NEA jazz masters : America's highest honor in jazz ; 25th anniversary

National Endowment for the Arts

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NATIONAL
ENDOWMENT
FORTHE ARTS

A great nation
deserves great art.

The National Endowment for the Arts is a public
agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts,
both new and established; bringing the arts to all
Americans; and providing leadership in arts education.
Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent
agency of the federal government, the Endowment is
the nation’s largest annual funder of the arts, bringing
great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner
cities, and military bases.

National Endowment for the Arts

America's Highest Honor in Jazz

25th Anniversary

Credits

This publication is published by:

National Endowment for the Arts
Office of Communications

Febcia Knight, Director

Don Ball, Publications Manager/Editor

Designed by:

Fletcher Design Inc., Washington DC

Cover Photo: NEA Jazz Masters Jimmy Heath, Chick Corea, Paquito
D’Rivera, and James Moody take the stage during the 2006 NEA Jazz
Masters concert and awards ceremony at the International Association
for Jazz Education conference in New York City. Photo by Tom Pich

Special Thanks:

Vance Jacobs, Tom Pich, Lee Tanner, and Michael Wilderman for the
use of their photographs.

Kate Kaiser and Stuart Klawans for their contributions to the text.

The following reference texts were used in researching biographical
information of the Jazz Masters:

All Music Guide to Jazz by Vladimir Bogdanov, Claris Woodstra,
and Stephen Thomas Erlewine, Backbeat Books

American. Musicians II by Whitney Balliett, Oxford University
Press

Biographical Encyclopedia ofjazzby Leonard Feather and Ira
Gitler, Oxford University Press

Four Jazz Lives by A.B. Spellman, University of Michigan Press

Jazz: The Rough Guide by Ian Carr, Digby Fairweather, and Brian
Priestley, Rough Guides

Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 4th Edition by Richard Cook and
Brian Morton, Penguin

Talking Jazz: An Oral History by Ben Sidran, Da Capo Press

Voice/TYY: (202) 682-5496

For individuals who are deaf or hard-of-hearing.

Individuals who do not use conventional print may contact the Arts
Endowment's Office for AccessAbility to obtain this publication in an
alternate format. Telephone: (202) 682-5532

National Endowment for the Arts

1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20506-0001
(202) 682-5400

Additional copies of this publication can be obtained for free by
contacting the NEA Web site: www.arts.gov. Additional information
about the jazz artists noted in this publication can be accessed at the
International Association for Jazz Education Web site: www.iaje.org.

This publication was printed on recycled paper.

A Message from the Chairman

It is my great pleasure to introduce the 25th anniversary class of
NEA Jazz Masters. Since the program’s inception in 1982, the title
of NEA Jazz Master has been bestowed upon 90 of the greatest
living American jazz musicians.

The NEA Jazz Masters Award is the nation’s highest honor in jazz. It is given to
individuals who liave made a major contribution on this great American art form as a
lifetime achievement award. Since 2004, four non-musicians who have championed
jazz also have been honored with the A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Award for Jazz
Advocacy.

In addition to honoring achievements in jazz, the NEA Jazz Masters initiative has
developed into an ambitious and comprehensive program to honor and promote the art.

Last year we introduced a groundbrealdng jazz education initiative for high school
students, NEA Jazz in the Schools, which was developed in partnership with Jazz at
Lincoln Center and with support from the Verizon Foundation.

We also have brought jazz to all 50 states through the NEA Jazz Masters on Tour
program, in partnership with Arts Midwest and sponsored by Verizon, in which
NEA Jazz Masters presented live jazz performances, master classes, and lectures in
geographic areas otherwise underserved by high quality live jazz. Additionally, the Arts
Endowment has partnered with Jazz Alliance to support NEA Jazz Masters residencies
on the campuses of Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The NEA also is supporting the production of nationwide syndicated radio and
television broadcasts highlighting the lives and careers of individual NEA Jazz Masters,
such as the public television series Legends of Jazz, to further the reach of this unique
American art form. Finally, the agency continues to lend support to major public jazz
archives — among them the Smithsonian Institution — in their efforts to obtain, maintain,
and make permanently accessible to researchers and the public important oral histories
of some of the most significant jazz musicians.

The NEA Jazz Masters honored here are the eminent ambassadors for America’s most
influential musical export. The NEA’s mission is to assist these great musicians by
lending support to those entrusted with the preservation of our jazz legacy, to assist
organizations focusing on presenting the music, and to provide quality teaching materi-
als for student education to assure future generations of jazz audiences and artists. We
salute the 2007 NEA Jazz Masters, the newest members of this esteemed group.

