News & Updates — piano

One of the most important Jamaican musical figures was the keyboardist/composer Jackie Mittoo. He was a child prodigy who learned piano at four years old, was leading popular club bands recording sessions for Studio One as a teenager. He became the label's Musical Director and was a founding member of The Skatalites, along with Tommy McCook (who shares a date of birth today). Very much influenced by soul music (such as Booker T & the MG's), he not only held down key roles in The Soul Vendors, Sound Dimension and The Soul Brothers, but he also made some funky records...

Happy birthday to the great Nina Simone!! Pianist, singer, anti-war and civil rights activist, an inspiration to generations. This great talent from North Carolina captivated everyone that came in her path or heard her music. A gifted arranger, she could take any tune, or combination of tunes, and turn them into epic statements. Her music melded gospel, jazz, classical, blues and pop, with the clear purpose of many politicized folk artists of her day. Born Eunice Waymon, she aspired to be a pioneering black concert pianist and only reluctantly became a jazz singer after racist rejection from a prestigious school....

Not necessarily a household name and not quite a flashy player, Tadd Dameron was one of the great arrangers in jazz and wrote a few standards. The pianist's own compositions include "Hot House", "Lady Bird", "Soultrane", "Fontainebleau", "If You Could See Me Now", "Good Bait" and "Mating Call", but he was an in-demand arranger who worked with Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Count Basie, Miles Davis, Sarah Vaughn, Milt Jackson, Benny Goodman, Billy Eckstine and others before the dope got the best of him. From Cleveland, Dameron learned piano from his mother as a child. His saxophonist brother and he would...

Jutta Hipp was a pioneering female jazz pianist from Germany. After a rough time as a displaced person in the '40s in Germany, she toured around Europe in the '50s with Atilla Zoller and others before coming Stateside in '55. She made a few records before retiring from the scene. Today, she has a street named after her in her hometown. This cut features Zoot Sims on the sax: