Clarence Clemons

Clarence Anicholas Clemons, Jr. (January 11, 1942 – June 18, 2011), also known as The Big Man, was an American musician and actor. From 1972 until his death, he was a prominent member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, playing the tenor saxophone. He released several solo albums and in 1985, had a hit single with "You're a Friend of Mine", a duet with Jackson Browne. As a guest musician he also featured on Aretha Franklin's classic "Freeway of Love" and on Twisted Sister's "Be Chrool to Your Scuel" as well as performing in concert with The Grateful Dead and Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band. As an actor Clemons featured in several films, including New York, New York and Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. He also made cameo appearances in several TV series, including Diff'rent Strokes, Nash Bridges, The Simpsons and The Wire. Together with his television writer friend Don Reo he published his semi-fictional autobiography told in third person, Big Man: Real Life & Tall Tales, in 2009. Clemons suffered a stroke on June 12, 2011, and died of complications from it on June 18, at 69 years of age.

Born in Norfolk County (later the city of Chesapeake), Virginia, Clemons was the son of Clarence Clemons, Sr., a fish market owner, and his wife Thelma. He was the oldest of their three children. His grandfather was a Southern Baptist preacher and, as a result, the young Clemons grew up listening to gospel music. When he was nine, his father gave him an alto saxophone as a Christmas present and paid for music lessons. He later switched to baritone saxophone and played in a high school jazz band. His uncle also influenced his early musical development when he bought him his first King Curtis album. Curtis, and his work with The Coasters in particular, would be become a major influence on Clemons and led to him switching to tenor saxophone. As a youth Clemons also showed potential as a football player, and graduated from Crestwood High School (now Crestwood Middle) before attending Maryland State College on both music and football scholarships. He played as a lineman on the same team as Emerson Boozer and attracted the attention of the Cleveland Browns, who offered him a trial. However, the day before, he was involved in a serious car accident which effectively ended any plans of a career in the NFL. At age 18, Clemons had one of his earliest studio experiences, recording sessions with Tyrone Ashley's Funky Music Machine, a band from Plainfield, New Jersey that included Ray Davis, Eddie Hazel and Billy Bass Nelson, all of whom later played with Parliament-Funkadelic. He also performed with Daniel Petraitis, a New Jersey and Nashville legend. These sessions were eventually released in 2007, by Truth and Soul Records as Let Me Be Your Man.[12][13] While at Maryland State College Clemons also joined his first band, The Vibratones, which played James Brown covers and stayed together for about four years between 1961 and 1965. While still playing with this band he moved to Newark, New Jersey where he worked as a counselor for emotionally disturbed children at the Jamesburg Training School for Boys between 1962 and 1970.

The story of how Clemons first met Bruce Springsteen has entered into E Street Band mythology. "The E Street Shuffle" with a monologue about how they met and the event was also immortalized in "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out". They allegedly met for the first time in September 1971. At the time Clemons was playing with Norman Seldin & The Joyful Noyze at The Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Seldin was a Jersey Shore musician/entrepreneur who, as well as playing piano and leading various bands, had his own record label, Selsom Records. In 1969, Clemons had recorded an eponymous album with this band. In 2008, tracks from this album were reissued on an anthology, Asbury Park — Then And Now, put together by Seldin. It was Karen Cassidy, lead vocalist with The Joyful Noyze, who encouraged Clemons to check out Springsteen who was playing with The Bruce Springsteen Band at the nearby Student Prince.
Well before this meeting, however, Clemons and Springsteen had moved within the same circle of musical acquaintances. Norman Seldin had managed and promoted several local bands, including The Motifs who featured Vinnie Roslin, later to play with Springsteen in Steel Mill. On April 22, 1966, Seldin had also organised a battle of the bands competition at the Matawan-Keyport Roller Drome in Matawan, New Jersey. Springsteen was among the entrants playing with his then band, The Castiles. Billy Ryan, who played lead guitar with The Joyful Noyze, also played in The Jaywalkers with Garry Tallent and Steve Van Zandt and Clemons himself had played with Tallent in Little Melvin & The Invaders.