Chairman

National Endowment for the Arts

iii

2007 NEA Jazz Masters

Photo by Vance Jacobs

1982-2007

1982

Roy Eldridge*
Dizzy Gillespie*
Sun Ra*

1983

Count Basie*
Kenny Clarke*
Sonny Rollins

1984

Ornette Coleman
Miles Davis*

Max Roach

1985

Gil Evans*

Ella Fitzgerald*
Jo Jones*

1986

Benny Carter*
Dexter Gordon*
Teddy Wilson*

1987

Cleo Brown*
Melba Liston*

Jay McShann*

1988

Art Blakey*
Lionel Hampton*
Billy Taylor

1989

Barry Harris
Hank Jones
Sarah Vaughan*

1990

George Russell
Cecil Taylor
Gerald Wilson

1991

Danny Barker*
Buck Clayton*
Andy Kirk*

Clark Terry

1992

Betty Carter*
Dorothy Donegan*
Sweets Edison*

1993

Jon Hendricks
Milt Hinton*

Joe Williams*

1994

Louie Bellson
Ahmad Jamal
Carmen McRae*

1995

Ray Brown*

Roy Haynes
Horace Silver

1996

Tommy Flanagan*
Benny Colson
J.J. Johnson*

1997

Billy Higgins*

Milt Jackson*

Anita O’Day*

1998

Ron Carter
James Moody
Wayne Shorter

1999

Dave Brubeck
Art Farmer*

Joe Henderson*

2000

David Baker
Donald Byrd
Marian McPartland

2001

John Lewis*

Jackie McLean*
Randy Weston

2002

Frank Foster
Percy Heath*
McCoy Tyner

2003

Jimmy Heath
Elvin Jones*

Abbey Lincoln

2004

Jim Hall
Chico Hamilton
Herbie Hancock
Luther Henderson*
Nat Hentoff
Nancy Wilson

2005

Kenny Burrell
Paquito D’Rivera
Slide Hampton
Shirley Horn*
Jimmy Smith*

Artie Shaw*
George Wein

2006

Ray Barretto*
Tony Bennett
Bob Brookmeyer
Chick Corea
Buddy DeFranco
Freddie Hubbard
John Levy

2007

Tashiko Akiyoshi
Curtis Fuller
Ramsey Lewis
Dan Morgenstern
Jimmy Scott
Frank Wess
Phil Woods

Deceased

Table of Contents

Introduction l

A Brief History of the Program 3

Program Overview 5

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 7

Toshiko Akiyoshi 8

Curtis Fuller 9

Ramsey Lewis 10

Dan Morgenstern 11

Jimmy Scott 12

Frank Wess 13

Phil Woods 14

NEA Jazz Master Barry Harris
performs during the 2006
awards ceremony at the
International Association for
Jazz Education conference in
New York City.

Photo by Tom Pich

Digitized by the Internet Archive

in 2015

https://archive.org/details/neajazzmastersam00nati_0

Photo by Vance Jacobs

Introduction

There is general agreement that the

United States has produced three original art
forms: movies, modern dance, and jazz. All
speak to the genius of American culture. Film is
indicative of our ability to convert new technology
into a medium for mass consumption, frequently
achieving the status of high art. Modern dance,
an indigenous kinesthetic art capable of an
unbounded range of expression, from treatments
of contemporary issues to pure abstraction.

And then there is jazz.

Jazz lives at the very center of the American
vernacular. It is the gift of the generations of new
urban African American people whose capacity
for the synthesis of diverse strains of musical forms
brought schottisches, quadrilles, habaneras, and
marches into the bases of the blues and ragtime to
create a whole new way of making music. It was
built on the discipline of collective improvisation,
a remarkable skill when you think about it, which
allowed for maximum expression of the individual
within the context of the group. Jazz is democratic
and virtually without hierarchy: the composer is one
more collaborator in the group, and even bandleaders
do not stand above the soloists.

These qualities are entirely appropriate for what
is best about America. The old jazz principle that
“you’ve got to make it new” is so American that it
could go on the dollar bill. These defining qualities
have made jazz arguably the United States’ most wel-
comed cultural export. It has taken root wherever it
has been planted, moving into and becoming a part
of the cultures of other countries and then becoming
an aspect of their national expression, in the way
that Russian jazz is vastly different from Afro-Cuban
jazz. Some years ago, just after apartheid had fallen,

I heard a young South African ensemble that com-
prised an Indian pianist, a tabla player, a white
female flutist, and a black bassist. Distinct traces of
each of these musicians’ heritages were audible in
their solos, yet they performed with intimate ease.

I thought, how marvelous that, as these young peo-
ple are at a point in history when they can speak to
each other as equals, jazz provides the vocabulary.

It is no accident that jazz has been a favored
medium of cultural diplomacy. For decades, Willis
Conover’s jazz series on the Voice of America kept
ears open to the United States Information Agency
(USIA) all over the world. Uncounted numbers
of jazz musicians have traveled abroad under the

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 1

auspices of the State Department. Many of the
National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters, such
as Dizzy Gillespie, Randy Weston, and Billy Taylor,
have toured the glohe as our cultural representatives
The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships program was
created to say to jazz musicians that their govern-
ment values the way that they keep our culture rich
hy continually producing such fabulous music.
Mastery is a difficult status to achieve. No creative
discipline has more than a few true masters, for it
takes exceptional talent, dedication, hard work, and

opportunity to become one. NEA Jazz Masters
have demonstrated these qualities and more. The
National Endowment for the Arts is honored to
recognize these great artists for the outstanding
contributions they have made to American culture.

