Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Skip Martin was born Lloyd Vernon Martin on May 14, 1916 in Robinson, Illinois. He was an active arranger during the swing jazz band era of the 1930s and 1940s. working with Count Basie, Charlie Barnet, Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. He doubled as a reedist with the latter three, and recorded with trumpeter Cootie Williams in the early 1940s as well.

Later in the 1940s Skip worked with Les Brown before moving to Los Angeles, California in the 1950s, where he did extensive work as a staff and freelance orchestrator, studio conductor and popular song arranger Tony Martin, The Pied Pipers, the Andrews and De Castro sister groups, and Barbara Ruick.

Martin recorded three albums as a leader and produced material for West Coast jazz and swing concept albums such as Scheherajazz in 1959 for Somerset Records. In 1963 he joined Nelson Riddle on a dream team of arrangers working on the Sinatra-Burke compilation albums for the ambitious Reprise Musical Repertory Theatre project, featuring the singing members of the Rat Pack, plus Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Jo Stafford.

In Hollywood, Skip was one of the team of orchestrators contributing to Singin’ in the Rain, Guys and Dolls, and shared  arrangement credits with Conrad Salinger on Summer Stock, Kiss Me Kate and Funny Face, where a few songs of the Great American Songbook came from. He retained sole credit as orchestrator for Judy Garland’s comeback vehicle A Star Is Born, which gave us The Man That Got Away and It’s A New World.

Saxophonist, clarinetist, and music arranger Skip Martin transitioned on February 12, 1976, in Los Angeles, California.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Harold Rubin was born on May 13, 1932 in Johannesburg, South Africa of Israeli descent. Attending Jeppe High School for Boys he received private instruction in the fine arts and classical clarinet as a teenager. He developed a fascination with jazz and began playing at the Skyline Night Club at eighteen. He went on to enroll as an architecture student at the University of the Witwatersrand and completed his professional studies in London, England.

Rubin’s creative endeavours in South African society during the 1950s and 1960s dissented against the apartheid-era Afrikaner establishment by defying the country’s racist social norms. Rubin organised his own jazz group in the 1950s, snuck into black townships, and played alongside black musicians.

Openly protesting the repressive political environment, Harold left the country for Israel, where he quickly established himself in Tel Aviv, and was employed as an architect and taught at an academy of architecture and design from the 1960s until his retirement in 1986. He returned to playing jazz in late 1979, having previously given up performance for more than a decade after his emigration from Africa. He became a founding member of the 1980s Zaviot Jazz Quartet, who throught he decade performed and recorded on Jazzis Records.

He was awarded the Landau Award in tribute to his contributions to jazz music in 2008, he continued to play jazz with musicians of the younger generations in Tel Aviv. Clarinetist Harold Rubin, who concentrated in the free jazz genre, transitioned on April 1, 2020 at the age of 87.

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The Quarantined Jazz Voyager

A simple statement: You know what to do to remain safe and healthy. The fat lady hasn’t begun to warm up because it’s not over.

This week I am featuring an album by an understated vocalist who recorded some two dozen albums. I’ve selected from the library. I Just Dropped By To Say Hello is a studio album by jazz vocalist Johnny Hartman, released on Impulse! Records. It was his second and next-to-last album on the label, after his highly successful collaboration with John Coltrane which produced John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman, recorded a few months earlier.

Tracks 1 & 6 were recorded on October 9, 1963 and the balance of the songs were recorded on October 17, 1963 at Van Gelder Studios in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. It was produced by Bob Thiele, The album was mastered at Longwear Plating and released in 1964. Tracks 1~6 were on the A side of the album and 7~11, the B side of the original album.