In July 1972, Springsteen began recording his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and during breaks from recording, he jammed with Clemons and The Joyful Noyze on at least two occasions at The Shipbottom Lounge in Point Pleasant, New Jersey. When Springsteen then decided to use a tenor saxophone on the songs "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the Night," it was Clemons he called. By October Springsteen was ready to tour and promote Greetings… and he put together a band featuring Clemons, Tallent, Danny Federici and Vini Lopez. Clemons played his last gig with Norman Seldin & The Joyful Noyze at the Club Plaza in Bayville, New Jersey on October 21, 1972. Four days later Clemons made his debut with the formative E Street Band at an unadvertised, impromptu performance at The Shipbottom Lounge. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s Clemons featured prominently on Springsteen albums.[4] On Born to Run he provided memorable saxophone solos on the title track, "Thunder Road" and "Jungleland" while Darkness on the Edge of Town featured another notable solo on "Badlands". The River saw Clemons feature on songs such as "The Ties That Bind", "Sherry Darling", "I Wanna Marry You", "Drive All Night" and "Independence Day" while Born in the U.S.A. saw solos on "Bobby Jean" and "I'm Goin' Down".
At the end of shows, while recognizing members of the E Street Band, Springsteen referred to Clemons as "The Biggest Man You Ever Seen". He sometimes changed this depending on where the E Street Band performs — at their 2009 concert in Glasgow he introduced Clemons as "the biggest Scotsman you've ever seen".
Clemons' final recordings with Springsteen and the E Street Band will be featured on Springsteen's 2012 album, Wrecking Ball.

Outside of his work with the E Street Band, Clemons recorded with many other artists and had a number of musical projects on his own. The best known of these are his 1985 vocal duet with Jackson Browne on the Top-20 hit single "You're a Friend of Mine", and his saxophone work on Aretha Franklin's 1985 Top-10 hit single "Freeway of Love". He was managed briefly in the 1980s by former Crawdaddy editor Peter Knobler, whose wedding Clemons played with his band, Clarence Clemons & the Red Bank Rockers. During the 1980s Clemons also owned a Red Bank, New Jersey nightclub called Big Man's West. He toured in the first incarnation of Ringo Starr & The All-Starr Band in 1989, singing "You're a Friend of Mine" (dueting with Billy Preston) and an updated rap arrangement of "Quarter to Three." In the mid-1990s, he recorded a Japan-only CD release called Aja and the Big Man "Get It On" with Los Angeles singer/songwriter Aja Kim. In the 2000s, Clemons along with producer Narada Michael Walden, put together a group called The Temple of Soul, releasing a single called 'Anna'. He also recorded with philanthropic teen band Creation. Clemons collaborated with Lady Gaga on the songs "Hair" and "The Edge of Glory" from her album Born This Way, providing a saxophone track and solo. Clarence Clemons occasionally sat in with the Grateful Dead and as recently as April 2011, sat in on several tunes with the Grateful Dead "spinoff" band Furthur during a concert in Boca Raton Florida. Just days before he suffered a major stroke, he shot a music video with Lady Gaga for "The Edge of Glory".
Clemons suffered a stroke on June 12, 2011. He underwent two surgeries after which he was declared in serious but stable condition. According to Rolling Stone magazine, he had been showing signs of recovery. However, Clemons died from complications caused by the stroke on June 18, 2011.
Bruce Springsteen said of Clarence Clemons: "Clarence lived a wonderful life. He carried within him a love of people that made them love him. He created a wondrous and extended family. He loved the saxophone, loved our fans and gave everything he had every night he stepped on stage. His loss is immeasurable and we are honored and thankful to have known him and had the opportunity to stand beside him for nearly forty years. He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.

Various artists reacted on stage to the death of Clarence.
At their concert in Portsmouth, Virginia on Sunday, June 19, 2011, Phish covered Thunder Road as a tribute to Clemons.
At an Eddie Vedder concert in Hartford, Connecticut on Saturday, June 18, 2011, Vedder played tribute to Clarence during Pearl Jam song Better Man. Eddie wished Clemons well, and shortly thereafter was notified by a sound tech that he had died. During a subsequent performance on The Late Show with David Letterman, Vedder played a ukulele with "Clarence" written across the front of it.
Before singing Moment of Surrender at the U2 concert in Anaheim on Saturday, June 18, 2011, Bono paid tribute to Clarence Clemons, who had died earlier that day. Bono read lyrics from Springsteen's Jungleland near the end of the song, and he repeated them at the song's conclusion. Bono repeated this dedication and tribute during Moment of Surrender at the U2 concert in Baltimore on Wednesday, June 22, 2011.
New Jersey rock band Bon Jovi performed Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out as the first encore during their concert in Horsens, Denmark on June 19, 2011. While playing that song photos of Clarence were shown on the giant video screen behind the band.
Jimmy Buffett added verses that included Clarence in "The Stories We Can Tell" during his final encore during his concert in June 21, 2011. The rest of the band left the stage and it was Buffett playing and singing alone.
During their set at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival, Brian Fallon, lead singer of the New Jersey rock band, The Gaslight Anthem dedicated their song, The '59 Sound to Clemons' memory.

