It seems absurd of course to have a website about jazz with scant mention of the country where it developed, and which produced almost all of the important figures in its first five or six decades of existence. However, that is precisely the point of this website. Most histories of jazz inevitably devote most of their time to the great American legends of the 1920, 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s, who informed everything that came afterwards. USA has, of course, continued to produce incredible jazz talent faster than any other country, but focussing on the music coming out of the States, while neglecting the wonderfully diverse ways in which jazz has been interpreted and hyrbridised around the world, is to miss out on the some of the best music of the last 50 years.
Inevitably the great American players continue to pop up throughout the bios of musicians all round the world. Buck Clayton’s time in Shanghai was an important milestone in the history of jazz in China, particularly through his work with Li Jinhui; Louis Armstrong’s State Department tour of Africa was a touchstone for many musicians on that continent; the myriad of expatriate bebop players in Paris and Copenhagen during the 1960s and 70s fostered a generation of young European musicians, who could more than hold their own in that heady company.
If you want bios of people like Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Count Basie, there are hundreds of websites out there that will do those giants more justice than I would be able to. But they will all appear in various guises, as their impact on jazz’s formative international development is part of the story.
Moreover, there are countless musicians who I will profile on this website, where the bulk of their career took place in the States, and I will list them below.
FOREIGN BORN JAZZ MUSICIANS WHO SETTLED IN USA:
- Toshiko Akiyoshi
- Monty Alexander
- Art Hodes
- Paquito D’Rivera
- Marian McPartland
- George Shearing
- more to come…
