Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmie Smith was born James Howard Smith on January 27, 1938 in Newark, New Jersey and studied drums at the Al Germansky School for Drummers from 1951 – ’54. This was followed by attendance at the Julliard School in 1959.
Smith began his professional career in New York around this time playing through the Sixties with Jimmy Forrest, Larry Young, Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, Pony Poindexter, Jimmy Witherspoon, Gildo Mahones, Jimmy McGriff and Groove Holmes and ultimately playing with Erroll Garner until 1975 when he moved to California.
His West Coast years saw Jimmie performing and recording into the 90s with a who’s who list such as Sonny Criss, Bill Henderson, Ernestine Anderson, Phineas Newborn, Barney Kessell, Herb Ellis and Al Cohn to name a few. He would tour Japan with Hammond B3 organist Jimmy Smith and guitarist Kenny Burrell in 1993.
One of drummer Jimmie Smith’s most noted collaborations took place at the Montreux International Jazz Festival in 1977, where he played with Benny Carter, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, Dizzy Gillespie and Count Basie. As a leader he recorded “From The Heart” for the Tokyo Sound City label and “Rockin’ In Rhythm” with Ray Brown and Hank Jones for Concord.
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Requisites
Sarah Vaughan with Clifford Brown, also known as Sarah Vaughan, is a 1954 jazz album featuring the Grammy Award winning singer and influential trumpeter Clifford Brown.
The album, released on the EmArcy label was the only collaboration between the pair, and though originally eponymous, was re-issued under a new title to emphasize the appearance of the popular trumpeter.
Well received, though not without some criticism, the album was Vaughan’s own favorite among her works through 1980 and in 1999 the album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick Nash was born Richard Taylor Nash on January 26, 1928 in Boston Massachusetts and began playing brass instruments at ten. His interest increased after his parents death and while in boarding school Nash took up the trumpet and bugle.
His first professional work came in 1947 with bands like that of Tex Beneke and after playing during Army service, he joined Billy May’s band. He would later become a first call studio musician in Los Angeles, California.
The favorite trombonist of composer and conductor Henry Mancini, Dick was the featured soloist on several soundtracks beginning with Mr. Lucky, Peter Gunn, Hatari, Breakfast At Tiffany’s and The Days Of Wine And Rose. By 1959 he was playing bass trombone with saxophonist Art Pepper on his Art Pepper + Eleven – Modern Jazz Classics session.
Over the course of his career Nash has been predominantly associated with the swing and big band genres and besides working on film scores the trombonist has performed and recorded with Quincy Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, Harry James, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Louie Bellson, Nat King Cole, Mel Torme, June Christy, Stan Kenton, Les Brown, Don Ellis, Jimmy Witherspoon, Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Erroll Garner, Anita O’Day, Teresa Brewer, Randy Crawford, The Manhattan Transfer, Sonny Criss and the list goes on.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Florence Mills was born Florence Winfrey on January 25, 1895 in Washington, D.C. and started performing as child. At six she sang duets with her two older sisters and eventually formed a vaudeville act, calling themselves “The Mills Sisters”. The act did well, but eventually her sisters quit performing.
Florence, determined to pursue a career in show business eventually joined Ada Smith, Cora Green, and Carolyn Williams in a group called the “Panama Four” that had some success. Mills stardom came as a result of her role in the successful Broadway musical “Shuffle Along” in 1921, which has been credited with beginning the Harlem Renaissance. She went on to play the Palace Theatre, become an international star with the hit show Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds, with her signature song “I’m A Little Blackbird Looking For A Bluebird”. She became known as the “Queen of Happiness,” for her effervescent stage presence, delicate voice, and winsome, wide-eyed beauty and would be featured in Vogue and Vanity Fair.
By 1926, exhausted from more than 250 performances of the hit show Blackbirds in London in 1926, Florence became ill with tuberculosis and further weakened, passed away of infection following an appendicitis operation on November 1, 1927 at age 32.
Duke Ellington memorialized in his song “Black Beauty” as did Fats Waller with “Bye Bye Florence”, the residential building at 267 Edgecombe Avenue in Harlem’s Sugar Hill neighborhood is named after her and a children’s book, “Baby Flo: Florence Mills Lights Up the Stage” written by Alan Schroeder, will be published by Lee and Low in March 2012.
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Jazz In Film
Quicksand: 1950 film directed by Irving Pichel that starred Mickey Rooney, Jeanne Cagney and Barbara Bates relates the story of an auto mechanic who after borrowing $20 from his employer’s cash register, is plunged into a series of increasingly disastrous circumstances which rapidly spiral out of his control.
Appearances by Red Nichols and his band.
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