Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lawrence “Bud” Freeman was born on April 13, 1906 in Chicago, Illinois and became one of the most influential and important jazz tenor saxophonists of the Big Band era. During high school in 1922 he became one of the original Austin High School Gang playing the C-melody saxophone alongside Jimmy McPartland and Frank Teschemacher. Two years later he switched to tenor and influenced by the New Orleans Rhythm Kings and Louis Armstrong the Gang would formulate their own style that would become part of the emerging Chicago jazz sound.
In 1927 Freeman moved to New York and worked as a session player and band member with Red Nichols, Roger Wolfe Kahn, Ben Pollack Joe Venuti and Eddie Condon in 1933 producing one of his most notable performances on the recording of “The Eel” which would later become Bud’s nickname for his long snake-like improvisations.
Bud’s smooth and full-tenor sax style with a heavy robust swing was the signature that got him gigs with the Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman orchestras along with leading his own Summa Cum Laude Orchestra. During WWII he joined the Army and led the band in the Aleutian Islands. Returning to New York after his discharge, for the next couple of decades he led his own groups, worked with Eddie Condon, Buck Clayton, ruby Braff, Vic Dickerson and Jo Jones. He was a member of the World’s Greatest Jazz Band off and on, moved to England in 1974, performing, touring and recording throughout Europe. He returned to Chicago and continued to work well into his eighties.
Tenor saxophonist, clarinetist, composer and bandleader Bud Freeman passed away on March 15, 1991 in his hometown of Chicago. He was posthumously inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall Of Fame in 1992.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Russell Garcia was born April 12 1916 in Oakland, California but for most of his life has resided in New Zealand. The self-taught musician with only a few lessons in high school could read music from a very young age. He began his career at age five when one of his brothers bought him a $5 cornet. In school he started up a jazz band so he could play his horn and it became an outlet for his compositions and arrangements.
When Garcia was eleven the Oakland Symphony Orchestra performed his arrangement of Stardust and by high school was playing five nights a week. After a year at San Francisco State University he dropped out and went on the road with several big bands. Finding no satisfaction in his progress he went to Hollywood and studied composition, harmony, orchestration, counterpoint and form with the best teachers and took lessons on every instrument so he could write for each with a deeper awareness. During that time while still in his twenties he conducted the West Hollywood Symphony Orchestra, preparing him for things to come.
Russell’s big break came in 1939 when he took the job of composer/conductor for “This Is Our America” and impressed then director Ronald Reagan, who in turn, recommended him to NBC. From that point on worked poured in. He worked with Henry Mancini on the Glenn Miller Story, Charlie Chaplin, Universal Studios, arranged and conducted Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s “Porgy & Bess”, then followed up with three more albums with Armstrong.
Always the innovator Garcia left Hollywood for jazz and using experimental frameworks assembled his groundbreaking four-trombone band with famed brass players Frank Rosolino, Tommy Pederson, Maynard Ferguson and Herbie Harper and Marty Paich. He recorded over sixty albums under his own name, as well as composing for Stan Kenton’s cutting edge Neophonic Orchestra. He collaborated with Frances Faye, Anita O’Day, Mel Torme, Andy Williams, Judy Garland, Orson Welles, Julie London and Oscar Peterson.
In 1966 he walked away from his success in music to advocate world peace, a promise he made to himself after surviving World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. He continues to lecture and record around the globe and has authored what is considered the definitive textbooks on composition, “The Professional Arranger Composer Books I and II” used in universities and conservatories worldwide. Composer and arranger Russell Garcia passed away on November 19, 2011.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Double bassist John Levy was born April 11, 1912 in New Orleans but was raised in Chicago, Illinois. In 1944 he left Chicago for the bright lights of New York and played bass with Ben Webster, Erroll Garner, Milt Jackson and Billie Holiday. In ’49 he became the original bassist for the George Shearing Quintet and took on the responsibility as his road manager.
1951 saw him turning to business and opening John Levy Enterprises, Inc. becoming the first black personal manager in pop and jazz. By the sixties his roster was boasting clients including Nancy Wilson, Cannonball Adderley, George Shearing, Joe Williams, Shirley Horn and Ramsey Lewis.
In 1997, John Levy was inducted into the International Jazz Hall Of Fame and in 2006 was named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts. Bassist and personal manager John Levy passed away on January 20, 2012 at age 99 in Altadena, California.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Claude Bolling was born April 10, 1930 in Cannes, France. He studied at the Nice Conservatory in Paris. A child prodigy whose primary influence was Duke Ellington, he was playing jazz piano professionally at age 14 with Lionel Hampton, Roy Eldridge and Kenny Clarke. Drawing inspiration from the New Orleans sound of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet and blending it with the music of Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard and Cootie Williams created an interesting voice for the small band Bolling assembled in 1945. This combination put Claude in the midst of the trad jazz scene in Europe that evolved during the fifties.
He worked with Paul Gonsalves, Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Cat Anderson and Rex Stewart and by 1955 was leading his own orchestra. Stepping aside from his jazz recording and performance duties in the 60’s, Bolling ventured into creating, managing and producing a female pop group Les Parisiennes, composed for film and television (amassing over a hundred scores), expanded his interpretive range to include the early American modern jazz pianists like Erroll Garner, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Fats Waller and Horace Silver.
His European fans followed his decades of playing ragtime, blues, New Orleans jazz, boogie woogie and swing, however, his American devotees gained access to his suites written and arranged for classical flute, guitar, trumpet, violin and cello soloists and a mainstream jazz piano trio beginning with his collaboration with flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, a mixture of baroque elegance and modern swing that stayed at the top of the hit parade for two years and in the Billboard “Top 40” for 530 weeks, roughly ten years.
He became friends, worked with and paid tribute in his later years to Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli and Lionel Hampton. Claude Bolling, at 89, a renowned jazz pianist, composer, arrange and occasional actor is still active.
More Posts: piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tenor saxophonist Julian Dash was born on April 9, 1916 in Charleston, South Carolina. He first played the alto saxophone and made his debut in the Charleston Nighthawks in 1935, then switched to tenor that year playing with the Revellers and the Bama State Collegians at Alabama State Teachers College from 1935-36 followed with a move to New York to study embalming.
Dash headed his own group from 1936 to 38 then replaced Paul Bascomb in the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, an association that lasted into the 50’s. After the group disbanded Julian became a part-time player, worked with Buck Clayton in 1953, worked with Marlowe Morris in the sixties, led his own quintet in 1970-71 prior to retiring in 1971. Julian Dash, tenor saxophonist who was based in swing music and co-wrote the classic hit Tuxedo Junction, passed away on February 25, 1974.
More Posts: saxophone