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Tadd Dameron
Tadd Dameron as a composer and arranger was the man who in the 1940s and ‘50s was among the first to use the sometimes raw and undisciplined devices of the then- new style of jazz called bebop in well-developed arrangements for big bands and small groups. Perhaps more than any other musician, Dameron added form to the then-emerging style of bop.
Born in Cleveland in 1917, Dameron grew up with music all around him, his mother first taught him to play piano, "not to read, but by memory." But, it was Dameron’s older brother, Caesar, a saxophonist, who got his brother interested in jazz by listening to the records of the big bands of the 1930’s like Fletcher Henderson, Duke Ellington, and the Casa Loma band that was playing unique arrangements at the time.
Cleveland jazz musician Andy Anderson said he first heard Dameron in the 1930s when Caesar brought his kid brother to a nightclub, and asked if the boy could sit in with the Snake White Band. Anderson said he was amazed when Tadd started playing piano. Anderson said, "He’s got ten fingers and all of them went down on the keys and all of them were on different notes. You didn’t expect to hear anything like that."
Before long, a Central High School friend, trumpeter Freddie Webster, persuaded Dameron to join his band playing in Cleveland. By 1938 at the age of 21, he began to write arrangements for a band that had been formed in Cleveland by James Jeter and Hayes Pillars. In 1940, Dameron went on the road with bands led by Zack Whyte and Blanche Calloway and went to New York with Vito Musso’s band. When Musso’s band folded, he went to Kansas City where he composed and arranged for Harlan Leonard’s Rockets. Among his compositions for the Leonard band were "400 Swing," "Rock and Ride" and "A La Bridges." At this point in his life, Dameron was writing almost pure swing. There was no evidence yet of the modern sounds he would later pioneer.
He began to experiment with a few new ideas while writing arrangements for the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. He was soaking up all the new bebop he was hearing and was beginning to use some of the new style in his big band arrangements. Dameron recalled, "I started writing in my own style when I got on Count Basie’s band." In 1942, Trummy Young, a trombonist Dameron had known on the Lunceford band, introduced Tadd to Dizzy Gillespie. Arranging for Gillespie’s big band, Dameron took the long phrases, powerful upbeat rhythms and chord changes of bop that Dizzy and Charlie Parker were pioneering, and used them in big band arrangements. Among his early compositions for Gillespie was "Good Bait."
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Tadd Dameron: Fontainebleau & Magic Touch Revisited
by Chris May
There is much that is tragic about Tadd Dameron's story. The composer, arranger and pianist fell prey to the heroin epidemic that gripped New York's jazz world in the 1940s and 1950s. He did jail time for his addiction in 1959-60. He died at the woefully young age of 48 years in 1965. But there is nothing tragic about Dameron's legacy as a composer-arranger, the field in which he made his most important contribution to jazz. His work was unfailingly ...
Continue ReadingFive Views From The Piano Bench
by C. Michael Bailey
The piano is a versatile instrument that provides different trajectories for those who play it. The view from the piano bench can vary as dramatically as the artist playing it. Yuja Wang The Vienna Recital Deutsche Grammophon 2024 From the biggest of stages... In 2009, Chinese wunderkind pianist Yuja Wang released her debut recording, Sonatas & Etudes (Deutsche Grammophon), and for the past 15 years has proven herself the ...
Continue ReadingMiles Davis: Miles Davis With Tadd Dameron Revisited
by Chris May
1949 was a year of massive change for Miles Davis, and not in a good way. It began, in January, with him fronting the first of the recording sessions, made with a nonet, that became generically known as The Birth Of The Cool and which, if he had achieved nothing else of note, would have secured him a lasting place in jazz history. It ended with him strung out on heroin, a habit that reversed his ascent and which took ...
Continue ReadingRiver City Jazz Masters Preview, Newk, Tadd & More
by Marc Cohn
Happy 89th birthday to Mr. Sonny Rollins! After some 21st century music from Hudson, Joshua Redman (his latest), UK pianist Zoe Rahman [whew!], Chicagoland's Geof Bradfield & Kamasi Washington, we preview the Baton Rouge River City Jazz Masters 2019-2020 season at the Manship Theatre (Eddie Palmieri, Eric Alexander, Nicholas Payton AND Jazzmeia Horn)! It's gonna be good, you bet. We continue our chronological celebration of Sonny Rollins-- tracks with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. This logically led to ...
Continue ReadingPaul Combs: Dameronia: The Life and Times of Tadd Dameron
by Victor L. Schermer
Dameronia: The Life and Times of Tadd Dameron Paul Combs 264 Pages ISBN: # 978-0-472-03563-2 The University of Michigan Press2013 “There is enough ugliness in this world; I'm interested in beauty."--Tadd Dameron “Nature's first green is gold, Her hardest hue to hold. Her early leaf's a flower; But only so an hour. Then leaf subsides to leaf, So Eden sank to grief, So dawn ...
Continue ReadingTadd Dameron Birthday Celebration at Smoke
by Nick Catalano
Tadd Dameron was born on Feb. 21 in 1917, and for the past few years, Smoke has celebrated his birthday over President's weekend. This year the tribute featured tenor saxophonists George Coleman and Eric Alexander on alternating nights, with a rhythm section of drummer Joe Farnsworth, bassist John Webber and pianist Rich Wyands. Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron hailed from Cleveland and began his arranging work with swing bands, writing for Harlan Leonard, Jimmie Lunceford, Coleman Hawkins, Count ...
