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Top Jazz Artists on Rhapsody Online

Billie Holiday
Long since gone, Lady Day still casts a spell. Like her musical alter ego, Frank Sinatra, interest in her personal life threatens to overshadow her importance to jazz and pop. Forget the tragedy, listen to the music. Holiday's attention to phrasing has influenced generations of singers and players. With her trademark gardenia in her hair, she advanced the art of singing by adding personal nuance and detail to each number. She practiced a subtle craft, telling a story with each lyric...her story. But even if all you speak is Esperanto, she has enough musicianship to duet with the likes of Lester Young and Ben Webster. Like them, her music dazzles with emotion, not empty gymnastics. - NDEDINA
Ella Fitzgerald
Thought by many to be the greatest female jazz singer ever, Ella Fitzgerald enjoyed unparalleled success via such standards as "Lady be Good" and "I Get a Kick Out of You." At home fronting both large orchestras and intimate string sections, Fitzgerald's greatest strength was her stirring ability to use her voice as a virtual musical instrument in much the same way Benny Goodman controlled his clarinet or Charlie Parker played his saxophone -- notes were hit so quickly and elegantly that their accuracy boggled mind and ear alike. In a career that spanned seven decades, Ella Fitzgerald was the portrait of vocal mastery and jazz improvisation. - CHODGKINS
Nina Simone
You may know the unique Simone's piano and searing, androgynous voice from commercials and movies, but your parents know her from LPs and swanky boites. - NDEDINA
Duke Ellington
The contributions Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington has made to American music cannot be overstated. Ellington led an earthshaking big band with musicians that helped shape jazz and his charts influenced countless arrangers. He wrote dozens of what are now considered standards while he continued to explore and experiment with longer suites. Ellington could produce a great swing song, then a ballad, and then follow it up with an avant-garde orchestral piece -- all of equal quality. On his own, Ellington was a powerhouse who used members of his orchestra like a painter uses colors and optimized the talents and sounds of each musician. When Billy Strayhorn joined him as a co-arranger, songwriter and piano player, their combined talents led the orchestra to even greater heights. When Duke Ellington was asked to define jazz he replied, "there are only two kinds of music, good and bad." The Duke just may have created more "good" music than anyone in history. - NDEDINA
Herbie Hancock
Just out of knee-pants, Hancock hit the jazz world after performing Mozart with the Chicago Symphony at age eleven. Hancock's piano became a fixture of the New York club and studio scene after he graduated with degrees in music and electrical engineering. His first solo albums at age twenty-one embraced Soul, gospel-infused Hard Bop, and cerebral Post Bop (Hancock is the kind of artist who can pen the groovy club hit "Watermelon Man" and turn around and record the sweeping album Maiden Voyage without seeming to break a sweat). He joined Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis, released groundbreaking soundtrack work like Blow Up, established the Electro-Funk template with Head Hunters, and won an Academy Award for his work on Round Midnight. Today, Hancock continues to look to the future while celebrating music from several centuries and cultures. - NDEDINA
Oscar Peterson
The bright, tittering twinkle of Peterson's blindingly fast, liquid lines is on par with Art Tatum, and has made him one of the greatest of all jazz pianists. As one of Verve's house musicians, Peterson has backed a who's who of jazz for producer Norman Granz. He also set the standard for piano trio playing, originally forming a group with equally gifted and tasteful bassist Ray Brown and guitarists Barney Kessel and Herb Ellis. He later replaced guitar with drums (often played by Ed Thigpen), and Peterson's sound was copied by countless pianists with varying degrees of success. Equally at home in a solo setting or with an orchestra, Peterson filled any session in which he participated with effervescent joy and abundant technique -- coating everything in his sparkling, romantic and immutable manner of playing. - JTERRY
Buddy Collette
History was rewritten when Los Angeles' West Coast bop scene was stereotyped as "white jazz." But L.A. had a thriving black community that included native Angelinos and transplants like Benny Carter, Charles Mingus, Nat Cole, Hampton Hawes and Buddy Collette. Collette mastered all the woodwinds, including the tenor and alto saxophone, and he also helped make the flute an accepted jazz instrument. Collette came to fame playing with Chico Hamilton's chamber-jazz group. A favorite among jazz fans, Collette's work is also known from dates with vocalists such as Peggy Lee, Mel Torme, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Nancy Wilson, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, childhood friend Charles Mingus and many more. Along with Benny Carter and "Sweets" Edison, Collette was one of the first black musicians to break into Hollywood's once-segregated recording studios. - NDEDINA
Louis Armstrong
"The Reverend Satchelmouth is the beginning and the end of music in America." So said Bing Crosby and how right he was because Armstrong is the single most important figure in twentieth century popular music. If there's an artist who wasn't directly influenced by his astounding improvisations, and most importantly, his phrasing, then he was influenced by those who were. Armstrong did more with time, nuance, and personality than whole armies of musicians. But forget about influencing others -- if his music doesn't fill you with tingles of joy and delight then you just may be dead. And don't fret if you are six feet under; Pops will be serenading you in heaven. For how can there be a heaven without Louis? - NDEDINA
