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Isla Eckinger was born on May 6, 1939 in Dornach, Switzerland and played cello as a child, moving to the trombone during his teenage years. After studying trombone at the Conservatory in Basel, he taught himself to play the bass.
As a professional musician Isla made his debut playing with Oscar and Miriam Klein. In the 1960s, he accompanied on tour with Ben Webster, Buck Clayton, Don Byas and Johnny Griffin.
After a move to Munich, Eckinger began working with Mal Waldron, Joe Haider and Philly Joe Jones. From 1970 to 1976 he became an educator, teaching at the Swiss Jazz School while working with Haider, Peter Giger and Heinz Bigler in Group Four for Jazz.
With a new quartet with Waldron, Steve Lacy and Manfred Schoof, Eckinger toured Japan in 1975, and Italy with Chet Baker the following year. By the end of the 1970s he belonged to Wolfgang Engstfeld’s quartet, then worked with Klaus Weiss, Fritz Pauer and also with Dizzy Gillespie.
Mid-1980 saw Isla in Los Angeles, California recording with Chuck Manning. He played with Roman Schwaller and Jimmy Cobb as well as with Charly Antolini, Andy Scherrer and Paul Haag. Double bassist, vibraphonist and trombonist Isla Eckinger transitioned on April 8, 2021.
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Joyce Collins was born on May 5, 1930 in Battle Mountain, Nevada. She began playing piano professionally at the age of 15 while still attending Reno High School. While studying music and teaching at San Francisco State College she played in groups and solo at various jazz clubs, eventually touring with the Frankie Carle band.
By the late 1950s, Collins settled in Los Angeles, California, working there Reno and in Las Vegas she became the first woman to conduct one of the resort’s show bands. During this period she worked in film and television studios, spending 10 years in the band on the Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart shows.
In 1975, she recorded with Bill Henderson garner Grammy nominations for their Street Of Dreams and Tribute To Johnny Mercer albums. Joyce continued to work in films, coached the Bridges brothers for their roles in The Fabulous Baker Boys. She appeared twice on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz radio show.
She performed mostly in solo, duo and trio work but occasionally sat in with big bands, such as that led by Bill Berry. She has recorded with Paul Horn and under her own name releasing her debut album in 1961, followed by her sophomore release Moment To Moment, after a long gap. She was an accomplished composer, arranger and singer with a delicate understanding of the lyricist’s intentions.
As an educator, in 1975 she taught jazz piano at the Dick Grove Music School. She wrote and arranged extensively, including a program, performed live and on radio, tracing the involvement of women in jazz as composers and lyricists. Pianist, singer and educator Joyce Collins passed away on January 3, 2010.
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Sonny Payne was born on May 4, 1926 in New York City. His father was Wild Bill Davis’ drummer Chris Columbus. After early study with Vic Berton, in 1944 he started playing professionally around New York with the Dud and Paul Bascomb band, Hot Lips Page, Earl Bostic, Tiny Grimes and Lucille Dixon through the decade.
From 1950 to 1953, Payne played with Erskine Hawkins’ big band and led his own band for two years, but in late 1954 he made his most significant move, joining Count Basie’s band for more than ten years of constant touring and recording. He recorded Counting Five In Sweden with Joe Newman in 1958 on the Metronome label..
