Top Jazz Entertainers
From the early 1900s “ragtime jazz,” to the more current “smooth jazz,” ever-evolving jazz rhythms have continually spawned numerous popular jazz entertainers. Jazz has matured and expanded for more than a century, giving rise to a number of genres including Creole, Dixieland, Blues, East Coast Hard Bop, Soul jazz, Bebop, Bossa Nova, Fusion and many more distinctive jazz sounds.
• Dixieland jazz tunes were made hugely popular by great jazz pioneers such as Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton.
• Blues singer Bessie Smith was nicknamed “Empress of the Blues” as she became one of the most popular singers in America during the Jazz Era of the 1920s.
• Count Basie and Duke Ellington, both legendary bandleaders, created enduring jazz melodies popularized with the first quarter of the century.
• Swing music and dance became a popular jazz style in the 1930s. Perhaps the most influential jazz entertainer during this time was clarinetist Benny Goodman, also a bandleader.
• Bebop musicians such as Thelonius Monk and Dizzy Gillespie were considered top jazz entertainers of the 1940s.
• More diverse jazz sounds developed across America in the 1950s. Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Art Blakey, among others, represented the Hard Bop sound of that era.
• Jazz of the 1960s and 1970s became increasingly free form in style. Latin jazz emerged at this time, with bossa nova perhaps at the forefront. Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto, both Brazilian musicians, were pioneers in this genre. Other artists such as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, as well as venerable vocalists Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra, helped to popularize the latin sound.
• During the 1980s, jazz enjoyed a time of even greater mainstream exposure. Jazz trumpet player Wynton Marsalis won a number of Grammy Awards throughout this decade.
• In more recent times, a more downbeat version of jazz became known as “smooth jazz.” This is the more commercialized form of jazz that is heard today. Popular jazz artists in this category are numerous, but noteworthy names include Kenny G; Boney James; Grover Washington, Jr.; Al Jarreau; Anita Baker; Sade; Kirk Whalum; and David Sanborn.