CONCERT JAZZ Events - Chiltern Hundreds Area

The Composers

Memorable songs by talented Writers that gave jazz the special gift of - The Standards.

When you think about it, jazz composition is an incredibly difficult art. A great jazz composer must create a piece of music that is interesting as written, but also interesting as a framework for what is not written. A good jazz composition should imply more than it says.

Everyone's short list of top jazz composers should begin with Duke Ellington.
Duke Ellington

Johnny Mercer Foundation

'Come Rain or Come Shine'

Harold Arlen

Hoagland Carmichael
Hoagy Carmichael left his mark on the music world as one of the great composers of the twentieth century. As a child the Indiana native showed strong musical inclinations. His mother played piano in a local movie theatre and helped encourage him, though she warned against choosing music as a career. Heeding his mother's advice, in 1920 he entered Indiana University to study law.
Carmichael played piano in several bands during his college years and led two outfits of his own, Carmichael's Collegians and the Carmichael Syringe Orchestra. The latter was a free-spirited group which took guidance from a dada-influenced poet named Monk. While in college Carmichael became good friends with cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. Beiderbecke found Carmichael's original compositions intriguing, and in 1924 his Wolverines recorded ''Riverboat Shuffle.'' Inspired, Carmichael wrote more songs, including ''Washboard Blues','' which was recorded by Paul Whiteman.
Still trying to keep music in perspective, Carmichael graduated from college in 1926 and accepted a position at a law firm in Florida. One day soon after he heard a Red Nichols recording of ''Washboard Blues'' on a sidewalk phonograph. At that moment he decided to make music his life. He returned to Indiana, where he wrote the now standard ''Stardust.''
Carmichael worked with Whiteman, Jean Goldkette, and Don Redman before moving to New York, where his career struggled. Not having sold a song since his arrival, in 1930 he recorded several of his own tunes, ''Georgia on My Mind,'' '' Rockin' Chair'' and ''Lazy River.'' These recordings caught the attention of the music industry, and within a year Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and the Dorsey Brothers had recorded their own versions of the songs.
Soon Carmichael's music was being heard in motion pictures and on Broadway. Carmichael himself began appearing in films, starting an acting career as a sideline. In 1939 he moved to Hollywood, where he continued writing, performing, recording and acting. In 1951 he and lyricist Johnny Mercer won an Oscar for their song ''In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening,'' sung by Bing Crosby in the film Here Comes the Groom.  During the 1940s Carmichael had his own radio program.  He moved to television in 1953, hosting television's The Saturday Night Revue, a summer replacement series. In 1959 he accepted a dramatic role in the television series Laramie. Carmichael was one of the first inductees into the Songwriting Hall of Fame in 1971. Hoagy Carmichael suffered a heart attack and passed away in late 1981.

"I wore my hat on the back of my head and no tie, with a cigarette drooping from my lips, and I lazyed through the entire performance," Hoagy said, describing his historic, record-breaking performance at the London Palladium in 1951.

Cole Porter

Billy Strayhorn Born November 29, 1915, in Dayton, Ohio, but raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Strayhorn received an extensive private education in music. His collaboration with Duke Ellington began soon after he approached Ellington with one of his own compositions in 1938. In early 1939 the Ellington band recorded Strayhorn's "Something to Live For" with Strayhorn at the piano, and three more of his compositions were recorded later that year.  Soon Strayhorn was associate arranger and alternate pianist with the Ellington band. The Ellington-Strayhorn collaboration was unique in musical history because both as composers and pianists, the two musicians' accomplishments were so closely intertwined that it is often difficult to distinguish them. The Ellington theme song, "Take the 'A' Train," is a Strayhorn composition, and Strayhorn composed or collaborated on more than 200 recorded works in the Ellington repertoire, plus hundreds of others that have never been recorded. Strayhorn died from esophageal cancer in 1967. The standard biography is David Hadju's Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1996).

Bob Dorough  Born in the decidedly non-bustling Arkansas town of Cherry Hill and raised in Texas, Bob Dorough played clarinet in his high school band and earned a BA in Music from what is now North Texas University. Before that, three years with a Special Services Army Band had given him loads of valuable experience in both playing and arranging. In 1949, Bob made a bee-line for New York, where he took classes at Columbia University, immersed himself in the city’s rapidly evolving jazz scene and took whatever musical jobs he could land. For two years, he toured with Sugar Ray Robinson as the ex-boxer’s musical director and often shared stages with notables like Armstrong, Hines and Basie. Later in Paris, Bob did five months as a singing pianist at the Mars Club and began what has proven to be a long musical association with Blossom Dearie.  His first record album (Devil May Care, released on Bethlehem in 1956 and still available) caused quite a stir. The buzz has continued over nearly five decades since then, with Dorough recordings issued on a variety of labels, both large and tiny. Along the way, Bob became the first – and the last – halfway decent singer to appear on a Miles Davis record. Among Bob's more illustrious songwriting collaborators over the years have been Fran Landesman and Dave Frishberg. His tunes now appear on albums recorded by dozens of other vocalists – and many have found special favor as instrumentals, too.

Gen-Xers know his voice – if not his name – because they love the "Schoolhouse Rock" videos that entertained them on ABC-TV during the 70s, 80s and 90s.Bob handled the music for about fifty of these timeless little classics. In the fall of 2002 (the same year that Pennsylvania's governor honored him as the state's Artist of the Year), Bob took his current trio on a State Department-sponsored tour of Latin America that involved over twenty concerts and workshops in seven countries. Along the way, our man somehow found time to also serve as a professor in the music department at East Stroudsburg University.  These days, Bob – a proud inductee into the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame – does a bit of organic gardening at his Keystone State farmette. He's still writing great songs, too. Most important, though, he continues to delight audiences in clubs and concert halls on several continents. As throngs of admirers worldwide can testify, Bob Dorough is only now reaching his prime.

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Last modified: 26/06/2008