Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor Baron Thielemans was born on April 29, 1922 in Brussels, Belgium. Known to the world as Toots, he began his musical training on accordion at age three. Not playing harmonica until he was seventeen, Toots original reputation was made as a guitarist greatly influenced by Django Reinhardt. By 1949 he was sharing the Paris Jazz Festival bandstand with Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Max Roach and Sidney Bechet for a jam session. That same year he began touring Europe with Benny Goodman and making his recording debut with Zoot Sims.
Moving to the US in 1952 he joined Charlie Parker’s All-Stars and worked with Miles Davis and Dinah Washington. He played and recorded with names like Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, George Shearing, Quincy Jones, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, Paul Simon, Billy Joel, The Happenings, Astrud Gilberto, Shirley Horn, Elis Regina and others.
His composition “Bluesette”, recorded in 1962, where he introduced whistling and guitar in unison, has become a jazz standard. Norman Gimbel later penned the lyrics and the tune became a worldwide hit for several singers and is still highly requested.
His trademark harmonica playing and whistling has been heard in movie scores, television series and commercials. He has been a proponent of world music releasing a French flavored album Chez Toots and the two-volume Brasil Project. He has received honorary doctorates, made a baron by King Albert II of Belgium, and in 2008 became a NEA Jazz Master.
Apart from his popularity as an accomplished musician, he is well liked for his modesty and kind demeanor. The composer and musician continued to play and record until he passed away on August 22, 2016 in Braine-l’Alleud, Belgium. He is credited with single-handedly introducing the chromatic harmonica as a jazz instrument in the Fifties, playing with the dexterity of a saxophone.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
It has been said that Antonio Carlos Jobim was the George Gershwin of Brazil, and there is a solid ring of truth in that, for both contributed large bodies of songs to the jazz repertoire, both expanded their reach into the concert hall, and both tend to symbolize their countries in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Born Antônio Carlos Brasileiro de Almeida Jobim on January 25, 1927 in Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janiero studied to become an architect but the lure of music was too strong being firmly rooted in the music of Pixinguinha, who began modern Brazilian music in the 1930’s. By twenty he started playing piano in nightclubs and working recording sessions. He cut his first record in 1954 leader his group Tom and His Band, backing singer Bill Farr.
Tom, a nickname he affectionately carried throughout his life, was firmly planted in jazz having been impacted by Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Barney Kessel and other West Coast musicians. He also gleaned influence upon his harmonies from Claude Debussy and Samba gave his music an exotic rhythmic underpinning. His piano is simple and melodic, his guitar gentle and his singing hauntingly emotional. Among his many themes his lyrics talked of love, political repression, betrayal, the natural beauties of Brazil and his home city of Rio.
Jobim first found fame in 1956 when he teamed with poet and diplomat Vinicius de Moraes to score part of the play Orfeo do Carnival, which would later gain them worldwide acclaim at Cannes when Black Orpheus debut in 1959.
In 1958, an unknown Brazilian singer João Gilberto recorded some of Jobim’s songs, which effectively launched bossa nova. Yet, Jobim’s breakthrough outside Brazil occurred in 1962 when Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd scored a surprise hit with his tune “Desafinado” – and later Getz teamed with Joao Gilberto and his wife Astrud resulting in Getz/Gilberto in 1963 and Getz/Gilberto 2 in 1964. The ’63 album became one of the best selling jazz albums of all time and grabbed 4 Grammy Awards. With their gracefully urbane, sensuously aching melodies and harmonies, Jobim’s songs gave jazz musicians in the 1960s a quiet, strikingly original alternative to their traditional Tin Pan Alley source.
Grammy award winning songwriter, composer, arranger, singer, pianist and guitarist while driving home after finishing recording for his next album Tom Jobim, collapsed and passed away of heart failure in New York City on December 8, 1994.
