Kennedy Center jazz artists

[Milestones]

It's interesting to see that Wayne Shorter is going in this year.  I hear that even Wayne was shocked.  As far as I can tell, his old boss, Miles Davis, was never an honoree.  

So who are the jazz artists?  There's Dizzy, Sonny, Herbie, Ella, Count.  Who else?

Not sure how the election process works, and not sure how many on this forum attach any importance to the Kennedy Center.

 

[paul secor]

Cher is being honored this year. Take it for what you will.

[JSngry]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennedy_Center_Honors

I've bolded awardees who are at least tangentially "jazz" in terms of formative or realized experience. Opinions may vary, hell, are expected to.

1970s[edit]

• 1978 – Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers, and Arthur Rubinstein
• 1979 – Aaron Copland, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham, and Tennessee Williams

1980s[edit]

• 1980 – Leonard Bernstein, James Cagney, Agnes de Mille, Lynn Fontanne, and Leontyne Price
• 1981 – Count Basie, Cary Grant, Helen Hayes, Jerome Robbins, and Rudolf Serkin
• 1982 – George Abbott, Lillian Gish, Benny Goodman, Gene Kelly, and Eugene Ormandy
• 1983 – Katherine Dunham, Elia Kazan, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, and Virgil Thomson
• 1984 – Lena Horne, Danny Kaye, Gian Carlo Menotti, Arthur Miller, and Isaac Stern
• 1985 – Merce Cunningham, Irene Dunne, Bob Hope, Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe, and Beverly Sills
• 1986 – Lucille Ball, Ray Charles, Hume Cronyn & Jessica Tandy, Yehudi Menuhin, and Antony Tudor
• 1987 – Perry Como, Bette Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Nathan Milstein, and Alwin Nikolais
• 1988 – Alvin Ailey, George Burns, Myrna Loy, Alexander Schneider, and Roger L. Stevens
• 1989 – Harry Belafonte, Claudette Colbert, Alexandra Danilova, Mary Martin, and William Schuman

1990s[edit]

• 1990 – Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, Risë Stevens, Jule Styne, and Billy Wilder
• 1991 – Roy Acuff, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Fayard & Harold Nicholas, Gregory Peck, and Robert Shaw
• 1992 – Lionel Hampton, Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward, Ginger Rogers, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Paul Taylor
• 1993 – Johnny Carson, Arthur Mitchell, Georg Solti, Stephen Sondheim, and Marion Williams
• 1994 – Kirk Douglas, Aretha Franklin, Morton Gould, Harold Prince, and Pete Seeger
• 1995 – Jacques d'Amboise, Marilyn Horne, B.B. King, Sidney Poitier, and Neil Simon
• 1996 – Edward Albee, Benny Carter, Johnny Cash, Jack Lemmon, and Maria Tallchief
• 1997 – Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, Charlton Heston, Jessye Norman, and Edward Villella
• 1998 – Bill Cosby (rescinded in 2018),^[21] Fred Ebb & John Kander, Willie Nelson, André Previn, and Shirley Temple Black
• 1999 – Victor Borge, Sean Connery, Judith Jamison, Jason Robards, and Stevie Wonder

2000s[edit]

• 2000 – Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chuck Berry, Plácido Domingo, Clint Eastwood, and Angela Lansbury
• 2001 – Julie Andrews, Van Cliburn, Quincy Jones, Jack Nicholson, and Luciano Pavarotti
• 2002 – James Earl Jones, James Levine, Chita Rivera, Paul Simon, and Elizabeth Taylor
• 2003 – James Brown, Carol Burnett, Loretta Lynn, Mike Nichols, and Itzhak Perlman
• 2004 – Warren Beatty, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Elton John, Joan Sutherland, and John Williams
• 2005 – Tony Bennett, Suzanne Farrell, Julie Harris, Robert Redford, and Tina Turner
• 2006 – Zubin Mehta, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson, Steven Spielberg, and Andrew Lloyd Webber
• 2007 – Leon Fleisher, Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Martin Scorsese, and Brian Wilson
• 2008 – Morgan Freeman, George Jones, Barbra Streisand, Twyla Tharp, and The Who (Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey)
• 2009 – Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro, and Bruce Springsteen

2010s[edit]

• 2010 – Merle Haggard, Jerry Herman, Bill T. Jones, Paul McCartney, and Oprah Winfrey
• 2011 – Barbara Cook, Neil Diamond, Yo-Yo Ma, Sonny Rollins, and Meryl Streep^[22]
• 2012 – Buddy Guy, Dustin Hoffman, Led Zeppelin (John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant), David Letterman, and Natalia Makarova^[23]
• 2013 – Martina Arroyo, Herbie Hancock, Billy Joel, Shirley MacLaine, and Carlos Santana^[24]
• 2014 – Al Green, Tom Hanks, Patricia McBride, Sting, and Lily Tomlin^[25]
• 2015 – Carole King, George Lucas, Rita Moreno, Seiji Ozawa, and Cicely Tyson^[26]
• 2016 – Martha Argerich, Eagles (Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit and Joe Walsh, with Glenn Frey^[27]), Al Pacino, Mavis Staples, and James Taylor^[28][29]
• 2017 – Carmen de Lavallade, Gloria Estefan, LL Cool J, Norman Lear, and Lionel Richie
• 2018 – Cher, Philip Glass, Reba McEntire, Wayne Shorter, and the creators of Hamilton: An American Musical (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, Alex Lacamoire, and Andy Blankenbuehler)

[Steve Reynolds]

55 minutes ago, paul secor said:

Cher is being honored this year. Take it for what you will.

