Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Thore Jederby was born on October 15, 1913 in Stockholm, Sweden, receiving formal training in music at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music. He began playing jazz in the mid-1930s, playing with Arne Hülphers’s band from 1934 to 1938, and then with Thore Ehrling’s ensemble from 1938 through the end of World War II.

He led his own group, the Swing Swingers, for studio recordings in the mid-1930s, and led smaller ensembles for recording sessions well into the 1940s. Later in his life, Thore went on to become active in the capturing of the history of Swedish jazz. He was involved in reissues of early Swedish recordings, curated radio shows devoted to Swedish jazz, and participated in a national commission on the history of jazz in Sweden.

Double bassist Thore Jederby, who was also a record producer and radio broadcaster, passed away on January 10, 1984 in Stockholm.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Spencer Williams was born on October 14, 1889 in New Orleans, Louisiana and was educated at St. Charles University in New Orleans. By 1907 he was performing in Chicago, Illinois, and moved to New York City around 1916. After arriving in New York, he co-wrote several songs with Anton Lada of the Louisiana Five. Among those songs was Basin Street Blues, which became one of his most popular songs and is still recorded by musicians to this day.

He toured Europe with bands from 1925 to 1928 during this time he wrote for Josephine Baker at the Folies Bergère in Paris. Spencer returned to New York for a few years until 1932 when he moved to Europe, spending most of his time in London, England before moving to Stockholm, Sweden in 1951.

His hit songs include Basin Street Blues, I Ain’t Got Nobody, Royal Garden Blues, Mahogany Hall Stomp, I’ve Found a New Baby, Everybody Loves My Baby, Shimmy-Sha-Wobble, Boodle Am Shake, Tishomingo Blues, Fireworks, I Ain’t Gonna Give Nobody None of My Jelly Roll, Arkansas Blues, Georgia Grind, Paradise Blues, When Lights Are Low, and My Man o’ War.

Returning to New York City in 1957, composer, pianist, and singer Spencer Williams, who was posthumously inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970, before passing away in Flushing, New York on July 14, 1965.

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Three Wishes

Cedar Walton gave his three wishes to Pannonica and they were: 

  1. “I don’t know how to word this… I’d like to have immediate access to the world, you know? Anywhere I want to go.”
  2. “To have my own band and to be able to swing no matter what. Playing with Art* demands that.”
  3. “I wish jazz was accepted like everything else.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

GRIOTS GALLERY

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Scoville “Toby” Browne was born on October 13, 1909 in Atlanta, Georgia and played in the late 1920s with Junie Cobb’s band and the Midnight Ramblers in Chicago, Illinois. From 1931 to 193232 he played saxophone and clarinet for Fred Avendorph. He went on to work with Louis Armstrong from 1933–35, and in the mid- and late Thirties with Jesse Stone, Jack Butler, Claude Hopkins, and Blanche Calloway.

By the end of the decade, he was attending the Chicago College of Music and the 1940s Browne played with Slim Gaillard, Fats Waller, Buddy Johnson, Hot Lips Page, and Eddie Heywood before serving in the U.S. military during World War II. Following his discharge, he played with Hopkins again and with Buck Clayton.

Taken on the role of bandleader on and off in the 1950s, Toby also studied classical music. He was the main clarinet soloist with Lionel Hampton and toured overseas with Muggsy Spanier late in the decade, and appeared in the 1958 photograph A Great Day in Harlem.

Continuing to work with Hopkins well into the Seventies, alto saxophonist and clarinetist Toby Browne who never recorded as a bandleader but only a sideman, passed away on October 3, 1994 in Chicago.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jimmy Archey was born on October 12, 1902 in Norfolk, Virginia. He began playing when he was twelve and was getting professional gigs a year later. He studied at Hampton Institute from 1915 to 1919, played in Atlantic City, New Jersey for a while before moving to New York City in 1923.

During the Roaring Twenties, he played with Edgar Hayes, Most noteworthy for his work was in several prominent jazz orchestras and big bands of his time, including leading one of his own. He performed and recorded with the James P. Johnson Orchestra, King Oliver, Fats Waller, and the Luis Russell Orchestra, among others.

The late 1930s saw Archey participating in big bands that simultaneously featured musicians such as Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Cab Calloway, Duke Ellington, and Claude Hopkins. In the 1940s he toured France with Mezz Mezzrow and in the 1950s, he spent much of his time working with New Orleans revivalist bands with artists such as Bob Wilber and Earl Hines.

Becoming a bandleader, during the next few years, he headed a sextet, which in 1952 had trumpeter Henry Goodwin, Benny Waters on clarinet and pianist Dick Wellstood. A major yet underrated musician, his only sessions recorded as a leader were for Nec Plus Ultra, the French Barclay and the 77 label. Trombonist Jimmy Archey passed away on November 16, 1967 in Amityville, New York.

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