the CHARLESTON JAZZ INITIATIVE

Elmore Browne, February 2004
Sullivan’s Island, SC
Graduate of Avery; knew Charlestonians and jazz musicians, Lonnie Simmons and cousin, George Thayer

Felder Hutchinson, February 2004
Charleston
Graduate of Avery; community historian of Charleston’s social history

Jack White (1920-2006), February 2004
North Charleston
Advocate and producer of jazz and other music and social events in Charleston; knew Freddie Green and Count Basie

Charleston
Internationally-recognized blacksmith who knew Jenkins Orphanage Band members in early-mid 20th century

Wolfram Knauer, June 2005
Darmstadt, Germany
Director, Jazz-Institut Darmstadt, Germany; his archive is the largest public jazz repository in Europe; maintains significant secondary source material on Charleston musicians; CJI Circle Member

Jeffrey Green, June 2005
West Sussex, UK
Biographer of Edmund Thornton Jenkins: The Life and Times of An American Black Composer, 1894-1926; CJI Circle Member

Harleston Fleming, July 2005
Charleston
Member of prominent Harleston family in Charleston; composer, arranger and pianist; retired high school and college educator

Rollins Edwards (b. 1922), July 2005
Summerville, SC
Drummer; alumnus of the Count Basie, Buddy Johnson and Willie Jackson bands; danced at the Savoy Ballroom in New York City; first African American elected to the Dorchester County Council and later the Summerville Town Council

Emmanuel Abdul-Rahim, July 2005
Copenhagen, Denmark and Charleston
Percussionist; alumnus of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, the Thad Jones Orchestra and bands led by James Moody and John Coltrane; created the Latin Jazz Quintet with four of Denmark's top jazz musicians; mother was from Charleston; recently returned to Charleston, his “ancestral home”; CJI Circle Member

Jonathan Bloom, November 2005
New Orleans, LA
Jazz educator and percussionist; music educator, New Orleans Public Schools; directed the New Orleans All City Jazz Outreach; is family member of the Chatters, a Charleston family

Clifton Smalls (b. 1918), January 2006
Brooklyn, NY
Pianist; native Charlestonian; former member of the Carolina Cotton Pickers; relief piano player for Earl “Fatha” Hines; recorded with, and served as musical director for the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, Billy Eckstine, Eartha Kitt, Ella Fitzgerald and Sammy Davis, Jr.; referred to as a “veritable jazz treasure” by Clarence Atkins in “A Jazzman in Brooklyn” written for The Black World Today (February 14, 2003).

Joey Morant, January 2006
Jersey City, NJ
Trumpeter and brass instrumentalist; Charlestonian and quintessential player from the Jenkins Orphanage band tradition of the 1950s; plays with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band; 2003 Harlem Jazz and Music Festival Instrumentalist of the Year; has performed the national anthem at several Cooper River Bridge Runs in Charleston; CJI Circle Member

A.B. Spellman, June 2006
Washington, DC
Poet, critic and author; former Deputy Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts; author of Art Tatum: A Critical Biography and Four Lives in the Bebop Business; CJI Circle Member

Larry Ridley, June 2006
New York, NY
Bassist; Executive Director of the African American Jazz Caucus, Inc., an affiliate of the International Association for Jazz Education (IAJE); Jazz Artist in Residence at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; Artistic Director of the Jazz Legacy Ensemble; Professor of Music, Emeritus, Rutgers University; CJI Circle Member

Gerald Wilson, January 2007
Los Angeles, CA
Recognized as one of the foremost composers, arrangers and band leaders of modern jazz for over 50 years; received 5 Grammy nominations with the most recent for the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance and the Best Original Composition ("Romance:); received the top Big Band and Composer/Arranger honors in the Downbeat International Critics Poll; other awards and honors include the Paul Robeson Award, National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship, the nation's highest jazz honor, and 2 American Jazz Awards for Best Arranger and Best Big Band (1997); received the rare honor of having his life's work archived by the Library of Congress

Jimmy Heath, January 2007
Corona, NY
Recognized as a brilliant instrumentalist, composer and arranger; the middle brother of the legendary Heath Brothers and father of Mtume; for over 50 years, he has performed with nearly all of the jazz giants including Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Wynton Marsalis; performed on more than 100 recordings and written more than 125 compositions -- many which have become jazz standards; taught for 11 years as Professor of Music at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College (NY); received National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship, the nation's highest jazz honor

Dan Morgenstern, January 2007
Jersey City, NJ
Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University - the largest and most comprehensive jazz archives in the world; author of Jazz People, Living With Jazz, and is co-editor of the Annual Review of Jazz Studies; past editor of Jazz, Down Beat and Metronome magazines; won 6 Grammy awards for Best Album Notes; received the A.B. Spellman Award for Jazz Advocacy/ National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Fellowship, the nation's highest jazz honor

There is still little awareness of the Charleston, South Carolina contribution to jazz. The romantic history of New Orleans and the pioneering recordings by orchestras from that city have focussed attention elsewhere: that Charlestonians recorded, also in the 1920s, with groups including stellar attractions such as Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton, Duke Ellington, and in the 1930s with Count Basie, the French star Django Reinhardt is little understood.
Jeffrey Green, Biographer of Edmund Thornton Jenkins,