# From Charlie Parker to Eddie Johnson, remembering jazz centenarians during a pandemic: Photos, Video

- Link: https://jazzblues.eu/2020/06/09/from-charlie-parker-to-eddie-johnson-remembering-jazz-centenarians-during-a-pandemic-photos-video/
- Published: 2020-06-09T12:18:04+01:00
- Author: https://JazzBlues.EU

**This was going to be a year of great jazz centennials.**

For 1920 marked the birth of several jazz musicians who either changed the course
of the music or deeply enriched it. Festivals, themed concerts and other events 
around the world would have celebrated their centenaries and honored their vast 
legacies.

But all that has been canceled or postponed as the coronavirus has shut down clubs,
concert halls and festivals.[](https://www.chicagotribune.com/paid-posts/?prx_t=95QFAZjBAA2-4QA&ntv_fr)

“I still remember the day like it was yesterday. I was enjoying a day of shopping
and lunch with my best friend, and when we got up to leave the restaurant, I felt
an awful pain…

So for the time being, let’s raise a glass to some of the innovators, visionaries
and iconoclasts who made 1920 an indelible year in jazz and changed the way we hear
and think about the music:

**Charlie Parker, Aug. 29, 1920 – March 12, 1955.**

Of all the jazz languages that coursed through the 20th century, none has been more
dominant or shown as much creative resilience as bebop. And no one did more to invent
its syntax than Parker. Alongside trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and others, Parker crafted
an idiom of fast-moving chord changes and faster-flying figurations. There was more
than just speed and technical wizardry involved, though, for Parker developed complex
improvisational methods that transformed the way musicians understand harmony and
dissonance. That Parker also happened to be the most formidable alto saxophone virtuoso
ever to bring a reed to his lips broadened the scope of his achievements.

**Dave Brubeck, Dec. 6, 1920 – Dec. 5, 2012.**

Early in his long career, pianist-composer Brubeck was condescended to by a certain
subset of jazz aficionados. How could a musician so popular among the masses and
so prolifically played on the radio possibly have anything to offer those who considered
themselves cognoscenti? The joke was on them, of course, as Brubeck’s music teemed
with new ideas in rhythm, meter, structure and scale, all the while subtly embracing
elements of Western classical music. Then, too, Brubeck’s role as a champion of 
social and racial justice enhanced his importance in American culture, and beyond.
And no one played the piano quite the way Brubeck did, an unmistakable sense of 
joy emanating from every grandly conceived chord.

**John Lewis, May, 3, 1920 — March 29, 2001.**

Just about everything that pianist-composer-bandleader Lewis did ran counter to 
conventional notions of what jazz was supposed to be. The elegance and tenderness
of his pianism, the heightened subtlety of his arrangements and the unmistakable
influence of centuries-old classical music argued that there was more to jazz than
just its rambunctious, freewheeling spirit. In Lewis’ hands, the art form could 
capture fragility, delicacy and transparency. All these welcome characteristics,
and others, radiated from the Modern Jazz Quartet, which Lewis led for decades, 
opening up new realms of sonic possibility.

![Clark Terry was one of the most popular and influential jazz trumpeters of his
generation and an enthusiastic advocate of jazz education.](https://i0.wp.com/www.
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Clark Terry was one of the most popular and influential jazz trumpeters of his generation
and an enthusiastic advocate of jazz education.

**Clark Terry, Dec. 14, 1920 – Feb. 21, 2015.**

Some musicians are at least as important for the influence they have on others as
for the music they create themselves. Trumpet masters such as Miles Davis, Wynton
Marsalis and Nicholas Payton have credited Terry for having encouraged them in the
earliest days of their careers. The golden lyricism of Terry’s work on trumpet and
flugelhorn (an instrument he brought into the jazz mainstream) affected those trumpeters
and uncounted others. Terry also helped shatter the color barrier on national TV,
in the 1960s earning a place in Doc Severinsen’s “Tonight Show” band. At the center
of it all, of course, was Terry’s sound, as warmly inviting and nimbly dexterous
as any in jazz.

**Peggy Lee, May 26, 1920 – Jan. 21, 2002.**

Singer-songwriter Lee proved that a vocalist needn’t shout to be heard around the
world. Her soft-and-sly vocals delighted jazz devotees and brought the music to 
huge audiences across the decades, thanks to hit recordings such as “Why Don’t You
Do Right?” “Fever,” “It’s a Good Day” and “Is That All There Is?” There were no 
vocal acrobatics involved, no virtuosic scat singing, no sense of self-regard or
ostentation. Instead, Lee taught the jazz world the value of understatement, the
eloquence of minimalism, the beauty of saying everything with a few well-chosen 
notes. The voiceovers Lee did in the Disney film “Lady and the Tramp,” as well as
the tunes she wrote for the film with Sonny Burke, proved there was so much more
beneath the seemingly simple surface of her work than casual listeners may have 
realized.

**Art Van Damme, April 9, 1920 – Feb. 15, 2010.**

Jazz can find its voice on practically any instrument – yes, even the accordion.
Anyone who doubts it surely never heard Van Damme in concert. What Charlie Parker
and Dizzy Gillespie could do on their horns, Van Damme could articulate on an instrument
long unfairly mocked, thanks to generations of terrible practitioners. To hear Van
Damme toss off lightning-quick runs on the bebop standard “Robbins Nest” or producing
a feathery touch at a breakneck tempo in “Look Down That Lonesome Road” was to marvel
at what the accordion can do – in the right hands. Just as no vocalist ever has 
matched Ella Fitzgerald’s technical prowess nor any pianist equaled Art Tatum’s 
keyboard feats, so no accordionist ever has approached Van Damme’s mastery, and 
none probably ever will.

![Hazel Scott in 1968.](https://i0.wp.com/www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/YBisV70BO1E-
TpuIho28xBG9o_k%3D/415x233/top/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/
27Z4WT26KFHCJMY4UBNADYZJXA.jpg?resize=546%2C306&ssl=1)

Hazel Scott in 1968.

**Hazel Scott, June 11, 1920 – Oct. 2, 1981.**

Women never have received equal time, attention or support in jazz and still don’t.
But pianist-vocalist-composer Scott somehow transcended long-standing barriers, 
bringing her ebullient art to clubs, concert halls, recording studios, radio, TV,
Broadway and movies. Her musical cameos in Hollywood films captured her ferocious
energy and Lisztian manner on piano, Scott proving that classical technique and 
jazz-swing rhythm are thoroughly compatible. When she played stride piano, you had
to marvel at the dexterity and marksmanship of her extraordinary left hand.

**Eddie Johnson, Dec. 11, 1920 – April 7, 2010.**

If you frequented jazz sessions on Chicago’s South Side a few decades ago, you invariably
encountered the big and bluesy sound of Johnson’s tenor saxophone. It seemed to 
embody so much of what mid-20th century Chicago jazz was all about. When Johnson
played a ballad, there was no resisting the tonal depth and melodic ingenuity of
his work. As Chicago saxophonist Eric Schneider once told me, “I always used to 
say, ‘Fellas, hold on to your ladies, because Eddie Johnson’s going to play a ballad,
and you may lose ’em.’

![From Charlie Parker to Eddie Johnson, remembering jazz ...](https://i0.wp.com/
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