Lenny Pickett is one of the greatest saxophonist in American history. He was born on April 10, 1954, in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and grew up in Berkeley, California. He began his career in 1972 and has played with several well-known groups, including: Tower of Power and the Saturday Night Live Band. In addition to his involvement in many groups, Lenny Pickett has played with artists David Bowie, Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, and many more. However, based on his background, he is the definition of greatness. After overcoming many obstacles, he is considered one of the founders of “late twentieth-century American music. While growing up in Berkeley, California, his black stepfather, a trumpet player named Tommy Warren, introduced him to the world of jazz. However, Pickett never received any musical teaching. However, he did receive a few lessons from the saxophonist, Bert Wilson. Besides that, Lenny Pickett is a self-taught musician. In addition to not having a formal music education, he never received a formal high school and college education. After his stepfather introduced him to the world of jazz, his high school …show more content…
In the 1970’s, the group became very popular around the world with Pickett playing many solos. However, in 1981, he left Tower of Power in search of something different. In 1985, Pickett began his long-time involvement in the Saturday Night Live Band. At first, he was part of the group by playing with the band and playing many solos. However, in 1995, he was hired as the band’s Musical Director and has held that position to present day. Due to his practicing and experience, Pickett can play many different genres, including: soul, rhythm, blues, and funk. In addition, he is a professor of jazz saxophone at New York University. Overall, Lenny Pickett is an American saxophonist who is worthy of
He mostly would rather hang around the adults than with the kids in the school yard. He was very intelligent, but he found school to be very boring. He dropped out of school at the age of sixteen. But he did earn a GED a year after. Some say that the reason he liked being around adults so much was because at the same time he was being sexually abused by his uncle and older neighbor.
Eleanora Fagan (April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959), professionally known as Billie Holiday, was an American jazz artist and artist musician with a vocation traversing almost thirty years. Nicknamed "Woman Day" by her companion and music accomplice Lester Young, Holiday affected jazz music and pop singing. Her vocal style, firmly propelled by jazz instrumentalists, spearheaded another method for controlling stating and rhythm. She was known for her vocal conveyance and improvisational aptitudes, which compensated for her restricted range and absence of formal music instruction. There were other jazz vocalists with equivalent ability, however Holiday had a voice that caught the consideration of her crowd.
Chuck Mangione is perhaps one of the best jazz musicians, and flugel player of his time. Chuck Mangione was born in Rochester, New York on November 29, 1940. Right from the start he was in a musical family. They were visited by many jazz musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, and Cannonball Adderley! Chuck began his childhood career by playing trumpet, he even practiced with Dizzy and referred to him as his “musical father”. Later on, Dizzy was so impressed with Chuck’s ability, that he gave him one of his own upswept trumpets. Later on, Chuck continued his musical career in Eastman School of Music.
Leroy Anderson was born June 29, 1908 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His parents, as children, immigrated to the United States from Sweden with their families. His father, Bror Anton Anderson, worked as a postal clerk in the Central Square post office. He also played the mandolin. Anna Margareta Anderson, his mother, was the organist at the Swedish church in Cambridge. He lived in the suburbs of Boston for twenty seven years with his parents and brother.
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, more commonly known as Jelly Roll Morton, was born to a creole family in a poor neighborhood of New Orleans, Louisiana. Morton lived with several family members in different areas of New Orleans, exposing him to different musical worlds including European and classical music, dance music, and the blues (Gushee, 394). Morton tried to play several different instruments including the guitar; however, unsatisfied with the teachers’ lack of training, he decided to teach himself how to play instruments without formal training (Lomax, 8). ...
When he was fifteen years old, his mother died from appendicitis. From fifteen years of age to his college years, he lived in an all-white neighborhood. From 1914-1917, he shifted from many colleges and academic courses of study as well as he changed his cultural identity growing up. He studied physical education, agriculture, and literature at a total of six colleges and universities from Wisconsin to New York. Although he never completed a degree, his educational pursuits laid the foundation for his writing career.