A. B. Spellman

Poet and Author, Four Jazz Lives

Former Deputy Chairman for Guidelines & Panel Operations
National Endowment for the Arts

2 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

Photo by Michael Wilderman

National Endowment for the Arts
1991 American Jazz Masters Fellowship Awards

Buck Hill (sax) and NEA Jazz Master Clark Terry (flugelhorn) at the 1 991 Awards ceremony.

A Brief History of the Program

A melding of African and European music and
cultures, jazz was born in America, a new
musical form that used rhythm, improvisa-
tion, and instruments in unique and exciting ways.
Jazz came to prominence in the early 20th century
on the dance floors of major cultural centers such as
Kansas City and New York. With the advent of sound
recording techniques, the increased availability of
affordable gramophones, and the rise of radio as pop-
ular entertainment, jazz quickly conquered the coun-
try. By the 1930s and 1940s, jazz had become
America’s dance music, selling albums and perform-
ance tickets at dizzying rates and sweeping millions
of fans in foreign countries off their feet.

By the 1950s, however, with the advent of rock
and roll and the tilt in jazz toward bebop rather than
the more popular swing, jazz began a decline in its
popularity. It was still seen as an important and
exciting art form, but by an increasingly smaller
audience. Jazz was still being exported overseas,
though, especially by Voice of America radio broad-
casts and U.S. Department of State goodwill tours
that featured such musicians as Dizzy Gillespie,

Louis Armstrong, and Dave Brubeck.

By the 1960s, when the National Endowment for
the Arts (NEA) was created by Congress, jazz album
sales were down and jazz performances were becom-
ing more difficult to find. Large dance orchestras dis-
banded for lack of work, and musicians found them-
selves in stiff competition for fewer and fewer gigs.
The music, starting with bebop and into hard bop
and free jazz, became more cerebral and less dance-
oriented, focusing on freeing up improvisation and
rhythm. It was moving to a new artistic level, and if
this high quality were to be maintained, it would
need some assistance.

NEA assistance to the jazz field began in 1969,
with its first grant in jazz awarded to pianist/com-
poser George Russell (who would later go on to
receive an NEA Jazz Master award in 1990), allowing
him to work on his groundbreaking book, Lydian
Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, the first
major academic work in jazz. In a decade, jazz bind-
ing went bom $20,000 in 1970 to $1.5 million in
1980 to more than $2.8 million in 2005, supporting a
wide range of activities, including jazz festivals and
concert seasons, special projects such as Dr. Billy
Taylor’s Jazzmobile in New York and the Thelonious

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 3

Monk Institute of Jazz’s Jazz Sports program, educa-
tional jazz programming on National Public Radio,
artists-in-schools programs, and researcli.

While tlie NEA recognized and acted on tlie need
for public funding for jazz, the pioneers of the field
were rapidly aging, and often dying without the
appropriate recognition of their contribution to this
great American art form. Louis Armstrong and Duke
Ellington, two of the giants of jazz in terms of both
musicianship and composition, both died in the
early 1970s without the importance of their contribu-
tions being fully acknowledged and appreciated.

In an effort to nationally recognize outstanding
jazz musicians for their lifelong achievements and
mastery of jazz, the Arts Endowment in 1982 created
the American Jazz Masters Fellowships — now the
NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships — given to musicians
who have reached an exceptionally high standard of
achievement in this very specialized art form.

In addition to the recognition, the NEA included
a monetary award of $20,000 for each fellowship.

The rigors of making a living in the jazz field are
well documented. Jazz is an art form to which the
free market has not been kind. Despite their unparal-
leled contributions to American art, many jazz greats
worked for years just barely scraping by. The mone-
tary award often has provided a much needed infu-
sion of income.

That such recognition was long overdue is exem-
plified by Thelonious Sphere Monk, one of the great
American composers and musicians. Monk was
nominated for an NEA Jazz Master Fellowship in the
first year of the program, but unfortunately passed
away before the announcement was made (the fel-
lowship is not awarded posthumously). The three
who were chosen certainly lived up to the criteria
of artistic excellence and significance to the art form:
Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Sun Ra. The
panel in that first year included stellar jazz musi-
cians themselves, including some future NEA Jazz
Masters: trumpeter Donald Byrd and saxophonists
Frank Foster, Chico Freeman, Jackie McLean, and
Archie Shepp. In addition, legendary Riverside
record company co-owner and producer Orrin
Keepnews was on the panel.

From that auspicious beginning, the program has
continued to grow and provide increased awareness
of America’s rich jazz heritage. In 2004, the number
of fellowships awarded increased from three to six
(in 2005, the number increased to seven), and a new
award was created for those individuals who helped
to advance the appreciation of jazz. In 2005, the
award was designated the A. B. Spellman NEA Jazz
Masters Award for Jazz Advocacy in honor of A. B.
Spellman, a jazz writer, accomplished poet, innova-

tive arts administrator, and former NEA Deputy
Chairman, who has dedicated much of his life to
bringing the joy and artistry of jazz to all Americans.
Additionally, the amount of the fellowship was
increased to $25,000.

