At Edifier, we recognize the tremendous impact that these musicians, and genre of music has had on our overall products. From our headphones, speakers, and musical interest, Jazz continues to inspire us. Who is your favorite Jazz musician? We've compiled a list of our top 10 favorite jazz greats in this article, which we hope will serve as a great starting point for learning more about this fascinating genre of music.
1. Louis Armstrong
It's difficult to talk about jazz history without mentioning jazz music's original superstar, Louis Armstrong. He was born in New Orleans in 1901, was the first major soloist in jazz, and went on to become the most influential musician in the genre's history. He's perhaps best known to the general public as the grinning, gravelly-voiced singer of the 1960s hits "What a Wonderful World" and "Hello Dolly." His incredible technical skills, joy, spontaneity, and incredibly fast and imaginative musical mind continue to dominate Jazz today.
2. Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt, born Jean Reinhardt, was a Belgian, Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer, who was generally considered one of the greatest jazz musicians to ever live. Reinhardt's ability to play anything, let alone a six-string guitar, is remarkable when learning Reinhardt suffered severe damage to his left hand’s fourth and fifth fingers following a tragic fire. To this day, Reinhardt remains an influential and highly respected European jazz talent to have emerged from Europe.
3. Charlie Parker
Charles “Charlie” Parker, born in Kansas City in 1920, was a Grammy Award-winning jazz saxophonist who co-invented the bop or bebop musical form, with John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie. While he is more commonly known as “Bird” or “Yardbird,” Parker was nonetheless a groundbreaking composer and improviser who helped usher in a new age of jazz and inspired generations of musicians and artists long after his untimely death in 1955 at the age of 34.
4. Charlie Christian
Charles Henry “Charlie” Christian, the "Father of Bebop," and an early pioneer of the electric jazz guitar during the mid-1930s, was born in Texas in 1916 and died in 1942, in New York. He was one of the first to use electrically amplified devices to create improvised masterpieces; although his career was unfortunately cut short by his untimely death in 1942, he still left an indelible mark on the jazz music industry.
5. J.J. Johnson
James Louis “J.J.” Johnson, was an American jazz composer, arranger, and trombonist, born in 1924 and died in 2001 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He is notable for being one of the first trombonists to perform in the bebop style. The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) named Johnson, Tommy Flanagan, and Benny Golson as Jazz Masters on January 12, 1996, earning the highest honor given to a jazz musician in the United States.