Stevie Ray Vaughan was born in Dallas, Texas on October 3, 1954 to Jim and Martha Vaughan. Stevie Ray first got interested in the guitar around the age of eleven in 1963. By then his older brother (Jimmie Vaughan born in 1951.) had already been playing for a couple years. He taught Stevie Ray a few tricks, a couple blues chords, and minor pentatonic licks, but not much though. Stevie Ray was mostly self taught, he grew accustomed to never using his pinkie. Growing up he listened to great blues legends like the famous B.B. King, the not as famous, but close, who really didn't get the recognition he deserved, Albert King. He found their music gratifying, and admired them greatly, learning all their licks by ear, on stage he could mirror any solos they threw at him. Both Albert King and B.B. King played a very influential role in the development of Stevie Rays style. By the time he was fourteen he was already playing in Dallas blues clubs with bands like Blackbird, the Shanstones, and the Epileptic Marshmallow. Stevie Ray being so involved with his music barely had time for highschool. He dropped out in 1972.
Ragtime is music played in “ragged” or off-the-beat times. Scott Joplin was born around 1868 near Linden, Texas. His parents were Florence Givins and Giles Joplin. In the 1870s, Joplin’s parents moved the family to Texarkana, Texas.
Davis was first introduced to the trumpet when he was just a teenager. Just like most other kids, “Davis grew up in a supportive middle-class household, where he was
Born in Alton, Illinois, Miles Davis grew up in a middle-class family in East St. Louis. Miles Davis took up the trumpet at the age of 13 and was playing professionally two years later. Some of his first gigs included performances with his high school bandand playing with Eddie Randall and the blue Devils. Miles Davis has said that the greatest musical experience of his life was hearing the Billy Eckstine orchestra when it passed through St. Louis. In September 1944 Davis went to New York to study at Juilliard but spend much more time hanging out on 52nd Street and eventually dropped out of school. He moved from his home in East St. Louis to New York primarily to enter school but also to locate his musical idol, Charlie Parker. He played with Parker live and in recordings from the period of 1945 to 1948. Davis began leading his own group in 1948 as well as working with arranger Gil Evans. Davis’ career was briefly interrupted by a heroin addiction, although he continued to record with other popular bop musicians.
No black school was available locally so he was forced to move. He said "Good-bye" to his adopted parents, Susan and Moses, and headed to Newton County in southwest Missouri. Here is where the path of his education began. He studied in a one-room schoolhouse and worked on a farm to pay for it. He ended up, shortly after, moving with another family to Fort Scott in Kansas. In Kansas, he worked as a baker in a kitchen while he attended the High School. He paid for his schooling with the money he earned from winning bake-off contests. From there he moved all over bouncing from school to school. "College entrance was a struggle again because of racial barriers."2 At the age of thirty he gained acceptance to Simpson College in Indianola, Iowa.
At the age of thirteen he began working in order to earn money for college. He was a shoe shiner, an elevator boy, and a paper boy. He attended the all-black Armstrong High School, where he acted in plays, was a sergeant in the Cadet Corps, and earned good grades, graduating at the age of 16.
Rag time as it is most commonly know was the type of fast paced music played around 1885 in St. Louis. Scott Joplin was born in 1868 and lived until 1917, but has done a lot in his life span. He was one of the first African Americans to be know as a composer. Born in Texarkana, Texas to a large family with musical background, he began learning to play the guitar and beagle, and gained free piano lessons by showing such fast progression to his teachers. After death of his mother, he left the house at age fourteen. He learned much form traveling through Mississippi playing in local spots and learning form what was offered to him. In 1885 he arrived in St. Louis, at the time a center for a new music phenomenon called ragtime.
middle of paper ... ... Music was not taught in the high school I was in. To satisfy my interest in learning about music and how to play musical instruments, I had to find a source of education other than school; a great depiction in agreement with Graff’s claim that students are being limited by not considering their interests when creating curricula (Graff 197). In conclusion, education is broader than just falling into what the contemporary school system has to offer. Both Gatto and Graff proved this by explaining how conforming students to certain perspectives of education limits their potential in other educational branches that interest the students.
His father's wealth warned him an early education, leading to him studying liberal arts at the