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Tributes to Jim Hall and Chico Hamilton + Dexter Gordon's 90th Birthday

Jazz Unlimited for February 2, 2014 will be “Tributes to Jim Hall and Chico Hamilton + Dexter Gordon’s 90th Birthday.”  Hall and Hamilton died in late 2013 after long lives and careers.  All three artists featured tonight had their early careers in Los Angeles.  We will attempt to play music representative of their careers.  The artists featured on this show include Gerald Wiggins, Billie Holiday, Paul Desmond, the Billy Eckstine Big Band, Pat Metheny, Art Farmer, Charles Lloyd, Herbie Hancock, Gerry Mulligan, Sonny Rollins, Kenny Baron, Joe Lovano, Chris Potter and Woody Shaw, along with Hall, Hamilton and Gordon.

The Slide Show contains my photographs of some of the musicians heard on this show. 

Here is a video of a reunion of the second Chico Hamilton Quintet with Fred Katz (cello), Buddy Collette (fl), John Pisano (g), Carson Smith (b) and Chico Hamilton (d) recorded live at the 1989 Montreux Jazz Festival.

Dennis Owsley has broadcast a weekly jazz show for St. Louis Public Radio since April 1983. He holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry and is a retired Monsanto Senior Science Fellow and college teacher. His show, Jazz Unlimited, airs every Sunday from 9:00 p.m. to midnight. The show has the largest jazz audience in St. Louis and was named Best Jazz Radio Show in St. Louis for the years 2005-2007 and 2009 by the Riverfront Times. In celebration of his 25 years on the air, January 24, 2008 was proclaimed Dennis Owsley Day" in the City of St. Louis. He is the 2010 winner of the St. Louis Public Radio Millard S. Cohen Lifetime Achievement Award. Dennis is also a noted photographer, and his exhibit, In the Moment: Photographs of Jazz Musicians, ran from September 23, 2005 to January 21, 2006 at the Sheldon Art Gallery. He is a lifetime student of jazz history and teaches short courses on the subject. Dennis is the author of the award-winning book City of Gabriels: The History of Jazz in St. Louis 1985-1973, published in 2006.
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