Official website (http://puredesmond.ca/)
Paul Desmond
Sign in to saveAmerican jazz musician (1924-1977)
OverviewAI-generated
Paul Desmond, born Paul Emil Breitenfeld on November 25, 1924, in San Francisco, was an American jazz musician, composer, and alto saxophonist. He served in the United States Army during World War II and was educated at San Francisco State University. His musical style is categorized as jazz and cool jazz. He recorded for Columbia Records, CTI Records, and RCA Records.
Desmond died of cancer in New York City on May 30, 1977. He is known for works such as *Paul Desmond Songbook* and *Paul Desmond - Saxophone Signature Licks*. He stated that he wanted to sound like a dry martini and noted he had won prizes as the world’s slowest alto player. He also mentioned writing at the beach despite sand in his typewriter.
Synthesized by Vinony from 39 facts across 8 sources: Wikidata, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Crossref, Last.fm, Firecrawl, Wikiquote, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Works
- 7
Top works
- Paul Desmond - Saxophone Signature Licks
- Paul Desmond Songbook
- Hepatitis B & C What Every Family Needs to Know
- Moleskine Community Cover Art Squared Journal Letter Paul Desmond
- Paul Desmond
via Open Library + Wikidata
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Country
- United States
- Active from
- 1924
- Active to
- 1977
Discography
- First Place Again1960
- Desmond Blue1962
- Two of a Mind1962
- Take Ten1963
- Bossa Antigua1965
- Glad to Be Unhappy1965
- Easy Living1966
- Bridge Over Troubled Water1969
- From the Hot Afternoon1969
- Summertime1969
Member of
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 503,715
- Total plays
- 5,498,012
Tags
Paul Desmond (1924-1977) was a U.S jazz saxophonist. Desmond was born Paul Emil Breitenfeld in San Francisco, California on 25th November 1924. He came to prominence with the Dave Brubeck Quartet, which lasted from 1951 until 1967. Desmond wrote their biggest hit, "Take Five". Desmond's alto saxophone tone and technique owed nothing to the great alto player of the time, Charlie Parker; instead his was a clear, light, floating sound and highly melodic playing style. <a href="https://www.last.
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Nonparametric Estimation from Incomplete Observations
· 1958 · cited 70,801x
- “Mini-mental state”
· 1975 · cited 68,248x
- CLUSTAL W: improving the sensitivity of progressive multiple sequence alignment through sequence weighting, position-specific gap penalties and weight matrix choice
· 1994 · cited 52,079x
- Research electronic data capture (REDCap)—A metadata-driven methodology and workflow process for providing translational research informatics support
· 2009 · cited 46,766x
- Cytoscape: A Software Environment for Integrated Models of Biomolecular Interaction Networks
· 2003 · cited 45,669x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “I could only write at the beach, and I kept getting sand in my typewriter.”
- “I hate the way he writes. I kind of love the way he lives, though.”
- “I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.”
- “I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry martini.”
- “I tried practicing for a few weeks and ended up playing too fast.”
- “I was unfashionable before anyone knew who I was.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
Key facts
- Born
- Paul Emil Breitenfeld , ( 1924-11-25 ) November 25, 1924, San Francisco , California, U.S.
- Died
- May 30, 1977 (1977-05-30) (aged 52), New York City, U.S.
- Genres
- Cool jazz West Coast jazz mainstream jazz
- Occupations
- Musician composer arranger
- Instruments
- Alto saxophone clarinet
- Years active
- 1940s–1977
- Labels
- Columbia RCA Victor Horizon CTI A&M
- Formerly of
- The Dave Brubeck Quartet
via Wikipedia infobox
Official website
.CA Domain Auctions | Web Hosting Canada
puredesmond.ca →Link to the official site · 18,298 chars · not written by Vinony
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- human
- Given name
- Paul
- Gender
- male
- Citizenship
- United States
- Place of birth
- San Francisco
- Place of death
- New York City
- Occupation
- recording artist
- Languages spoken
- English language
- Genre
- jazz
- Instrument
- alto saxophone
- Conflict
- World War II
- Military branch
- United States Army
- Official website
- puredesmond.ca
- Image
- Paul Desmond from Carl Van Vechten collection.png
Show 8 more facts
- cause of death
- cancer
- date of birth
- 1924-11-25
- date of death
- 1977-05-30
- Commons category
- Paul Desmond
- manner of death
- natural causes
- birth name
- Paul Emil Breitenfeld
- name in native language
- Paul Desmond
- copyright representative
- Broadcast Music, Inc.
Sources (3)
via Wikidata · CC0
~14 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Paul Desmond (born Paul Emil Breitenfeld; November 25, 1924 – May 30, 1977) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and composer and proponent of cool jazz. He was a member of the Dave Brubeck Quartet and composed the group's biggest hit, "Take Five". The song remains the best-selling jazz song of all time.
In addition to his work with Brubeck, he led several groups and collaborated with Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Jim Hall, and Ed Bickert. After years of chain smoking and poor health, Desmond succumbed to lung cancer in 1977 after a tour with Brubeck.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Paul Desmond” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.