Saturday, February 25, 2023

WELCOME TO THE NEW SOUND PROJECTIONS MUSICAL ARTISTS SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND REFERENCE ARCHIVE

AS OF JANUARY 13, 2023 FIVE HUNDRED MUSICAL ARTISTS HAVE BEEN FEATURED IN THE SOUND PROJECTIONS MAGAZINE THAT BEGAN ITS ONLINE PUBLICATION ON NOVEMBER 1, 2014.
 
THE 500th AND FINAL MUSICAL ARTIST ENTRY IN THIS NOW COMPLETED EIGHT YEAR SERIES WAS POSTED ON THIS SITE ON SATURDAY, JANUARY 7, 2023. 
 
BEGINNING JANUARY 14, 2023 THIS SITE WILL CONTINUE TO FUNCTION AS AN ONGOING PUBLIC ARCHIVE AND SCHOLARLY RESEARCH AND REFERENCE RESOURCE FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THEIR LOVE OF AND INTEREST IN WHAT THE VARIOUS MUSICAL ARTISTS ON THIS SITE PROVIDES IN TERMS OF BACKGROUND INFORMATION AND VARIOUS CRITICAL  ANALYSES AND COMMENTARY OFFERED ON BEHALF OF EACH ARTIST ENTRY SINCE NOVEMBER 1, 2014.

ACCESS TO EACH ARTIST CAN BE FOUND ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE HOME PAGE WHERE THE 'BLOG ARCHIVE' (ARTISTS LISTED IN WEEKLY CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER) AND ‘LABELS' (ARTIST NAMES, TOPICS, ETC.) LINKS ARE LOCATED. CLICK ON THESE RESPECTIVE LINKS TO ACCESS THEIR CONTENT:

 

https://soundprojections.blogspot.com 

PHOTO:  MELBA LISTON  (1926-1999))

 
MELBA LISTON  (1926-1999)

https://thegirlsintheband.com/2013/11/melba-liston/

Melba Liston

by Nicole Williams Sitaraman

Melba Liston was a trombone player who was nothing less than a force of nature. In addition to being sought after for her second-to-none slide playing, she became widely revered for her jazz arrangements and compositions. She is, without question, one of the unsung heroes of the jazz genre.

 

She was born in Kansas City, MO on January 13, 1926. When she was seven years old, Melba selected the trombone as her instrument of choice as part of her elementary school’s new music program. She later reflected that as a little girl, she chose the trombone because she thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. As a youngster learning to play the slide, she quickly learned how difficult playing the trombone was but she stuck with it. Only a year later, she was good enough to play a solo on a local radio station.

In 1937, her family moved to Los Angeles and Melba’s mother matched her with a music teacher named Alma Hightower. Melba studied with Hightower for a few years but by the time Melba reached the age of sixteen, she decided to become a professional musician and joined the musicians union. She became a member of the band of the Los Angeles Lincoln Theater. During her period with the Lincoln Theater band, she interfaced with the International Sweethearts of Rhythm and also began composing and arranging for other acts performing at Lincoln Theater. This spirit of musical entrepreneurship and creativity would carry Melba throughout her illustrious career as a trombone player, composer and arranger (roles rarely given or attributed to women in jazz during this era).

 

After her stint at the Lincoln Theater, she joined a band newly-formed by trumpeter Gerald Wilson and also recorded with Dexter Gordon. Melba stayed with Wilson’s band through 1948 when the band broke up. She then joined Dizzy Gillespie’s big band which, at the time, included musicians such as John Coltrane and John Lewis. Melba enjoyed working in this exciting band full of talented artists but Gillespie disbanded the group only a year later. She (and her former bandleader Gerald Wilson) then joined a band backing Billie Holiday on tour. The experience of touring throughout the south with Holiday’s band, coping with the strains of limited income and even more limited audiences, was strenuous, disheartening and exhausting for Melba. In later years, Melba spoke candidly about the extreme difficulties of being a female jazz musician during this era. More than being shunned or overlooked, she, and likely many other women musicians trying to make their way, were abused. However, despite consistent abuse by male musicians, Melba found strength and motivation in her music.

