Biography
Jeff “Tain” Watts holds the unique distinction of being the only musician to appear on every Grammy Award winning jazz record by both Wynton and Branford Marsalis.
He got the nickname "Tain" from Kenny Kirkland when they were on tour in Florida and drove past a Chieftain gas station, so "Jeff Tain" for "Chief-tain".
Watts has worked in the film and television industry as both a musician on the The Tonight Show with Jay Leno for three years and as an actor, Rhythm Jones in Spike Lee’s Mo' Better Blues. Tain performed and recorded with the Branford Marsalis Quartet from 1985 to 2009. He currently performs with his own groups The Watts Project and the Jeff "Tain" Watts Quartet, as well as the great pianists McCoy Tyner, The George Cables Project, and Geri Allen. Watts started his own record label Dark Key Music in 2007, releasing Folk's Songs in 2007, Watts in 2009 and Family in 2011. Dark Key Music is a 2010 Grammy Award Winner: Best Instrumental Solo, Terence Blanchard for "Dancin' 4 Chicken". As a composer, Watts is a creative and innovative force in modern jazz, contributing most of the compositions on his own albums.
He is a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and can be seen on the album cover of Branford Marsalis' Braggtown with a Terrible Towel.
Read more about this topic: Jeff "Tain" Watts
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A great biography should, like the close of a great drama, leave behind it a feeling of serenity. We collect into a small bunch the flowers, the few flowers, which brought sweetness into a life, and present it as an offering to an accomplished destiny. It is the dying refrain of a completed song, the final verse of a finished poem.”
—André Maurois (1885–1967)
“The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)