Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Douglas Ewart was born on September 13, 1946 in Kingston, Jamaica and emigrated to the United States in 1963. Settling in Chicago, Illinois he became associated with the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1967, studying with Joseph Jarman and Roscoe Mitchell. He served as that organization’s president from 1979 to 1986.
Douglas recorded eight albums as a leader and has performed or recorded fifteen with J. D. Parran, Muhal Richard Abrams, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Alvin Curran, Anthony Davis, Robert Dick, Von Freeman, Joseph Jarman, Amina Claudine Myers, Roscoe Mitchell, James Newton, Rufus Reid, Wadada Leo Smith, Cecil Taylor, Richard Teitelbaum, Henry Threadgill, Hamid Drake, Don Byron, Malachi Favors Maghostut, Muhal Richard Abrams, Spencer Barefield, Tani Tabbal, Jean-Luc Cappozzo, Joëlle Léandre, Bernard Santacruz, Michael Zerang, Chico Freeman, Dennis González, Yusef Lateef, Adam Rudolph,
In 1992 he collaborated with Canadian artist Stan Douglas on the video installation Hors-champs which was featured at Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. The installation features Ewart in improvisation of Albert Ayler’s Spirits Rejoice with musicians George Lewis, Kent Carter, and Oliver Johnson.
Douglas Ewart has lived in Minneapolis, Minnesota since 1990 and plays sopranino and alto saxophones, clarinets, bassoon, flute, bamboo flutes, panpipes, and didgeridoo; as well as Rastafarian hand drums.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cat Anderson was born William Alonzo Anderson on September 12, 1916 in Greenville, South Carolina. Losing both parents when he was four years old, he was sent to live at the Jenkins Orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina where he learned to play the trumpet. It was his classmates that gave him the nickname “Cat” based on his fighting style.
He toured and made his first recording with the Carolina Cotton Pickers, a small group based at the orphanage. After leaving the Cotton Pickers, Anderson played with guitarist Hartley Toots, the Claude Hopkins Big Band, Lucky Millinder, the Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, the Sabby Lewis Orchestra, the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, with whom he recorded the classic Flying Home No. 2, and the Doc Wheeler Sunset Orchestra with whom he also recorded from 1938–1942.
His career took off in 1944 when he joined Duke Ellington’s orchestra at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He quickly became a central part of Ellington’s sound. Although Anderson was a very versatile musician, capable of playing in a number of jazz styles, he is most renowned for his abilities in the extreme high or “altissimo” range. He had a big sound in all registers but could play up to a “triple C” with great power, able to perform his high-note solos without a microphone.
A master of half valve and plunger mute playing, Cat was capable of filling in for anyone else who was not there. He led and fronted his own big band and in addition, he was a very skilled arranger and composer. He performed his own compositions El Gato and Bluejean Beguine with Ellington, and others of his compositions and arrangements with his own band, for example on his 1959 Mercury recording, Cat on a Hot Tin Horn.
After 1971, he settled in the Los Angeles, California area, where he continued to play studio sessions, perform with local small and big bands, and to tour Europe. He recorded seven albums as a leader, and as a sideman recorded sixty-four with Johnny Hodges, Quincy Jones, Rosemary Clooney, Frances Faye, Mel Torme, Earl Hines, Bell Berry, Benny Carter, Claude Bolling, Gene Ammons, Louis Bellson, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lionel Hampton. Trumpeter Cat Anderson passed away from cancer on April 29, 1981.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Adriano Acea was born September 11, 1917 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Adriano Acea of Cuba and Leona Acea of Virginia. One of six children, he was stricken with rheumatic fever and wasn’t expected to live during his first decade of life.
During the 1930s, Acea started out as a trumpeter and saxophonist and after his military service in the Army in 1946, he switched to playing the piano. He later became a session musician with jazz veterans Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Cootie Williams, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Dinah Washington, James Moody, Zoot Sims, and Roy Haynes. Between 1951 to 1962 he would record with Grant Green, Dodo Greene, Joe Newman, Leo Parker, Don Wilkerson, and Jesse Powell.
Acea is listed as co-composer of Nice ‘N’ Greasy that was the closing track to Lou Donaldson’s 1962 album, The Natural Soul. He is also credited as a composer on recordings by Gillespie, Jacquet, and Moody.
Pianist Adriano Acea, known as Johnny Acea, passed away on July 25, 1963.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Davis was born on September 10, 1958 in Santa Barbara, California. With Shelly Manne as his godfather, he became interested in the drums at a young age. Following the advice of drum teacher Alan Dawson, he moved to New York City in the early 1980s to begin his career as a jazz drummer.
Once there Steve met jazz educator Jamey Aebersold, and by 1982 joined the Aebersold clinic faculty. Throughout the 1980s while studying privately with Joe Morello he worked in New York City, meeting pianist Lynne Arriale at a jam session soon after she moved to the city in 1991.
As an educator, Davis holds a faculty position at the Jamey Aebersold Jazz Summer Schools in the US and the Jazzwise Summer Schools in the UK. He has taught at Triton College, Webster University, Washington University, Berlin Conservatory of Music, Indiana University, and the University of South Florida.
He has recorded five albums as a leader, and eighteen as a sideman with Arriale, Aebersold, Joe Beck, Ali Ryerson, Manfredo Fest, Monika Herzig, Wolfgang Lackerschmid, and Walt Weiskopf. Drummer Steve Davis, who is a recording engineer, continues to perform and record as a musician.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jean Omer was born in Nivelles, Belgium on September 9, 1912. He played violin before switching to clarinet and saxophone, playing with local groups in Strassburg and Brussels. He worked in France in the band of Billy Smith, then played with the Golden Stars and in René Compère’s band.
Omer participated in a recording session with Gus Deloof in 1931. Following a tour with Fud Candrix’s Carolina Stomp Chasers, he founded his own group, which included at times, Lauderic Caton and Jean Robert. He and Robert De Kers accompanied Josephine Baker in the mid-1930s and played in a group with Ernst van’t Hoff late in the decade.
In 1941, he recorded with Rudy Bruder. He settled in Brussels and led a band into the 1960s which played at the club Le Boeuf sur le Toit. Clarinetist, saxophonist, and bandleader Jean Omer passed away on May 30, 1994 in Brussels, Belgium.
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