ARTISTS & PERFORMERS

Artist PhotoArtist Bio
Coon-Sanders Nighthawk Orchestra was the first Kansas City jazz band to achieve national recognition, which it acquired through national radio broadcasts. It was founded in 1919, as the Coon-Sanders Novelty Orchestra, by drummer Carleton Coon and pianist Joe Sanders. Coon was born in Rochester, Minnesota in 1893. Sanders was born in Kansas in 1896. Sanders was known as "The Old Left Hander" because of his skills at baseball. He gave the game up in the early 1920s to make dance music his career. The orchestra began broadcasting in 1922 on WDAF, ... Continue reading
Count Basie (August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. His mother taught him to play the piano and he started performing in his teens. Dropping out of school, he learned to operate lights for vaudeville and to improvise accompaniment for silent films at a local movie theater in his home town of Red Bank, New Jersey. By 16 years old, he increasingly played jazz piano at parties, resorts and other venues. In 1924, he went to Harlem, where his performing career expanded; he toured with g... Continue reading
Don Redman (July 29, 1900 – November 30, 1964) was an American jazz musician, arranger, bandleader and composer. He was named a member of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame on May 6, 2009. Don began playing the trumpet at the age of three, joined his first band at the age of six and by the age of 12 was proficient on all wind instruments ranging from trumpet to oboe as well as piano. He studied at Storer College in Harper's Ferry and at the Boston Conservatory, then joined Billy Page's Broadway Syncopators in New York City. In 1923, Redman ... Continue reading
Doris Day (April 3, 1922 or 1924) is a retired American actress and singer. Day began her career as a big band singer in 1939. Her popularity began to rise after her first hit recording "Sentimental Journey", in 1945. After leaving Les Brown & His Band of Renown to embark on a solo career, Day started her long-lasting partnership with Columbia Records, which remained her only recording label. The contract lasted from 1947 to 1967 and included more than 650 recordings, making Day one of the most popular and acclaimed singers of the 20th cent... Continue reading
Duke Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years. Born in Washington, D.C., Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a national profile through his orchestra's appearances at the Cotton Club in Harlem. In the 1930s, his orchestra toured in Europe. Some of the musicians who were members of Ellington's orchestra, such as saxophonist Johnny Hodges, are considered to be... Continue reading
Earl "Fatha" Hines (December 28, 1903 – April 22, 1983), was an American jazz pianist and bandleader. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of jazz piano and, according to one major source, is "one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz". In 1925, after much family debate, Hines moved to Chicago, Illinois. The city was then the world's jazz capital, home to Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. Hines started in The Elite no. 2 Club but soon joined Carroll Dickerson's band, with whom he also... Continue reading
Eddie Lang (October 25, 1902 – March 26, 1933) was an American musician regarded as the father of jazz guitar. He displaced the banjo with the guitar and made it a worthy solo and band instrument. He learned violin at the age of seven, soon adding guitar and banjo. Within a year he was playing all three professionally and in public. In the early 1920s he played with Vic D'Ipplito, Bert Estlow, Charlie Kerr, Bill Lustin's Scranton Sirens, and Red McKenzie's Mound City Blue Blowers. During the 1920s he recorded and performed on radio, often wit... Continue reading
Eddy Duchin (April 1, 1909 – February 9, 1951) was a popular American pianist and bandleader of the 1930s and 1940s, famous for his engaging onstage personality and his elegant piano style. Duchin was born on April 1, 1909 in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  He was originally a pharmacist before turning full-time to music and beginning his new career with Leo Reisman's orchestra at the Central Park Casino in New York, an elegant nightclub where he became hugely popular in his own right and eventually became the Reisman orchestra's leader by 1932.... Continue reading
Ella Fitzgerald (April 25, 1917 – June 15, 1996) was an American jazz singer often referred to as the First Lady of Song, Queen of Jazz and Lady Ella. She was noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing and intonation, and a "horn-like" improvisational ability, particularly in her scat singing. After tumultuous teenage years, Fitzgerald found stability in musical success with the Chick Webb Orchestra, performing across the country, but most often associated with the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem. Fitzgerald's rendition of the nurser... Continue reading
Ella Mae Morse (September 12, 1924 – October 16, 1999) was an American popular singer. She was hired by Jimmy Dorsey when she was 14 years old. In 1942, at the age of 17, she joined Freddie Slack's band, with whom in the same year she recorded "Cow Cow Boogie", the first gold record by Capitol Records. "Mr. Five by Five" was also recorded by Morse with Slack, and they had a hit recording with the song in 1942. She also originated the wartime hit "Milkman, Keep Those Bottles Quiet", which was later popularized by Nancy Walker in the film, Broa... Continue reading