Between the 1930s and 1950s, a single street in Manhattan became the beating heart of America’s jazz revolution. 52nd Street — soon nicknamed “Swing Street” — hosted more legendary jazz clubs per block than anywhere else in the world. Night after night, the greatest musicians of the era gathered there to make musical history. This …
There are very few surviving moments that allow us to actually see Charlie Parker playing live. Most of his legend lives in recordings, photographs and stories told by those who were there. But in early 1952, something remarkable happened: Parker appeared on American network television alongside Dizzy Gillespie — and the cameras captured it. This …
There are some performances that don’t rely on spectacle to make an impression. When Stan Getz played “Desafinado” live on The Shirley Bassey Show in 1976, it wasn’t a headline-grabbing moment or a chart-topping release — but it quietly reflected just how far bossa nova had travelled. For Getz, this was a piece of music …
In its 100 year history, America’s TIME magazine has featured no fewer than FIVE jazz musicians on it’s iconic front page. Can you guess who they are, before we tell you? The first issue of Time magazine, its title stylised in capitals as TIME, was published on 3 March 1923 and would continue, weekly, for …
In 1987, a UK perfume advert for Chanel No. 5 helped launch one of the most unlikely musical comebacks in jazz history. The soundtrack? A dusty, near-forgotten recording of “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” performed by Nina Simone more than three decades earlier. The public loved it. The song re-entered the charts, the album …
Charlie Parker walked into Massey Hall in May 1953 without a saxophone. He didn’t bring one. Lost? Stolen? Sold at a pawn shop? No one’s entirely sure — but what happened next, and the instrument he used, became one of the great stories in jazz history. In 1949, a new kind of saxophone emerged from …
In autumn 1964, the Miles Davis Quintet arrived at Milan’s Teatro dell’Arte for a performance that would crystallise into an enduring jazz moment. With Wayne Shorter having joined the group just weeks earlier, this one-hour concert—which you’ll find in full via the video below—offers rare colourised footage of a band just beginning to take shape. …
In a quiet moment in Bern, Switzerland, legendary jazz pianist and vocalist Shirley Horn sat down to reflect on her early musical journey — one shaped by a deep love of melody, a fearless secret gig, and an unexpected call from Miles Davis that changed everything. Her path into jazz didn’t begin with singing, but …
For all the stories and mythologies surrounding Charlie Parker — the saxophone prodigy, the bebop pioneer, the tragic genius — few moments bring us as close to the man himself as this rare recorded interview with fellow alto great Paul Desmond. Filmed in the 1950s, it’s an unusually candid and humble window into Parker’s philosophy: …
In 1959, Coleman Hawkins was at the height of his late-career renaissance. A towering figure in the history of the tenor saxophone — the man who had first given the instrument real authority in jazz back in the 1930s — Hawkins was playing with a freshness that kept him alongside much younger peers. That year, …