Dave Van Ronk born 20 June 1931

David Kenneth Ritz Van Ronk (June 30, 1936 – February 10, 2002) was an American folk singer. An important figure in the American folk music revival and New York City's Greenwich Village scene in the 1960s, he was nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street". 

Guitarist, singer, songwriter, and native New Yorker Dave Van Ronk inspired, aided, and promoted the careers of numerous singer/songwriters who came up in the blues tradition. Most notable of the many musicians he helped over the years was Bob Dylan, whom Van Ronk got to know shortly after Dylan moved to New York in 1961 to pursue a life as a folk/blues singer. Van Ronk's recorded output was healthy, but he was never as prolific a songwriter as some of his friends from that era, like Dylan or Tom Paxton. Instead, Van Ronk's genius was derived from his flawless execution and rearranging of classic acoustic blues tunes. 

Van Ronk was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to a family that was "mostly Irish, despite the Dutch 'Van' name". He moved from Brooklyn to Queens around 1945 and began attending Holy Child Jesus Catholic School, whose students were mainly of Irish descent . He acquired a ukulele at 12 years old, a guitar a year later, and then he learned the banjo. His initial love was jazz, favoring singers like Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Jelly Roll Morton . He had been performing in a barbershop quartet since 1949, but left before finishing high school spending time in the Merchant Marine after which he left home for Greenwich Village, a few miles away. 

                      Here’s “House Carpenter” from above LP 

                                   

He took his inspiration from blues and folk singer Odetta, who encouraged him to play the classic jazz music that he was so keenly interested in. Often regarded as the grand uncle of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene, the self-effacing Van Ronk, an engaging intellectual and voracious reader, would have been the first to tell you that there were others, like Odetta, who were around the Village before him. As the blues and folk boom bloomed into the '60s, Van Ronk became part of an inner circle of musicians who lived in the Village, including then up-and-coming performers like Dylan, Paxton, Phil Ochs, Ramblin' Jack Elliot, and Joni Mitchell. An expert fingerpicker, Van Ronk was influenced as a vocalist by Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong. 

Van Ronk's recording career began in 1959 with Sings Ballads, Blues & a Spiritual on Moses Asch's Folkways label. His reputation wasn't solid, however, until he began recording for the Prestige label in the first half of the '60s. A collection of jazz tunes, In the Tradition, followed in 1964, and then Inside Dave Van Ronk. He switched to Mercury for two albums, one with the Ragtime Jug Stompers. These recordings allowed him to tour throughout the U.S. and perform at major folk festivals like Newport. Although he had a short-lived folk rock band called the Hudson Dusters in 1968, the bulk of Van Ronk's recordings were solo acoustic affairs. 

Van Ronk was among 13 people arrested at the Stonewall Inn June 28, 1969, the night of the Stonewall Riots, which is widely credited as the spark of the contemporary gay rights movement. He had been dining at a neighboring restaurant and joined the riot against the police occupation of the club and was dragged from the crowd into the building by police deputy inspector Seymour Pine. The police slapped and punched Van Ronk to the point of near unconsciousness, handcuffed him to a radiator near the doorway, and charged him with assault. 

Recalling the expanding riot, Van Ronk said, "There were more people outside the building when I came out than when I went in. Things were still flying through the air, cacophony—I mean, just screaming and yelling, sirens, strobe lights, the whole spaghetti."The next day, he was arrested and later released on his own recognizance for having thrown a heavy object at a police officer. City records show he was charged with felony assault in the second degree and pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of harassment. 

During 1985 Van Ronk released his first all-original album, Going Back to Brooklyn, containing only his own songs. He continued to record throughout the '90s and beyond, with the Alcazar Records label releasing Another Time and Place in 1995 and Justin Time issuing Sweet and Lowdown in 2001. 

On February 10, 2002, Van Ronk died in a New York hospital of cardiopulmonary failure while undergoing ostoperative treatment for colon cancer. He died before completing work on his memoirs, which were finished by his collaborator, Elijah Wald, and published in 2005 as The Mayor Of MacDougal Street.  Married to Terri Van Ronk in the 1960s, lived for many years with Joanne Grace, then married Andrea Vuocolo, with whom he spent the rest of his life. 

