Mark Whitfield was born in October 1966 in Long Island, New York. The youngest of five, his love for jazz and blues music came early.  At the age of 15, all his siblings were moving into careers as doctors and lawyers and Whitfield himself, had obtained a medical student internship at Georgetown University. While that’s impressive for any 15-year-old, it was the scholarship he won to the Berklee College of Music, in Boston, which excited him even more. After his family moved across the country to a suburb of Seattle, Whitfield convinced his parents to let him attend Berklee after graduating from high school early, at the age of 16. It was while studying the guitar at Berklee where Whitfield met a young piano and vocal student from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, named Jody Davis.

Whitfield’s tenure at Berklee was not as smooth as his acceptance to the school had been. He wanted to play traditional mainstream jazz, which was not in vogue at Berklee at the time. “I was looking for pure sound, a hollow-body guitar, a small amplifier, no effects,” he told Offbeat. He found a core of jazz purists that he could jam with, which included Delfeayo, Wynton, and Branford Marsalis.

At the age of 20, Whitfield graduated, married Jody, and the couple moved to a small studio apartment in Brooklyn, New York. Whitfield’s sister was a stockbroker and got him a position as a stockbroker’s assistant. More importantly, his brother-in-law, drummer Tory Davis, got him a job playing with the after-hours house band at the famous Blue Note jazz club in Greenwich Village.

Later that same year, he was playing at the club’s 25th anniversary party when legendary jazz guitarist George Benson heard him. Benson was impressed and arranged for him to work with celebrated organist Jack McDuff. McDuff was not especially enamored of Berklee graduates but let him play with his band. It was a learning experience for Whitfield who incorrectly assumed he had a sophisticated theoretical and harmonic background. McDuff soon set him straight, “Stop playing those banjo chords,” he told Whitfield.

In 1990, around the time his debut album came out, Whitfield and Jody discovered they would soon be parents. They decided to move to Jody’s home town of Baton Rouge, to raise their child in a more traditional family setting. There, Whitfield met saxophonist Alvin Batiste, head of Southern University’s jazz program, who soon became his mentor. He began playing with his old classmate, Delfeayo Marsalis, and through him met other members of the New Orleans jazz community, including trumpeter Nicholas Payton. Since then, the two have played on each other’s albums and as backing musicians for famed organist Jimmy Smith.

Whitfield’s second album, Patrice, was released in 1991. More avant garde than his previous album, it again did well with the critics but not in sales. In 1993, while working on his third album he had been persuaded to try a more salable approach and the smooth jazz of his Kenny G-style work produced a modest success. Whitfield toured with a large band for a few months but found he disliked playing pop songs. He returned to playing more traditional jazz with a trio and in turn confounded the audiences, who were expecting his pop material. “The alternative is, you sell out your musical and artistic vision,” he told Keith Spera of Offbeat. “If it’s not a huge commercial success, then you’re a complete failure–you have no recourse. You weren’t successful as a jazz musician, you weren’t successful as a pop musician. What do you do now?”

In 1994, Whitfield moved to the Verve record label and returned to his jazz and blues interests with True Blue, an album that featured seven original compositions and six jazz classics. The combination garnered both critical praise and impressive sales. “The maturation process of this standout jazz guitarist continues unabated,” wrote Bob McCullough in the Boston Globe. It was followed by 7th Ave. His new life in Louisiana had helped move his playing beyond the styles he learned in Boston and New York. Stroll readily calls to mind the eastern urban ambiance of his beginnings at the Blue Note.

James Harrell McGriff was born on April 3, 1936, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, birthplace of many of jazz’s greatest organists. He started playing piano at the age of five and by his teens, was also playing alto sax and upright bass. His first group was a piano trio, which found him playing bass in the band. When he joined the U.S. Army, McGriff served as an MP in Korea and settled in on a career as police officer for Philadelphia’s finest, a gig which only lasted a little more than two years.

Music kept drawing McGriff’s attention away from the police force. His childhood friend, organist Jimmy Smith, had begun earning a substantial reputation in jazz for his Blue Note records (the two played together once in 1967) and McGriff became interested in the organ sound while Richard “Groove” Holmes played at his sister’s wedding. Holmes went on to become McGriff’s teacher, friend and, on two occasions in 1973, his sparring partner for two Groove Merchant records.

In April 1960, McGriff made the switch and started playing organ. He was greatly influenced by the energy and dynamics of organist Milt Buckner and the diplomatic aplomb of Count Basie. But such local pianists as Sonny Gatewood, Howard Whaley and Austin Mitchell held his favor too. McGriff formed a combo that played around Philadelphia and often featured upcoming tenor sax player, Charles Earland, who soon switched permanently to organ when he saw how much fun McGriff was having at the organ. During this time, McGriff also accompanied such artists as Don Gardner, Arthur Prysock, Candido and Carmen McRae who came through town for local club dates.

