Curated category
DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame members
- Louis ArmstrongLouis Armstrong borrowed his stepfather's gun without permission on the 31st of December 1912, fired a blank into the air, and spent the night at New Orleans…
- Frank SinatraFrancis Albert Sinatra weighed 13.5 pounds when he was born on the 12th of December 1915, in a tenement at 415 Monroe Street in Hoboken, New Jersey.
- Jimi HendrixJimi Hendrix died in London on the 18th of September 1970, at the age of 27, from barbiturate-related asphyxia. He was, by then, the world's highest-paid…
- Billie HolidayBillie Holiday, born Eleanora Fagan on the 7th of April, 1915, died with seventy cents in the bank. She had made a quarter of a million dollars in the three…
- Ella FitzgeraldElla Jane Fitzgerald walked onto the stage of the Apollo Theater on the 21st of November 1934, planning to dance. She was 17 years old, and she had recently…
- Duke EllingtonDuke Ellington wrote his first composition in the summer of 1914, working as a soda jerk at the Poodle Dog Cafe in Washington, D.C.
- George GershwinGeorge Gershwin's last words were "Fred Astaire." He spoke them on the night of the 9th of July 1937, as he collapsed in a borrowed house in Beverly Hills…
- John ColtraneJohn William Coltrane was born on the 23rd of September 1926, in his parents' apartment at 200 Hamlet Avenue in Hamlet, North Carolina.
- Miles DavisMiles Dewey Davis III was born on the 26th of May 1926 in Alton, Illinois, to a family that owned a 200-acre estate in Arkansas with a profitable pig farm.
- Bing CrosbyBing Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" has sold over 50 million copies worldwide, making it the bestselling single of all time.
- Frank ZappaFrank Vincent Zappa was born on the 21st of December, 1940, in Baltimore, Maryland, into a household where Italian was spoken by his grandparents and gas…