She later left Billie Holiday’s band, stopped playing the trombone and moved back to Los Angeles where she worked in a clerical position in the city’s Board of Education. She stopped playing the slide but her creativity and love of music prevented her from abandoning arranging and composing altogether. Melba quickly became known and respected in music as a savvy and remarkable bebop jazz arranger. Her later work would demonstrate her stellar ability to transcend categories and embrace post-bop, Afrobeat and Motown sounds in her compositions.

During the 1950’s, Melba tried her hand at small roles in film, including bit background parts in The Prodigal and the Ten Commandments. However, in 1956, she returned to playing her trombone in Dizzy Gillespie’s orchestra commissioned by the U.S. State Department as a musical ambassador of the U.S. in South America. She wrote and arranged many of her most memorable tunes during her work with Dizzy’s ambassador orchestra including “Stella By Starlight,” “My Reverie,” and “The Gypsy.” She later transitioned into working with Quincy Jones (a fellow alum of Dizzy Gillespie’s band) and his orchestra as both a player and writer until that group fell on difficult financial times. In 1958, Melba Liston recorded her only album as a leader, Melba Liston and Her ‘Bones – a true gem in jazz history.

She later settled in New York and worked as a freelance arranger and composer for studio sessions of various artists including Marvin Gaye, Milt Jackson, Randy Weston, Gloria Lynne and the Supremes. During the 1960’s is when Melba’s best collaborative relationship – partnering with Randy Weston – flourished. Randy Weston simply adored her expert musical abilities and they worked together on a number of projects for many years to come. In fact, their collaborations produced several notable albums including the critically acclaimed albums Uhuru Afrika (1960) and Highlife (1963). I would venture to say that Melba was a pioneer in the explicit melding of contemporary African rhythms and intonations with American jazz. I am sure Fela Kuti took a listen to these albums on occasion.

During the 1970’s, Melba Liston spent six years in Jamaica on a music education appointment at the University of Jamaica and served as director of popular music studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music. When she returned to the US, she formed an all-female jazz band called the Melba Liston Company which headlined at the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival. The band was discontinued in 1983.

Melba continued to be actively involved in the jazz scene as an arranger and composer including critically acclaimed projects with Randy Weston through the 1990’s. Unfortunately, her health declined with the first of several strokes in 1986. Melba Liston passed away in 1999 but left a phenomenal legacy as a jazz trailblazer.

Sources:

http://elvispelvis.com/melbaliston.htm

http://www.fyicomminc.com/jazzwomen/melbaliston.htm

http://www.randyweston.info/randy-weston-sidemen-pages/melba-liston.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3812/is_200003/ai_n8890639/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melba_Liston

http://curtjazz.wordpress.com/tag/jazz-trombone/

Check out: Nicole Williams Sitaraman’s blog on Jazz Virtuosa at http://jazzvirtuosa.blogspot.com/

http://www.theheroinecollective.com/melba-liston/

BIOGRAPHY: Melba Liston – Jazz Trombonist


Melba Liston was an African-American musician who became a brilliant star of the jazz world. Though best known as a composer and arranger, her incredible skill as a trombonist meant she also achieved fame as an instrumentalist, and she worked alongside some of the biggest names in music. Her unprecedented and varied career spanned five decades, seeing her become one of the industry’s extreme rarities; a successful female trombonist.

Melba was born in Kansas City in 1926, and when she was seven years old she was offered a choice of instruments to learn as part of her elementary school’s music programme. She chose a trombone because she found it beautiful. Only a year later she played it well enough to perform solo on local radio. In 1937, Melba and her mother moved to California where, at the age of sixteen, she took up her first professional engagement with the pit band of the Los Angeles Lincoln Theatre. Not only did she play there, but she also wrote and arranged musical scores for other performers.

Melba then joined composer and trumpeter, Gerald Wilson, both as a musician and as his assistant arranger, in his newly-formed big band. She also worked with tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon at this time, and the pair recorded a track called Mischievous Lady which Gordon had written especially as a tribute for her. Melba was starting to excel as a soloist and Dizzie Gillespie was so impressed with her skill that, when Gerald Wilson’s orchestra disbanded in 1948, he asked her to join his ensemble.

