Curated OER
National Park Service: Buddy Bolden: Calling His Children Home
One of the early cornet players, Buddy Bolden was a key figure in the early development of jazz. Read about his life and career in this well written site.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Sun Ra
This entry features Sun Ra, a black American jazz composer and keyboard player who led a free jazz big band known for its innovative instrumentation and the theatricality of its performances.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Art Pepper
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Art Pepper, an American jazz musician noted for the beauty of his sound and his improvisations on alto saxophone, and a major figure in the 1950s in West Coast jazz (see cool jazz).
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Art Tatum
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Art Tatum, a blind, self-taught American pianist, considered one of the greatest technical virtuosos in jazz.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Baby Dodds
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Baby Dodds, an African-American musican, a leading early jazz percussionist and one of the first major jazz drummers on record.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Bennie Moten
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Bennie Moten, a U.S. pianist, one of the earliest known organizers of bands in the Midwest in the emergent years of jazz.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Ben Webster
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Ben Webster, an American jazz musician, considered one of the most distinctive of his generation, noted for the beauty of his tenor saxophone tone and for his melodic inventiveness.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Billy Eckstine
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Billy Eckstine, an American singer and bandleader who achieved great personal success while fostering the careers of a number of younger jazz musicians.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Brownie Mc Ghee
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Brownie McGhee, an American blues singer, guitarist, pianist, songwriter, and longtime partner of the vocalist and harmonica player Sonny Terry.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Bud Powell
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Bud Powell, an American jazz pianist who emerged in the mid-1940s as one of the first pianists to play lines originally conceived by bebop horn players.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Bunk Johnson
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Bunk Johnson, a black American jazz trumpeter, one of the first musicians to play jazz and a principal figure of the 1940s traditional jazz revival.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Carmen Mc Rae
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Carmen McRae, an American jazz vocalist and pianist who from an early emulation of vocalist Billie Holiday grew to become a distinctive stylist, known for her smoky voice and her melodic...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Dexter Gordon
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Dexter Gordon, an American bop tenor saxophonist.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Dinah Washington
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Dinah Washington, a black American blues singer noted for her excellent voice control and unique gospel-influenced delivery.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Fats Waller
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Fats Waller, an American pianist and composer who was one of the few outstanding jazz musicians to win wide commercial fame, though this was achieved at a cost of obscuring his purely...
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Hank Jones
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Hank Jones, an American jazz musician born July/Aug. 31, 1918, Vicksburg, Miss. .
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Herbie Hancock
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Herbie Hancock, an American keyboard player, songwriter, and bandleader, a prolific recording artist who achieved success as an incisive, harmonically provocative jazz pianist and then...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Herbie Nichols
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Herbie Nichols, an African-American jazz pianist and composer whose advanced bop-era concepts of rhythm, harmony, and form predicted aspects of free jazz.
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Encyclopedia Britannica: Horace Silver
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Horace Silver, an American jazz pianist, composer, and bandleader, exemplary performer of what came to be called the hard bop style of the 1950s and '60s. The style was an extension of...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Lionel Hampton
This entry from Encyclopedia Britannica features Lionel Hampton, an American jazz musician and bandleader, known for the rhythmic vitality of his playing and his showmanship as a performer. Best known for his work on the vibraphone,...
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Lucky Thompson
Biographical details on Lucky Thompson, an American jazz musician, one of the most distinctive and creative bop-era tenor saxophonists, who in later years played soprano saxophone as well.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Mary Lou Williams
Biographical sketch of jazz pianist, Mary Lou Williams, who performed with and composed for many of the great jazz artists of the 1940s and '50s.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Max Roach
Biographical sketch of Max Roach, an American jazz drummer and composer, one of the most influential and widely recorded modern percussionists.
Encyclopedia Britannica
Encyclopedia Britannica: Mc Coy Tyner
Learn about the life and career of McCoy Tyner, an African-American jazz pianist, bandleader, and composer noted for his technical virtuosity and dazzling improvisations.