 (Edited from Wikipedia, Folkways & AllMusic)

Porky Freeman born 29 June 1916

"Porky" Freeman (June 29, 1916 – July 8, 2001) was an American Western swing performer, bandleader, and songwriter. He was also an electric guitar pioneer and inventor. 

Quilla Hugh Freeman was born near Vera Cruz, Missouri, USA. The Freeman’s, who eked a living from a small farm, were a musical family and Quilla began playing piano, fife, ocarina and harmonica as a young child. In 1928, he added banjo and trumpet and played in the school band, soon adding fiddle, mandolin and, his main instrument, guitar to the list. In 1931, he dropped out of school and hoboed around for a time before forming a quartet that played on a Jefferson City station. 

In 1933, he returned home and became a member of a trio, Raul Hatfield And His Ava Wildcats, on KGBX Springfield, Missouri, where he made his first recordings. After again deciding to return home to complete his education, he performed locally. In 1937, he worked on KWTO Springfield sometimes as member of the Brownlow Boys and sometimes with Otie and Sue Thompson, who gave him the nickname of Porky. He later played guitar and trumpet with Doc James and toured with the Weaver Brothers before playing with Bill Boyd and Roy Newman in Fort Worth, Texas. 

                                   

In 1942, he returned to KGBX Springfield, where he became a regular on the Slim Wilson Show before playing with Bill Nicholls in Los Angeles. During this time he had become one of the first musicians to feature boogie woogie style guitar music and in 1943, he recorded ‘Porky’s Boogie Woogie On The Strings’ for the Morris Lee label, which became the first country boogie instrumental. It proved popular and in 1944, he was given a contract with ARA, where he recorded as the Porky Freeman Trio. He played on Jack Guthrie’s hit recording of ‘Oklahoma Hills’ and his reputation saw him play and tour with numerous top acts including the Sons Of The Pioneers, Spade Cooley, Hank Penny, Jimmy Wakely and Stuart Hamblen and many others. 

Porky Freeman, Red Murrell & Al Barker

He was also much in demand as a session musician. In September 1945, the Porky Freeman Trio, which comprised Merle Travis, Tommy Sergeant and Alan Barker, recorded two versions of ‘Boogie Woogie Boy’. Freeman played lead guitar and Travis added the vocal. The first take was released on ARA and the second with a variation on the lyrics later on 4 Star Records. That Porky was used as lead guitarist when Travis was on the recordings emphasizes the instrumental brilliance of Freeman. Porky’s  early experimentation with the electric guitar led to several patents for the instrument. One of the patents, 'Single Pickup Frequency Control For String Instrument', led to legal wrangling with Fender. 

Throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s, he played and/or recorded with many popular acts in the Los Angeles area. Freeman, who retired to make his home in West Hollywood, continued to perform locally into the late 80s. In 1987, the German Cattle label released an album of 21 of Freeman’s 40s recordings, including a version of the instrumental that started his recording career. The recordings with Travis were included in a 5-CD set of Merle Travis’ work by Bear Family Records in 1994. 

Porky Freeman died in Orange, California July 8, 2001 aged 85. 

(Edited from AllMusic & Wikipedia)

Sarah Ogan Gunning born 28 June 1910

Sarah Ogan Gunning (June 28, 1910 – November 14, 1983) was an American singer and songwriter from the coal mining country of eastern Kentucky, as were her older half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson and her brother Jim Garland. 

She was born Sarah Elizabeth Garland on June 28, 1910, in Bell County, Kentucky. Her father was coal miner Oliver Perry Garland and her mother Sarah Elizabeth Lucas Garland, his second wife. He had earlier married Deborah Robinson Garland who bore four children, including Mary Magdalene Garland, later better known as Aunt Molly Jackson. After Deborah's death, Oliver married Sarah Lucas, and had eleven more children, including Jim Garland and Sarah Ogan Gunning. The children grew up with little formal education but with strong family ties and a rich tradition of songs and stories. 

In 1925 the fifteen-year-old Sarah fell in love with Andrew Ogan, a twenty-year-old from Claiborne County, Tennessee, who had come to work in the Fox Ridge coal mine in Bell County, Kentucky. They eloped to Cumberland Gap to marry. They had four children, two of whom died of starvation during the Depression. Living conditions were bad in eastern Kentucky by 1931, and many miners responded to the retreat of the United Mine Workers by joining the communist-led National Miners Union (NMU). The ensuing violence and controversy pushed many NMU leaders and persons involved in union activity, including Ogan and her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson, to leave the state. 