In 2005, Chairman Dana Gioia greatly expanded
the NEA Jazz Masters initiative to include several new
programs in addition to the fellowships. A two-CD
anthology of NEA Jazz Masters’ music was produced
by Verve Music Group. NEA Jazz Masters on Tour,
sponsored by Verizon, is bringing jazz musicians to all
50 states throughout 2005-06 for performances, com-
munity events, and educational programs. A new arts
education component was created in partnership with
Jazz at Lincoln Center and with support from the
Verizon Foundation, NEA Jazz in the Schools. This
educational resource for high school teachers of social
studies, U.S. history, and music includes a five-unit,
Web-based curriculum and DVD toolkit that explores
jazz as an indigenous American art form and as a
means to understand U.S. history (more information
can be found at www.neajazzintheschools.org). New
broadcasting programming was created, such as 14
one-hour shows on NEA Jazz Masters featured on the
public radio series Jazz Profiles, hosted by NEA Jazz
Master Nancy Wilson, and NEA Jazz Moments, radio
shorts for broadcast on satellite radio XM. Since 2005,
the Arts Endowment has partnered with Legends of
Jazz, a weekly public television series dedicated to
legendary jazz artists and often highlighting NEA
Jazz Masters.

Each passing year brings increased international
recognition of the NEA Jazz Masters Awards as the
nation’s highest honor for outstanding musicianship
in the field of jazz. The recipients of the NEA Jazz
Masters Award cover all aspects of the music: from
boogie-woogie (Cleo Brown) to swing (Count Basie,
Andy Kirk, Jay McShann); from bebop (Dizzy
Gillespie, Kenny Clarke) to Dixieland (Danny
Barker): from free jazz (Ornette Coleman, Cecil
Taylor) to cool jazz (Miles Davis, Gil Evans, Ahmad
Jamal): and everywhere in between. What ties all
these styles together is a foundation in the blues, a
reliance on group interplay, and unpredictable
improvisation. Throughout the years, and in all the
different styles, these musicians have demonstrated
the talent, creativity, and dedication that make them
NEA Jazz Masters.

Celebrating its 25tb anniversary in 2007, the
award offers a solid platform for raising worldwide
awareness of America’s rich jazz heritage by not only
honoring those who have dedicated their lives to the
music, but also by leading the way in efforts encour-
aging the preservation and nourishing of jazz as an
important musical form for generations to come.

4 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

Photo by Vance Jacobs

NEA Jazz Masters Louie Bellson, Roy Haynes, Chico Hamilton, and James Moody at the luncheon for the 2005

NEA Jazz Masters event in Long Beach, California-

Program Overview

The National Endowment for the Arts recog-
nizes the importance of jazz as one of the
great American art forms of the 20th century.
As part of its efforts to honor those distinguished
artists whose excellence, impact, and significant con-
tribution in jazz have helped keep this important tra-
dition and art form alive, the Arts Endowment annu-
ally awards NEA Jazz Masters Fellowships, the high-
est honor that our nation bestows upon jazz musi-
cians. Each fellowship award is $25,000.

The NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship is a lifetime
achievement award. The criteria for the fellowships
are musical excellence and significance of the nomi-
nees’ contributions to the art of jazz. The Arts
Endowment honors a wide range of styles with
awards currently given in the categories of rhythm
instrumentalist, solo instrumentalist, vocalist, key-
boardist, arranger/composer, and bandleader. There
is also a special award given to a non-musician, the
A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Master Award for Jazz
Advocacy, which is awarded to an individual who
has made major contributions to the appreciation,
knowledge, and advancement of jazz.

Fellowships are awarded to living artists on the
basis of nominations from the general public and the
jazz community. The recipients must be citizens or
permanent residents of the United States. An indi-
vidual may submit only one nomination each year,
and nominations are made by submitting a one-page
letter detailing the reasons that the nominated artist
should receive an NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship.
Nominations submitted to the Arts Endowment by
the deadline are reviewed by an advisory panel of
jazz experts and at least one knowledgeable layper-
son. Panel recommendations are forwarded to the
National Council on the Arts, which then makes rec-
ommendations to the Chairman of the National
Endowment for the Arts. Nominations remain active
for five years, being reviewed annually during this
period.

Information on submitting a nomination and on
the NEA Jazz Masters award is available on the NEA
Web site: www.arts.gov.

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 5

iiiii

i

2007 Fellows

Toshiko Akiyoshi

VOCALIST

Jimmy Scott

SOLO INSTRUMENTALIST
COMPOSER-ARRANGER

SOLO INSTRUMENTAUST

Phil Woods

Ramsey Lewis

JAZZ ADVOCATE

Dan Morgenstern

Names in bold in biographies denote NEA Jazz Masters awardees.