During Southside Johnny's annual July 4 weekend concert at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ he and Miami Steve spoke of Clemons. Afterwards, Eddie Manion played Clemons' famous Jungleland solo while a projector screened showed images of the Big Man.
On July 17, 2011, a tribute concert was held at the Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, NJ. Bruce Springsteen performed a 45 minute set playing some of Clarence's songs. Clarence's son (Clarence III), who goes by Nick, opened the show with his band, The Nick Clemons Band.
On October 1, 2011, a major, first-class tribute to Clemons took place at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood, Fla. Traditionally an annual charity event hosted by Clemons, called The Classic Rock & Roll Party, the event paid tribute to Clemons' life and all he did for Home Safe, a non-profit organization helping victims of child abuse and domestic violence.
In January 2012, Clemons' hometown of Norfolk, Virginia will pay tribute with memorial concerts, featuring members of the E Street Band. The concert will take place at The NorVa concert hall.

Cecil Taylor

Cecil Percival Taylor (born March 25, 1929, in New York City) is an American pianist and poet. Classically trained, Taylor is generally acknowledged as one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an extremely energetic, physical approach, producing complex improvised sounds, frequently involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His piano technique has been likened to percussion, for example described as "eighty-eight tuned drums" (referring to the number of keys on a standard piano), and also to Art Tatum's.
Taylor began playing piano at age six and studied at the New York College of Music and New England Conservatory. After first steps in R&B and swing-styled small groups in the early 1950s, he formed his own band with soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy in 1956.

Taylor's first recording, Jazz Advance, featured Lacy and was released in 1956. It is described by Cook and Morton in the Penguin Guide to Jazz: "While there are still many nods to conventional post-bop form in this set, it already points to the freedoms which the pianist would later immerse himself in." Taylor's Quartet featuring Lacy also appeared at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival. He collaborated with saxophonist John Coltrane in 1958 (Stereo Drive, currently available as Coltrane Time).
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor's music grew more complex and moved away from existing jazz styles. Gigs were often hard to come by, and club owners found Taylor's approach to performance (long pieces) unhelpful in conducting business. Landmark recordings, like Unit Structures (1966), appeared. By 1961, Taylor was working regularly with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, one of his most important and consistent collaborators. Taylor, Lyons and drummer Sunny Murray (and later Andrew Cyrille) formed the core personnel of The Unit, Taylor's primary group effort until Lyons's premature death in 1986. With 'the Unit', musicians developed often volcanic new forms of conversational interplay.

Taylor began to perform solo concerts in the early 1970s. Many of these were released on album and include Indent (1973), side one of Spring of Two Blue-J's (1973), Silent Tongues (1974), Garden (1982), For Olim (1987), Erzulie Maketh Scent (1989) and The Tree of Life (1998). He began to garner critical, if not popular, acclaim, playing for Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, lecturing as an in-residence artist at universities, and eventually being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and then a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.
Following Lyons's death in 1986 Taylor formed the Feel Trio in the early 1990s with William Parker (bass) and Tony Oxley (drums); the group can be heard on Celebrated Blazons, Looking (The Feel Trio) and the 10-CD set 2 T's for a Lovely T. He has also performed with larger ensembles and big-band projects. His extended residence in Berlin in 1988 was extensively documented by the German label FMP, resulting in a massive boxed set of performances in duet and trio with a who's who of European free improvisors, including Oxley, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Tristan Honsinger, Louis Moholo, Paul Lovens, and others.

Most of his latter day recordings have been put out on European labels, with the exception of Momentum Space (a meeting with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones) on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge released his 1998 Library of Congress performance Algonquin, a duet with violinist Mat Maneri. Taylor continued to perform for capacity audiences around the world with live concerts, usually played on his favored instrument, a Bösendorfer piano that features nine extra lower-register keys. A documentary entitled "All the Notes", was released on DVD in 2006 by director Chris Felver. Taylor was also featured in an earlier documentary film Imagine the Sound (1981), in which he discusses and performs his music, poetry and dance.

Taylor recorded sparingly in the 2000s, but continues to perform with his own ensembles (the Cecil Taylor Ensemble and the Cecil Taylor Big Band) as well as with other musicians such as Joe Locke, Max Roach, and Amiri Baraka. In 2004, the Cecil Taylor Big Band at the Iridium 2005 was nominated a best performance of 2004 by All About Jazz, and the same in 2009 for the Cecil Taylor Trio at the Highline Ballroom in 2009. The trio consisted of Taylor, Albey Balgochian, and Jackson Krall. An autobiography, more concerts, and other projects are in the works. In 2010, Triple Point Records released a deluxe limited edition double LP titled Ailanthus/Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions of Two Root Songs, a set of duos with long-time collaborator Tony Oxley that was recorded live at the Village Vanguard in New York City.



