One More You Wrote Through Us: Horace Tapscott
Posted in Shows on Feb 24th, 2007
In 1961 pianist Horace Tapscott turned down a chance to have a high-profile career with the Lionel Hampton band and spent the next several decades in Los Angeles, leading several community-jazz bands and doing his best to extend the mentoring and teaching tradition that he had experienced growing up during the glory days of L.A.’s Central Avenue era. The underground jazz scene that he helped to create and sustain–a vibrant, multi-arts mix…
In this program we explore the sounds of the mid-20th-century Los Angeles jazz scene with historian Steve Isoardi (editor of the oral history book Central Avenue Sounds). Jam sessions, bebop, r & b, big bands, visits from Hollywood celebrities—as the center of African-American culture in L.A., Central Avenue had it all. We’ll hear the music of artists such as Dexter Gordon, Howard McGhee, Hadda Brooks…
Trumpeter Cal Massey was an African-American jazz composer, little-known now and in his lifetime, but .jpg)
There was a strong relationship between jazz and civil rights in 20th-century America; musicians and many critics as well were advocates for equal rights for African-Americans, and jazz provided a cultural bridge between blacks and whites that helped to work as a force for integration. In the post-World War II era black musicians began to speak up, directly and indirectly, against racial injustice, and they also began to record…