By 1935 the Garlands and the Ogans had moved to New York City, with assistance from New York University folklorist Mary Elizabeth Barnicle. In New York, they met many leaders of the folksong revival, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, Huddie Ledbetter, and Earl Robinson. But Andrew Ogan had TB, and when the illness worsened he moved back to Brush Creek in Knox County, Kentucky, where he died in August 1938. Sarah herself was frequently ill during this period but managed to survive New York's privation.  She married Joseph Gunning, a skilled metal polisher, in August 1941. After the start of World War II they moved to work in the shipyard in Vancouver, Washington, where her brother Jim Garland had also found work. After the war they moved to Detroit, Michigan. 

                                    

Through contacts she made while living in New York, Sarah Ogan had a dozen of her songs recorded by Alan Lomax in 1937, and Professor Barnicle recorded Sarah singing duets with her brother Jim Garland in 1938 for the Library of Congress. Woody Guthrie wrote a profile of Sarah for the New York Daily Worker in 1940, and expanded his sketch for his American Folksong. She was also mentioned in the popular A Treasury of American Song. One of the well-known songs she wrote around 1936, "I am a Girl of Constant Sorrow," appeared in a 1953 collection, and was recorded in the 1960s by Peggy Seeger and Barbara Dane among others. The song is a rewrite of "Man of Constant Sorrow" that she remembered from a hillbilly record (likely recorded by Emry Arthur in 1928) she had heard some years before in the mountains, but the lyrics she wrote was considerably different from the original after the first verse. 

Living in Detroit, Sarah was overlooked in the early stages of the American folk revival in the 1950s. In August 1963 folklorist Archie Green visited Sarah to follow up interviews he had done with her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson. Green joined forces with Wayne State University faculty Ellen Stekert and Oscar Paskal to record Sarah in January and March 1964 in the studios of WDET and the United Auto Workers Solidarity House. The Detroit sessions provided the selections for her album "Girl of Constant Sorrow," Folk-Legacy FSA-26, issued in 1965. She was encouraged to sing publicly in Professor Stekert's classes and at a conference featuring Walter Reuther and Michael Harrington in Detroit in 1964. She sang at the Newport Folk Festival in the summer of 1964, and had her most extended performance at the University of Chicago Folk Festival in January 1965. After the death of her second husband in 1976, her health deteriorated and she rarely performed outside of church. 

Sarah Gunning died during a family gathering in Knoxville, Tennessee on November 14, 1983 at the age of 73 years, and was buried in Hart, Michigan, where she had lived since the mid-1960s. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic) 

 

Anna Moffo born 27 June 1932

Anna Moffo (June 27, 1932 – March 9, 2006) was an American opera singer, television personality, and actress. One of the leading lyric-coloratura sopranos of her generation, she was the possessor of a lovely, warm-toned lyric soprano voice. 

Noted for her physical beauty, she was nicknamed "La Bellissima". She was the perfect interpreter of those innumerable operatic heroines like Violetta in La Traviata and Mimi in La Bohème, two typical examples in Italian opera with Massenet's Manon and Antonia in Les Contes d'Hoffmann in French. Although the greater part of her career was spent in America - she sang for 17 seasons at the Metropolitan in New York - Moffo also appeared in many of the capitals of Europe, including London, where she sang Gilda in Rigoletto at Covent Garden, as well as several music festivals. 

Anna Moffo was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Italian parents. Her father worked as a shoemaker. She studied singing with Eufemia Giannini at the Curtis Institute and later gained a Fulbright scholarship for further study in Italy, where she worked in Rome with Luigi Ricci and Mercedes Llopart. She made her début in 1955 at the Spoleto Festival, singing Norina in Donizetti's Don Pasquale. Moffo's spectacular good looks ensured a great interest from film and television cameras alike, and in 1956 she sang Madama Butterfly for Italian television which made Moffo an overnight sensation throughout Italy. This was directed by Mario Lanfranchi, who later became Moffo's first husband and her manager. 