Leaving Basie in 1965, he again led his own trio and toured with Illinois Jacquet in 1976. He went Frank Sinatra’s personal drummer for all of the singer’s appearances with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1965 and 1966, and he later rejoined Basie as the regular drummer from 1973–1974. Most of the rest of his career, however, was spent in the Harry James band, which he joined in 1966, and with whom he was working when he passed away of pneumonia at the age of 52 on January 29, 1979 in Los Angeles, California. Harry James paid all of his medical bills and subsequent funeral costs.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jymie Merritt was born James Raleigh Merritt on May 3, 1926 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother was a choral director, voice and piano teacher and his father a businessman and author. After serving in the U.S. Army during WWII from 1944 to 1946 he returned home to work for a short time in his father’s real estate business. After a brief flirtation with the clarinet he was inspired by a Duke Ellington recording featuring bassist Jimmy Blanton. Encouraged by his mother he studied with Philadelphia Orchestra double bassist Carl Torello and at the Ornstein School of Music
Over the course of his career Merritt has worked in jazz, R&B and blues. In the early 1950s he toured with rock and roll pioneers Bullmoose Jackson and Chris Powell moving on to work with legendary bluesman B.B. King from 1955 to 1957. In 1957 he moved to Manhattan to work with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers featuring his friend Benny Golson, as well as Bobby Timmons and Lee Morgan. He touring and recording with Blakey extended until 1962, when an unknown ailment forced him to stop touring.
By 1964 Merritt was back, working with the trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker and is featured prominently in Baker’s unfinished autobiography published under the title As Though I Had Wings: The Lost Memoir. From 1965 to 1968 he worked with drummer, composer and activist Max Roach, not only in the rhythm section but as a composer, recording his Downbeat Magazine Critic Poll for Best Jazz Composer “Nommo” on Roach’s critically acclaimed 1966 Atlantic album The Drum Also Waltzes. He left in the late 1960s to work with Dizzy Gillespie and appear with him on the Dick Cavett Show.
One of Jymie most productive showcases as a composer was his reuniting recording of trumpeter Lee Morgan’s 1970 Blue Note release Live at the Lighthouse featuring his composition Absolutions that has become a jazz classic. In 1962 he formed and fronted the Forerunners with Odean Pope, Kenny Lowe, Donald Bailey and September Wrice and they evolved into a music cooperative exploring his system of chord inversions, harmonics, and unique approaches to composition and rehearsals, producing a lexicon of its own known as the Forerunner system or concept.
This group performed regularly in and around Philadelphia for five years, until he joined Roach’s band. Pope would also join Roach’s band, playing with him into the 1970s. Forerunner was on and off periodically from the 1960s through the 1980s, depending on what band Merritt was playing with at the time as well as how his health was. Of the second incarnation in 1982 saxophonist Bobby Zankel, Alan Nelson, Odean Pope, Julian Pressley, Colmore Duncan and Warren McLendon. Approaching his 90th birthday Merritt continues to rehearse and perform with the current incarnation of The Forerunners, many of whom have been with the ensemble from its inception.
In 2013, along with bassist Reggie Workman, he received the Clef Club of Philadelphia’s Living Legend Jazz Award as well as the Jazz Heritage Award and the Don Redman Heritage Award. Double-bassist electric-bass pioneer, bandleader and composer Jymie Merritt, who mainly performed as a sideman with Art Blakey, Sonny Clark, Curtis Fuller, Benny Golson, Lee Morgan and Jimmy Witherspoon, passed away on April 10, 2020 of liver cancer in Philadelphia, aged 93.
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Eddy Louiss was born May 2, 1941 in Paris, France. Throughout his life his primary instrument was the Hammond organ, but as a vocalist, he was a member of Les Double Six of Paris from 1961 through 1963. He would worked with Kenny Clarke, Rene Thomas and Jean-Luc Ponty and was a member of the Stan Getz Quartet with Thomas and Bernard Lubat. This group recorded Getz’s album Dynasty in 1971.
In duet, Eddy recorded with pianist Michel Petrucciani in 1994 and with accordionist Richard Galliano in 2002. His later recordings, for example, Sentimental Feeling and Récit proche combined jazz with rock and world music.
Louiss spent most of his career leading his own group in France, but twice has made particularly notable recordings, both on organ. He played piano with Johnny Griffin in the mid-’60s, and in 1964, he was awarded the Prix Django Reinhardt.
Hammond organist Eddy Louiss, who left the world a catalogue of some twenty recordings as a leader, passed away on June 30, 2015.
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