Vince Guaraldi
You love Vince Guaraldi's piano jazz whether you know it or not. Guaraldi wrote and performed the delightful scores for the Peanuts cartoons. This San Francisco native added his hard hitting yet sensitive piano skills to Cal Tjader's Latin Jazz band after a stint with the great Woody Herman. Guaraldi's keyboard style mixed the beauty of Bill Evans' melodic explorations with Horace Silver or Ramsey Lewis' crowd pleasing funkiness. He formed his own trio and had a Top-40 hit with "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" in 1963. His sublime work on the Peanuts television specials got no finer than on A Charlie Brown Christmas, which brings a touch of bittersweet tenderness to holiday cheer. Though he died young at the age of forty-seven in 1976, Guaraldi had already made his musical mark. - NDEDINA
Kenny G
Kenny G has single-handedly transformed jazz into a genre that actually sells records in numbers normally associated with modern pop stars (over 30 million sold so far). Unlike such Smooth Jazz pioneers as Grover Washington Jr. and David Sanborn, however, Kenny G only concentrates on what the mass public likes and doesn't branch out from what is expected of him. His melodies are of the most gentle breed, churning out endless hits and assisting in the conception of many children. A master of the ancient art of circular breathing, Kenny G also holds the record for holding a single note longer than any other musician. - JTERRY
Tony Bennett
The resurgence of Tony Bennett to the top of the charts was one of the most gratifying surprises of the 1990s. Bennett was a (very big) cog in the Columbia hit machine of the '50s and '60s and he had to fight Mitch Miller tooth and nail to do the jazz albums and classy material he loved. He toured extensively with Duke Ellington and become the first white star to record with Count Basie. The cream of this era is collected on the exceptional Jazz, a compilation which also features Art Blakey, Stan Getz, and Bennett's main ivory tinkler, Ralph Sharon. A few years after "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," Bennett got knocked down during the acid rock wave of the late '60s but he answered back with his own label, Improv and cut two great albums with Bill Evans. Always a warm and good-humored singer, age and experience took the brassy edge off Bennett's voice and he decided to stick with jazz accompaniment. In the late '80s he recorded with Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie and George Benson, and slowly rebuilt his base. The '90s MTV generation took to Bennett's music and his unruffled cool personality in a very big way. His music is timeless. - NDEDINA
Miles Davis
Arguably, no single artist has changed the face of modern music so profoundly, and so many times, as Miles Davis. As Charlie "Yardbird" Parker was busy revolutionizing the jazz world with his stripped-down, freewheeling style called Bop, he invited the young Davis to join him in the mid-1940s. Miles played with Bird for three years before going on to wage his own Cool Jazz revolution, fronting a nine-piece ensemble and creating lush, orchestral arrangements for Birth of the Cool. Due to drug addiction, a fallow period ensued in the early '50s, but Davis returned to the fore with renewed vigor and a new quintet in 1954. The Miles Davis Quintet, including John Coltrane on tenor sax, set new standards for what jazz could represent, achieving a popularity previously thought unattainable in the eclectic realm of jazz. Further milestones lay ahead for Davis -- his groundbreaking orchestral work with his musical soul mate Gil Evans, the recording of the most popular jazz album ever (Kind of Blue), further endeavors with another pivotal quintet in the '60s and finally, the fathering of the Free Improvisation and Funk-tinged riffs and grooves of the Fusion age with Bitches Brew. Through it all, Davis was the consummate professional and master innovator, never pausing to look back while constantly building upon his notoriously irrepressible momentum. - NENELOW
Glenn Miller
Glenn Miller put a whole nation "In the Mood." Miller led the most successful big band of the Swing era -- not a bad accomplishment considering that a strong sense of swing was the only thing this trombonist lacked. Thankfully, Miller corralled a wonderful group of musicians and arrangers and had hit after deserving hit during the War years. The era of Bobby Soxers and rationing may be over but "Moonlight Serenade," "Pennsylvania 6-5000," and the evergreen "In the Mood" have been embraced by the new generation of Lindy Hoppers. The man himself died when his plane was shot down over the English Channel, but his band continues in one form or another to this day. Critics still debate whether Miller was a jazz musician or not, but nobody ever questions how good he was at what he did. - NDEDINA
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra transformed popular music. Often cited as the single finest interpreter of American standards, he influenced generations of vocalists such as Nat King Cole and Carmen McRae by focusing on phrasing and matching narrative nuance and emotional naturalism with amazing breathing control. In the 1930s, Sinatra starting bringing back "old" songs by such masters as Cole Porter while he was still a Big Band singer. He became a national institution in the '40s, and even though Ray Charles has praised the flawless technique of this Columbia period, Sinatra kept evolving. Starting in the '50s he concentrated on groundbreaking concept albums and a fresh Big Band sound with master arranger Nelson Riddle. Sinatra explored every nuance of emotion on these Capitol and Reprise albums and influenced the work of Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee. Beginning in the '70s, when rock ruled, his voice and output became erratic but some brilliant work remains. Though Sinatra always viewed himself as a popular singer, jazz musicians hold his work in the highest esteem. Miles Davis and Lester Young often interpreted standards through his versions and avant-gardist John Zorn has said that in his own way, Frank Sinatra was as much a jazz improviser as Charlie Parker. - NDEDINA