The following year Moffo sang Nannetta in Verdi's Falstaff at both the Salzburg Festival and at La Scala, Milan. Seldom can Shakespeare's "sweet Anne Page" (as she is in the original play) have had a more enchanting interpeter. After these European triumphs, Moffo returned to the US to make her début in Chicago, as Mimi in La Bohème. Her Rodolfo was Jussi Björling. Though nearly twice her age and at the end of his career (he died three years later), he was vocally a perfect partner for the young soprano. Moffo had three other roles at the Lyric that season: Mignon, Le nozze di Figaro (with Tito Gobbi, Giulietta Simionato and Eleanor Steber) and Lucia di Lammermoor. On at least one occasion her performance of Lucia's Mad Scene earned Moffo a 10-minute standing ovation. 

                                   

In the late 1950s, she recorded Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro, opposite Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Giuseppe Taddei, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini; and recitals of Mozart arias with EMI. She then became an exclusive RCA Victor artist. Moffo returned to Italy in 1959 to make the first of two films in which she appeared, Austerlitz, directed by Abel Gance. The multi-national cast of this epic account of the defeat of the Austro-Russian armies by Napoleon included Leslie Caron, Claudia Cardinale and Orson Welles among its guest stars. Moffo's second film appearance was for Paramount in 1970, when she played a small role in The Adventurers. Of rather more importance to her growing reputation as an opera singer was Moffo's début at the Metropolitan on 14 November 1959, as Violetta in La Traviata. 

Moffo was also invited to sing at the San Francisco Opera where she made her debut as Amina on October 1, 1960. During that period she also made several appearances on American television, while enjoying a successful international career singing at most major opera houses around the world (Stockholm, Berlin, Monte Carlo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, etc.). Moffo remained particularly popular in Italy and performed there regularly. She hosted a program on Italian television "The Anna Moffo Show" (two series: the first in 1964; the second in 1967) and was voted one of the ten most beautiful women in Italy. She appeared in film versions of La traviata (1967) and Lucia di Lammermoor (1971), as well as many non-operatic films. 

By the end of the Sixties the soprano's voice was beginning to show signs of wear and tear. This blew up into a full-scale vocal crisis in 1974, when Moffo realised, too late, that she had sung far too much, far too soon. At first it was thought she might never sing again, but she persevered, retraining her voice and in 1976 she returned, with a small new repertory. Although she continued to sing in staged opera through 1980, her appearances became more sporadic. Her last performance at the Met was during the 1983 Centennial celebrations, where she sang the Sigmund Romberg duet "Will You Remember?" with Robert Merrill. After retiring from singing Moffo remained active as a board member of the Metropolitan Opera Guild and by hosting several tributes and giving occasional masterclasses. 

Anna Moffo spent the last years of her life in New York City, where she died of a stroke at the age of 73 years on 10 March 2006, following a decade-long battle with breast cancer. She is interred with Sarnoff at Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York. 

(Edited from Elizabeth Forbes obit @ The Independent & Wikipedia)

 

St. Louis Jimmy Oden born 26 June 1903

St. Louis Jimmy Oden (June 26, 1903 – December 30, 1977) was an American blues musician and songwriter with a dry, laconic vocal style and is remembered now more for his songwriting talents than for his records. 

James Burke "St. Louis Jimmy" Oden was born in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. His parents were Henry Oden, a dancer, and Leana West, although both had died before their son reached the age of eight. He sang and taught himself to play the piano in childhood. In his teens, he left home for St. Louis, where piano-based blues was prominent, to make his fortune with his fingers. 

He developed his vocal talents and began performing with the pianist Roosevelt Sykes. After more than ten years playing in and around St. Louis, in 1933 he and Sykes moved to Chicago. In the 20s, on the busy circuit of speak-easies, clubs and parties in that ‘wide-open’ city, he met another pianist Roosevelt Sykes, and Jimmy began to focus on singing and songwriting in their work together. For more than ten years, Jimmy and Roosevelt were at the centre of the scene in St.Louis where the Blues piano of Peetie Wheatstraw, Walter Davis and Speckled Red made the city almost synonymous with tinkling ivories.

                                    

In Chicago, he was nicknamed St. Louis Jimmy and had a solid performing and recording career for the next four decades. Chicago became his home, but Oden traveled with blues players throughout the United States. He recorded many records, his best-known being the 1941 Bluebird release "Goin' Down Slow". It was a great song, delivered in Jimmy’s typical downhearted style, and a regional hit, but when America joined WWII his recording career, like so many others, hit the buffers. 

