(SIR) JOHN DANKWORTH (b. 1927)
Born into a musical family in Woodford, Essex, Dankworth took up the clarinet and the alto sax. He spent time at the Royal Academy of Music in London and after the arm he attended the Royal Academy of Music in London and was Jazz Musician of the Year in 1949. Dankworth played with Charlie Parker at the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival, after which he toured Sweden with Sidney Bechet. Dankworth formed his own seven piece group in 1950, which then became a big band in 1953 and traveled to the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival. He has performed with Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan, Lionel Hampton and Ella Fitzgerald. In 1985 Dankworth founded the London Symphony Orchestra's Summer Pops. He taught at Gresham College from 1984-86 and with his wife, the singer Dame Cleo Laine, runs the Allmusic Summer Schools at a theatre in Wavendon which they created. Dankworth has composed for The National Theatre and The Royal Shakespeare Company, and for film and television programs such as the themes for The Avengers and Tomorrow’s World. He was awarded a CBE in 2002 and currently runs a recording label, Qnotes. He is preparing for his 80th birthday.
Dankworth on Nica "She was very much the sort of lady who liked to take over."
ARCHIE SHEPP (b. 1937)
Born in Florida and raised in Philadelphia, Shepp began his career studying both piano and the saxophone before focusing on the tenor sax. He moved to New York and was invited to record with the Cecil Taylor band. He then began recording with the New York Contemporary Five band, and worked with John Coltrane on Acension and New Thing At Newport in 1965. He began to be involved in the Civil Rights movement and explored African rhythms and musicality in his work dating from this time. Shepp tours internationally and from the 1970s until 2002 he was a professor of music and music history in the African-American Studies department at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Shepp on Nica 'She was a thinking woman and I think she thought for herself.'
CURTIS FULLER (b. 1934)
Fuller was raised in an orphanage in Detroit, a young friend of Paul Chambers. He began his career after army service (where he played with the Adderley brothers and Chambers) by joining with Yusef Lateef. The group moved to New York in the late 1950s. Fuller made recordings at this time for the Blue Note record label and for Prestige records. He is the only trombonist to have recorded with John Coltrane (he featured on Blue Train), Bud Powell and Jimmy Smith - in a two-month period in 1957. Fuller also played with Miles Davis in the late 1950s, and became a charter member of The Jazztet with Benny Golson and Art Farmer in 1959. He then played in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers from 1961 to 1965. He has toured globally with such luminaries as Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie. He continues to perform.
Fuller on Nica 'Nica came in the place there is alike a big gong going off, boom, the Baroness is here and that’s, everybody flocked to that you know. You know, and she played the part so well, I mean, what a good lord, *** whatever, Moses, King David, whatever, put one on her that would never go away. She could sit there with this thousand foot cigar, cigarette holder or something with such elegance you know and like she is taking it all in ad you could tell at some part of her life she much have been all star beauty"
BENNY GOLSON (b.1929)
Golson played with John Coltrane, Jimmy Heath, and Red Garland while still in high school in Philadelphia. After his graduation from Howard University, he then joined Bull Moose Jackson's band. Golson joined Tadd Dameron's band in 1953 then played in several bands with artists like Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie and Art Blakey. From 1959-62 he led the Jazztet with Art Farmer. Several of his most famous pieces have become jazz repertoire standards such as Killer Joe. In 1995 he received the NEA Jazz Masters Award from the National Endowment for the Arts. He still composes and has written countless pieces for television shows such as Mission Impossible, Room 222, M*A*S*H and The Six Million Dollar Man, and advertising campaigns for Pepsi and Chrysler. He has lectured, conducted workshops and held clinics at universities across America. In 2006, 100 Years of Jazz in America aired on PBS featuring only Benny Golson compositions. Golson is currently writing his autobiography and a college textbook. Golson on Nica "she was abreast with everything, the music, the musicians, the scene, what was going on, and social things, she was quote aware of everything. She was highly informed and a likeable person."
SONNY ROLLINS (b. 1930)
Rollins began his career at the age of 11 as a pianist and played with Thelonious Monk before the age of 20. He switched to the tenor saxophone in 1946 and recorded with Miles Davis in 1951 and Monk in 1953. In 1955, Rollins joined the Clifford Brown-Max Roach quintet and recorded Saxophone Colossus in 1956. He pioneered the use of only upright bass and drums as accompaniment for his saxophone solos, a treatment known as "strolling". In 1958 Rollins recorded The Freedom Suite as both a social and a political statement. After a sabbatical Rollins played at legendary jazz club Ronnie Scott's in the 1960s, and in 1965 he composed the soundtrack to the film Alfie. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rollins played with a number of musicians and even appeared on the 1981 Rolling Stones album Tattoo You. He was presented with a Grammy Award in 2004 for lifetime achievement and recently recorded his latest album, Sonny, Please.
Rollins on Nica 'She made a difference to our lives.'
Quincy Jones.
The all-time most nominated Grammy artist, with a total of 76 nominations and 26 awards, Quincy Jones has also received an Emmy Award, seven Oscar nominations, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. His life and career were chronicled in 1990 in the critically acclaimed Warner Bros. film Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones. In 2001, he published Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones. |
