Copper
Trading eights
Billy Taylor: Eight Great Tracks
Pianist and composer Billy Taylor (1921-2010) grew up in Washington, DC, where he took classical piano lessons with a man named Henry Grant. Grant’s other claim to fame in jazz...
Stéphane Grappelli: Eight Great Tracks
Nobody would dispute that Stéphane Grappelli is one of the top jazz violinists in history. So it says a lot about jazz history that, during much of the 1940s and...
Dianne Reeves: Eight Great Tracks
When Dianne Reeves went with her Denver high school big band to the National Jazz Educators’ Convention in 1974, she probably didn’t expect her career to suddenly take flight. But...
Johnny Hodges: Eight Great Tracks
When you think of classic recordings by Duke Ellington’s big band, an important part of that sound in your head is Johnny Hodges on lead alto sax. Hodges joined Ellington...
Marian McPartland: Eight Great Tracks
Britain still had a few more months of World War I to endure when Margaret Marian Turner was born in Slough, England in 1918. By the time World War II...
Lee Morgan: Eight Great Tracks
[FYI: from Columbia University’s Jazz Glossary—yes, there is such a thing: “Also ‘trading fours,’ etc. Soloists taking turns at improvising, playing for eight (or four, etc.) bars at a time.” I’d...