Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick Kenney was born on July 6, 1920 in Albany, New York. He started playing the cello but it was as a trombonist that he got into the Toots Mondello band in the early 1940s. This initial step led to the big bands of Stan Kenton and Woody Herman.
A bandleader named Paul Villepigue brought the trombonist from Albany to New York City. In 1946 he played with Johnny Bothwell, and after two years Kenney headed for the West Coast and a return to college studies prior to hitting the big band big time.
His first gig was with Charlie Barnet and he recorded with Maynard Ferguson in 1952. Les Brown added the trombonist to his low brass section in 1957, and Dick having migrated to Brown’s New England stomping or rather foxtrotting, eased up after his Stan Kenton and Woody Herman experience.
Trombonist Dick Kenney worked with many of the big bands racking up a discography of some 100 sessions in which he is featured on. The most recent of which were tracked in the late Sixties but his list includes Stan Kenton’s visionary City of Glass as well as addresses from forgotten artists, a good example being the Bothwell collection Street of Dreams. The date of his passing is unknown at this time.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bruce Turner was born Malcolm Bruce Turner on July 5, 1922 in Saltburn, England. Educated at Dulwich College, he learned to play the clarinet as a schoolboy and began playing alto sax while serving in the Royal Air Force in 1943 during World War II. He played with Freddy Randall from 1948–53, and worked on the Queen Mary in a dance band and in a quartet with Dill Jones and Peter Ind.
He briefly studied under Lee Konitz in New York City in 1950 then joined Humphrey Lyttelton’s outfit from 1953 to 1957. After leaving Lyttelton he led his own Jump Band from 1957–65 and was featured and arranged the music in the 1961 film Living Jazz. In 1961, Turner and his band recorded the LP Jumpin’ At The NFT (National Film Theatre) coinciding with the film’s release. Two years later he took part in the largest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain with George Melly, Diz Disley, Acker Bilk, Chris Barber, Kenny Ball, Ken Colyer, Monty Sunshine, Bob Wallis, Alex Welsh and Mick Mulligan.
He returned to work with Randall from 1964–66, and played with Don Byas in 1966 and Acker Bilk from 1966 to 1970. He continued to work with Lyttelton and Ind in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and played with the Jump Band every so often. He worked with Wally Fawkes, John Chilton, Stan Greig, Alex Welsh, and Dave Green through the Seventies. He led his own small ensembles in the 1990s, up until his death.
He was noted for his very quiet voice and his autobiography Hot Air, Cool Music was published in 1984. He also wrote a column on jazz for the Daily Worker. Saxophonist, clarinetist, and bandleader Bruce Turner passed away on November 28, 1993 in Newport Pagnell.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Seger Ellis was born on July 4, 1904 in Houston, Texas. He began his career as pianist playing live for a local Houston radio station KPRC in the early 1920s. In 1925 he was added to the orchestra of Lloyd Finlay for a “field trip” recording session for Victor Records and was also allowed to cut two piano solos.
The recordings led to Ellis being invited to Victor’s regular recording studio in Camden, New Jersey to cut a number of piano solos, all or most of them compositions of his own. These were among the earliest records Victor made using the new electric microphone and recording equipment, a technique that was yet not perfected which probably explains why only four of the titles were eventually issued. Of these the coupling Prairie Blues and Sentimental Blues became a minor hit.
After his first recording experiences Seger returned to Houston and radio work as well as playing in vaudeville theaters. During this period he started adding singing to his piano playing and was well received by audiences. In 1927 he was invited to New York to make vocal test recordings, his first issued vocal record was Sunday on the Columbia label. This was followed by a string of records for Okeh Records and he chose the best musicians to play with him such as Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Andy Sannella and Louis Armstrong.
His first recording career ended in 1931, however towards the end of the decade he returned with a big band of his own, the Choirs of Brass Orchestra with himself conducting and taking occasional vocals and featuring his wife, Irene Taylor as a vocalist. In 1939 Ellis reorganized and his new band featured the conventional four-man reed section but disbanded in 1941 and enlisted in the Army-Air Force in 1942.
A move back to Texas saw him being less active as a performer and more involved in songwriting. Many of compositions were recorded by Harry James, Gene Krupa, Bing Crosby, Count Basie and the Mills Brothers. Pianist and vocalist Seger Ellis gradually retired and took up residence in Houston where he passed away in a retirement home on September 29, 1995.