Melba played with Gillespie and his band in New York alongside musical luminaries such as John Coltrane and John Lewis. She loved working with such a progressive and exciting band but, due to financial constraints, the orchestra broke up only a year later.

After a short time touring with Count Basie, Melba joined the band hired to accompany Billie Holiday for a tour of America’s South. This was an extremely unhappy and difficult time in Melba’s career. The audiences were mostly small and indifferent, and she faced a great deal of hardship whilst on the road. Later in life, Melba would also speak of the profound difficulties she experienced being a woman in the music industry during this era. She not only found herself disregarded and ignored, but also suffered abuse, discrimination and even sexual assault.

When the tour with Billie Holiday came to an end, Melba was so disillusioned with the music industry that she temporarily turned her back on it. She returned to Los Angeles to take a clerical job at the Board of Education and also supplemented her income by taking small acting roles in several Hollywood movies.

Happily, during the late 1950s, Melba was lured back to music and joined Dizzie Gillespie’s latest big bebop band for tours to the Middle East, Asia and South America. She was both a writer and an arranger for the band and most commentators agree that she produced some of her finest work at this time.

In 1958, Melba formed her own all-female quintet and also recorded her only album as a band leader, Melba Liston & Her Bones – widely regarded as a jazz classic. She then went on to work with trumpeter Quincy Jones, who had formed a band to tour Europe with his Free and Easy show. She wrote consistently for this band, particularly standards and ballads, and continued to work with Jones when the ensemble returned to New York.

Across the following decade, Melba lived in New York, working as a freelance arranger and composer with various recording companies and for many prestigious artists, including Tony Bennett and Diana Ross. She also embarked on a wonderfully creative collaboration with pianist Randy Weston. The pair would work together for many years to come, producing a number of highly regarded and innovative recordings.

In 1973, Melba’s career took a different direction. She moved to Jamaica for six years and served as the Director of Popular Music Studies at the Jamaica Institute of Music. In 1975, she wrote and arranged the score for a film called Smile Orange, a sortie into Reggae music. On returning to the USA in 1979, Melba formed an all-female jazz band called the Melba Liston Company which headlined at the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival.

Throughout the 1980s Melba continued to be actively involved in the jazz music scene as an arranger and composer, and in 1987 was awarded the Jazz Masters Fellowship of the National Endowment for the Arts. Sadly, her health began to decline in 1986 with the first of several strokes. She died in 1999 having made a unique and remarkable contribution to the music of the 20th Centur

References include All About Jazz, Arts.gov, The Guardian, The Independent, Indiana Public Media. ©The Heroine Collective 2015 – Present, All Rights Reserved.

 

Melba Liston

 

(1926-1999)

 

Artist Biography by

A fine section trombonist, Melba Liston achieved her greatest fame as an arranger, particularly for her projects with Randy Weston. She grew up in California and played with Gerald Wilson's Orchestra starting in 1943. Her most notable recording as a soloist was with Dexter Gordon in 1947. Liston worked with Count Basie (1948-1949), Dizzy Gillespie's big band (1949-1950), and backed Billie Holiday, but then spent a few years outside of music. She toured with and wrote for Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra (1956-1957) and visited Europe with Quincy Jones' big band (1959), staying with that orchestra into 1961. Liston then became a freelance arranger, working on sessions led by Weston, Johnny Griffin, and Milt Jackson, writing for the studios, teaching, and occasionally playing. A serious stroke confined her to a wheelchair from 1985 onward, but Liston still wrote for several latter-day Randy Weston projects in the years prior to her death on April 23, 1999. 
 