After the War, Jimmy cut some tracks for the Bullet label, and in 1948 he cut ‘Florida Hurricane’ for Aristocrat Records, which was about to become Chess. His side-men on those sessions included pianist Sunnyland Slim and Muddy Waters on slide-guitar, and Muddy later recorded several of Jimmy’s compositions including ‘Soon Forgotten’ and ‘Take the Bitter with the Sweet’. In 1949 Jimmy and his partner Joe Brown set up their own JOB label, but within a year Jimmy had pulled out. His own records appeared throughout the 50s on the Savoy and Parrot labels, and with Roosevelt on Duke Records. 

Muddy Waters, Jimmy Oden, Chris Barber, Ottilee Patterson

He spent less time performing after being in a car crash in 1957. Songs written later in his career include "What a Woman!" Oden released the album Goin' Down Slow on Prestige-Bluesville in 1960. It had ten of his own compositions, including the title track. That same year he performed as a vocalist on three songs recorded for an Otis Spann session in 1960. 

Jimmy continued to record sporadically for several labels in the 60s, but failing health was catching up with him. Jimmy had retired from performing by the end of the decade, and passed away in Chicago on  December 30, 1977 from  bronchopneumonia at the age of 74. He was interred in Restvale Cemetery, in Alsip, Illinois, near Chicago. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & All About Blues Music)

David T. Walker born 25 June

David T. Walker (born June 25, 1941) is an American soul/R&B, and jazz guitarist. In addition to numerous session musician duties since the early 1970s, Walker has issued fifteen albums in his own name and has performed on over 2,500 Albums, Film Soundtracks, TV, and Radio Commercials beginning in 1961. He has received numerous achievement awards including Gold & Platinum Records. 

David T. Walker was born to a Native American mother and African American father in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He is the eldest child in a family of ten. His parents migrated to San Pedro, CA when He was two years old then  relocated to Central California when he was 7 years old. He attended David Starr Jordan High School in the Watts area of Los Angeles. Started playing the saxophone in the fourth grade and also had begun to hear Music from the local people and Family members. At age 14, His Family moved to Watts, part of Los Angeles. 

At age 16, he taught himself how to play guitar and began working in juke joints and Blues Clubs etc. While in High School, he joined the group called The Kinfolks, who traveled the entire USA many times, High School playing and traveling all the back roads and out of the way Chitlin Circuits and Theatre Musical Circuits for 7 years. Their road gigs included time with The Olympics, Hank Ballard and the Midnighters, Etta James, and Little Willie John, just to name a few. The Kinfolks joined Motown Records, and worked/traveled with Artists, such as Martha and the Vandellas etc. 

                        

At age 28, He signed a recording contract and His first Solo Album “The Sidewalk” and since 1967 has released fifteen solo albums. He has also been a session rhythm and lead guitarist, appearing on numerous soul, R&B, and jazz releases. His backup work was featured on several singles and albums, including Love Unlimited Orchestra's big hit single Love's Theme.(1974), Stevie Wonder's Innervisions (1973); Marvin Gaye's Let's Get It On (1973) and I Want You (1976); Carole King's Fantasy (1973); the Jackson 5's Diana Ross Presents The Jackson 5, ABC, and Maybe Tomorrow, single "Never Can Say Goodbye" (1971); Michael Jackson's Ben, single "Got To Be There" (1971); Nick De Caro album "Italian Graffiti", song "Under the Jamican Moon" (1974), Afrique on its 1973 Afro funk release Soul Makossa, Smokey Robinson's pop hit Cruisin' (1979) Bobby Womack's album The Poet (1981), and LeVert's R&B hit (Pop Pop Pop) Goes My Mind (1986). 

Other musicians Walker has worked with over the years include James Brown (1973), Ray Charles, LeVert, Aretha Franklin, Bobby Womack(1981), Smokey Robinson, Leon Ware, Barry White & Love Unlimited Orchestra, Four Tops, Wah Wah Watson, Chuck Rainey, Donald Byrd, Gladys Knight & the Pips, Billy Preston, the Sylvers, Quincy Jones, Hampton Hawes, Monk Higgins, Willie Hutch, Jeffrey Osborne, Johnny Bristol, Solomon Burke, Cannonball Adderley, B.B. King, the Friends of Distinction, the Crusaders, Joe Sample, Paul Humphrey, Bobbi Humphrey, Sérgio Mendes, Stanley Turrentine, Marlena Shaw, Blue Mitchell, Gloria Scott, and Boz Scaggs. 

