This morning I did something I haven’t done for a long time. I checked All About Jazz for today‘s jazz musicians born on this date. As I scrolled down the list I really didn’t see any one that interested me. Now I’m sure that if I researched a few of these musicians I’d find some really good jazz musician. Anyway I chose to check out the birthdays from yesterday.
Alan Lomax –Producer -Born 1915
When I did several names jumped out at me. The first was Musicologist and producer Alan Lomax
From All About Jazz….
Musicologist, writer, and producer Alan Lomax spent over six decades working to promote knowledge and appreciation of the world’s folk music. He began his career in 1933 alongside his father, the pioneering folklorist John Avery Lomax, author of the best-selling Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads (1910). In 1934, the two launched an effort to expand the holdings of recorded folk music at the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress (established 1928), gathering thousands of field recordings of folk musicians throughout the American South, Southwest, Midwest, and Northeast, as well as in Haiti and the Bahamas. Their collecting resulted in several popular and influential anthologies of American folk songs, including American Ballads and Folk Songs (1934); Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly (1936), the first in depth biographical study of an American folk musician; Our Singing Country (with Ruth Crawford Seeger) (1941); and Folk Songs USA (1948).Read More
Captain Beefheart – Vocals – Born 1941
Avant-garde rock legend and visual artist Don Van Vliet, who performed under the name Captain Beefheart, began experimenting with eccentric rock’n’roll sounds in the mid-1960s. His first two releases with the Magic Band drew positive notice from some connoisseurs but failed to connect with the wider public.
Van Vliet next forged a close creative partnership with Frank Zappa, a former high school classmate, who signed Beefheart to his Straight Records and produced 1969′s Trout Mask Replica. While the bizarre double album was not a major commercial success, it quickly became a cultural landmark. Read More
Gerry Gibbs – Vocals – Born 1964
Gerry Gibbs is a Grammy nominated Drummer, Multi-Instrumentalist, Producer, Band Leader, Composer & Arranger. His father is jazz vibraphone legend & band leader Terry Gibbs; who is among the earliest of pioneers from the be-bop era. Read More