If we had a LOVE button I would LOVE this post

One would have to pay me large dollars to watch even a couple of minutes of this charade of pomposity.

[JSngry]

I'd love to see Cher and Wayne and on a Reba McEntire song arranged by Phillip Glass, surrounded by the chorography of the creators of Hamilton.

Guess I'm one of those guys that asks why not? instead of why?

[Milestones]

That would be something!

But come to think of it, some of those unions on the Sunday Night show (with David Sanborn) weren't all that far off from that.

[JSngry]

hello!

[Rooster_Ties]

Good for Wayne!  Whatever one thinks of these particular awards (or frankly, almost any sort of 'awards' these days) -- it's hard to get bent out of shape when good people are recognized for their efforts over the decades.

If there's even ONE good honoree on these kinds of award shows, then that's a "win" as far as I'm concerned.  Or even better if there's a couple in the same year.  I keep my expectations in check, and so I'm never too deeply disappointed.

I think the last thing I let piss me off about an awards event/show, was the lack of an "album of the year" Grammy nomination for David Bowie's Blackstar last year (or would that have been the year before?).

So genuinely, three cheers for Wayne Shorter, a real jazz artist -- for getting a solid 15-17 minutes of airtime on a show like this.  Realizing there's 500 channels airing stuff at the same time on cable, to say nothing of an infinite number of things "airing" on-line (or recent, and streamable).

With any luck, you-know-who won't be there (like last year), and it should be a lovely evening.  I know some folks here in DC who've gotten to go a few times, and I hear its a really nice event there in the hall.  It is what it is, and as long as you don't pretend it's anything other than what it is (or hope too hard for it to be something it ain't), then it's all good!

And a hearty "Yay Wayne!"  If nothing else, the 6-minute mini-doc on him should be good, knock on wood.  That's about how long they are, right?  Maybe 8-minutes tops.

[Simon Weil]

1 hour ago, JSngry said:

I'd love to see Cher and Wayne and on a Reba McEntire song arranged by Phillip Glass, surrounded by the chorography of the creators of Hamilton

They could always do Silence  [4:33] by John Cage, but I guess that's not what you meant.

Edited July 26, 2018 by Simon Weil
Clarification/Dumb mistake

[clifford_thornton]

i would be down for a cover of 4'33". 

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

you cant tell me you a) like the jazz sounds of blue note records and concurrently b) dislike cher

Edited July 26, 2018 by chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez

[Mark Stryker]

Not clear to me exactly how the selection works these days, but no doubt Wayne must have had an important champion either at the table or advising someone at the table -- I'm guessing Jason Moran, who has a titled position at the Kennedy Center, or possibly Wynton Marsalis.

And, yes, many huzzahs for this highly visible award. I don't think you can overestimate how much good this kind of mainstream recognition can do for helping jazz re-establish a visible presence within common culture. Especially when the real deal gets the the attention. And it don't come any more real  than Wayne.

Edited July 27, 2018 by Mark Stryker

[Justin V]

Wayne deserves all of the recognition he receives, so congratulations to him.  With Herbie also in, maybe Ron Carter will also rightfully receive the honor.

[Milestones]

Maybe they should cut the mics on Cher and Reba and let Wayne play.  

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

wait wait wait 1st of all you guys gotta understand the format- the people being honored do not play.  each person/group being honored will have a separate tribute performance.  in waynes case maybe joe lovano or lee konitz if they are smart might be cool, i dont know then with cher, who knows maybe katy perry'll come out in a classic cher costume, i dont know.  

[sonnymax]

1 hour ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

... who knows maybe katy perry'll come out in a classic cher costume, i dont know.  

[bertrand]

2 hours ago, chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez said:

wait wait wait 1st of all you guys gotta understand the format- the people being honored do not play.  each person/group being honored will have a separate tribute performance.  in waynes case maybe joe lovano or lee konitz if they are smart might be cool, i dont know then with cher, who knows maybe katy perry'll come out in a classic cher costume, i dont know.  

Bringing out Lee Konitz would be a brilliant stroke, but I don't expect it. I would imagine Herbie would be involved. It blows my mind that no promoter ever brought Konitz and Wayne together.

[Ken Dryden]

I'd like to see Dave Liebman honored, he deserves it.

[7/4]

8 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I'd like to see Dave Liebman honored, he deserves it.

That would be beautiful.