His song "On Love" was sampled on the breakbeat compilation album Tribe Vibes Vol. 2 by the group A Tribe Called Quest and on the collaborative album Alfredo by Freddie Gibbs and the Alchemist. His guitar riff on Joe Sample's "In All My Wildest Dreams" (from Rainbow Seeker) was sampled on Tupac Shakur's song "Dear Mama". 

Walker played in Bill Cosby's all-star band at the 2008 Playboy Jazz Festival. He has gained popularity in Japan for playing guitar and he also leads his group on tours of Japan each year. He recently toured Japan with Marlena Shaw, Larry Carlton and Brazilian artist Ed Motta. 

His Music is loved and respected by generations of music lovers and artists. He has been sampled by Hip Hop Artists such as Tupac Shakur, A Tribe Called Quest, Pete Rock , De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, and many others. 

(Edited from Wikipedia & David T. Walkers website)

Manny Albam born 24 June 1922

Manny Albam (June 24, 1922 – October 2, 2001) was an American jazz arranger, composer, record producer, saxophonist, and educator. During a career that spanned seven decades, he collaborated with a who's who of jazz greats including Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, and Stan Getz. He also developed successive generations of new talent as co-founder and musical director of the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop. 

Albam was born when his parents were en route from their native Russia to their new home in New York City, and his mother went into labor while their ship was outside of the Dominican Republic port of Samana. At the age of seven Albam discovered jazz after hearing a Bix Beiderbecke record, and soon after began playing the alto saxophone; at 16 he dropped out of school following an invitation to join Muggsy Spanier's Dixieland combo, then Don Joseph (1940) Musgy Spannier (1941), Bob Chester (1942), Georgie Auld (1942 – 5), Charlie Spivak and Boyd Raeburn (1943-5).

During his two years with Spivak, his arranging skills flourished, and he generated an average of two arrangements per week. After serving in the U.S. Army during World War II, (1945-6) he ubndertook similar work for Sam Donahue (1947), Charlie Barnet (1948-9), Jerry Wald (1949) and others,  and as his interest in writing and arranging grew, he effectively retired from performing in 1950, a decision that coincided with the last gasps of the big band era. 

                                    

Albam quickly emerged as a sought-after freelancer, composing and arranging material for many of the bop era's brightest talents. Within a few years, he became known for a bebop style that emphasized taut and witty writing with a flair for distinctive shadings; flute-led reed sections became something of an Albam trademark. One of his most popular works from that era was "Samana", an Afro-Latin composition he did for the Stan Kenton Innovations Orchestra, named after his birthplace Samaná in the Dominican Republic. 

Albam eventually signed to headline his own LPs for labels including Mercury, RCA Victor, and Dot, bringing together musicians including Phil Woods, Al Cohn, and Bob Brookmeyer for acclaimed easy listening efforts including The Blues Is Everybody's Business and The Drum Suite. His 1957 jazz arrangement of Leonard Bernstein's score to West Side Story so impressed Bernstein that the maestro invited Albam to write for the New York Philharmonic. 

The offer prompted Albam to study classical composition under Tibor Serly (1958 to 1960), later yielding such works as the luminous "Concerto for Trombone and Strings." Albam also wrote for feature films, television, and even advertising jingles, and in 1964 signed on as musical director for Sonny Lester's fledgling Solid State label, which two years later issued his jazz suite The Soul of the City. By that time Albam was increasingly channeling his energies into teaching, however. 

After stints with the Eastman School of Music, Glassboro State College, and the Manhattan School of Music, in 1988 he co-founded the BMI Jazz Composers Workshop, assuming the title of musical director from Brookmeyer three years later. 

He died of cancer at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, aged 79, in 2001. 

