Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Robert Edward Brookmeyer was born an only child on December 19, 1929 in Kansas City, Missouri and began playing professionally in his teens. Attending though not graduating from the Kansas City Conservatory of Music, he played piano in big bands led by Tex Beneke and Ray McKinley, but concentrated on valve trombone from when he moved to the Claude Thornhill orchestra in the early 1950s.

He was part of small groups led by Stan Getz, Jimmy Giuffre, and Gerry Mulligan in the 1950s and during the Fifties and Sixties he played New York City clubs, television house band, studio recordings, and arranged for Ray Charles and others. In the early 1960s Brookmeyer joined flugelhorn player Clark Terry in a band and they appeared together on BBC2’s Jazz 625.

A move to Los Angeles, California in 1968 saw Bob becoming a full-time studio musician, spending 10 years on the West Coast, and sinking into a serious alcohol problem. After overcoming this debilitation he returned to New York and became musical director for the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra in 1979. Writing for and performed with jazz groups in Europe from the early 1980s, he went on to establish and run a music school in the Netherlands, taught at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, as well as  other institutions.

Eight time Grammy nominated trombonist, composer, arranger, bandleader and educator Bob Brookmeyer,  who played n the mainstream, cool, post bop and West Coast jazz genres, passed away on December 15, 2011 in New London, New Hampshire.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lawrence Lucie was born in Emporia, Virginia on December 18, 1907 and when he was eight years old began learning mandolin, violin, and banjo. He moved to New York City in 1927, attended the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to study banjo and studied guitar at Paramount Music Studios, making the later his primary instrument.

Lucie started his professional career as a temporary substitute for Fred Guy in the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1931. He spent the next two years playing guitar for Benny Carter, followed by Fletcher Henderson, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Lucky Millinder, Coleman Hawkins in 1940, and Louis Armstrong until 1944, recording with all of them except Ellington. He would go on to record with Red Allen, Putney Dandridge, Billie Holiday, Spike Hughes, Jelly Roll Morton, Bobby Watson, Roy Eldridge, Sidney Bechet, Big Joe Turner, and Teddy Wilson.

After serving in the Army, he became a member of small groups in contrast to his big band years, and worked often as a studio musician. Throughout his career he was a rhythm guitarist, seldom taking solos until the 1970s, when he founded Toy Records to issue music performed by him and his wife, Nora Lee King. In the 1980s and 1990s he played in concerts with Panama Francis.

As an educator he taught for thirty years at the Borough of Manhattan Community College until 2004. He played solo guitar in clubs until he was 99-years-old. Guitarist Lawrence Lucie, who had a seventy-five year career in jazz and was the last musician to record with Jelly Roll Morton, passed away on  August 14, 2009 at the age of 101.

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Requisites

Soul Fountain is an album featuring saxophonist Clifford Jordan which was recorded in 1966 and but not released on the Atlantic Records subsidiary Vortex label until 1970.

All compositions were composed by Clifford Jordan with the exception as noted: T.N.T. composed by Ben Tucker, Grady Tate and Bob Dorough, I’ve Got a Feeling for You, H.N.I.C. composed by Tate and Tucker, I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown, Caribbean Cruise, Señor Blues by Horace Silver, Eeh Bah Lickey Doo and Retribution composed by Abbey Lincoln.

The personnel included Clifford Jordan on tenor saxophone, flute, piano, Jimmy Owens – trumpet, flugelhorn, Julian Priester – trombone, John Patton – organ (tracks 6-8), Frank Owens – piano, organ (tracks 1-5), Ben Tucker – bass (tracks 1-5), Bob Cranshaw – bass, electric bass (tracks 1-5), Bobby Durham (tracks 1-5), Billy Higgins (tracks 6-8) – drums, Ray Barretto – congas (tracks 6-8), Joe Wohletz – bongos, percussion and Orestes Vilato – percussion (tracks 1-5)

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Helen Sachs was born December 17, 1934 in Indonesia and began taking classical piano lessons at the age of six. During her school days, she appeared as a vocalist with her own jazz trio. Her idols were the jazz singers of the 1940s like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, as well as Frank Sinatra and Mel Tormé.

In 1957 Helen moved to Germany and from 1969 she began to perform with small combos and big bands. She worked with various radio and television stations in Europe, including TROS and VARA in the Netherlands, Südwestfunk and Süddeutscher Rundfunk and TV Bratislava.

She made recordings with Mel Lewis and Jeff Hamilton, and appeared with Hank Jones, Art Farmer and Toots Thielemans. She taught from 1973 to 1988 at the University of Duisburg, and in 1997 she moved to the United States.

She works with her septet Crossings and the Big Band On The Rio Grande in Las Cruces, New Mexico. Since then vocalist Helen Sachs has frequently performed in Germany, and with her quintet and the Ralf Butscher Trio together with Curt Warren.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joe Fonda was born on December 16, 1954 in Amsterdam, New York to parents who both played jazz. He played guitar in his youth but switched to bass guitar later on. He studied bass at Berklee College of Music, where he also began playing upright bass.

In the early 1980s he played in the New Haven, Connecticut area and recorded with Wadada Leo Smith. Fonda explored dance and its relationship to jazz music, playing bass with a dance company in the 1980s and incorporating a tap dancer into his ensemble for the albums From the Source and The Healing.

1994 began his playing with Anthony Braxton, collaborating with him extensively for the next five years and recording fifteen albums. He and Michael Jefry Stevens co-lead an ensemble, the Fonda-Stevens group, that began in 1991. The group has recorded ten sessions and continues to perform extensively in Europe and the United States.

Bassist Joe Fonda has recorded seventeen albums as a bandleader and continues to record, perform and explore free jazz.

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