Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Guarnieri, born March 23, 1917 in New York City was a virtuoso jazz and stride pianist best known for his stints with the big bands of Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw in the 1940s. Guarnieri is also noted for his embellishment and juxtaposition of jazz with classical piano, such as Scarlatti and Beethoven.
Throughout the 1940s Guarnieri was a busy sideman, recording with artists such as Charlie Christian, Cozy Cole, Ike Quebec, Charlie Kennedy, Hank D’Amico and Ben Webster. He also led his own group called the “Johnny Guarnieri Swing Men” and recorded with them on the Savoy label, a group that included Lester Young, Hank D’Amico, Billy Butterfield and Cozy Cole. He also led a trio in the 1940s composed of himself, Slam Stewart and Sammy Weiss.
In 1949 Guarnieri recorded an album with June Christy and recorded with numerous other artists over his career. In his later years he shifted more toward jazz education. In commemoration of his reputation as a teacher, Guarnieri’s students financed a label for him called “Taz Jazz Records” and in the ‘70s he recorded numerous albums on his new label, and until 1982 worked the “Tail of the Cock” nightclub in Studio City, California.
Pianist Johnny Guarnieri died doing what he loved to do, play jazz, onstage during a performance with Dick Sudhalter on January 7, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Benson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 22, 1943 and raised in the Hill District. A child prodigy at the age of 7, he first played the ukulele in a corner drug store and received a few dollars for his efforts. At age 8, he was playing guitar in an unlicensed nightclub on Friday and Saturday nights that was soon closed down by the police. By the time he was 10, George was in New York recording his first single record with RCA-Victor in New York, called “She Makes Me Mad”.
He attended Connelly High School and although he left before graduation, he learned how to play straight-ahead instrumental jazz during a relationship performing for several years with organist Jack McDuff. At the age of 21, he recorded his first album as leader, “The New Boss Guitar” featuring McDuff, followed by “It’s Uptown with the George Benson Quartet” and “The George Benson Cookbook”.
During the ‘60s he was recording with Miles Davis for Columbia’s “Miles In The Sky”, moved on to Verve for a period and then signed with Creed Taylor producing such albums as “White Rabbit” and “The Other Side of Abbey Road” among others.
Benson released “Breezin” in 1976 and it went triple platinum topping Billboard’s 200. Tuning to vocal chops, the guitarist added a crossover audience adding smooth jazz to his repertoire of genres that include R&B, pop and jazz. The multi-Grammy award winner, he has recorded over two hundred albums and singles as a leader, sideman and collaborator; and has performed with the likes of Jaki Byard, Hank Mobley, Jimmy Smith, Lou Donaldson, Hank Crawford, Don Sebesky, Stanley Turrentine, Hubert Laws, Lee Morgan, Red Holloway, J. J. Johnson and Kai Winding, Freddie Hubbard, Deodato, Aretha Franklin, Freddy Cole, and Sadao Watanabe among numerous others.
In 2009 the National Endowment of the Arts honored George Benson with the distinction of being a Jazz Master and he continues to record, perform and tour worldwide.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Amina Claudine Myers was born March 21, 1942 in Blackwell, Arkansas. The pianist, organist, vocalist, composer and musical arranger began singing and playing the piano and organ as a child in church choirs in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area where she grew up. She directed choirs at an early age and graduated in concert music and music education from Philander Smith College.
In the early sixties Amina moved to Chicago, teaching and attending classes at Roosevelt University. It was in Chicago that she began working with Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons, joined the AAMC, focused on vocal compositions and recorded her debut album with Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre in 1969. .
In 1976 Myers relocated to New York City, where she intensified her compositional work and expanded it into the realm of Off-Broadway productions. She also continued performing and recording as a pianist and organist with Lester Bowie and Muhal Richard Abrams into the early eighties. In 1985 she joined Charlie Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra and had notable collaborations on recordings with artists like Marian McPartland, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Archie Shepp, David Murray, Arthur Blytheand Ray Anderson to name a few.
Amina Claudine Myers, a virtuoso pianist and organist whose work is presented internationally and appears on scores of recordings, draws upon her backgrounds in classical music and the music of the black church of her native rural South to create a recombinant sensibility within improvisation-imbued extended compositions. Her work is insistently post-genre at a moment when re-inscriptive collage pretends to postmodern transgression.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harold Mabern was born on March 20, 1936 in Memphis, Tennessee and initially started learning the drums before turning his attention to the piano. Attending Douglass High School he played with Frank Strozier, George Coleman, Booker Little but was most influenced by the piano of Phineas Newborn Jr. After graduating from high school he moved to Chicago where he went to street school listening to Ahmad Jamal and others in clubs to increase his proficiency.
Early in his career Harold played in Chicago with Walter Perkins’ MJT + 3 in the late 1950s before moving to New York in 1959. Heading straight to Birdland where he met Cannonball Adderley who introduced him to Harry “Sweets” Edison who was looking for a replacement for Tommy Flanagan. A quick audition was followed by an offer and a few week later they were in the studio recording with Jimmy Forrest.
Mabern grew his reputation as a sideman and in the tradition of hard bop and soul jazz, the pianist worked with Lionel Hampton, the Jazztet, Donald Byrd, Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Wes Montgomery, Joe Williams and Sarah Vaughan to name a few.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mabern led four albums for Prestige Records and recorded with Stanley Cowell’s Piano Choir. Harold Mabern also recorded as a leader for DIW/Columbia and Sackville and toured with the Contemporary Piano Ensemble.
Pianist Harold Maben has twenty sessions as a leader and another six-dozen as a sideman in his catalogue. In more recent years, Harold is a frequent instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, has recorded extensively with his former William Patterson University student, the tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander and continues to perform and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Henderson was born William Randall Henderson on March 19, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois. He didn’t begin his musical career until 26 years later performing around his home city with Ramsey Lewis before moving to New
York in 1958. A singer of blues, ballads and swing, he follows in the tradition of Joe Williams and Ernie Andrews but clearly brings his own personality to each performance.
His early big hit was Senor Blues, recorded with Horace Silver and worked with the Jimmy Smith trio. During his tenure at Vee-Jay in which he recorded several fine albums he worked with Ramsey Lewis, Yusef Lateef, Booker Little and Eddie Harris. A move to MGM had him working with Oscar Peterson in 1963 and touring with Count Basie from 1965-66.
Settling in Los Angeles, Bill began working as an actor in film and television in the seventies, taking minor or supporting roles and one-time appearances in such movies as Trouble Man, Silver Streak, City Slickers, Hoodlum, and television with Happy Days, Hill Street Blues, The Jeffersons, MacGyver, Cold Case and My Name Is Earl.
The late nineties saw his participation on Charlie Haden’s album “The Art Of The Song” alongside Shirley Horn, followed by a Live at the Kennedy Center and Beautiful Memory: Live at The Vic releases. Still in great form at the age of 86, vocalist and actor Bill Henderson, who amassed some four-dozen albums and 45s over his career, continued to perform around Los Angeles until his death at age 90 on April 3, 2016 from Alzheimer’s Disease.
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