Dave Koz
Take Kenny G, add a bit of David Sanborn's soulful sound, and you have Dave Koz's lightly bouncing saxophone instrumentals. A consistent chart-topper, his sales are the envy of every jazz musician, and much of his music is funkier and brighter than what often plays on Smooth Jazz radio. Koz is also a popular, award winning disc jockey. - NDEDINA
Norah Jones
This young singer and pianist has so much talent that she can't be contained by one genre of music. The American-born, Texas-bred daughter of Indian music legend Ravi Shankar has after-hours jazz, soul, country, blues and folk music at her command, and combines each with natural, dreamy ease. It's almost as if Rickie Lee Jones or Diana Krall were recording for an absinthe-soaked 4AD label that specialized in Americana. Some of our greatest artists -- from Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles, from Elvis to the Beatles -- were genres onto themselves, and it's refreshing to see a performer as young as Jones craft her own sound and style. Blue Note Records signed her in hopes of slowly building her into the kind of crossover jazz success that the Verve label has enjoyed with Diana Krall and Cassandra Wilson. But it didn't turn out quite that way: the buzz around Jones's debut, 2002's Come Away With Me, was so enthusiastic that the album eventually became one of the biggest sellers of the new millennium. Blue Note wisely chose not to try to make her even more successful and left Jones and her band to their own devices for 2004's Feels Like Home, a slightly darker return to the sophisticated but comforting acoustic sound of her debut. Jones and her band avoided the sophomore slump with the album, which hit the gates as a massive hit and further secured her career in music. In early 2007, Jones released Not Too Late, her first all self-penned set. She also performs regularly with other bands and musicians, including the Little Willies, Peter Malick (she appears on every track of his New York Cityalbum), jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter, electronica band Wax Poetic, and a number of her heroes, among them Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band. - NDEDINA
John Coltrane
John Coltrane's recording career took off with his work with Miles Davis' Quintet in 1955 and in '56, he began recording his first solo material. He began a serious investigation of harmony, which culminated in his seminal '59 LP Giant Steps. Coltrane's warp-speed sonic attack on this album was called by the critics but his playing kept evolving. In '61, he solidified the lineup of a new quartet with pianist McCoy Tyner, bassist Jimmy Garrison, and drummer Elvin Jones. Their playing was largely modal, based on the approach Coltrane had learned with Miles Davis. In the years that followed, the group began pushing towards total freedom. At the same time, Coltrane began to tackle more spiritual themes, which one can hear on the two suites A Love Supreme and Meditations. By his untimely death in 1967, Coltrane had moved entirely into free-form improvisation; yet even in his most chaotic playing one senses a higher purpose. John Coltrane was both a deeply spiritual person and a relentless stylistic innovator, who demolished the boundaries of jazz in search of transcendence. - NENELOW
Pat Metheny
Pat Metheny is one of the most bipolar of modern musicians, jumping from gentle Crossover Jazz with smooth synthesizers to wild Free Jazz explorations. Metheny is unafraid of taking chances. After a string of Latin-influenced, synth-heavy hits that filled concert halls, he released Zero Tolerance for Silence, an album featuring forty minutes of feedback noise. As a soloist, Metheny is among the top modern guitarists, using his lightly chorused electric guitar to play startlingly original chromatic lines with exceptionally tasteful phrasing. He has worked with countless artists, but collaborations with Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, Gary Burton and Ornette Coleman stand out as noteworthy. Metheny may also be responsible for fusing Heavy Metal and jazz -- at least in terms of his hairstyle decisions. - JTERRY
Chet Baker
Chet Baker, more than ten years after his mysterious death, is more popular than ever. Baker was an extremely handsome young man and this, coupled with his reckless, drug-addled life, earned him the tag the James Dean of Jazz. But even after he lost his looks, Baker's trumpet and vocals continued to spellbind. Jazz snobs like to forget that Charlie Parker chose Baker to be his West Coast foil or that it was Dizzy Gillespie who talked Baker into returning to the trumpet in the '70s after his teeth were knocked out. Baker hit the big time at a very young age, with Gerry Mulligan's groundbreaking piano-less quartet that made a name for West Coast jazz. Baker's trumpet style owed a lot to Miles Davis (though, Baker never used a mute and was ashamed when he beat out Clifford Brown in jazz polls) and his pleasant, thin vocals were just as introspective and well-phrased. - NDEDINA
Najee
Though he's not quite on the plane of Kenny G, Najee still ranks among the most popular of the post-Grover Washington, Jr. Smooth Jazz sax players. He hit on a commercially successful formula with his 1987 debut Najee's Theme and has stuck closely to it ever since. His recordings are full-scale productions, employing large casts of drum programmers, vocalists, and keyboardists to back up his vapory soprano sax and flute melodies. His 1995 recording Songs From the Key of Life was something of an exception, as it added a little more muscle as well as a few touches of improvisation and some relatively creative string and horn arrangements. In general though, he likes to keep things smooth, polished and predictable, and that's why he's sold so many records over the years. - WYORK