All recordings listed in Selected Discography are under the artist's name unless otherwise noted.
Years listed under recordings in Selected Discography denote the years the recordings were made.

2007 NEA Jazz Master
Toshiko Akiyoshi

;

Akiyoshi

BANDLEADER

Born December 12, 1929 in Dairen, Manchuria

PIANIST COMPOSER ARRANGER

Over the course of a six-decade career, pianist, band-
leader, and composer-arranger Toshiko Akiyoshi has
made a unique and vital contribution to tire art of big
band jazz. Born in Manchuria, where she began playing the
piano at age six, Akiyoshi moved back to Japan with her par-
ents at the end of World War II. Her family, enduring the
hardships of the period, could not provide her with an
instrument, and so, just to touch a piano, she took her first
job as a musician, playing in a dance-hall band.

She was not exposed to real jazz until a Japanese record
collector introduced her to the work of Teddy Wilson, whose
music immediately impressed her. In 1952, pianist Oscar
Peterson discovered Akiyoshi while he was on a Jazz at tire
Philharmonic torn of Japan and recommended that producer
Norman Granz record her. Thanks to
this opening, she came to die

^DDISCOO^

>

Long Yellow Road, RCA, 1974-75

Farewell, Ascent, 1 980

Carnegie Hall Concert, Columbia, 1991

Four Seasons ofMorita Village, BMG, 1996

Hiroshima: Rising from the Abyss,

True Life, 2001

United States in 1956 to study
at the Berklee School of
Music in Boston. She
moved to New York in
1959, playing at
Birdland, die Village
Gate, the Five Spot, and
the Half Note; but
despite a brief attempt in
the 1960s to showcase her
talents as a composer and
arranger for large ensembles,
she did not have die opportu-

nity to form a big band until she moved to Los Angeles in
1972 with her husband, saxophonist/ flutist Lew Tabackin.
The following year, the couple formed die Toshiko Akiyoshi
Jazz Orchestra featiuing Lew Tabackin. In 1976, the band
placed first in die Down Beat Critics’ Poll, and Akiyoshi’s
album Long Yellow Road was named best jazz album of the
year by Stereo Review. In the 1970s, Akiyoshi began explor-
ing Japanese themes in her compositions and arrangements,
mixing them with the strong jazz base in her music.

In 1982, the couple returned to New York, where
Akiyoshi re-formed her band widi New York musicians. The
band enjoyed a critically successful debut at Carnegie Hall
as part of the 1983 Kool Jazz Festival. Akiyoshi has recorded
22 albums to date with the orchestra. Her recording Four
Seasons of the Morita Village was awarded the 1996 Swing
journal Silver Award, and her big band albums have
received 14 Grammy Award nominations. Akiyoshi is the
first woman ever to place first in the Best Arranger and
Composer category in the Down Beat Readers’ Poll.

In 1995, the Toshiko Akiyoshi Jazz Orchestra was
invited to play in China, and in 1996 Akiyoshi completed
her autobiography Life With Jazz, which is now in its fifth
printing in Japanese and will soon be translated into Korean.
Among tire many honors she has received are fire
Shijahosho (1999, from fire Emperor of Japan); the Japan
Foundation Award, Order of tire Rising Sun, Gold Rays with
Rosetta (2004, from the Emperor of Japan): and tire Asahi
Award (2005, from the Asahi Shimbun newspaper).

8 2007 NEA Jazz Master’s

A remarkably fluent trombonist, whose
impeccable sense of time and ambi-
tious solos made him a mainstay of
the hard-bop scene, Curtis Fuller was born
in Detroit, where he began his music stud-
ies in high school. A stint in an Army
band (where he played with Cannonball
Adderley) helped him mature into a pro-
fessional with virtuoso skills. After work-
ing in Detroit with Kenny Burrell and
Yusef Lateef, he moved to New York,
where he made his recording debut as a
leader on Transition in 1955. He also became
a strong presence on the Blue Note label, work-
ing with Clifford Jordan, John Coltrane (on the clas-
sic Blue Train) and his own The Opener (with Hank
Mobley). Always in demand — he also played on late-1950s
sessions for Prestige, United Artists, and Savoy — Fuller is
the only trombonist to have recorded with Coltrane, Bud
Powell, and Jimmy Smith.

In 1959, he became a founding member of The Jazztet
with Benny Golson and Art Farmer, then joined Art
Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1961. For the next four years,
working in a front line with Wayne Shorter and Freddie
Hubbard, Fuller helped make this edition of the Messengers

Born December 15, 1934 in Detroit, Ml

one of tire defining bands of tire hard-bop era.

