Tadd Dameron

Tadd Dameron
Portrait of Tadd Dameron, New York, between 1946 and 1948
Background information
Birth name	Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron
Born	(1917-02-21)February 21, 1917 Cleveland, Ohio, US
Died	March 8, 1965(1965-03-08) (aged 48)
Genres	Jazz
Occupation(s)	Composer Arranger Musician
Instruments	Piano

Tadley Ewing Peake "Tadd" Dameron (February 21, 1917 – March 8, 1965) was an American jazz composer, arranger and pianist. Saxophonist Dexter Gordon called him the "romanticist" of the bop movement, while reviewer Scott Yanow wrote that Dameron was the "definitive arranger/composer of the bop era".

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dameron was the most influential arranger of the bebop era, but also wrote charts for swing and hard bop players. The bands he arranged for included those of Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Jimmie Lunceford, Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Eckstine, and Sarah Vaughan. He and lyricist Carl Sigman wrote "If You Could See Me Now" for Sarah Vaughan and it became one of her first signature songs. According to the composer, his greatest influences were George Gershwin and Duke Ellington.

In the late 1940s, Dameron wrote arrangements for Gillespie's big band, who gave the première of his large-scale orchestral piece Soulphony in Three Hearts at Carnegie Hall in 1948. Also in 1948, Dameron led his own group in New York, which included Fats Navarro; the following year Dameron was at the Paris Jazz Festival with Miles Davis. From 1961 he scored for recordings by Milt Jackson, Sonny Stitt, and Blue Mitchell.