Benny Goodman
OK, Benny Goodman looked like a nerdy accountant. So what? Listen to his music...he always swung like Jayne Mansfield in capri pants. Goodman's cutting-edge clarinet chops were so strong that they propelled him to stardom in 1935 and officially launched the swing scene in popular culture. An all around tough cookie (and reputed to be difficult to work with), Goodman nevertheless hired interracial groups, working with the finest musicians (Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, Charlie Christian), and blazed a trail for big bands and small jazz outfits through his various incarnations. In the late '40s, he incorporated Bop into his sound and continued to grow, working with such modernists as Herbie Hancock. Swing revivalists take note: Goodman makes Brian Setzer sound like Guy Lombardo. - NDEDINA
Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole's great piano work with his jazz trio got overshadowed by his massive vocal success in the 1950s yet each phase of his career offers up so many riches that it proves that the lines between jazz and popular music just don't matter. Cole's easygoing vocals during the '40s matched his piano style charm for charm and his "lock-handed" approach and supple arrangements influenced everyone from Oscar Peterson to Diana Krall. But by the early 1950s, Cole weaned himself from the trio when his orchestrated and Big Band records sold in the millions. Thankfully, Cole's dreamy vocals just kept getting better and better when he didn't have the keyboard to preoccupy him and his concept albums for Capitol rank up there with Frank Sinatra's and Peggy Lee's in complete perfection. "Perfection" may just be the only word that can describe the true King's music. - NDEDINA
George Benson
George Benson is a stunning guitarist whose jazz work is too far out for pop audiences and whose pop work is often too mainstream for jazz fans. Benson was a child prodigy who hit the professional circuit at age 8 with a homemade guitar (any jazz snob who questions his future pop output didn't grow up poor) and a pure Soul voice. He consumed the different styles of Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery and Grant Green, put his own spin on them and was noted for often scatting over his guitar lines as he solos. He went on to record with Jack McDuff, Jimmy Smith, Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock before hitting it big with a series of top-shelf Fusion jazz albums on CTI. His vocal on "This Masquerade" and his guitar instrumental "Breezin'" both became deserving mega-hits in the 1970s. After a period in the '80s as an R&B star, Benson moved into position as a Smooth Jazz elder statesman. It's a position he holds to this day, but Benson still displays his "pure" jazz chops in concert and increasingly on his albums. - NDEDINA
Dave Brubeck
With his unique piano style and songwriting abilities, Dave Brubeck earned the respect of such lofty peers as Miles Davis, Charles Mingus and Cecil Taylor. During much of his career the jazz snobs have been less kind, but they're coming around to the fact that this snubbing was never really about Brubeck's music. As a matter of fact, most of the negative jazz press he received was due to the fact that Brubeck found fame and fortune by taking jazz from the nightclub to the college campus, and because he openly embraced avant-garde classical structure in his pieces. The fact that Brubeck made it onto the cover of Time before Armstrong or Ellington didn't help, but Brubeck's career is clearly long overdue for a re-evaluation. Whether playing lyrical standards, composing complex extended works or jamming with his peers, Brubeck has always taken the artistic high road and done it his way. He shared a special bond with his sublime sax player Paul Desmond, and their tune "Take Five" from his milestone album Time Out became a surprise hit single and remains a standard to this day. - NDEDINA
Diana Krall
Thanks to her maturely seductive voice, subtle piano chops, and a deep-rooted familiarity with the classic American songbook, Diana Krall is good enough to have earned the attention of older Vocal Jazz fans looking for a throwback to the good old days. But more importantly, she's also caught the collective ear of a younger audience nostalgic for a past they've never experienced. Ranging from swinging piano trios a la early Nat King Cole to the string-enhanced sophistication of 1998's Grammy-nominated When I Look in Your Eyes, her output drew almost entirely from a body of songs penned before she was born. That changed somewhat when she co-wrote (with husband Elvis Costello) most of the songs on The Girl In the Other Room. Krall gives refreshingly unmannered performances, using her vocal and piano skills to sell standards and not herself. She's now topped the traditional jazz charts longer than any other artist in history. While Krall isn't an innovator, she doesn't need to be. Diana Krall's classy take on classic material shows that jazz still speaks to modern, mainstream audiences. - WYORK
Ray Charles
Heaven and earth battle it out in the music of Ray Charles, who combined gospel with the best of secular music and helped give birth to soul, rock, and hard bop. His early work showed the silky influences of the Nat "King" Cole trio and the piano blues great Charles Brown. Charles combined their sophisticated styles with R&B and gritty gospel to create his signature sound: hard, snappy piano combined with exquisite vocals that fall somewhere between a preacher gone bad and a yearning romantic balladeer. Charles absorbed styles like a sponge: big band jazz, country and pop were all added to his musical arsenal, and he built up a musical empire that kept him in the public eye for decades up until his untimely death, at the age of 73, in June 2004. Just prior to his passing, Charles cut his first duets record with such fans as Norah Jones, Willie Nelson, and Elton John, which illustrates a multi-generational sampling of the artists who list him as a prime influence. An American institution, Ray Charles' rendition of "Georgia on My Mind" has even become that state's anthem. If only the other 49 states could be as fortunate. - NDEDINA