Melba Liston - Melba And Her Bones  (Full Album):



Trombone – Al Grey (# 3, 6, 7), Bennie Green (# 3, 6, 7), Benny Powell (# 3, 6, 7), Frank Rehak (# 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9 to 12), Jimmy Cleveland (# 1, 2, 4, 5, 8), Melba Liston Trombone, Tuba – Slide Hampton (# 1, 2, 4, 5, 8) Baritone Saxophone – Marty Flax (# 9 to 12) Bass – George Joyner (# 3, 6, 7), Nelson Boyd (#9 to 12) Drums – Charlie Persip (# 3, 6, 7, 9 to 12), Frank Dunlop (# 1, 2, 4, 5, 8) Guitar – Kenny Burrell (# 3, 6, 7) Piano – Ray Bryant (# 1, 2, 4, 5, 8), Walter Davis Jr. (# 9 to 12) ........................................................ 
 
1 Christmas Eve 4:57 2 What’s My Line Theme 4:18 3 You Don’t Say 3:55 4 The Dark Before The Dawn 3:18 5 Pow! 4:01 6 Blues Melba 6:30 7 The Trolley Song 2:31 8 Wonder Why 3:58 9 Insomnia 3:29 10 Very Syrian Business 4:22 11 Never Do An Abadanian 5:07 12 Zagred This 4:41 ........................................................ 
 
Recorded - #3,6,7: New York City, December 22, 1958 #1,2,4,5,8: New York City, December 24, 1958 #9-12: New York City, June, 1956

 

Melba Liston

Melba Liston is an NEA Jazz Master 
Born in Kansas City, Melba moved to Los Angeles as a child, and became a working musician at age sixteen. She learned to arrange and write, as well as play, and quickly found herself snapped up by Gerald Wilson, who hired her as a copyist, arranger, and trombonist during the War. When Wilson's band broke up in 1948, she joined Count Basie, and in 1949, Dizzy Gillespie. Her writing and arranging were formidable, and after Dizzy's big band folded in 1957, she stayed busy in New York with writing and playing. She returned to Los Angeles in the late 1960s, and moved to Jamaica in 1974, to teach at the Institute of Music there. She returned in 1979, settling in New York to lead her own group. She suffered a stroke in 1986 that ended her playing career, but continued to compose and arrange until her death in 1999. Melba appears on numerous big band sessions from 1945-57, and recorded one album as a leader. She occasionally returned to playing in her later years, and can be found on a handful of records, with luminaries like Quincy Jones, Randy Weston, Clark Terry, and Oliver Nelson, from the 1960s.


https://www.npr.org/2008/07/09/92349036/melba-liston-bones-of-an-arranger

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Melba Liston: Bones Of An Arranger

Melba Liston: Bones Of An Arranger



Melba Liston performs on Art Ford's Jazz Party, a television program broadcast from Newark, N.J., in 1958. Nancy Miller-Elliott. Courtesy of the Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University 

One of the few women to succeed as both a jazz instrumentalist and an arranger, Melba Liston was a true jazz pioneer. In the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, she played trombone in the big bands of Gerald Wilson, Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones, and Clark Terry. As an accomplished arranger, Liston brought musical life to the songs of numerous great artists, ranging from Billie Holiday to Marvin Gaye, and including a lengthy collaboration with pianist and composer Randy Weston.

Born in 1926, Liston first laid eyes on the trombone in grade school; immediately, she said, she knew she wanted one. With encouragement from her family and music teachers, she began to develop her talent in school and local ensembles. One of her high-school friends, alto saxophonist Vi Redd, says that Liston was always musically ahead of her peers. "Melba's just always been an advanced musician," she says. "We had to struggle to keep up with her."

While in high school, Liston landed her first professional job at the Lincoln Theater pit band in Los Angeles. After a year of work, she worked as an assistant to arranger and composer Gerald Wilson, who was forming his first big band.


AUDIO:  <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/92349036/92363021" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"></iframe>

https://www.wijsf.com/jazzwomen/melbaliston.html
 
Melba Liston
"Melba Liston is one of the best jazz musicians, not just one of the best women in jazz." -- Junior Mance

Melba Liston was born in Kansas City and moved with her family to Los Angeles at the age of 11 where she played with youth bands before starting her career in a pit orchestra (1942). She joined Gerald Wilson's band in 1943 and began writing arrangements; during her time with Wilson she recorded with Dexter Gordon (1947), then when Wilson's orchestra disbanded on the East Coast (1948) she accepted a job with Dizzy Gillespie. She toured with Billie Holliday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing and took a clerical job.