In 1961, McGriff’s trio was offered the chance to record an instrumental version of Ray Charles’s hit I’ve Got A Woman by Joe Lederman’s Jell Records, a small independent label. When the record received substantial local airplay, Juggy Murray’s Sue label picked it up and recorded a full album of McGriff’s trio, released in 1962. The album also turned out another huge hit, “All About My Girl,” firmly establishing McGriff’s credentials as a fiery blues-based organist, well-versed in gospel soul and fatback groove.

McGriff recorded a series of popular albums for the Sue label between 1962 and 1965, ending with what still stands as one of his finest examples of blues-based jazz, Blues For Mister Jimmy. When producer Sonny Lester started his Solid State record label in 1966, he recruited Jimmy McGriff to be his star attraction. Lester framed McGriff in many different groups, performing a wide variety of styles and giving the organist nearly unlimited opportunities to record. McGriff was heard everywhere; from an all-star tribute to Count Basie (The Big Band), a series of “Organ And Blues Band” records (of which, 1969’s A Thing To Come By, is the best), pop hits (Cherry, The Way You Look Tonight) and funk classics (Electric Funk and such singles as The Worm and Step 1).

During this time, McGriff actively performed at clubs and concert halls worldwide. He settled in Newark, New Jersey, and eventually opened his own supper club, the Golden Slipper – where he recorded BLACK PEARL and a live album with Junior Parker in 1971. Beginning in 1969, he also performed regularly with Buddy Rich’s band, though the two were only recorded once together in 1974.

McGriff “retired” from the music industry in 1972 to start a horse farm in Connecticut. But Sonny Lester’s new record company, Groove Merchant, kept issuing McGriff records at a rate of three or four a year. By 1973, McGriff was back – touring relentlessly and actively recording again. Around this time, disco was gaining a hold in jazz music and McGriff’s flexibility proved infallible.

By 1980, McGriff broke away from Sonny Lester and began working actively with producer (and former funk lord) Bob Porter (and recording master Rudy Van Gelder). McGriff began a long relationship with Fantasy’s Milestone label, which has caught him in a wide variety of circumstances featuring such headliners as Rusty Bryant, Al Grey, Red Holloway, David “Fathead” Newman, Frank Wess and young gun Eric Alexander.

Between 1994 and 1998, McGriff also experimented with the Hammond XB-3, a sort of synthesized organ that increased the organ’s capabilities with MIDI enhancements. This gave McGriff an unnatural synthesized sound, which probably explains his retreat from the instrument on such recent efforts as 2000’s funky McGRIFF’S HOUSE PARTY (featuring fellow organist Lonnie Smith). He is a considerable player of many abilities and has managed over four decades to appeal to a diverse audience of listeners.

Machito was born February 16, 1912 in Tampa, Florida and died April 15, 1984 in London, England. He was the King of Afro-Cuban jazz. He grew up singing and playing with many of the leading musicians of Cuba. After playing with a few groups in Havana, he moved to New York City in 1937, following the lead of his friend (and later, brother-in-law), Mario Bauza.

In 1940, they decided to form a group and try out a style that combined Cuban rhythms and melodies and orchestrations derived from swing. Billed as the Afro-Cubans, the group was soon signed to Decca Records and had a few minor hits with numbers like “Sopa de Pichon [Pigeon Soup]” and Bauza’s composition, “Tanga” (which later became Machito’s theme song).

Machito’s sister, Graciela, came to the U.S. to sing with and lead the band with Bauza after Machito was drafted into the Army in 1942. Discharged due to an injury in 1943, he resumed performing and became a regular act featured in weekly radio broadcasts from the La Conga Club. Machito’s Latin rhythms began to influence many of New York’s jazz musicians, most notably Dizzy Gillespie, who had worked with Bauza in Cab Calloway’s band and was now pioneering a new style that would eventually be called, “bebop.”

Another jazz artist influenced by Machito was Stan Kenton, whose new band was beginning to enjoy huge popularity. Kenton called Machito the “greatest exponent of Afro-Cuban jazz” and even recorded a Latin-flavored number titled, “Machito.” He and Machito shared the bill in a historic concert at Manhattan’s Town Hall on January 24, 1947.

Producer Norman Granz then got the idea of pairing the great bebop alto saxophonist Charlie Parker and tenor Flip Phillips with Machito in for a series of recordings in December 1948 that have since been cited for establishing “the Latin-jazz connection for all time.” With compositions and arrangements by Bauza and Chico O’Farrill, Machito’s recordings from this period (reissued on Mucho Macho) are considered his band’s finest work.

Machito continued to perform both in the U.S. and abroad until his death. One of his last recordings, “Machito and His Salsa Big Band,” won the Grammy for best Latin album in 1982 and Machito was waiting to go on stage at Ronny Scott’s nightclub in London when he suffered a fatal heart attack in 1984.