Peggy Lee
Peggy Lee gives everybody "Fever." She brought a certain sizzle to her Big Band canary days with Benny Goodman, and attained star status while on Decca and Capitol Records in the '50s. Lee continued as the reigning cult goddess of vocal jazz and pop until her death in 2002. - NDEDINA
Stan Getz
So unique was Stan Getz's saxophone sound that his solo on "Early Autumn" catapulted him to stardom in 1948 (his tone was so unique that he was nicknamed "The Sound" and even Coltrane wished he could play like him). Getz was at first influenced by Lester Young (and he was deservedly famous for the way he played ballads) but he quickly fell under bop's spell and his disarming versatility that enabled him to shine in Swing, Cool, or Avant-Garde jazz contexts. Just as his popularity was beginning to wane in the early 1960s, he scored massive hits with his Bossa Nova work, introducing the sultry South American-derived rhythms to a global audience. Getz remained on top for the rest of his life. - NDEDINA
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan first amazed Bop musicians and the public when she was a teenager singing with Billie Eckstine's big band. She earned the nickname "Sassy" for her salty tongue, but Vaughan quickly became known as the "Divine One" for her awe-inspiring vocal abilities. Vaughan had a multi-octave range that she could employ with (seemingly) wild abandon or with surgical precision to get at the core of a song and during the 1950s and '60s she cut a remarkable mix of trio, Big Band and orchestral albums for the Mercury label. Whether Vaughan reconfigured the melody of a standard, sang a show tune straight, or slowed a ballad down to a crawl, the song became her own. She had the same struggles as other star vocalists when jazz was bumped from the pop scene in the mid-1960s but she rebounded nicely in the '70s with a great string of recordings on the Pablo label. While Sarah Vaughan remains one of the most influential singers in jazz and pop history -- Anita Baker, Dianne Reeves and others still carry her torch -- no one has ever topped her at her own game. - NDEDINA
Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Sphere Monk was an iconoclast of the jazz community, a brilliant composer/pianist whose relentlessly quirky music has been putting smiles on people's faces long after his death. While he played with many groups through the 1940s, it wasn't until '47 that Monk began his solo odyssey. Outside the Bebop mainstream, Monk was busy concocting his own brew of witty, angular melodies with unorthodox and difficult chord progressions, and deeply swinging, Stride-influenced rhythm. In larger combos, Monk was a brilliant, if erratic, accompanist. His approach was wildly diverse, encompassing harmonically dense riffing, startlingly dissonant counterpoint, and complete silence. He was even known to get up and dance around the piano during his bandmates' solos. Monk was also a master at choosing sidemen; on his 1957 recording Monk's Music, he placed the passionate Post Bop explorations of John Coltrane alongside the gruff proto-Swing of Coleman Hawkins. A genius of modern music, indeed. - NENELOW
Peter White
While most smooth jazz guitarists use George Benson as their model, Englishman Peter White has learned more from Earl Klugh's easygoing, less R&B-focused approach. White can lay down webs of fluid flamenco one moment, and then pluck perfectly chosen solitary notes the next. His albums usually do well on the contemporary jazz charts, and he's also an in-demand sideman who regularly records with Rick Braun, Richard Elliot and Basia. - NDEDINA
Boney James
Boney James has become a star by adding a touch of R&B muscle to the patented Kenny G saxophone style. James has yet to cut a solo album on par with the best of Grover Washington Jr. or Dave Sanborn, but his collaborations with Rick Braun rank among the finest Smooth Jazz being cut today. - NDEDINA
Bill Evans
Bill Evans somehow learned to distill beauty from the air and make it pure. His crystalline, impressionistic touch on the piano produced ballads to dive into deeply. Though he could be a mainstream, swinging jazz pianist, his faster pieces could also be less accessible, jagged and angular. Evans was an in-demand sideman in the late 1950s and was one of the main creative catalysts behind Miles Davis' Kind of Blue album. He preferred to work with his own trio (his piano/bass/drums recordings are among the most influential in modern jazz), but he also recorded stellar albums with Jim Hall, Stan Getz, and Tony Bennett. On his own, he multi-tracked Conversations with Myself, yet another milestone. Despite his scholarly image, Evans was plagued with drug addiction for the majority of his adult life. He passed away, much too soon, in 1980. - NDEDINA
Spyro Gyra
Sergio Mendes
One of the leading lights of bossa nova's crossover into America, Sergio Mendes came of age in an era when Tom Jobim and JoÃÂ£o Gilberto were leading Brazil towards international acclaim, and jazz musicians from around the world were flocking to the South American country for the "new sound of bossa nova." Heavily influenced by Jobim, Mendes was the best-selling Brazilian artist in the United States by the mid-1960s. His music took a turn toward light jazz, and Mendes explored numerous pop hits of the era in that idiom, including the Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" and Simon and Garfunkle's "Scarborough Fair." - SBARDEEN
Harry Connick, Jr.
