Playboy Jazz Poll
Playboy Jazz Poll was an American jazz prize that was awarded by Playboy magazine from 1957 to the 1990s .
background
Playboy Magazine regularly featured articles on jazz under the editorship of Hugh Hefner , a jazz fan, including the Dorsey Brothers in 1953. They released an annual Playboy Jazz All Star album from 1957 and presented jazz in their clubs (with their own established jazz circuit of prominent jazz musicians in the 1960s) and on Playboy's own television shows. The Playboy Jazz Festival from 1959, which Hefner continued regularly from 1979, was also a great success . There occurred in 1959 in Chicago a. a. the Count Basie Orchestra , Oscar Peterson , Ella Fitzgerald and the Coleman Hawkins Quartet (with Eddie Higgins , Bob Cranshaw and Walter Perkins ).
In 1957, Playboy magazine created a jazz award, the Playboy Jazz Poll . According to Playboy (Issue 2, 1957), around 430,000 votes were counted in the first jazz poll. It won Stan Kenton (Leader, over twice as many votes as the runner-up Count Basie ), Louis Armstrong (tr followed by Chet Baker and Dizzy Gillespie in 3rd place), JJ Johnson (trb, before Kai Winding ), Ray Brown (b, just before Oscar Pettiford ), Lionel Hampton (vib, clearly ahead of Milt Jackson , the category was different instruments ), Paul Desmond (as, second was Bud Shank ), Gerry Mulligan (bar sax, before Harry Carney ), Dave Brubeck (p, well before Erroll Garner , and the Dave Brubeck Quartet , as a combo before the Modern Jazz Quartet ), The Four Freshmen (vocal group, before The Hi-Lo’s ), Frank Sinatra (singer, well before Nat King Cole ), Stan Getz (ts, far ahead of Charlie Ventura ), Barney Kessel (git, in front of Sal Salvador ), Ella Fitzgerald (singer, in front of but not too far from June Christy ), Benny Goodman (cl, in front of Buddy DeFranco ), Shelly Manne (dr , before Gene Krupa ). The magazine also published the exact voting results. The musicians could be ticked from a large selection in a list in the October 1956 issue. Only votes received before November 15 of the previous year were counted. Art Tatum and Tommy Dorsey died during the election but were counted. Norman Weiser, who had previously worked as editor for Down Beat , was responsible for the organization . Down Beat was also the model of the Playboy Jazz Polls. The following all-star concert and album was organized by Norman Granz .
On the album The Playboy Jazz All Stars in 1957 Playboy published music of the winners in the various musician categories of this year's Jazz Poll of the magazine; these were u. a. Stan Kenton , Louis Armstrong , JJ Johnson , Paul Desmond , Stan Getz , Gerry Mulligan , Benny Goodman , Dave Brubeck , Barney Kessel , Ray Brown , Shelly Manne , Lionel Hampton , Frank Sinatra, and Ella Fitzgerald ; the liner notes were written by jazz critic Leonard Feather . In early 1959 a second such LP was released, The Playboy Jazz All-Stars, Vol. 2 . There was a regular cartoon in the magazine with a group picture of the Playboy All Stars. The 1957 All Star LP was also one of the pioneering recordings of jazz on stereo LP. The group also had its own record label (Playboy Records) and in 2001 founded a new sub-label at Concord Records (Playboy Jazz).
Poll winners included Charlie Ventura (1957), Art Van Damme , Chet Atkins , Cal Tjader , Nancy Wilson , The Supremes (1967), Aretha Franklin (1961), Jimmy Smith (1969), and in later years Steve Grossman and Janis Siegel 1994. There was also irritating for jazz purists shifts in the selection of winners, as the mid-60s, the Playboy magazine's nomination of Peter, Paul and Mary , a folk trio, as the best vocal group ( best vocal group ) by the readers of Magazine accepted. In 1967 The Supremes won as the best vocal group. As early as 1967, jazz disappeared into the Playboy All-Star Band. At the end of the 1960s, Mehrbach found the Beatles or individual band members of the Beatles among the winners or nominees. From 1975 there were only Poll Winners in the Playboy pages (no All Star Band).
