Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jeri Brown was born in Halifax, Missouri on March 20, 1952 and began singing publicly from the age of six. While matriculating through college in Iowa on a four-year scholarship she studied classical voice. As a result of student performances in mid-western U.S. and Europe her voice caught the attention of musical directors and composers looking for an imaginative voice with incredible range effortlessly creating aesthetic touches to their contemporary or avant-garde works.
Along with performances with the Cleveland Chamber Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and several combos, Jeri began incorporating more stylistic renditions of standards from theatre, film and pop culture. This led to her working with Ellis Marsalis, Billy Taylor and Dizzy Gillespie. Upon the suggestion of Joe Lovano, she began to improvise during concert performances.
The short list of jazz artists Jeri has performed and recorded with is not limited to Leon Thomas, John Hicks, Grady Tate, Kirk Lightsey, Betty Carter, David Murray, D.D. Jackson, Billy Hart, Kenny Werner, Pierre Michelot, Onaje Allan Gumbs, Fred Hersch, Tony Suggs, Michel Donato, Winard Harper, Chico Freeman, Rufus Reid and Seamus Blake.
Holding several degrees in Counseling, Education and English, Brown has taught at Cleveland State University, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, The university of Akron, University of Massachusetts at Amherst and several universities in Canada. Not to be limited, she has added documentaries, film and theatre to her arsenal of accomplishments and has written and recorded lyrics in collaboration with Avery Sharpe, Henry Butler, Cyrus Chestnut, Abdullah Ibrahim, and Jimmy Rowles. She continues her lifelong pursuit of excellence performing, composing and recording.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Curley Russell was born Dillon Russell on March 19, 1917 in Trinidad. Learning to play bass in his youth, the double-bassist by 1941 had joined the Don Redman big band and two years later was playing with Benny Carter. During the early bop period of jazz he became extremely busy performing and recording with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
From 1947 – 1949 he was a member of the Tadd Dameron Sextet and became more in demand for his ability to play at rapid tempos typical of the period. During his short career as a sideman he performed and recorded with an impressive list of musicians: Buddy De Franco, Bud Powell, Horace Silver, Thelonious Monk, the Art Blakey Quintet, Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Johnny Griffin, Stan Getz, George Wallington, Milt Jackson, Al Cohn and Zoot Sims.
Seemingly uninterested in the melodic mobility that was expected of bassists, he was never featured as a soloist and by the late Fifties dropped out of the jazz scene and left the music business altogether. Bassist Curley Russell passed away on July 3, 1986.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Andy Narell was born March 18, 1954 in New York City and took up the steelpan at a very young age after his father invited Ellie Mannette to bring steel pan to Queens, New York in an attempt to get kids off the street and out of gangs.
Moving with his family to California in his teens he eventually studied music at the University of California, Berkeley. He played piano with UC Jazz Ensembles and graduated in 1973. In the 1980s he worked in the project Bebop & Beyond, recording tribute albums to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. He has performed with the Caribbean Jazz Project, Montreux, Sakésho, and Bela Fleck and the Flecktones.
A composer and arranger Andy has created music for Trinidad’s national steelband competition Panorama, and has also performed in South Africa. He has performed and recorded with Spyro Gyra, Taj Mahal, Toto and Mike Marshall and has recorded more than two dozen albums for Windham Hill, Inner City and Heads Up record labels and continues to compose, arrange, perform and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Elis Regina was born Elis Regina Carvalho Costa in Porto Alegre, Sao Paulo Brasil on March 17, 1945. She began her career as a singer at age 11 on a children’s radio show, O Clube Do Guri on Rádio Farroupilha. In 1959, Rádio Gaúcha contracted her and the next year she travelled to Rio de Janeiro where she recorded her first LP, Viva a Brotolândia (Long Live Teenage Land).
Following this debut she won her first festival song contest in 1965 singing Arrastão that launched her solo career. Recording her sophomore project Dois na Bossa, that became the first album to sell over a million copies, is considered the beginning of the new musical style MPB, Musica Popular Brasileira.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, along with Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, she helped to popularize the work of the tropicalismo movement. Her 1974 collaboration with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Elis & Tom, has been cited as one of the greatest bossa nova albums of all time. Her earlier records were mostly apolitical but from the mid-’70s on, her music became more engaged, and she began to choose compositions and structure her conceptually complex live shows in ways as to criticize the military government, capitalism, racial and sexual injustice and other forms of inequality.
Her death from a cocaine, alcohol and temazepan interaction on January 19, 1982 at the age of 36 shocked Brazil. Elis Regina, singer of MPB, samba, jazz, bossa nova, rock and pop, is widely regarded as the best Brazilian singer of all times by many critics, musicians, and commentators.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leon Joseph Roppolo was born on March 16, 1902 in Lutcher, Louisiana but by age ten was living in New Orleans. Young Leon’s first instrument was the violin, but being a fan of the New Orleans marching bands he wanted to play clarinet. Soon excelling on clarinet, he played youthful jobs for parades, parties and at Milneburg on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. By his teens he left home with Bee Palmer’s group that evolved into the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, that become one of the hot jazz bands in 1920s Chicago along with King Oliver’s band. Leon’s style influenced many younger Chicago musicians, most famously Benny Goodman.
Following the breakup of the Rhythm Kings he went to New York City jazz scene and recorded with the Original Memphis Five and the California Ramblers. Returning to New Orleans he briefly reformed the Rhythm Kings, made a few recordings but primarily worked with other bands like the Halfway House Orchestra, with whom he recorded on saxophone.
Roppolo soon began exhibiting more eccentric behavior and violent temper outbursts. Too much for his family to take, Leon was committed to the state mental hospital. Aging and feeble far beyond his years in his later life, he would come home for periods when a relative or friend could look after him, and he would sit in with local bands on saxophone or clarinet.
Leon Roppolo, nicknamed “Rap” and who played clarinet, saxophone and guitar, passed away in New Orleans at the age of 41 on October 5, 1943. He left for posterity such compositions as Farewell Blues, Gold Leaf Strut and Make Love To Me, the latter recorded by Jo Stafford in 1954 and that hit No. 1 on the Billboard charts and #2 on Cashbox.
