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Jimmy Blanton
Jimmy Blanton
Jimmy Blanton Background information Birth name Born Origin USA Died Genre(s) Occupation(s) Instrument(s) Years active Associated acts July 30, 1942 Jazz Double bassist Double bass, Violin 1936–1942 Duke Ellington Jimmy Blanton October 5, 1918 Chattanooga, Tennessee ,
Jimmy Blanton (October 5, 1918–July 30, 1942) was an influential American jazz double bassist. Blanton originated melodically conceived pizzicato and bowed bass solos. Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Blanton originally learned to play the violin, but took up the bass while at Tennessee State University, performing with the Tennessee State Collegians from 1936 to 1937, and during the vacations with Fate Marable. After leaving university in order to move to St Louis and play full time with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra (with whom he made his first recordings), he joined Duke Ellington’s band in 1939. Despite staying with Ellington for only two years, Blanton made an incalculable contribution in changing the way the double bass
was perceived in jazz. Until his emergence, the double bass was rarely used to play anything but quarter notes in ensemble or solos. By soloing on the bass more in a ’horn like’ fashion, Blanton began sliding into eighthand sixteenth-note runs, introducing melodic and harmonic ideas that were totally new to the instrument. His virtuosity put him in a different class from his predecessors, making him the first true master of the jazz bass and demonstrating the instrument’s unsuspected potential as a solo instrument. Such was his importance to Ellington’s band at the time, together with the tenor saxophonist Ben Webster, that it became known as the Blanton–Webster band. Blanton also recorded a series of bass and piano duets with Ellington. Unexpectedly in 1941, Blanton was diagnosed with tuberculosis, cutting short his tenure with Ellington. He died the following year after retiring to a sanatorium in California, aged 23.
Sources and external links
• Carr, Ian, Digby Fairweather, & Brian Priestley. Jazz: The Rough Guide. London: Rough Guides. ISBN 1-85828-528-3 • Jimmy Blanton — by Richard S. Ginell, from Allmusic • "Jimmy Blanton". African American Almanac. 9th ed. Gale, 2003. Student Resource Center. Thomson Gale. 11 April 2006
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Blanton" Categories: 1918 births, 1942 deaths, Deaths from tuberculosis, Jazz double-bassists, Tennessee State University alumni, American jazz double-bassists, People from Chattanooga, Tennessee, Duke Ellington Orchestra members, Infectious disease deaths in California This page was last modified on 12 November 2008, at 21:17 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) taxdeductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers
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