In 1968, Fuller toured Europe with Dizzy
Gillespie’s big band. During tire 1970s, he
experimented for a time playing hard bop
arrangements in a band featuring elec-
tronic instruments, heading a group
with guitarist Bill Washer and bassist
Stanley Clarke. He concluded that
phase with the 1973 album Crankin'.
Fuller toured with tire Count Basie
Baird from 1975 to 1977; co-led the quin-
tet Giant Bones with Kai Winding in 1979
and 1980; and played with Art Blakey,

Cedar Walton, and Benny Golson in the late
1970s and early '80s. During the 1980s, Fuller
toured Europe regularly with the Timeless All-Stars and
performed and recorded with a reconvened Jazztet.

hr more recent years, Fuller has become known
nationally and internationally as a master clinician in jazz
studies programs, having worked with students and young
professionals at institutions including Skidmore, Harvard,
Stanford, tire University of Pittsburgh, Duke, the New
England Conservatory of Music, and tire John F. Kennedy
Center for the Performing Arts. He holds an honorary
doctorate from Berklee College of Music.

^DDISCOo^

A

>

Blues-ette, Savoy, 1 956

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, Ugetsu,
Rlverside/OJC, 1963

Crankin’ , MRL, 1973

The Jazztet, Real Time, Contemporary, 1986
Keep It Simple, Savant, 2003

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 9

2007

EDUCATOR BROADCASTER

Born May 27, 1935 in Chicago, IL

With a style I hat springs from his early gospel expe-
rience, his classical training, and a deep love of
jazz, pianist and composer Ramsey Lewis has
built a decades-long career as one of America’s most popular
performers. Born in Chicago, where he continues to make
his home, he began taking piano lessons at the age of four
and credits his teacher Dorothy Mendelsohn with awaken-
ing him to the communicative power of music. He
recalls her telling him to ‘“Listen with your inner
ear,’ and ‘Make the piano sing.’ These concepts
were revelations!”

During diese early years, though, Lewis
had no experience with jazz, except for
the records his father would play at
home from artists such as Duke
Ellington, Art Tatum, and Meade “Lux”

Lewis. He was already 15, and an
accomplished gospel pianist, when a fel-
low church musician, Wallace Burton,
asked him to join his band and helped
Lewis learn the fundamentals of jazz. With
his very first trio album, Ramsey Lewis and the
Gentlemen of Swing, Lewis captivated a large and
diverse jazz audience. By 1965, he was one of the
nation’s most successful jazz pianists, topping the charts
with “The In Crowd,” “Hang On Sloopy,” and “Wade in the
Water.” Since then, he has won three Grammy Awards and
the Recording Academy Governor’s Award (2000), and

earned seven gold records and three honorary doctorates.

Expanding his career through teaching, programming,
and work in radio and television, he also has become an
ambassador for jazz. Lewis has served as Art Tatum
Professor in jazz Studies at Roosevelt University; as Artistic
Director of the “Jazz at Ravinia” series of the Ravinia
Festival; and as host of a weekday morning drive-time radio
show on Chicago’s WNUA-FM, for which he has been
awarded R&R's 1999 and 2000 Personality of the
Year Award. He hosts the syndicated Legends
of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, a two-hour radio
program that airs throughout the United
States, and is the co-producer (widr PBS
television station WTTW-Chicago) and
host of a television series of die same
name, which features emerging and
established jazz musicians.

Active in community affairs, espe-
cially on behalf of youdi, Lewis helped
organize the Ravinia Festival’s Jazz Mentor
Program. In recognition of his activities, he
was featured as the “Person of the Week” on
ABC Nightly News in February 1995 and has
received the prestigious Lincoln Academy of Illinois
Laureate Award in Springfield, Illinois, in April 1997. He
currently tours and performs with his own trio, featuring
Larry Gray on bass and Leon Joyce on drums.

^SODISOOg,

#v %

The In Crowd, Chess, 1 965

Dancing in the Streets, Cadet, 1968

Ramsey Lewis/Billy Taylor, We Meet Again,
Columbia, 1988-89

Appassionata, Narada, 1999

With One Voice, Narada, 2005

10 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

JAZZ HISTORIAN
AUTHOR EDITOR

ARCHIVIST

EDUCATOR

Director of the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers
University since 1976, Dan Morgenstern is a jazz
historian and archivist, author, editor, and educator
who has been active in the jazz field since 1958. The
Institute of Jazz Studies is the largest collection of jazz-
related materials anywhere.

Born in Germany and reared in Austria and Denmark,
Morgenstern came to the United States in 1947. He was
chief editor of Down Beat from 1967 to 1973, and served as
New York editor from 1964; prior to that time he edited the
periodicals Metronome and Jazz. Morgenstern is co-editor
of the Annual Review Of Jazz Studies and the monograph
series Studies In Jazz, published jointly by the IJS and
Scarecrow Press, and author of Jazz People. He has been
jazz critic for the New York Post, record reviewer for the
Chicago Sun Times, and New York correspondent and
columnist for England’s Jazz Journal and Japan’s Swing
Journal. He has contributed to reference works including
the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, Dictionary of American
Music, African-American Almanac, and Encyclopedia
Britannica Book of the Year; and to such anthologies as
Reading Jazz, Setting The Tempo, The Louis Armstrong
Companion, The Duke Ellington Reader, The Miles Davis
Companion, and The Lester Young Reader.

