Gene Brown
Gene Brown, resident of LA, CA, a versatile artist, musician and internet marketing. Born and raise in South Carolina, migrated to the west coast seeking greater opportunities. Greater opportunities soon became more than imagined.
Archive for the ‘Musician’ Category
Today’s opportunities erase yesterday’s failures…
December 20, 2010It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
November 6, 2010Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was a composer, pianist, and big band leader.
A prominent figure in the history of jazz, Ellington’s music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, and world tours. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death, the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowing a special posthumous honor in 1999.
Ellington called his music “American Music” rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as “beyond category”. These included many of the musicians who were members of his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most well-known jazz orchestral units in the history of jazz. He often composed specifically for the style and skills of these individuals, such as “Jeep’s Blues” for Johnny Hodges, “Concerto for Cootie” for Cootie Williams, which later became “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me” with Bob Russell’s lyrics, and “The Mooche” for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol’s “Caravan” and “Perdido” which brought the ‘Spanish Tinge’ to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained there for several decades. After 1941, he frequently collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his “writing and arranging companion.”
Ellington recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films.
Ellington led his band from 1923 until his death in 1974. His son Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father’s business for several decades, led the band until his own death in 1996. At that point, the original band dissolved. Paul Ellington, Mercer’s youngest son and executor of the Duke Ellington estate, kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going from Mercer’s death onwards.
The best way to be, is to do
October 19, 2010Wynton Marsalis
Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American jazz and Western classical virtuoso trumpeter and composer. He is Artistic Director of Jazz at Lincoln Center. He has promoted the appreciation of Classical and Jazz music, often focusing on young audiences.
As a Jazz performer and composer he has made display of his extensive knowledge about jazz and jazz history and for being a classical virtuoso. As of 2006, he has made sixteen classical and more than thirty jazz recordings, has been awarded nine Grammys in both genres, and was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for a jazz recording.
Why do we pigeonhole and label an artist? It is a sure way of missing the important, the contradictory, the things that make him or her unique.
August 2, 2010Lukas Foss
Lukas Foss (August 15, 1922 – February 1, 2009) was a German-born American composer, conductor, pianist, and professor.
Jumping at several small opportunities may get us there more quickly than waiting for the big one to come along.
May 20, 2010Hugh Allen
Sir Hugh Percy Allen (23 December 1869 – 20 February 1946) was an English musician, academic and administrator. He was a leading influence on British musical life in the first half of the 20th century.
Don’t be a blueprint. Be an original.
May 13, 2010Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and “hoedown” format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.
Acuff began his music career in the 1930s, and gained regional fame as the singer and fiddler for his group, the Smoky Mountain Boys. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1938, and although his popularity as a musician waned in the late 1940s, he remained one of the Opry’s key figures and promoters for nearly four decades. In 1942, Acuff co-founded the first major Nashville-based country music publishing company—Acuff-Rose Music—which signed acts such as Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and The Everly Brothers. In 1962, Acuff became the first living person inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Don’t be a blueprint. Be an original.
April 13, 2010Roy Acuff
Roy Claxton Acuff (September 15, 1903 – November 23, 1992) was an American country music singer, fiddler, and promoter. Known as the King of Country Music, Acuff is often credited with moving the genre from its early string band and “hoedown” format to the star singer-based format that helped make it internationally successful.
Acuff began his music career in the 1930s, and gained regional fame as the singer and fiddler for his group, the Smoky Mountain Boys. He joined the Grand Ole Opry in 1938, and although his popularity as a musician waned in the late 1940s, he remained one of the Opry’s key figures and promoters for nearly four decades. In 1942, Acuff co-founded the first major Nashville-based country music publishing company— Acuff-Rose Music— which signed acts such as Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, and The Everly Brothers. In 1962, Acuff became the first living person to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.
Like attracts like. Whatever the conscious mind thinks and believes the subconscious identically creates.
March 21, 2010Bryan Adams
Bryan Guy Adams, OC, OBC (born November 5, 1959) is a Canadian rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, producer, and photographer.
When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live life.
February 9, 2010Greg Anderson
Greg Anderson (born in 1970) is an American musician and co-founder of Southern Lord Records.
Anderson is the guitarist in the doom/stoner metal outfit Goatsnake, but is also well known for his collaborations with Stephen O’Malley.
Together they have participated in projects such as the short-lived death/doom metal band Thorr’s Hammer, the extreme doom metal band Burning Witch (although Anderson left before the band could record an album), as well as the drone metal bands Sunn O))) and Teeth of Lions Rule the Divine.
Earlier in his career, Anderson was involved with the straight edge hardcore punk bands: False Liberty, Brotherhood, Amenity, Statement, Galleon’s Lap and the Revelation Records, indie rock/hardcore punk band, Engine Kid.
Both Brotherhood and Galleon’s Lap featured future Foo Fighters and Sunny Day Real Estate bass player, Nate Mendel.
Recently, Greg has joined Attila Csihar and Oren Ambarchi in a new drone doom project called Burial Chamber Trio, as well as Ascend, a current project/record with Gentry Densley, the former singer/guitarist of Revelation Records band, Iceburn.
In April 1998, Anderson and O’Malley founded the independent, underground label Southern Lord Records, based in Los Angeles, California. The company specializes in doom, sludge, drone, experimental metal, and more recently left-field black metal.
My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.
January 30, 2010Clara Schumann
Clara Schumann (née Clara Josephine Wieck; 13 September 1819 – 20 May 1896) was a German musician and composer, considered one of the most distinguished pianists of the Romantic era. She exerted her influence over a 61-year concert career, changing the format and repertoire of the piano recital and the tastes of the listening public. Her husband was the composer Robert Schumann. She and her husband encouraged Johannes Brahms, and she was the first pianist to give public performances of some of Brahms’ works, notably the Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel.
Artist Quote of the Day 