A gifted singer, pianist and actor, Harry Connick Jr. was poised to become one of the biggest stars of the 1990s. While that didn't quite happen, Connick is big -- both as an performer and actor. A native of New Orleans, he was a child prodigy who fell in love with jazz piano, and the rich musical legacy of his hometown has always informed his work. After moving to New York City, the handsome and charismatic Connick took a friend's advice and threw on some retro duds, he quickly landed a major recording contract. Connick's first two albums were jazz piano affairs, but when his pseudo-soundtrack for When Harry Met Sally (done in Frank Sinatra's patented 1950s Swingin' Lovers style) became a surprise smash hit that stayed atop the jazz charts for years, Connick kept the Sinatra thing going for a while. Then came an ill-advised but heartfelt New Orleans R&B detour. His old school R&B wasn't embarrassing, but since he'd always incorporated the feel of the city into much of his work, it did feel a bit redundant. When Connick returned to jazz-based pop music with 1997's To See You, one could hear his renewed enthusiasm - in fact, his recordings from this point on are often better and more exciting than some of his earlier, better-selling releases. Many critics have failed to see (or hear) how much Connick's singing, songwriting and piano playing have matured over the years. His single greatest development may be in the unheralded field of arrangements; his imaginative band charts on albums such as Come By Me and Songs I Heard show an originality and spark that would earn him acclaim in the jazz world if he weren't a pop star. At the same time, Connick take pains to strip all the other instruments away and show off his uncompromising jazz piano playing, often on Branford Marsalis' label. In 2007, he returned to New Orleans for Oh, My Nola, an album that contains all the verve and fire that his earlier efforts in the style sometimes lacked. - NDEDINA
Dinah Washington
A great jazz and pop vocalist who excelled at the blues, Dinah Washington had a sharp, powerful voice that she wielded with knife-like precision. Washington's open and direct (yet smartly controlled) style was extremely popular throughout the 1950s with black audiences, and by the late-'50s she had crossed over to the white pop market with big hits such as "What A Diff'rence A Day Makes," which combined a jazz and blues feel with Nashville-style arrangements. Washington loved after hour jam sessions, and also released a stellar series of jazz albums on Mercury (now Verve Records) that included many of the greatest musicians of the day. Known for her full figure, strong personality, hard-living lifestyle, and multiple marriages, Washington was something of an Elisabeth Taylor/Marilyn Monroe for the African-American community: always in the news, she was almost as famous for newspaper headlines, funny quips, and her fun fashion sense as she was for her music. She died of an accidental overdose while going on a crash diet in December 1963. Washington rightly remains extremely popular in jazz and vocal circles, and she's a major influence on R&B in general and artists such as Ray Charles, Etta James and Aretha Franklin in particular. - NDEDINA
Dr. John
Before making his name as a major New Orleans pianist, Dr. John was known as Mac Rebennack, a successful session guitarist who was forced to find a new instrument after being accidentally shot in the hand. As Dr. John, he garnered a reputation for performing in all-out Mardi Gras regalia, bringing a theatrical aspect to his shows that surprisingly never detracted from his soulful music. His hearty vocals have a thick Louisiana twang filtered through deep, earthy grit, while his rollicking keyboard and piano playing travel from home-style New Orleans R&B and jazz to spaced-out psychedelia, mixed into a secret musical gumbo that no one has quite figured out. He's probably best known for his '70s classic "Right Place, Wrong Time," a song that reached new levels of stripped-down voodoo Funk and was boosted by the help of supreme Cajun groovers, the Meters. - JTERRY
Jamiroquai
Along with many other soul-jazz bands coming out of London in the '90s, Jamiroquai (and groups like The James Taylor Quartet) gave critics a good reason to come up with a new genre for the burgeoning electronic sound in jazz. The result was "Acid Jazz" and Jamiroquai's 1993 debut "Emergency on Planet Earth" became a key album for the style and led the band to quickly sign an outstanding eight album deal with Sony. The "Stevie Wonder sounding" lead vocalist and bandleader Jason "Jay" Kay sports a trendy earth conscious lifestyle and has an addiction for fast cars, space traveling and funked-out space disco. - PGAVIN
Buena Vista Social Club
This Cuban musicians' collective has played together for over half a century, and it shows. Stylistically, they span the entire spectrum of Afro-Cuban music. Deliciously slow bolero ballads and majestic danzones feature the swell of strings, while background vocals conveying messages of romance hide behind arrestingly beautiful melodies. Buena Vista Social Club's most influential style is the exuberant, polyrhythmic music known as son, which gave birth to both Mambo and Salsa. These upbeat numbers are full of infectious guitar licks, multilayered Afro-Cuban rhythms, soaring vocal melodies, and brash, Big Band-style horn parts. - NENELOW
