TONY HIGHTOWER

Singer/Songwriter Tony Hightower is taking up the mantle to be a bridge that ushers R&B audiences into Jazz…Real Jazz. With years of experience as a musical performer and actor with familial roots that place him firmly within the music’s firmament, Atlanta-native Hightower is still just getting started on this benevolent turn in his journey. And he is bringing a lot of young people with him.

His sophomore project, LEGACY, finds Hightower exploring Jazz vocal stylings from a dazzling prism of angles. The 10-song album moves confidently and assuredly from original compositions such as the soulful scat-laced “All to the Good,” the seductive Brazilian bossa nova of “Rendezvous” and the tender carnal Jarreau-esque love beg “I Need You” to swingin’ covers of Earth, Wind & Fire’s classic Skip Scarborough-penned “Can’t Hide Love,” a mean shuffle boogie groove through Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” and a smoldering upright bass accompanied tiptoe through the 1929 Andy Razaf standard “Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good To You” made further famous in 1944 by one of Hightower’s greatest and earliest Jazz vocal heroes, Nat “King” Cole. That one’ll make the women wiggle.

“I didn’t have a choice about doing this music,” Hightower confesses. “My mother, Theresa Hightower, lived her life onstage. She was a fiery and versatile vocal pro by age 16 and had me when she was 19. So, you could say I’ve been performing since the womb.” And though he did not know his father, Ralph Baker, well, the man’s DNA pulsed within his being as Hightower inherited the percussionist’s keen sense of fascinating rhythm, which led to Tony’s first pro gig at age 14 playing drums in the stage band for “The Dinah Washington Story” at the 14th Street Playhouse.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Freddie Jenkins was born on October 10, 1906 in New York City, New York and played in the Jenkins Orphanage Band when young before he attended Wilberforce University. Following this he played with Edgar Hayes and Horace Henderson between 1924 and 1928. 

He then took a position in Duke Ellington’s Orchestra in 1928 where he soloed in the 1930 film Check and Double Check, during a performance of the song Old Man Blues. He remained with the Ellington Orchestra until 1935, when lung problems forced him to quit.

Recovered, he formed his own group in 1935, recording one session as a leader. His sidemen included Ward Pinkett, Albert Nicholas and Bernard Addison. After this he played with Luis Russell in 1936. Rejoining Ellington in 1937 he played with him for a year, then for a short time thereafter played with Hayes Alvis. 

After 1938, his lung ailment returned and he retired again from performance. In his later years he worked as a songwriter, disc jockey, and in music press. He became a deputy sheriff in Fort Worth, Texas. 

Trumpeter Freddie Jenkins transitioned in 1978.

Bestow upon an inquiring mind a dose of a New York City trumpeter to motivate the perusal of the genius of jazz musicians worldwide whose gifts contribute to the canon…

Freddie Jenkins: 1906~1978 | Trumpet



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SNARKY PUPPY

Snarky Puppy is an American instrumental ensemble led by bassist Michael League. Founded in 2004, Snarky Puppy combines a variety of jazz idioms, rock, world music, and funk and has won four Grammy Awards. The once Texan, now New York-based quasi-collective Snarky Puppy has gone from the best-kept secret to one of the most respected names in instrumental music.

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CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE QUARTET

Christian McBride is an American jazz bassist, composer and arranger. He has appeared on more than 300 recordings as a sideman, and is an eight-time Grammy Award winner. This group was the original Joshua Redman touring quartet of the 1990s.

Christian McBride ~ Double Bass

Joshua Redman ~ Saxophone

Brad Mehldau ~ Piano

Brian Blade ~ Drums

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TOM HARRELL QUINTET

The trumpeter Tom Harrell has been doing this a long time, through various schools and vogues: He can play slow and fast and in between, sometimes all within a single line. But his improvising is always temperate and proportionate. He keeps you on the hook, but doesn’t shout, doesn’t stop the clock. Plenty of improvisers are specialists in now-ness, revealing a solo as a series of events, or present-tense flashes. With Mr. Harrell, it’s all one event. He’s always processing ahead and behind, and you feel as if you’re hearing the whole of the narrative at all times, from was to is to will be.

Tom Harrell – Trumpet, Flugelhorn

Dayna Stephens – Saxophone

Luis Perdomo – Piano

Ugonna Okegwo – Bass

Adam Cruz – Drums

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