In the mid-1950s she enjoyed a brief career as a film extra, appearing in The Prodigal and The Ten Commandments. She re-joined Gillespie for tours sponsored by the US State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1957), and visited Europe (1959) with the show Free and Easy, for which Quincy Jones was music director.

In the 1960s she worked for a variety of leaders including Randy Weston, then taught at the Jamaica School of Music for six years (1973-79), before returning to the USA to lead her own bands. She was a talented and sensitive arranger, and one of the most accomplished trombonists of her generation.

--STAN WOOLLEY, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz.


A selected discography of Melba Liston albums.

  • Melba Liston and her Bones, 1958, Metrojazz.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melba_Liston

Melba Liston

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Melba Doretta Liston (January 13, 1926 – April 23, 1999) was an American jazz trombonist, arranger, and composer. She was the first woman trombonist to play in big bands during the 1940s and 1960s, but as her career progressed she became better known as an arranger particularly in partnership with pianist Randy Weston.[1]
 
 

Life and career

 

Liston was born in Kansas City, Missouri. At the age of seven, Melba's mother purchased her a trombone. Her family encouraged her musical pursuits, as they were all music lovers.[2] Liston was primarily self-taught, but she was "encouraged by her guitar-playing grandfather" who she spent significant time with learning to play spirituals and folk songs.[3] At the age of eight, she was good enough to be a solo act on a local radio station.[4] At the age of ten, she moved to Los Angeles, California. She was classmates with Dexter Gordon, and friends with Eric Dolphy.[3] After playing in youth bands and studying with Alma Hightower, she joined the big band led by Gerald Wilson in 1944.[5]

She recorded with saxophonist Dexter Gordon in 1947 and joined Dizzy Gillespie's big band, which included saxophonists John Coltrane, Paul Gonsalves, and pianist John Lewis) in New York for a time[5] when Wilson disbanded his orchestra in 1948. Liston performed in a supporting role and was nervous when asked to take solos, but with encouragement she became more comfortable as a featured voice in bands.[1] She toured with Count Basie, then with Billie Holiday (1949) but was so profoundly affected by the indifference of the audiences and the rigors of the road that she gave up playing and turned to education. Liston taught for about three years.

She took a clerical job for some years and supplemented her income by taking work as an extra in Hollywood, appearing in The Prodigal (1955) and The Ten Commandments (1956). She returned to Gillespie for tours sponsored by the U.S. State Department in 1956 and 1957, recorded with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (1957), and formed an all-women quintet in 1958. In 1959, she visited Europe with the show Free and Easy, for which Quincy Jones was music director. She accompanied Billy Eckstine with the Quincy Jones Orchestra on At Basin Street East, released on October 1, 1961, by Verve.

In the 1960s she began collaborating with pianist Randy Weston,[6] arranging compositions (primarily his own) for mid-size to large ensembles. This association, especially strong in the 1960s, would be rekindled in the late 1980s and 1990s until her death. In addition, she worked with Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, and Johnny Griffin, as well as working as an arranger for Motown, appearing on albums by Ray Charles. In 1964, she helped establish the Pittsburgh Jazz Orchestra.[7] In 1971 she was chosen as musical arranger for a Stax recording artist Calvin Scott whose album was being produced by Stevie Wonder's first producer, Clarence Paul. On this album she worked with Joe Sample and Wilton Felder of the Jazz Crusaders, blues guitarist Arthur Adams, and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey. In 1973, she moved to Jamaica to teach at the Jamaica School of Music for six years before returning to the U.S. to lead her own bands.