Morgenstern has taught jazz history at the Peabody
Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Brooklyn College
(where he was also a visiting professor at the Institute for
Studies in American Music), New York University, and the

$

Jazz People, H.N. Abrams, 1976 (reprinted
by Da Capo Press, 1993)

Louis Armstrong: 4 Cultural Legacy (with
Donald Bogle, Richard A, Long, and Marc H.
Miller), University of Washington Press, 1994

Living with Jazz: A Header, ed.
Sheldon Meyer, Pantheon, 2004

Schweitzer Institute of Music in
Idaho. He served on the facul-
ties of the Institutes in Jazz
Criticism, jointly sponsored
by the Smithsonian
Institution and the Music
Critics Association, and is
on the faculty of the
Masters Program in Jazz
History and Research at
Rutgers University.

Morgenstern is a former
vice president and trustee of the
National Academy of Recording
Arts and Sciences (NARAS); was a co-
founder of the Jazz Institute of Chicago; served on the
boards of the New York Jazz Museum and the American
Jazz Orchestra; and is a director of the Louis Armstrong
Educational Foundation arid the Mary Lou Williams
Foundation. He has been a member of Denmark's
International JAZZPAR Prize Committee since its inception
in 1989.

A prolific annotator of record albums, Morgenstern has
won six Grammy Awards for Best Album Notes (1973, 1974,
1976, 1981, 1991, and 1995). He received ASCAP’s Deems
Taylor Award for Jazz People in 1977 and in 2005 for Living
with Jazz.

Yj

>

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 1 1

UDCALIST

Born July 17, 1925 in Cleveland, OH

For more than five decades,
vocalist Jimmy Scott has
numbered the jazz world’s
best singers among his select
group of fans. No less an
authority than Billie Holiday
named Scott — and only Scott —
as a vocalist she admired.

Although he was, for a period,

“perhaps the most unjustly
ignored American singer of the 20th
century” (according to Joseph Hooper
in a New York Times Magazine profile),

Scott today is once more finding a dedicated international
audience for his emotionally penetrating art.

Born in 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio, where he still lives,
James Victor Scott got his first big break in 1949, when
lionel Hampton hired him and billed him as “Little Jimmy
Scott.” As featured vocalist with tire Hampton big band,
Scott achieved fame in 1950 widi the ballad “Everybody’s
Somebody’s Fool.” His success continued throughout the
next decade, notably with his hit recording in 1955 of the
old Bing Crosby favorite “When Did You Leave Heaven?,”
a song that he made his own.

Scott subsequently spent long periods away from the
microphone, working for a time as a hotel shipping clerk

and as a caretaker for his ailing father. He returned
to the stage in 1985 and began recording again in
1990, and his career took off again two years later
when Seymour Stein heard him perform at song-
writer Doc Pomus’s funeral and signed him to the
Warner Brothers Sire label. Since that time, Scott
recorded two albums for Sire, one for Warner
Bros., and one for Artists Only! before joining
Milestone Records in 2000. He sang new interpreta-
tions of “Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool" and “When
Did You Leave Heaven?” on the Milestone CD Over the
Rainbow, released in 2001, on which he returned the
compliment Billie Holiday had paid him by performing his
own distinctive version of one of her signature songs,
“Strange Fruit.”

Scott’s new fairs have rediscovered his original hit
recordings of the 1950s on such collections as three-CD box
set The Savoy Years and More released in 1999, which
included his 1952 recordings for Roost Records and his
1955-75 recordings for Savoy, and his resurgence in the pub-
lic eye included appearances on Lou Reed’s 1992 recording
Magic and Loss and in an episode of David Lynch’s 1990s
television series Twin Peaks. He continues to record and
perform frequently.

tSDDISCOo

#V

The Savoy Years and More, Savoy, 1952-72
Falling In Love is Wonderful, Rhino, 1 962
All the Way, Sire, 1992
Holding Back the Years, Artists Only, 1998
Over the Rainbow, Milestone, 2000

12 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

Photo by Michael Wilderman

FLUTIST SAXOPHONIST COMPOSER

Wess

Born January 4, 1 922 in Kansas City, MO

multi-instrumentalist whose inspired solos have
kept big-band jazz fresh and vital into the present,
Frank Wess is revered as a smoodily swinging tenor
saxophone player in the Lester Young tradition, as an expert
alto saxophonist, and as one of die most influential,
instantly recognizable flutists in jazz history. Born in Kansas
City, Missouri, Wess first studied classical music and played
with the Kansas All-State High School Orchestra. After mov-
ing to Washington, DC, as a teenager, in 1935, he began to
play jazz in lunchtime jam sessions with fellow students,
including Billy Taylor. An early touring career was inter-
rupted by military service — he played in a 17-piece band
dining World War II — and then was resumed when Wess
came out of die Army and joined
^■$0 DISCoq/, 311 outstanding lineup in the

Billy Eckstine Orchestra. It
was at this time that he
took up die dute, study-
ing at the Modern
School of Music in
Washington.

