Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alcide Patrick Nunez was born on March 17, 1884 in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana of Isleño and French Creole descent. The family moved to New Orleans, Louisiana when he was a child. Growing up amid the Marigny and Bywater districts of New Orleans, he joined several bands in which he played guitar, although switched to clarinet about 1902. He soon became one of the top clarinetists in the city. By 1905 he was a regular in Papa Jack Laine’s band, in addition to playing with Tom Brown and sometimes led bands of his own.

Though he could play several instruments, he mainly played the clarinet and was able to improvise variations on the songs he heard. Before he was able to make music a full-time profession, Nunez worked for a while driving a mule-drawn wagon with fellow musician Chink Abraham.

In early 1916, he went north to Chicago, Illinois with Stein’s Dixie Jass Band, but he left the band shortly before they made their first recordings. After spending some time playing with Tom Brown’s band in Chicago, he went to New York City with Bert Kelly’s band and became his bandleader. He went on to help form the Louisiana Five, led by drummer Anton Lada, becoming one of the most popular bands in New York that recorded for several record labels.

In 1922, after Bert Kelly replaced him with Johnny Dodds, he returned to Chicago to lead the house band at Kelly’s Stables and played with the band of Willard Robison. Soon thereafter Nuñez began to lose his teeth, impairing his ability to play clarinet. He returned to his family in New Orleans, but after getting dentures he regained his ability to play the clarinet. He joined the police department to join the Police Band and at the same time was a member of The Moonlight Serenaders band and several other dance bands that played in New Orleans.

For a time in 1921, he settled in Baltimore, Maryland where he bought a large house but eventually returned home to New Orleans. Clarinetist Alcide Nunez, who was also known as Yellow Nunez and was one of the first musicians of New Orleans to make audio recordings,  transitioned from a heart attack on September 2, 1934.

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The Jazz Voyager

The Jazz Voyager is criss-crossing North America once more on a flight to the nation’s capital to take his seat in Studio K at The Kennedy Center for a command performance by vocalist Rene Marie. Opening in 1971 on the east bank of the Potomac River, this voyager first experienced the luxury and superb acoustics at the 1972 homecoming performance of Marvin Gaye as he unleashed his What’s Going On album on his adoring public. It was a magical night in the concert hall. Since then, I have had the pleasure to see a variety of jazz and soul performances like the one I will be privy to this evening. There’s a 7:30pm at 9:30pm tonight.

I met Rene in Atlanta in the Nineties and witnessed her meteoric rise in the city and then the world first hand as she captivated small and large audiences with her style and class. Most intriguing were her original compositions from which she took from life. Imaginative storytelling will take you on a journey within yourself as she relates the similarities we have in common as human beings. Listen carefully and you will reflect upon your own life.

The Kennedy Center is located at 2700 F Street NW, Washington, DC 20566. For more info 202-467-4600 or visit notoriousjazz.com/event/rene-marie-experiment-in-truth.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Lindberg was born March 16, 1959 in Royal Oak, Michigan. He began his professional career at the age of 16, eventually moving to New York City in 1977. After moving to New York, he played with the Human Arts Ensemble alongside Joseph Bowie and Bobo Shaw. In 1977, with James Emery and Billy Bang. He co-founded the String Trio of New York.

In 1980 he formed a trio with Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray. From 1980 to 1983 he lived in Paris, playing there solo and with Murray and John Tchicai. He has recorded extensively as a leader. He studied bass with the bassist from the Battle Creek, Michigan symphony orchestra and jazz musician Roscoe Mitchell.

He has to date recorded twenty-five albums as a leader, eight with the String Tio of New York, and twenty with Anthony Braxton, Human Arts Ensemble, Susie Ibarra, Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray, Kevin Norton, Wadada Leo Smith and ten with Blob.

Double bassist John Lindberg continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Robert Sage Wilber was born on March 15, 1928 in New York City. He became interested in jazz at the age of three when his father brought home a recording of Duke Ellington’s song Mood Indigo. In 1935, the family moved to the affluent suburb of Scarsdale, New York. At the age of thirteen he began formal clarinet study under his first teacher, Willard Briggs. He began listening to jazz from New Orleans, Kansas City, and Chicago by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Eddie Condon, and Frank Teschemacher. He played jazz in high school and with his friends formed a hot club, listening and jamming to records and graduated from high school in 1945.

Set on becoming a musician he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in 1945. After one term however, Bob dropped out and moved back to New York City to hang out on 52 Street and in Greenwich Village. He formed the Wildcats, with pianist Dick Wellstood and trombonist Eddie Hubble and they became the first jazz group in New York to do what Lu Watters and Turk Murphy had been doing on the Coast. They played the music of the Hot Five, the Red Hot Peppers and the Creole Jazz Band. The group performed regularly at Jimmy Ryan’s club over the next two years and was recorded in 1947 by Ramp-art Records.

Wilber worked with some of the best traditional jazz musicians of the era, including Muggsy Spanier, Baby Dodds, Danny Barker, Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell, George Wettling, Jimmy McPartland, Wild Bill Davison, and James P. Johnson. Fascinated with Sidney Bechet, in 1944 at sixteen, he met Bechet through Mezz Mezzrow and became Bechet’s pupil. He began studying both clarinet and soprano saxophone under his tutelage and eventually lived with him for several months.

Bob recorded for Columbia Records, Commodore, and Circle with Bechet and with his own group in the late 1940s. 1948 saw him forming a trio and playing Dixieland at intermissions at the Savoy Café in Boston, Massachusetts. Eventually, he expanded the band to a sextet and gained a strong following in the city, leading to opportunities in New York City.

 Clarinet and soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber, who continued playing right up until 2017, transitioned on August 4, 2019 at age 91 in Chipping Campden, England.

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Three Wishes

The Baroness queried Nelson Boyd what would his three wishes would be and his response was:

1. “Well, the first one, I would like to have freedom – through money.”
2. “Then, I would like to make some people happy.”
3. “Then, I’d like to be true to God.”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

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