Cecil Percival Taylor (n. Nueva York; 25 o 15 de marzo1 de 1929) es un pianista y percusionista estadounidense de jazz. Encuadrado en la vanguardia jazzística, ha frecuentado la mayor parte de los estilos surgidos a continuación del hard bop, especialmente el free jazz, con frecuentes aproximaciones a la improvisación libre.

Sus primeras influencias fueron las de Duke Ellington y Dave Brubeck. Su toque de piano es característicamente percusivo.
Taylor comenzó su estudio del piano a los seis años de edad y se matriculó en el New York College of Music y en el Conservatorio de música de Nueva Inglaterra.
Sus primeras actuaciones fueron con grupos liderados por Johnny Hodges y Hot Lips Page. Después, al formar a mediados de los años cincuenta un cuarteto con músicos como Steve Lacy (saxo soprano), Buell Neidlinger (bajo) y Dennis Charles (batería), Taylor abandonó sus actuaciones como acompañante.
Con su grupo, trabajó en 1956 en él y actuó en 1957 en el Newport Jazz Festival. En 1960 grabó con profusión para Candid y con Archie Shepp como saxo tenor.
En 1962, se incorporaron al cuarteto Jimmy Lyons al saxo alto y Sunny Murray a la batería. Estuvieron seis meses de gira en Europa y a su regreso a Estados Unidos Taylor se retiró durante un año. En 1964 colaboró en la fundación de the Jazz Composer's Guild y en 1968, junto a Carla Bey, Don Cherry, Michael Mantler y otros formó una asociación cooperativa que agrupó a músicos del free jazz denominada Jazz Composer's Orchestra Association.

En los setenta enseñó en la Universidad de Wisconsin en Madison, en el Antioch College, y en el Glassboro State College, y grabó frecuentemente con su grupo Unit, además de realizar constantes giras por Europa. Galardonado con un Guggenheim Fellowship en 1973, consiguió eludir sus problemas económicos. Actúa en la Casa Blanca durante la administración Carter en 1979.
Trabajó con Mary Lou Williams y con el batería Max Roach, y empezó a incorporar a sus conciertos fragmentos de su excéntrica poesía.

Ron Affif

Ron Affif is an American jazz guitarist (born on December 30, 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) of mixed Lebanese and Italian origin. He is the son of boxing welterweight and middleweight fighter Charley Zivic who being a jazz fan initiated him in music.

His mother is Marlene, sister of renowned jazz guitarist Ron Anthony.
Affif studied with Jerry Conderata and Joe Negri before heading to the West Coast in 1983 to study under maternal uncle and musician Ron Anthony. While in Los Angeles he also took lessons from the jazz guitarist Joe Pass. He moved to New York City in late 1989, and currently lives in Brooklyn.
In the late 1990s, he recorded five albums under the Fantasy record label, of which the best known is "52nd Street". In 1998, he formed the Ron Affif Trio alongside fellow musicians bassist Essiet Okon Essiet and drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts.
Affif's style is reminiscent of Wes Montgomery and George Benson, and Benson once described Affif playing as his "favorite type of guitar player, one that plays with fire."

Ron Affif es un guitarrista de jazz estadounidense (nacido el 30 de diciembre de 1965 en Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), de origen mixto libanés e italiano. Él es el hijo de peso welter de boxeo y de combate de peso mediano Charley Zivic que ser un fan del jazz le inició en la música.  Su madre es Marlene, la hermana del famoso guitarrista de jazz Ron Anthony.
Affif estudió con Jerry Conderata y Negri Joe antes de dirigirse a la costa oeste en 1983 para estudiar con su tío materno y el músico Ron Anthony. Mientras que en Los Angeles, también tomó clases del guitarrista de jazz Joe paso. Se trasladó a Nueva York a finales de 1989, y actualmente vive en Brooklyn.
A finales de 1990, grabó cinco álbumes bajo el sello Fantasy, de los cuales el más conocido es "52nd Street". En 1998, formó el trío de Ron Affif junto con el bajista de músicos Essiet Essiet Okon y el baterista Jeff Watts "Tain".

Affif estilo tiene reminiscencias de Wes Montgomery y George Benson y Benson describió una vez Affif jugar como su "tipo preferido de la guitarra, que juega con fuego".