For example, 1968 winners were Oscar Peterson (piano, instrumental combo), Buddy DeFranco (cl), Ella Fitzgerald (singer), Dizzy Gillespie (tr), Wes Montgomery (g), JJ Johnson (trb), Frank Sinatra (singer) , Ray Brown (b), Buddy Rich (dr), Duke Ellington (Leader), Milt Jackson (vib), Gerry Mulligan (bar sax), The Four Freshmen (vocal group), Stan Getz (ts), Cannonball Adderley (as) . The winners for the best albums were Big Swing Face (Buddy Rich, Pacific Jazz) in the big band section , Small Combo SRO, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass (A&M), and Sgt.Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for vocals ( The Beatles , Capitol Records ).
There was also a Playboy Jazz Hall of Fame from 1966 , the first members were (until 1968): Frank Sinatra, Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, John Coltrane , Benny Goodman, Ray Charles . Past poll winners were also regularly asked about their selection ( All Star Reader's Poll ). In addition, every year there was a scrapbook with poll winners (but not necessarily those of the respective year and also with other musicians).
The Playboy Jazz Poll and the selection of its predominantly white readership was described as racist by Miles Davis , who is notoriously known for such allegations, in his autobiography when he addressed the awarding of the prize to rock singer Sting and his band as winners in the category Best Jazz Band :
- “Isn't that a hammer? A black group going from, say, fusion jazz to rock would never get that recognition ”.
Miles Davis was interviewed several times for Playboy, including in the September 1962 issue, where he went into detail on racial discrimination. In the course of the 1960s, however, angered him in his own words that no black women were presented in the magazine as Playmates, which is why he himself for example, featured his girlfriend Cicely on his record covers (and also no longer accepted any other Playboy Poll Awards).
literature
- Elizabeth Fraterrigo: Playboy and the Making of the Good Life in Modern America . 2009
Individual evidence
- ^ Playboy and Jazz, All About Jazz
- ^ Tom Lord: Jazz discography (online).
- ^ Action TV: Tough-Guys, Smooth Operators and Foxy Chicks , edited by Anna Gough-Yates, Bill Osgerby. 2013, p. 192
- ↑ The list was compiled in 1961, for example, by a number of prominent jazz musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra etc., music critics such as Gene Lees from Down Beat and Leonard Feather from Playboy, representatives of the record industry such as Alfred Lion , George Wein , Norman Granz , George Avakian , Richard Bock , Nesuhi Ertegun .
- ^ Billboard December 9, 1957
- ^ Billboard February 23, 1959
- ↑ Bruce H. Klauber: World of Gene Krupa: That Legendary Drummin 'Man . 1990, p. 161
- ↑ It's the Cowboy Way !: The Amazing True Adventures of Riders in the Sky , p. 243
- ↑ John Chintala: Chet Atkins: A Complete Guide to "Mister Guitar" .
- ^ S. Duncan Reid: Cal Tjader: The Life and Recordings of the Man Who Revolutionized Latin Jazz . 2013.
- ^ Jet Feb. 9, 1967
- ↑ Jack Hamilton: Just Around Midnight: Rock and Roll and the Racial Imagination . 2016, p. 184
- ↑ 1,000 successful Blacks, Volume 1 . Ebony Editors Johnson Pub. Co., 1973
- ↑ Steve Katz: Blood, Sweat, and My Rock 'n' Roll Years: Is Steve Katz a Rock Star? . 2015, p. 175
- ^ Gloria Rusch : The Professional Singer's Handbook . 1998, p. 145
- ↑ Peter Yarrow, Noel Paul Stookey, Mary Travers: Peter Paul and Mary: Fifty Years in Music and Life . 2014. p. 17.
- ↑ The Beatles Rarity 2013 ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Playboy, No. 2, 1968 with a detailed review of the year by Nat Hentoff
- ^ Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe: Miles , Heyne, 2000, p. 536
- ↑ Ian Carr , Miles Davis, Da Capo 1998, pp. 182f
- ^ Carr, Miles Davis, 1998, p. 234. After a Down Beat interview June 18, 1974
