Tadd Dameron

Born in Cleveland, Ohio,^[1] Dameron was the most influential arranger of the bebop era, but also wrote charts for swing and hard bop players.^[2] The bands he arranged for included those of Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and Sarah Vaughan. In 1940–41, Dameron was the piano player and arranger for the Kansas City band Harlan Leonard and his Rockets. He and lyricist Carl Sigman wrote "If You Could See Me Now" for Sarah Vaughan and it became one of her first signature songs.^[3][4][5] According to the composer, his greatest influences were George Gershwin and Duke Ellington.^[6]

In the late 1940s, Dameron wrote arrangements for the big band of Dizzy Gillespie, who gave the première of his large-scale orchestral piece Soulphony in Three Hearts at Carnegie Hall in 1948. Also in 1948, Dameron led his own group in New York, which included Fats Navarro; the following year, Dameron was at the Paris Jazz Festival with Miles Davis. From 1961, he scored for recordings by Milt Jackson, Sonny Stitt, and Blue Mitchell.^[7]

Dameron additionally arranged and played for rhythm and blues musician Bull Moose Jackson. Playing for Jackson at that same time was Benny Golson, who was to become a jazz composer in his own right. Golson has said that Dameron was the most important influence on his writing.

Dameron composed several bop and swing standards, including "Hot House", "If You Could See Me Now", "Our Delight", "Good Bait" (composed for Count Basie)^[6] and "Lady Bird". Dameron's bands from the late 1940s and early 1950s featured leading players such as Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, Wardell Gray, and Clifford Brown. In 1956, he led two sessions based on his compositions, released as the 1956 album "Fontainebleau" and the 1957 album "Mating Call". The latter featured John Coltrane. Dameron developed an addiction to narcotics toward the end of his career. He was arrested on drug charges in 1957 and 1958, and served time (1959–60) in a federal prison hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. After his release, Dameron recorded a single notable project as a leader, The Magic Touch, but was sidelined by health problems; he had several heart attacks before dying of cancer in 1965, at the age of 48. He was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.^[8]

• In the 1980s, drummer Philly Joe Jones and trumpeter Don Sickler founded Dameronia, a band that performed the music of Tadd Dameron.^[9]
• Saxophonist Dexter Gordon called him the "romanticist" of the bop movement.^[10]
• Music critic Scott Yanow called Dameron the "definitive arranger/composer of the bop era".^[11]
• Saxophonist Joe Lovano included five Dameron tunes on his 2000 album 52nd Street Themes.^[12]
• In 2006, trumpeter Peter Welker released Duke, Billy And Tadd as a tribute to Duke Ellington, Billy Strayhorn, and Dameron.^[13]
• Turkish drummer Ferit Odman released Dameronia with Strings, an album featuring eight Dameron tunes, in 2015.^[14]
• Trumpeter Joe Magnarelli's 2019 album If You Could See Me Now is a tribute to Dameron.^[15]
• In 2019, singer Vanessa Rubin released an album titled The Dream Is You: Vanessa Rubin Sings Tadd Dameron.^[16]