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Pete Fountain was born Pierre Dewey LaFontaine, Jr. in a Creole cottage style frame house on July 3, 1930 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father later changed his name to Peter and added Junior. He started playing clarinet as a child due to suffering from weakened lungs from a respiratory infection. Choosing the clarinet, his lungs became strengthened after receiving a doctor’s advice to play an instrument that he would have to blow into.
He took private lessons but also learned to play jazz by playing along with phonograph records of first Benny Goodman and then Irving Fazola. Early on he played with the bands of Monk Hazel and Al Hirt. Fountain founded The Basin Street Six in 1950 with his longtime friend, trumpeter George Girard . Four years later the band broke up and he was hired to join the Lawrence Welk orchestra and became well known for his many solos on the television show, The Lawrence Welk Show.
Post Welk, Pete was hired by Decca Records A&R head Charles “Bud” Dant and went on to produce 42 hit albums with Dant. He returned to New Orleans, played with The Dukes of Dixieland, then began leading bands under his own name. On the Sixties and Seventies he owned his own club in the French Quarter and later acquired Pete Fountain’s Jazz Club at the Riverside Hilton. He would lead a quintet comprised of bassist Don Bagley, vibist Godfrey Hirsch, pianist Merle Koch, and double bass drummer Jack Sperling. He played the Hollywood Bowl and appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson 56 times.
Over the course of his career his club would host Cliff Arquette, Jonathan Winters, Frank Sinatra, Phil Harris, Carol Lawrence, Robert Goulet, Keely Smith, Robert Mitchum, Brenda Lee, among many others. He would play and/or record with Oliver “Sticks” Felix, John Probst, Paul Guma, Godfrey Hirsch, Jack Sperling, Don Bagley, Morty Corb, Godfrey Hirch, Merle Kock, Stan Wrightsman and Al Hirt, who had a club down the street. He performed his last show at the Hollywood Casino in 2010.
He is a founder and the most prominent member of the Half-Fast Walking Club, one of the best known marching Krewes that parade in New Orleans on Mardi Gras Day. He has been honored with induction into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame, given a star on the Delta Music Museum Walk of Fame, and received an honorary degree from Loyola University New Orleans. Clarinetist Pete Fountain, who played jazz, Dixieland, pop jazz, honky-tonk jazz, pop, and Creole music, passed away in his hometown on August 6, 2016 from heart failure at the age of 86.
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Garry Dial was born on July 2, 1954 in Montclair, New Jersey. He began piano lessons at the age of 10 with Elston Husk and his mother, a pianist helped him practice. His 7th grade teacher gave him his first jazz record The Oscar Peterson Trio which instilled in him the love of jazz. Entering high school at St. Benedict’s Prep in Newark, New Jersey where the priests at St. Benedict’s supported his love of jazz. While in church he met Mary Lou Williams who offered him free lessons, took him under her wing and for the next few years went into Harlem to study with her. It was there he learned of Miles, Monk, Bud Powell and Cecil Taylor.
As a junior in high school Garry took the Summer Jazz Workshop at Berklee College Of Music and realized that music and jazz would be his calling. After high school graduation he returned to Berklee where he met his teacher of 37 years, the late Charlie Banacos. After one year at Berklee fellow musician Kenny Werner recommended him for a gig in Bermuda as the pianist at The Princess Hotel from 1975 to 1978.
A move to New York saw Dial playing with Charli Persip, performing at Frank Sinatra’s private parties, joining Gerry Mulligan’s Big Band, the Mel Lewis Quartet and Joe Morello Quintet. He was enlisted by Ruth Ellington Boatwright, Duke’s sister, to perform and record on tape each composition in the entire Ellington archive, as many were never recorded or played by the composer and would have been lost to history. Shortly afterward, he met Red Rodney and where he first came to fame as an important modernizing force with the Red Rodney-Ira Sullivan Quintet. After a ten-year association Sullivan departed and was replaced by saxophonist Dick Oatts, and they eventually formed the group Dial & Oatts, recording for the DMP label. Garry has also recorded with his own trio for the Continuum label.
As an educator he has leant his talent and knowledge to the students at the Manhattan School of Music and the New School, has given private lessons with Stefon Harris, Jacob Sacks, Mary J. Blige, Bette Midler, Alexa Joel and Amanda Brecker, to name a few. Hard bop and post bop pianist Garry Dial continues to perform, record, tour and educate.
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