Anita Baker
Anita Baker was one of the defining talents of the '80s, a singer who stepped outside the current of the pop mainstream and rose to the top of the charts with a combination of good songwriting, lovely production, and a highly distinctive vocal style. A Detroit legal secretary-cum-chanteuse, Baker layered her seductive, rich voice over highly relaxed accompaniment, creating songs that defined the best of mid-'80s Quiet Storm. Baker's voice is enough to keep you awake, though, and songs such as "Rapture" and "Sweet Love" offer plenty to this day. - SBARDEEN
Quincy Jones
Many today just know Quincy Jones as a recording industry powerhouse, but in the 1950s and '60s he was an in-demand jazz arranger as well as the man who blazed a path for future African Americans in the movie studios and record companies. Jones grew up in Seattle and learned how to read music from the blind (!) Ray Charles as a teen. He went on to play trumpet and write arrangements for the orchestras of Lionel Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie and Ray Charles. In 1957, French record company Barclay records snatched him up as an executive and from there he went on to the Mercury label. At the same time, he recorded with the awesome Quincy Jones Big Band. It contained the finest musicians and combined the streamlined swing of Count Basie with the sounds of Hard Bop. Jones was all over the place during this period, working with many artists and singers such as Sarah Vaughan and Frank Sinatra. Jones started working on film and television soundtracks to great success. In the '70s he got funky (like everybody else) and slowly withdrew to the business side of music. But every once in a while, he comes back out. Today, his work shows the common threads found in jazz, Funk, pop, and rap. - NDEDINA
Bela Fleck
Widely acknowledged as one of the world's most innovative and technically proficient banjo players, Fleck formed the Flecktones in the early '90s and then proceeded to smash any preconceived notion about what a banjo could or couldn't do. Fleck began playing banjo in high school in New York City. From the beginning he attempted to apply the theories and principles of Bebop to the instrument, blending them in with his already formidable Bluegrass talents. He spent the '80s as part of the Newgrass Revival, a group of virtuoso string band musicians intent on freeing themselves from the limitations of the genre. In the Flecktones he's supported by electric drums, electric bass and a number of keyboard instruments, and the music is really closer to Fusion jazz than anything else. The band is a major concert attraction and their records have -- surprisingly enough -- appeared on the charts and sold in impressive numbers. - THEYMAN
Nancy Wilson
A highly successful and respected jazz and soul singer, Nancy Wilson bridges the gap between the classic pop vocal era of Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald and the belting R&B divas of today. Though Nancy Wilson has always cited the emotionally naked, androgynous vocal style of Jimmy Scott as her primary influence, her voice carries definite echoes of Dinah Washington and Sarah Vaughan. Yet Wilson also has always had a strong feeling for post-Sam Cooke soul and the tartness of her delivery carries more than an echo of the sometimes-icy Lena Horne. Young and heart-stoppingly beautiful, Wilson was discovered singing in a N.Y.C. jazz club in the late 1950s by Cannonball Adderley, who told his management at Capitol Records that they needed to scoop her up before another label did. Wilson was immediately signed and started recording for Capitol, the premier vocal label of the 1950s and '60s. She released a couple of very respectable LPs with star arranger Billy May but actually crossed over to radio and the pop charts with two small group jazz platters with her bestselling label mates (one with George Shearing (The Swinging's Mutual) and the other with Cannonball Adderley). Catapulted to the pop stratosphere, Wilson was the bestselling artist on Capitol Records' roster (beating out everyone from Nat King Cole to the Beach Boys) until the Beatles crossed the pond and eclipsed everything and everybody in their culture-changing wake. Other fine albums from this '60s period include Yesterday's Love Songs, Today's Blues and But Beautiful, a jazz ballad set led by pianist Hank Jones. In the '70s and '80s, Nancy Wilson slowly made the transition from pop star to adult contemporary soul singer. From the 1990s to the present day, Wilson returned to alternating jazz standards, quiet storm and adult contemporary ballads, while putting on a sensational jazz show in concert. The longevity of Wilson's career and the continuing strength of her voice are almost unheard of in modern pop music, though her career -- and her affinity with jazz, blues and soul -- shares many parallels with one-time Capitol labelmate Lou Rawls. - NDEDINA
Melody Gardot
