� The first ever box-set featuring the main works of the finest female piano players in Jazz � Ranging from Chicago-Jazz with Lil Hardin and Louis Armstrong via the Boogie and Swing of Hadda Brooks or Hazel Scott and on to the Bebop of Barbara Carroll, Toshiko Akiyoshi, or Jutta Hipp � 18 original albums plus rare bonus tracks
Early on in the history of blues and jazz, women, especially as singers and pianists, made an important contribution to the development of these African-American music styles, the formative roots of the popular music of the 20th century. Lil Hardin (1988-1971) was a highly talented, classically trained pianist, who joined the turbulent music scene of the early jazz center Chicago in the 20s. There she played with the best groups, such as King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band, where she met a young trumpeter named Louis Armstrong from New Orleans. With her experience, sense of taste and style, she motivated her soon-to-be husband, Armstrong, to emerge from the shadow of his mentor, King Oliver, and make a career as a soloist. The rest is history. Armstrong's recordings of his Hot 5 and Hot 7s of the 1920s, with Hardin as pianist and a repertoire to which she contributed world-famous compositions, are among the milestones in jazz history. She remained a very active musician even after the divorce. The outstanding female musician of the swing and bebop era was Mary Lou Williams. From the 1940s, the stylistic range of the many wonderful female piano players gathered here was getting ever wider. Boogie Queen Hadda Brooks, Dorothy Donegan, Beryl Booker, Hazel Scott and Nina Simone all combine soul with class, playing in a more modern style were Barbara Carroll, Lorraine Geller, Bertha Hope and Toshiko Akiyoshi from Japan, as well as the German Jutta Hipp. All of them were excellent individualists, whose music definitely deserves to be heard again.600534405379600534210 CD Box46M2WW-US-BR-MX-PRJazz Piano DivasJazzMilestones of Jazz LegendsDocuments23/08/2019
