Tadd Dameron
Tadley Ewing ( Tadd ) Dameron ( born February 21, 1917 in Cleveland, Ohio; † March 8, 1965 in New York; born Tadley Ewing Peake ) was an American jazz pianist, composer and arranger. With Gil Fuller and Dizzy Gillespie, he was one of the pioneering arrangers of the early bebop.
Life and work
Tadd Dameron got was four years of piano lessons; by his brother, Caesar, who was also a jazz musician, he learned to play the saxophone later. The Orchestrate Dameron taught himself an autodidact - his first arrangements he wrote for the Jeter - Pillars Big Band in 1938 in Cleveland. In New York, Minton 's Playhouse, he came across Charlie Parker and the bebop avant-garde. He began to write arrangements, during which he earned his bread sometimes as a factory worker for the orchestra Bop by Dizzy Gillespie ( Dizzy Gillespie Big Band ) and Billy Eckstine. With Miles Davis, he played in 1949 at the Festival International de Jazz 1949 at the Salle Pleyel in Paris; this concert was to have a major impact on the success of modern jazz in France. He also recorded with Clifford Brown, John Coltrane, Gil Evans and Kenny Dorham on plates.
Because of a narcotics offense he had in 1958 for several years in jail. For his active artistic career was more or less complete; but he continued to write arrangements. " While the other pioneers of bebop shone especially by virtuosity, Dameron was not the outstanding instrumentalist, but the only one in this group who arranged professional, orchestral introductions invented, great ballads invented and even sound interesting, the fourth voice in a horn section could be. "
Dameron will probably remain best remembered for his compositions: With Fontainebleau ( 1956) he wrote, " the first fully written-out work of jazz. " Pieces like Good Bait, Ladybird, If You Could See Me Now or Hot House have become jazz standards. His compositions "are among the catchiest melodic sanglichsten and bebop. "
He died at age 48 from cancer.