People, Locations, Episodes

Lou Donaldson, Saxophonist born

*Lou Donaldson was born on this date in 1926.  He is a Black jazz alto saxophonist.   Louis Donaldson was born in Badin, North Carolina.  He started playing the saxophone at 15; he attended North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro in the early 1940s. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was trained at the Great Lakes bases in Chicago, […]

R.L. Burnside, Musician born

R.L. Burnside was born on this date in 1926. He was an African American blues musician.

From Oxford, MS, he began playing music at age 16, learning from such Delta Blues men, as Mississippi Fred McDowell and Muddy Waters. Burnside started out on the harmonica but soon switched to the guitar. As a child, his family moved to Holly Springs, MS, where he has remained ever since. R.L. began singing and playing the blues in the 1950s at local jukes, dances, and parties. He worked on farms or as a fisherman most of the time.

Big Mama Thornton, Blues Singer born

Big Mama Thornton was born on this date in 1926. She was an African American blues singer, songwriter, drummer and harmonica player.

Willie Mae Thornton was raised in a religious setting in Montgomery, AL. Her father was a minister and her mother sang in the choir. Thornton’s musical aspirations led her to leave home in 1941 at age 14 and join the Georgia-based Hot Harlem Revue. Her seven-year tenure with the Revue gave her significant singing and stage experience and enabled her to tour the South, settling in Houston in 1948.

Donald Shirley, Pianist, and Composer born

*Donald Shirley was born on this date in 1927.  He was a Black classical and jazz pianist and composer.   Donald Walbridge Shirley was born in Pensacola, Florida, to Jamaican immigrant parents, Stella Gertrude, a teacher, and Edwin S. Shirley, an Episcopal priest.  Young Shirley started to learn piano when he was two years old. He briefly enrolled at Virginia State University and Prairie View College.   […]

Amos Milburn, Singer born

*On this date in 1927 Amos Milburn was born. He was an African American blues musician and singer.

Born in Houston, Texas on April Fools Day, he was one of twelve children, six boys and six girls. His father was a builder’s laborer. It is believed that young Milburn could play Jingle Bells on at the age of five. His early influences included Rhythm & Blues legend Louis Jordan along with boogie-woogie musicians Pete Johnson, Meade Lux Lewis & Albert Ammons.

Babatunde Olatunji, Percussionist born

*Babatunde Olatunji was born on this date in 1927. He was a Nigerian musician specializing in percussion.

Born and raised in Nigeria, Olatunji was educated at Morehouse College in Atlanta and the New York University Graduate School. At Morehouse, he began performing casually, entertaining students. As the demand for his music grew, he turned professional. In 1959, Columbia Records released Olatunji’s first album, Drums of Passion, which became a worldwide hit. It was the first album to bring genuine African music to Western ears, selling over five million copies.

Cornbread Harris, Musician born

*Cornbread Harris was born on this date in 1927.  He is a Black musician and composer.  Born James Samuel Harris in Chicago, he was one of two children of James and Claudine Harris.  The death of both his parents at the age of 3 left him and his younger sister orphans. Intensifying his anguish, Harris’s […]

Connie Kay, Jazz Drummer born

*Connie Kay was born on this date in 1927. He was an African American jazz drummer.

Self-taught on the drums, Kay played in the mid-’40s with Sir Charles Thompson, Miles Davis, and Cat Anderson. He was in Lester Young’s quintet off and on during 1949-55, a time in which he also worked with Beryl Booker, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker and others. In February 1955, he joined the Modern Jazz Quartet (MJQ), traveling the world with the band up until it called it “quits” in 1974.

Clora Bryant, Musician born

Clora Bryant, an African American jazz trumpeter, was born on this date in 1927.

She was born in Denison, Texas, and started in music as a singer in her Baptist church, but at age 14, she took up the trumpet after her brother, Fred, left his behind when he went into the military in 1941. Bryant was a very good student academically who played in her high school band.

Natalie Hinderas, Pianist, and Composer born

On this date we recognize the birth of Natalie Hinderas in 1927. She was an African American pianist and composer.

She was born Natalie Leota Henderson Hinderas, in Oberlin, Ohio to a musical family; her father (Abram) was a jazz pianist and her mother Leota Palmer was a classical pianist who taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music. Natalie began playing at the age of three, with formal lessons (piano and violin) beginning at six years of age. A child prodigy, Natalie gave her first full-length recital at eight years old.

Elvin Jones, Jazz Drummer born

Elvin Jones was born on this date in 1927. He was an African American jazz drummer.

Born in Pontiac, MI, Elvin Ray Jones His start with local bands and Army military bands led to work as the house drummer at the Bluebird Club in Detroit, where he got his first real exposure to professional talents. In 1956, Jones moved to New York, where he began his playing and recording career with Sonny Rollins, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell, and others. He recorded with both of his brothers during his career, jazz musicians Hank Jones and Thad Jones.

Bettye Miller sang with style

*Bettye Miller’s birth in 1928 is celebrated on this date. She was an African American Pianist and Singer.

Miller was born in Clinton, Missouri. She earned bachelors and master’s degrees in vocal music from Lincoln University and taught elementary school in West Plains, Missouri, for two years before moving to Philadelphia for more voice training. In Philadelphia, she turned to the piano as her primary instrument and played in nightclubs there before moving to Kansas City in the early 1950s.

Joyce Bryant, Singer, and Actress born

*Joyce Bryant was born on this date in 1927.  She is a Black singer and actress who achieved fame in the late 1940s and early 1950s as a theater and nightclub performer. Joyce Bryant, the oldest of eight children, was born in Oakland, California, and raised in San Francisco. Her father, Whitfield W. Bryant, worked as a chef […]

Cleo Laine, British Singer, born

*Cleo Laine was born on this date in 1927. She is a Black British jazz and pop singer and an actress. Laine was born Clementine Laine in Southall, London, to Alexander Sylvan Campbell, a black Jamaican building laborer, and Minnie Bullock, a white English farmer’s daughter from Swindon, Wiltshire. She attended the Board School there on Featherstone Road, sent […]

Mose Allison, Musician, and Composer born

*Mose Allison was born on this date in 1927.  He was a white-American jazz and blues pianist, singer, and songwriter.   Mose John Allison Jr. was born outside Tippo, Mississippi, on his grandfather’s farm, known as the Island “because Tippo Bayou encircles it.”  He took piano lessons at 5, picked cotton, played piano in grammar […]