(Edited from AllMusic, New Grove Dictionary of Jazz & Wikipedia)

George Russell born 23 June 1923

George Allen Russell (June 23, 1923 – July 27, 2009) was an American jazz pianist and a hugely influential, innovative figure in the evolution of modern jazz, the music's only major theorist, one of its most profound composers, and a trail blazer whose ideas have transformed and inspired some of the greatest musicians of our time. 

George Allen Russell was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the adopted son of a registered nurse and a chef on the B&O Railroad. Russell's first instrument was the drums, which he played in the Boy Scout Drum and Bugle Corps and at local clubs when he was in high school. At 19, he was hospitalized with tuberculosis, but he used the enforced inactivity to learn the craft of arranging from a fellow patient. Once back on his feet, he played with Benny Carter, but after being replaced on drums by Max Roach, Russell began to zero in on composing and arranging. 

He moved to New York to join the crowd of young firebrands who gathered in Gil Evans' "salon," and he was actually invited to play drums in Charlie Parker's band. But once again, he fell ill, finding himself in a Bronx hospital for 16 months (1945-1946), where he began to formulate the ideas for the Lydian Concept. Upon his recovery, Russell leaped into the embryonic fusion of bebop and Afro-Cuban rhythms by writing "Cubana Be" and "Cubana Bop," which the Dizzy Gillespie big band recorded in 1947. He contributed arrangements to Claude Thornhill and Artie Shaw in the late '40s and wrote the first (and not the last) speculative scenario of a meeting between Charlie Parker and Igor Stravinsky, "A Bird in Igor's Yard," recorded by Buddy DeFranco. 

                          Here’s “Ezz-Thetic” from above album

                                   

While working on his Lydian theories, Russell dropped out of active music-making for a while, working at a sales counter in Macy's when his book was published. But when he resumed composing in 1956, he had established himself as an influential force in jazz. Russell's connection with Gunther Schuller resulted in the commission of "All About Rosie" for the 1957 Brandeis University jazz festival, and he also taught at the Lenox School of Jazz that Schuller co-founded. 

He formed a rehearsal sextet in the mid-'50s that became known as the George Russell Smalltet, with Art Farmer, Bill Evans, Hal McKusick, Barry Galbraith, and various drummers and bassists. Their 1956 recording Jazz Workshop (RCA Victor) became a landmark of its time, and Russell continued to record intriguing LPs for Decca in the late '50s and Riverside in the early '60s. Another key album from this period, Ezz-Thetics, featured two important progressive players, Eric Dolphy and Don Ellis. 

Finding the American jazz scene too confining for his music, Russell left for Europe in 1963, living in Sweden for five years. From his new base, he toured Scandinavia with a new sextet of European players and received numerous commissions -- including a ballet based on Othello, a mass, and the orchestral suite Electronic Sonata for Souls Loved by Nature: 1980. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1969, he joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory of Music, where Schuller had started a jazz department, and this gave him a secure base from which to tour occasionally with his own groups. 

Russell stopped composing from 1972 to 1978 in order to finish a second volume on the Lydian Chromatic Concept. He led a 19-piece big band at the Village Vanguard for six weeks in 1978, played the Newport Jazz Festival when it was based in New York City, and made tours of Italy, the U.S. West Coast, and England in the '80s. 

Russell's most imposing latter-day commissions included "An American Trilogy" and the monumental three-hour work "Time Line" for symphony orchestra, jazz ensembles, rock groups, choir, and dancers. In addition to The African Game and So What on Blue Note, Russell made recordings for Soul Note in the '70s and '80s and Label Bleu in the '90s, while continuing to teach at the New England Conservatory and leading his Living Time Orchestra big band into the 21st century. 

He received a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant in 1989. In his career, Russell also received the 1990 National Endowment for the Arts American Jazz Master Award, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and the British Jazz Award. He has been elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, won the Oscar du Disque de Jazz Award, the Guardian Award, the American Music Award, six NEA Music Fellowships, and numerous others. He taught worldwide and was a guest conductor for German, Italian, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish radio groups.  

In 2005 George Russell & the Living Time Orchestra's The 80th Birthday Concert, released on the Concept label, celebrated the legendary octogenarian's contributions to the art of jazz with performances of some of his most groundbreaking extended compositions and arrangements.  George Russell died in Boston on July 27, 2009 of complications from Alzheimer's disease; he was 86 years old. 

(Edited from AllMusic & About Jazz)