Stan Kenton | Artist

Stanley Kenton was an American popular music and big-band jazz artist born 1911 in Wichita, Kansas. As a pianist, composer, arranger and band leader, he led an innovative and influential jazz orchestra for almost four decades. Though Kenton had several pop hits from the early 1940s into the 1960s, his music was always forward-looking. Kenton moved to California in his teens and started learning piano in high school where he was introduced to the music of Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines. By the age of 16, Kenton was already playing a regular solo piano gig at a local hamburger eatery for 50 cents a night plus tips; during that time he had his own performing group named "The Bell-Tones". In April 1936 Gus Arnheim was reorganising his band into the style of Benny Goodman's groups and Kenton was to take the piano chair. From the core of this group came the line up of the first Stan Kenton groups of the 1940s. Kenton would also go on to work with the NBC House Band and in various Hollywood studios and clubs, before forming his own Stan Kenton Orchestra which was one of the four longest running touring jazz orchestras, along with Woody Herman, Count Basie and Duke Ellington. Kenton was a salient figure on the American musical scene and made an indelible mark on the arranged type of big band jazz. Kenton's music evolved with the times from 1940 through the 1970s. He was at the vanguard of promoting jazz and jazz improvisation. Among Kenton's 70 studio albums and 60 live albums, standouts include New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm (1953), Cuban Fire! (1956), Kenton in HI-FI (1956), and Adventures in Jazz (1962) which won the Grammy award for the best Jazz album of 1962.

Artist Website: wikipedia/Stan_Kenton

Featured Albums: Stan Kenton

Related Artists: Stan Kenton Orchestra

Video Clips: Artistry in Rhythm, London 1972, Opus in Pastels