All this time, Count
Basie had been calling.
Wess finally joined his

big band in 1953, helping it to evolve dining its so-called
“New Testament” phase and remaining with it until 1964.
Wess’s dute playing, set off by Neal Hefti’s arrangements,
contributed strongly to die Basie Orchestra’s new sound,
while his tenor saxophone playing served as a counterpoint
to the more fiery sound of Frank Foster.

Wess has played since the 1960s in countless settings:
with Clark Terry’s big band, the New York Quartet with
Roland Hanna, Dameronia (1981-85), and Toshiko
Akiyoshi's Jazz Orchestra. During this period, he also
bridged the worlds of jazz and popular show business. Wess
performed as a staff musician for ABC Television, both for
die Dick Cavett Show and for die David Frost Show (with
the Billy Taylor Orchestra). In Broadway pit bands, he
played for shows such as Golden Boy (starring Sammy
Davis), Irene (with Debbie Reynolds), and Sugar Babies
(widi Mickey Rooney). For ten years, he played drst-chair
tenor saxophonist in die Carnegie Hall Jazz Band.

He has also led his own big bands on world tours, and
has played recently in the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni Big Band.
Widely recorded on many labels, bodi as a leader and a side-
man, Wess is a perennial favorite in Down Beat polls and a
now-legendary presence on the jazz scene.

Count Basie, Verve Jazz Masters,
Verve, 1954-65

I Hear Ya Talkin', Savoy, 1959

Flute Juice, Progressive, 1981

Going Wess, Town Crier, 1 993

Without A Doubt, Koch, 2000

2007 NEA Jazz Masters 13

fe3 5

COMPOSER ARRANGER SAXOPHONIST BANDLEADER EDUCATOR

Born November 2, 1931 in Springfield, MA

Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Philip Wells Woods
has devoted himself to tire alto saxophone since the
age of 12. As a teenager, he briefly took private les-
sons in improvisation from Lennie Tristano and also studied
for a summer at the Manhattan School of Music, fir 1948, he
enrolled in tire Juilliaxd School, where he remained through
1952, majoring in clarinet performance. While at Juilliard,
he played for a brief period in Charlie Barnet’s dance band.
Subsequently, he worked with leaders including George
Wallington (replacing Jackie McLean), Kenny Dorhanr, and
Friedrich Gulda and then, joining with one of his musical
idols, traveled to tire Near East and South America with
Dizzy Gillespie.

By now established as one of the most brilliant alto
saxophonists in jazz, Woods went on to perform in Buddy
Rich’s quintet and toured Europe with Quincy Jones (1959-
60) and the U.S.S.R. with Benny Goodman (1962). From
1964 to 1967, Woods took a summer break from tire band-
stand, teaching at tire Ranrblerny performing arts camp in
New Hope, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, still much in
demand, he performed in New York in 1967 both as the
leader of his own quartet (featuring Hal Galper, Richard
Davis, and Dottie Dodgion) and as a member of Clark
Terry's big band.

hr 1968, Woods moved to France and formed the
European Rhythm Machine quartet, with George Gruntz on
keyboards, Henri Texier on bass, and Daniel Humair on

drums. His talent as a composer blossomed during this
period, when he wrote music for Danish and Belgian radio
and composed a ballet for French television. After disband-
ing tire quartet in 1972, Woods returned to tire United
States, settled in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and
formed a jazz group with Mike Melillo, Steve Gilmore, and
Bill Goodwin. With this ensemble, he staked his claim to
being tire finest alto saxophonist in mainstream jazz, a repu-
tation confirmed by his performances on Images (1975, with
Michel Legrand), Live from the Showboat (1976), and Billy
Joel’s 1977 hit recording, “Just tire Way You Are,’’ all of
which received Grammy Awards.

In 1975, he received an NEA Music grant that he used to
compose the work “The Sun Suite,” one of more than 200
songs Woods has composed. He has recorded several
albums with new arrangements of
famous composers — such as

Antonio Carlos Jobim, Tadd
Dameron, Quincy Jones,
and Henry Mancini — and
in 2006 released a well-
received album of stan-
dards, American
Songbook. He remains
active internationally as
a bandleader, composer-
arranger, and soloist.

Rights of Swing, Candid, 1960

Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival,
MGM/Verve, 1969

I Remember, Gryphon, 1978

Encontro, Philology, 2000

Plays Woods, Philology, 2004

14 2007 NEA Jazz Masters

Twenty-one NEA Jazz Masters turned up for the 2006
awards ceremony in New York City. From left to right, top
to bottom, back row: Ron Carter, Bob Brookmeyer, Ray
Barretto, Buddy DeFranco, Paquito D'Rivera, McCoy Tyner,
Freddie Hubbard; middle row: NEA Chairman Dana Gioia,
John Levy, Nancy Wilson, Chick Corea, Barry Harris, Tony
Bennett, Jim Hall, Slide Hampton, David Baker; front row,
seated: Clark Terry, Frank Foster, James Moody, Chico
Hamilton, Roy Haynes, Nat Hentoff.

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