Steve Allen on the piano accompanied Jack Kerouac's first recorded poetry. They first performed the material together at the Village Vanguard two years earlier, and they only seemed to impress Kerouac who liked how his poetry sounded overtop Allen's improvisations.
Steve Allen made a career of improvisations overtop the structure of his own hard work. Although well-settled in radio by the late forties, he took any job he could in the new medium of television. In the early fifties, his popular reputation grew in large part to the familiar manner and quick wit he'd use as a wrestling announcer, as a guest host on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts and as a regular panelist on What's My Line? Besides being a television personality, he was a songwriter and musician. He released his debut album Steve Allen at the Piano in 1951 on Columbia Records.
The album, made up of highly embellished popular tunes, shows off his skill and only occasionally his wit.
Here is the discography surrounding Steve Allen's debut album:
Steve Allen at the Piano
Cinderella (Bebop's Fable) (1953 single)
Jack and the Beanstalk (Bebop's Fable) (1953 single)
Bebop's Fables (1953 EP)
But Officer (1953 single)
Piano Tonight! (1956 EP)
Tonight! Starring Steve Allen - The First Episode
"Cinderella" and "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" by Steve Allen
"'Round About Midnight" by the Thelonious Monk Quintet
Thelonious Monk worked to convince his record label Riverside to sign Johnny Griffin but lost out to the sentinels of modern jazz, Blue Note Records (Monk's own first label.) One of the pioneers of bebop, Thelonious Monk started recording as a bandleader in 1947 and releasing several singles that Blue Note Records eventually compiled into his 1951 debut album Genius of Modern Music.
Here is the discography surrounding Thelonious Monk's debut album:
Evonce (1948 single with his Sextet and Trio)
In Walked Bud (1948 single with his Quintet and Quartet)
'Round About Midnight (1948 single with his Quintet and Trio)
Thelonious (1948 single with his Sextet)
Who Knows (1948 single with his Quintet)
Humph (1949 single with his Sextet and Quartet)
Ruby My Dear (1949 single with his Trio and Quartet)
April in Paris (1950 single with his Trio)
Genius of Modern Music
Genius of Modern Music, Volume 1 (1956 expanded album re-release)
Sissle & Blake's stagework led to breakthroughs for a variety of black performers including Josephine Baker. Known primarily as a stage performer (singer/dancer/actress/comedienne), Baker had a fairly respectable recording career both in the United States and France. Like a lot of artists from the first half of the 20th century, her discography (here and elsewhere) is incomplete and her recording career was mostly over by the time albums came into vogue. Her first album here, Chansons Américaines released in 1951, is a compilation of a handful of her French singles from the 30s and 40s.
Here is the discography surrounding Josephine Baker's "debut" album:
I Wonder Where My Baby Is Tonight (1925 single)
Sleepy Time Gal (1925 single)
Who? (1925 single)
Feeling Kind of Blue (1926 single)
That Certain Feeling (1926 single)
Dinah (1926 single)
Bam Bam Bamy Shore (1926 single)
I Want to Yodel (1926 single)
You're the Only One for Me (1926 single)
I've Found a New Baby (1926 single)
Always (1926 single)
Skeedle Um (1926 single)
Breezing Along with the Breeze (1927 single)
Where'd You Get Those Eyes? (1927 single)
Then I'll Be Happy (1927 single)
Hello Bluebird (1927 single)
Blue Skies (1927 single)
He's the Last Word (1927 single)
Bye Bye Blackbird (1927 single)
The Loveliness of You (1927 single)
I Love Dancing (1927 single)
La petite tonkinoise (1930 single)
Pardon si je t'importune (1930 single)
Confessin' (1930 single)
Pretty Little Baby (1930 single)
You're Driving Me Crazy (1930 single)
Aux iles Hawaii (1930 single)
Voulez-vous de la canne a sucre? (1930 single)
Suppose! (1930 single)
Love Is a Dreamer (1931 single)
King for a Day (1931 single)
Sans amour (1932 single)
Si j'étais blanches (1932 single)
Madiana (1933 single)
Madiana (1933 single)
Haiti (1934 single)
Rêves (1935 single)
Sous le ciel d'afrique (1935 single)
Mayari (1936 single)
Nuits de Miami (1936 single)
Partir sur un bateau tout blanc (1936 single)
C'est un nid marchand (1937 single)
Afraid to Dream (1937 single)
I'm Feelin' Like a Million (1937 single)
Vous faites partie de moi (1937 single)
J'ai peur de rêver (1937 single)
Message for the Man in the Moon (1937 single)
J'ai un message pour toi (1937 single)
J'attends votre retour (1937 single)
Nuit d'alger (1937 single)
Sur deux notes (1939 single)
O mon Tommy (1940 single)
Brazil (1944 single)
L'amour est un jeu (1944 single)
Paris Chérie (1944 single)
Pardon si je t'importune (1944 single)
Paris, Paris (1949 single)
Minuit (1949 single)
Boneca de pixe (1949 single)
Y a pas trois moyens (1951 single) Chansons Américaines
Complete Recorded Works 1926-1927 (compilation album)
Clip from the film Zouzou starring Josephine Baker
Aside for being famous for being John Coltrane, John Coltrane was first famous for his remarkable collaboration with Miles Davis. Miles Davis picked up the trumpet at 13 and trained classically. Three years later, he was playing professionally as a freelance jazz trumpeter. Two years after that (in 1944), he got the chance to play with two of his greatest influences when Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker came to town and a third chair trumpeter got sick.
Miles would graduate high school and attend Juilliard to soon drop out after learning a thing or two. He jammed regularly with the upcoming crowd of New York jazz artists and sought to reconnect with Charlie Parker. He worked as a sideman and eventually joined both Dizzy's and Charlie's bands for a time. Although Miles was a comfortably slower and more reflective soloist, he naturally adapted to what was most popular at the time: bebop. His unique style, however, would eventually give birth to Cool (but more on that in a later update).
Besides revering Charlie Parker, he also took after Bird's heroin abuse. He was not as reliable as he would be after he kicked the drug, but he did begin recording under his own name and band (usually a sextet) starting in 1947. This led the release of his first 10" The New Sounds in 1951. (It is very important to note that this was not his first major recording session. A nonet he and composer Gil Evans formed recorded a different kind of jazz in the late forties. They played live shows to gauge audience interest but were met with an outspoken negativity that made sure the recordings would not be released until years later.)
Here is the discography surrounding Miles Davis's debut album:
Milestones (1946 single)
Half Nelson (1947 single)
Little Willie Leaps (1948 single)
Jeru (1949 single)
Move (1949 single)
Boplicity (1949 single)
Venus de Milo (1950 single)
Modern Jazz Trumpets (1951 compilation album)
Morpheus (1951 single)
Down (1951 single)
Dig (1951 single)
Conception (1951 single) The New Sounds