1. Charade (from Charade) (Henry Mancini, Johnny Mercer) ~ 2:38
2. In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning (Bob Hilliard, David Mann) ~ 2:49
3. A Sleepin’ Bee (Harold Arlen, Truman Capote) ~ 2:15
4. Don’t You Know I Care (Or Don’t You Care To Know) (Mack David, Duke Ellington) ~ 4:14
5. Kiss & Run (Rene Denoncin, William Engvick, Jack Ledru) ~ 3:35
6. If I’m Lucky (Eddie DeLange, Josef Myrow) ~ 2:52
7. I Just Dropped by to Say Hello (Sid Feller, Rick Ward) ~ 4:10
8. Stairway to the Stars (Matty Malneck, Mitchell Parish, Frank Signorelli) ~ 3:09
9. Our Time (Stanley Glick, Johnny Hartman) ~ 3:00
10. Don’t Call It Love (Ronnell Bright) ~ 2:07
11. How Sweet It Is to Be in Love (George Cardini, Danny DiMinno) ~ 2:20

• Johnny Hartman ~ vocals
• Illinois Jacquet ~ tenor saxophone
• Kenny Burrell ~ guitar (tracks 2-5, 7-11)
• Jim Hall ~ guitar (tracks 1, 6)
• Hank Jones ~ piano
• Milt Hinton ~ double bass
• Elvin Jones ~ drums

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Gerald Wiggins was born on May 12, 1922 in New York City. He started classical piano lessons when he was four but by his teenage years became interested in jazz. He doubled on bass while attending High School & Art and for a period in the 40s accompanied Stepin’ Fetchit. Following this he worked and toured with the big bands of Les Hite, Louis Armstrong and Benny Carter. Stationed in Seattle while in the military he played in the local jazz clubs.

By the mid 40s Wiggins relocated to Los Angeles and played music for television and film. He has worked with Lena Horne, Kay Starr, Nat King Cole, Lou Rawls, Jimmy Witherspoon Helen Humes, Joe Williams, Ernie Andrews and Eartha Kitt to name a few. He also worked at the Hollywood studios as a vocal coach and worked with Marilyn Monroe and others.

Always a highly flexible pianist, Wiggins was comfortable in swing and bop settings with a consistently witty style filled with catchy riffs became his distinctive signature. His best-known recording as an organist was Wiggin’ Out but it was Wiggins’ trio work with Andy Simpkins and Paul Humphreys that is legendary. Pianist Gerald Wiggins passed away at the age of 86 on July 13, 2008.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Beryl Audley Bryden was born May 11, 1920 in Norwich, Norfolk, England and was an only child Her enthusiasm for jazz music started during her teenage years, becoming a member of the National Rhythm Club when she was 17 and became secretary of the local branch in 1941. An ardent jazz fan she established a Nat Gonella fan club in her teens, before taking up the washboard and singing, influenced by Bessie Smith.

Moving to Cambridge in 1942 at 22, post WWII she returned to London with the hope of starting a career in music/ She worked with Mick Mulligan and George Melly at London jazz venues and became a supporter of visiting American jazz acts when the Musicians Union ban was lifted. Beryl befriended, amongst others, Buck Clayton, Louis Armstrong and Bud Freeman, with whom she recorded.

By 1949 she formed her own group called Beryl’s Back-Room Boys and later worked with Mike Daniels. In 1955 she joined the Chris Barber band on washboard, and played on Rock Island Line with Lonnie Donegan on vocals. This track helped trigger the ‘skiffle’ craze of the late 1950s.

Graduating to the Monty Sunshine jazz band she covered Bessie Smith’s Young Woman’s Blues, Gimme a Pigfoot (And a Bottle of Beer, and Coney Island Washboard Blues, which demonstrated her washboard technique.

She remained active at the end of the British trad jazz boom, and became particularly popular in Northern Europe, playing with the Ted Easton Jazz Band and The Piccadilly Six. She was active well into the Nineties playing with the Metropolitan Jazz Band, Digby Fairweather, Nat Gonella and her own Blue Boys.

Vocalist Beryl Bryden, whose final recording was with Nat Gonella shortly before her death, transitioned from lymphoma, aged 78, at St Mary’s Hospital, Paddington, England on July 14, 1998

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