Continue ReadingVarious Artists: Blue Note Connoisseur Series: The Lost Sessions
by C. Andrew Hovan
When it came to the music that he put out on record, Blue Note producer Alfred Lion was a stickler for tight ensembles, inspired performances, and musically appealing content. This sometimes meant, added to the sheer prolific nature of the label, that many decent sessions ended up accumulating in the vaults over the years. Of course, Blue Note began mining these resources back in the late '70s and early '80s, carrying on in some degree through the label's resurrection in ...
Continue ReadingMadd For Tadd Marks Its Second Celebration Of Tadd Dameron With 'Central Avenue Swing & Our Delight,' Set For August 25 Release By Tighten Up Records
Source:
Terri Hinte Publicity
Kent Engelhardt doubles down—literally—on his pursuit of big-band arrangements of the works of Tadd Dameron with Madd for Tadd’s August 25 release of Central Avenue Swing & Our Delight (Tighten Up). The two-disc set (a follow-up to their 2018 debut The Magic Continues) finds MFT, Ohio-based alto saxophonist Engelhardt’s 15-piece Dameron big band—co-led and conducted by trumpeter Stephen Enos—performing 21 new orchestrations of the totemic composer’s tunes as well as a new original composition by Engelhardt. As the title suggests, ...
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Jazz Musician of the Day: Tadd Dameron
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Tadd Dameron's birthday today!
Tadd Dameron as a composer and arranger was the man who in the 1940s and ‘50s was among the first to use the sometimes raw and undisciplined devices of the then- new style of jazz called bebop in well-developed arrangements for big bands and small groups. Perhaps more than any other musician, Dameron added form to the then-emerging style of bop. Born in Cleveland in 1917, Dameron grew up with music ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Tadd Dameron
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Tadd Dameron's birthday today!
Tadd Dameron as a composer and arranger was the man who in the 1940s and ‘50s was among the first to use the sometimes raw and undisciplined devices of the then- new style of jazz called bebop in well-developed arrangements for big bands and small groups. Perhaps more than any other musician, Dameron added form to the then-emerging style of bop. Born in Cleveland in 1917, Dameron grew up with music ...
read more
Jazz Musician of the Day: Tadd Dameron
Source:
Michael Ricci
All About Jazz is celebrating Tadd Dameron's birthday today!
Tadd Dameron as a composer and arranger was the man who in the 1940s and ‘50s was among the first to use the sometimes raw and undisciplined devices of the then- new style of jazz called bebop in well-developed arrangements for big bands and small groups. Perhaps more than any other musician, Dameron added form to the then-emerging style of bop. Born in Cleveland in 1917, Dameron grew up with music ...
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Tadd Dameron: Magic Continues
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Tadd Dameron's final album was The Magic Touch for Riverside Records in 1962. Dameron would die three years later. In 2017, alto saxophonist Kent Engelhardt, coordinator of jazz studies at Ohio's Youngstown State University, and Steve Enos, a trumpeter and director of jazz studies at Ohio's Cuyahoga Community College, co-formed Madd for Tadd. The 15-piece band was dedicated to recreating and preserving Dameron's music. Engelhardt transcribed, edited and arranged the 10 songs that Dameron had scored for his Magic Touch ...
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Perfect Album: Mating Call
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
While we're on the subject of Tadd Dameron this week, I didn't want to overlook what is perhaps his finest quartet album—Mating Call, with John Coltrane. Produced by Bob Weinstock for Prestige in November 1956 and released in '57, the personnel included Tadd Dameron (p), John Coltrane (ts), John Simmons (b) and Philly Joe Jones (d). It's perfection in every way, from Dameron's six songs (Mating Call, Gnid, Soultrane, On a Misty Night, Romas and Super Jet) to the superb ...
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Tadd Dameron: Fontainebleau
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
One of the prettiest octet albums of the 1950s was Tadd Dameron's Fontainebleau. Recorded in March 1956, the album for Prestige featured Kenny Dorham (tp), Henry Coker (tb), Sahib Shihab (as), Joe Alexander (ts), Cecil Payne (bar), Tadd Dameron (p,arr), John Simmons (b) and Shadow Wilson (d). The regal quality of Dameron's compositions and arrangements are steeped in classy romanticism yet remain in the hip bop realm. The players on the album come together well, as if carefully selected for ...
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Ferit Odman: To Tadd Dameron With Love
Source:
Ferit Odman
Jazz drummer Ferit Odman’s third album Dameronia With Strings is released all analog [AAA] by Equinox Music & Entertainment on 180 Gram Limited Vinyl LP & CD. The remarkably sensitive played session by Ferit Odman, Terell Stafford, Peter Washington and Danny Grissett both as a band and ace soloists lets us dream up high above the sky together with a well-balanced, swinging string sextet and beautiful arrangements by David O'Rourke. This is a tribute to Tadd Dameron and gives us ...
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Not the Miles Davis Nonet
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
Picking up where we left off yesterday, 1949 was quite a remarkable year for jazz. The second American Federation of Musicians' ban ended in late '48, allowing record production to resume after nine months. The LP record was introduced by Columbia, RCA unveiled the 45, magnetic tape started to roll in recording studios, bebop was peaking, R&B was heating up and cool was the new brainy sound, with some jazz artists straddling all three genres. Just as jazz styles were ...
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Ofer Shapira
saxophone
Kent Engelhardt
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Madd For Tadd
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Yooyoun Cho
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