Sonny Lester was a producer of big band, jazz, and easy listening albums, and followed in the limelight of his contempories like Enoch Light. He also wound up, unintentionally, becoming influential among the sample-hungry DJs of the 1990s as the originator of the Groove Merchant label. Lester was born in New York City in 1924, and began his... [+] Read More

One of the all-time giants of the Hammond B-3, Jimmy McGriff sometimes gets lost amid all the great soul-jazz organists from his hometown of Philadelphia. He was almost certainly the bluesiest of the major soul-jazz pioneers, and indeed, he often insisted that he was more of a blues musician than a jazz artist; nonetheless, he remained eclectic... [+] Read More