During her time in Jamaica, she composed and arranged music for the 1975 comedy film Smile Orange[8] starring Carl Bradshaw, who three years earlier starred in the first Jamaican film, The Harder They Come.
She was forced to give up playing in 1985 after a stroke left her partially paralyzed,[5] but she continued to arrange music with Randy Weston. In 1987, she was awarded the Jazz Masters Fellowship of the National Endowment for the Arts. After suffering repeated strokes, she died in Los Angeles, California in 1999 a few days after a tribute to her and Randy Weston's music at Harvard University. Her funeral at St. Peter's in Manhattan featured performances by Weston with Jann Parker as well as by Chico O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban ensemble and by Lorenzo Shihab (vocals). 


Composing and arranging

 

Her early work with the high-profile bands of Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie shows a strong command of the big-band and bop idioms. However, perhaps her most important work was written for Randy Weston, with whom she worked for four decades from the early 1960s.[2]
 
Liston worked as a "ghost writer" during her career. According to one writer, "Many of the arrangements found in the Gillespie, Jones, and Weston repertoires were accomplished by Liston."[9] 
 

Social meaning

 

Liston was a female in a profession of mostly males. Although some[10] consider her an unsung hero,[11] she is highly regarded in the jazz community. Liston was a trailblazer as a trombonist and a woman. She articulated difficulties of being a woman on the road. 
 
"There's those natural problems on the road, the female problems, the lodging problems, the laundry, and all those kinda things to try to keep yourself together, problems that somehow or other the guys don't seem to have to go through."[12]
She goes on to recount the struggles she experienced as an African American woman, which affected her musical career.[12] However, she generally spoke positively about the camaraderie with and support from male musicians.[1] Liston also dealt with larger issues of inequity in the music industry. One writer has said, "It was clear that she had to continually prove her credentials in order to gain suitable employment as a musician, composer, and arranger. She was not paid equitable scale and was often denied access to the larger opportunities as a composer and arranger."[12] 
 

Musical style

 

Liston's musical style reflects bebop and post-bop sensibilities learned from Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, and Art Blakey. Her earliest recorded work—such as Gordon's "Mischievous Lady" a tribute to her—her solos show a blend of motivic and linear improvisation, though they seem to make less use of extended harmonies and alterations.[2]

Her arrangements, especially those with Weston, show a flexibility that transcends her musical upbringing in the bebop 1940s, whether working in the styles of swing, post-bop, African musics, or Motown.[2] Her command of rhythmic gestures, grooves, and polyrhythms is particularly notable (as illustrated in Uhuru Afrika and Highlife). Her instrumental parts demonstrate an active use of harmonic possibilities; although her arrangements suggest relatively subdued interest in the explorations of free jazz ensembles, they use an extended tonal vocabulary, rich with altered harmonic voicings, thick layering, and dissonance. Her work throughout her career has been well received by both critics and audiences alike.[2]
 

Discography

As leader

 

As sidewoman or guest

With Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers
With Betty Carter

With Ray Charles
  • 1959 The Genius of Ray Charles
  • 1962 The Ray Charles Story, Vol. 2
With Dizzy Gillespie
With Quincy Jones
With Jimmy Smith
  • 1963 Any Number Can Win
  • 1966 Jimmy & Wes
  • 1966 The Further Adventures of Jimmy and Wes
  • 1966 Hoochie Coochie Man
  • 1969 Jimmy Smith Plays the Blues
With Dinah Washington
  • 1957 Dinah Washington Sings Fats Waller
  • 1958 Dinah Washington Sings Bessie Smith
With Randy Weston

With others

 

Further reading

 

  • Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring 2014). Special issue devoted to Melba Liston.
  • Ammer, Christine. 2001. Unsung: A History of Women in American Music, 2nd edn. Portland, OR: Amadeus.
  • Dahl, Linda. 1984. Stormy Weather: The Music and Lives of a Century of Jazzwomen. New York: Pantheon.
  • Hughes, Langston. 1960. Liner notes, Uhuru Afrika. (See discography.)
  • Voce, Steve. 1999, April 27. Obituary, in The Independent, London.
  • Watrous, Peter. 1999, April 30. "Melba Liston, 73, Trombonist And Prominent Jazz Arranger", The New York Times, C21.
  • Miller, S.L. (1992). "Randy Weston & Melba Liston: Together Again, Miraculously". Jazz Times. 22 (1): 24.

 

External links