Melody Gardot's life story is so movie-of-the-week that it would dominate her music if her work wasn't so strong. At age 19, Gardot barely survived a hit-and-run accident that left her permanently disabled, ultra-sensitive to light and noise (thus the dark glasses and earplugs) and in constant pain. (She also uses a cane, has special seating and wears a TENS device, which helps with nerve pain.) The music therapy she underwent not only helped her regain her memory, language and fine motors skills (she learned to play guitar while lying flat in bed), it also made her realize an unshakable passion. Her first EP came out while she was still in the hospital and her first full-length was released soon after. Worrisome Heart was a solid addition to the jazzy singer-songwriter revival. Gardot occupies a comfortable middle ground between Norah Jones' mellow jazz, Inara George's whimsical indie pop and Tom Waits' early beatnik retro vibe. Her follow-up, My One and Only Thrill, was an even greater leap forward. A ravishing torch set, the album proved the singer-songwriter to be an old world talent for the 21st century. - NDEDINA
Earl Klugh
This acoustic guitarist instantly became one of the top artists in contemporary and smooth jazz with his debut album in 1976. Earl Klugh's style: supple, flowing, Spanish-tinged, hasn't changed through the years but that isn't a bad thing since he lets his backing tracks absorb the styles of the times while he spins out his signature guitar lines. Klugh's recordings continue to sell to pop audiences while older jazz fans still remember first hearing Klugh's beautiful acoustic guitar work on George Benson's excellent White Rabbit. - NDEDINA
Jamie Cullum
Already the biggest selling British jazz artist of all time, Jamie Cullum quickly crossed over into the pop world with a sound that marries superior piano chops with an upbeat variation on confessional 1970s singer-songwriter material. Unlike the stereotype of introspective singer-songwriters, Jamie Cullum's extroverted personality marries high energy, old-fashioned showmanship with breezy English wit. A professional since his formative years, he learned to captivate diffident pub and pizza joint audiences with a frenetic: "Look over here! I'll do anything to entertain you!" performing style. This works because the pianist actually has the talent to pull just about anything off and a self-deprecating wit that stops him from looking like a show-off. While he is a kinetic swing-to-bop pianist, he's developed a vocal style that recalls Billy Joel more than Frank Sinatra, which helps distinguish him from the post-Harry Connick Jr. pack of retro-pianists and crooners. Seeing his pop potential, Universal signed Cullum to a deal that promised to promote him outside of the jazz ghetto. The gamble quickly paid off as his major label debut Twentysomething -- a mix of original tunes and standards -- instantly conquered the British jazz charts and continued sailing up to the top of the pop charts in 2003. Twentysomething is an easy album to like, and its multigenerational appeal coupled with the musician's heavy touring schedule has helped it sell around the world. The follow-up Catching Tales saw Cullum boldly recruit the likes of Dan The Automator and move from covering the Doves to delivering a fresh take on Harry Warren's "I Only Have Eyes For You," while still managing to keep the Essex-born, Wiltshire-raised Brit's voice and piano at the heart of affairs. - NDEDINA
Marc Antione
Antoine specializes in feather-light, Latin-tinged background jazz. His melodious guitar playing is generally accompanied by low-key dance/hip-hop beats and romantic synth atmospheres, while his records feature appearances by pop-jazz stars such as Jeff Golub, Peter White, and Rick Braun. - WYORK
Chris Botti
If Kenny G ruled the smooth jazz roost during the 1980s and '90s, Chris Botti claimed the modern instrumental throne during the 2000s. Botti is a solid musician who possesses a real feel for jazz, but the key to his success probably lies in the cool purity of his trumpet playing. While making plain his admiration for Miles Davis and Chet Baker, Botti's first album combined elements of smooth jazz and atmospheric light rock rather than cool-toned bop. Botti kept refining that approach when, in 2003, he released A Thousand Kisses Deep, which successfully brought elements of downtempo into the mix. He next cut the stripped-down string set When I Fall in Love, which went from being a contemporary best-seller to a pop sensation after Oprah endorsed it. Botti has since followed its winning formula, recording standards and a few modern romantic tunes with different ensembles and guest vocalists. Critics may be surprised to learn that he got his start playing for bop veterans Woody Shaw and George Coleman (who played with Miles Davis). A listen to his live readings of "My Funny Valentine" or "Why Not" (from 2006) lets you see why even old jazzers heard potential in the young Botti. - NDEDINA
Acoustic Alchemy
Since its inception as a duo in the '80s, the jazz-heavy, new age-focused act Acoustic Alchemy has undergone a number of lineup changes. Based in the U.K., Acoustic Alchemy is an Adult Contemporary favorite celebrated for making casually sophisticated tunes with a pleasing organic feel. - MPIAZZA

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