Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Henry Butler was born September 21, 1949 in New Orleans, Louisiana. Blinded by glaucoma in infancy and his musical training began at the Louisiana State School for the Blind, where he learned to play valve trombone, baritone horn and drums before focusing his talents on singing and piano,
Butler was mentored at Southern University in Baton Rouge by clarinetist and educator Alvin Batiste. He later earned a master’s degree in music at Michigan State University in 1974, receiving the MSU Distinguished Alumni Award in 2009.
Due to the devastation of his home and his vintage 1925 Mason & Hamlin piano by Hurricane Katrina, Henry moved to first Boulder then Denver, Colorado but by 2009 he relocated to New York City. He has pursued photography as a hobby since 1984,and his methods and photos are featured in a 2010 HBO2 documentary, Dark Light: The Art of Blind Photographers, that aired. His photographs also have been shown in galleries in New Orleans.
Pianist Henry Butler has recorded and released nine albums as a leader for Impulse, Windham Hill and Basin Street Records and as a sideman with James Carter and Corey Harris. He joins the lineage of Crescent City pianists like Professor Longhair, James Booker, Tuts Washington and Jelly Roll Morton. He continues to perform and record in a variety of styles of music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jackie Paris was born Carlo Jackie Paris on September 20, 1924 in Nutley, New Jersey. His uncle Chick had been a guitarist with Paul Whiteman’s orchestra. A very popular child entertainer in vaudeville, the pint-sized song and dance man shared the stage with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson and the Mills Brothers.
After serving in the Army during World War II, Paris was inspired by his friend Nat King Cole to put together a trio featuring himself on guitar and vocals. The Jackie Paris Trio was a hit at the Onyx Club, playing for an unprecedented 26 weeks, perhaps the longest-running residency in the history of Swing Street.
The first song that Jackie’s trio recorded was Hoagy Carmichael’s Skylark for MGM Records in 1947. In 1949, he was the first white vocalist to tour with the Lionel Hampton for a 78 one-night tour. Coming off the road, he received an offer to join the Duke Ellington Orchestra, but at that time was too exhausted to take it.
Paris was the first singer to record Thelonious Monk’s future jazz anthem Round Midnight, which was produced by Leonard Feather and featured a young Dick Hyman on piano with drummer Roy Haynes and bassist Tommy Potter. He was the only vocalist to ever tour as a regular member of the Charlie Parker Quintet but unfortunately no recordings exist of the Parker-Paris combo.
In 1953, Jackie was named Best New Male Vocalist of the Year in the first ever Down Beat Critics Poll. Ella Fitzgerald won the female category and repeatedly named Paris as one of her favorites as well as Charles Mingus, who enlisted the talented vocalist on several projects and club dates over many decades. He shared the bill with comic Lenny Bruce and recorded with Hank Jones, Charlie Shavers, Joe Wilder, Wynton Kelly, Eddie Costa, Coleman Hawkins, Bobby Scott, Max Roach, Lee Konitz, Donald Byrd, Gigi Gryce, Ralph Burns, Tony Scott, Neal Hefti, Terry Gibbs, Johnny Mandel and Oscar Pettiford and the list continues.
He recorded consistently through the years, from the 1940s and in 2001, he played to a standing room crow and to a standing ovation at Birdland. He was virtually the only performer to have appeared at every incarnation of the famed nightspot, from the 1950s to the present. Jackie Paris passed away on June 17, 2004 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pete Zimmer was born on September 18, 1977 and raised in Waukesha, Wisconsin. He studied at Northern Illinois University and the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. At the Conservatory while earning his bachelor degree he apprenticed under Danilo Perez, Cecil McBee, George Garzone, Bob Moses, Jerry Bergonzi and Bob Brookmeyer.
By 2004, Pete launched his record label, Tippin’ Records, and released his first leader album, Common Man, and has since produced and released three more as a bandleader and composer, Burnin’ Live at the Jazz Standard, Judgment, Chillin’ Live @ Jazz Factory and Prime of Life.
Pete has performed and recorded with George Garzone, Joel Frahm, Jeremy Pelt, Peter Bernstein, Michael Rodriguez, Rodney Jones, Jerry Weldon, Dennis Irwin, David Wong, Akiko Tsuruga, Rick Germanson, Anthony Wonsey, Randy Napoleon, Michael Karn, Julius Tolentino, Gene Perla, Tom Kennedy, Wayne Escoffery, Jaleel Shaw, Dan Nimmer, and many others.
Since 2005 Zimmer has led his group at many of the famous venues in New York City as well as touring much of the U.S.A. and also the United Kingdom. A highly regarded educator he conducts clinics at many collegiate jazz study programs and has been a faculty member at the New York Jazz Academy since 2009. Drummer, bandleader, sideman, composer, educator, and record label entrepreneur Pete Zimmer continues to pursue his jazz career.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sil Austin was born September 17, 1929 in Dunnellon, Florida. He taught himself to play saxophone when he was 12, won the Ted Mack Amateur Hour in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1945 playing Danny Boy and his performance got him a contract with Mercury Records. He moved to New York City and studied for a time at the Juilliard School of Music.
Austin briefly played with Roy Eldridge in 1949, with Cootie Williams in 1951-52 and Tiny Bradshaw from 1952-54, before setting up his own successful touring group. He recorded over thirty albums for Mercury, and had a number of Top 40 hits with popular tunes like Danny Boy, that became his signature song, My Mother’s Eyes and Slow Walk, the latter hitting #17 on the charts.
After leaving Mercury in the 1960s, he recorded with a few other labels, including SSS, owned by Shelby Singleton, and recorded a few albums in Japan in the 1970s. Saxophonist Sil Austin, who regarded Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Sonny Stitt as his major influences, passed away of prostate cancer on September 1, 2001.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Graham Haynes was born September 16, 1960 in Brooklyn, New York the son of drummer Roy Haynes. With aspirations to push jazz beyond its traditional boundaries, his first foray into electronic music came in 1979 with meeting alto saxophonist Steve Coleman. Together, they formed a band called Five Elements, which launched the influential group of improvisers called M-Base Collective.
With the formation of his own ensemble, Graham Haynes and No Image and subsequent release of What Time It Be?, he spent much of the Eighties studying a wide range of African, Arabic and South Asian Music. Then in 1990 a move to France incorporated these far-off influences into his next two releases, Nocturne Parisian and The Griot’s Footsteps.
Haynes returned to New York City in 1993, took advantage of the flourishing Hip-Hop scene and released the sample heavy album Transition. He recorded another hybridized album in 1996, Tones For The 21st Century, then discovered drum ‘n’ bass and began working with some of the genres finest DJs and producers in London and the U.S. This manifested in the 2000 release of BPM, a fusion of drum n’ bass beats with the classical music of Richard Wagner.
Over the years, Haynes has kept busy with several critically acclaimed multimedia projects, composing scores for films Flag Wars and The Promise, and as a lecturer at New York University. He received two nominations for the Alpert Award For The Arts.
He has collaborated with his father, Cassandra Wilson, Jaki Byard, Uri Caine, Vernon Reid, Me’Shell Ndegeocello, The Roots, David Murray, George Adams, Ed Blackwell, Bill Laswell, Steve Williamson and Bill Dixon to name a few. With ten albums under his belt, cornetist, trumpeter and composer Graham Haynes continues to push the envelope in his performance, recording and composing.
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