City of Los Angeles. A feature film about Hawes’ life, based on his autobiography, is currently in development.
