Drummer Kenny Clarke, a native of Pittsburgh, was an early champion of many of the Detroit musicians that flooded the New York scene starting in the middle ’50s. On this day, April 30, in 1956, Clarke led a gaggle of young Detroiters into the studio and recorded “Jazzmen: Detroit” for Savoy Records. This was one of the first LPs that alerted jazz fans that there was something special going on in the Motor City, and the imprimatur of Clarke — a founding member of the bebop — was no small thing.

Guitarist Kenny Burrell, 24, baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, and pianist Tommy Flanagan, 26, had only arrived in New York a few months earlier and were just starting to get calls for gigs and recordings.  “Jazzmen: Detroit” was only Adams’ second recording session, for example.

Today marks what would have been Duke Ellington’s 120th birthday. Here’s the Pontiac-bred Hank Jones playing Ellington’s “Sophisticated Lady” in 1976. It comes from a tremendous solo piano LP, “Satin Doll,” issued on the Trio label in Japan. The record is an Ellington tribute with half the selections by Duke, though the title track was co-written with Billy Strayhorn. Note perfect — which you can see by following along with the transcription in the video 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUYQqQ7bFZ8

(Photo of Hank Jones at the 2009 Detroit Jazz Festival, by Kimberly Mitchell / Detroit Free Press)

Happy birthday to drummer Oliver Jackson, born in Detroit on April 28, 1933. The brother of bassist Ali Jackson, Oliver had a long and varied career. He could swing in any idiom, and he worked and recorded with pre-bop stars like Earl Hines, Buck Clayton and Coleman Hawkins as well as modernists Yusef Lateef, Will Davis, Kenny Burrell, Gene Ammons, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and others. He also was a member of the JPJ Quartet, a cooperative group in the ’70s with Budd Johnson, Bill Pemberton and others.  

Jackson, who died in 1994 at age 61, got off to a quick start. As a teenager in Detroit in the late ’40s, he was part of cooperative group with his brother on bass, pianist Roland Hanna, and saxophonist Joe Alexander. Especially intriguing is that Jackson teamed with fellow

The John Coltrane Quartet recorded one of its greatest masterpieces, “Crescent,” 55 years today on April 27, 1964. The quartet’s drummer, Elvin Jones, is one of my greatest heroes, and it’s incredibly meaningful to me that I was able to use a picture of him on the cover of “Jazz from Detroit.”

Here’s what Jones once told Whitney Balliett of the New Yorker about working with Coltrane.

“It seemed that all my life was a preparation for that period. Right from the beginning to the last time we played together, it was something pure. The most impressive thing was a feeling of steady, collective learning. Every night when we hit the bandstand— no matter if we’d come 500 or 1,000 miles— the weariness dropped from us. It was one of the most beautiful

In honor of what would have been Ella Fitzgerald’s 102nd birthday today, here’s some film of the singer with Detroiter Tommy Flanagan on piano in 1965. Tommy worked two major stretches with Ella for a total of 13 years — from 1963-65 and then again from 1968-78. (In between he worked with Tony Bennett.). Tommy also spent a month with Ella in the summer of 1956, not long after he arrived in New York. His first gig with her was in Cleveland. He was already nervous when at one point during the performance, Ella sidled up to the piano bench and sternly told him, “If it’s going to be like this, I’m getting out of the business.” 

Ouch.

But, clearly, by 1965,  she was more than happy with his playing. You can hear why in this Ellington medley. Tommy surrounds her

Happy birthday to tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, born April 24, 1937, in Lima Ohio, but who came of age musically on the Detroit scene while studying formally at Wayne State University between 1956 and 1960 — and informally with Barry Harris — and, of course, working regularly in local clubs.  I grew up idolizing Joe and heard him live many times before his untimely death in 2001. Joe was the first major jazz musician I interviewed for the Detroit Free Press in early 1996, after arriving at the paper the previous fall. I’m especially proud of the chapter about him in my book. Here’s a taste:

“To a degree unusual even for an art based on improvisation, a Joe Henderson solo is an adventure. His ideas burst out of his horn like Silly String. He’ll suspend time and