The Jazz Voyager
The Jazz Voyager is hitting the friendly skies in Ohio and heading to the Big Apple to go to the Village Vanguard. Located in lower Manhattan at 178 7th Avenue S, New York City 10014. The small room with low ceilings and remarkable acoustics has staged more than 100 live commercial recordings, several of which are essential works in the history of jazz on record. The venue, open since 1935, is the oldest continuously operated jazz club in the world.
So tonight I will be enjoying pianist Jason Moran and Bandwagon with double bassist Tarus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits. Moran has worked with Greg Osby in his New Directions group and out of that band the trio formed The Bandwagon. The trio performs many compositions of Moran’s and some by Mateen.
For more information you can visit https://notoriousjazz.com/event/jason-moran-the-bandwagon
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Edward McCracken was born on November 23, 1904 in Dallas, Texas. Early in his career he played with local Dallas musicians like Jack Teagarden, Eddie Whitley, the Southern Trumpeters, and Doc Ross’s Jazz Bandits.
From 1926 to 1928 he lived in New York City where McCracken worked with Johnnie Johnston and Willard Robison’s Levee Loungers. After returning to Dallas, he worked with Ligon Smith, Joe Gill, and Ross again. He went on to tour with Joe Venuti and Frankie Trumbauer, before moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1939.
While in Chicago he played with Bud Freeman, and in the Forties he worked with Jimmy McPartland, Wingy Manone, Benny Goodman, Russ Morgan, and Wayne King. He substituted for Barney Bigard in the Louis Armstrong All-Stars international tour in 1952–53. Bob then toured internationally with Kid Ory and Red Allen throughout the 1950s.
During his later years in Los Angeles, California he played in several Dixieland revival groups, working with Ben Pollack, Pete Daily, Wild Bill Davison, and again with Teagarden, Ory, and Allen.
Clarinetist Bob McCracken, who is on many recordings including Kid Ory’s album, This Kid’s the Greatest, transitioned on July 4, 1972.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ethel Smith was born Ethel Goldsmith on November 22, 1902 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began performing from a fairly young age. Traveling widely, after studying both music and several languages at Carnegie Institute of Technology, she became proficient in Latin music while staying in South America.
Smith performed in several Hollywood films such as George White’s Scandals and Melody Time. Her appearance in these films brought notoriety to her colorful, elaborate costumes, especially her hats.
Her rendition of Tico Tico became her best-known hit. She performed it in the MGM film Bathing Beauty in 1944, after which her recording reached the U.S. pop charts that November, peaking at #14 and selling nearly two million copies worldwide. Her other well known hits were Down Yonder and Monkey on a String.
Smith was a guitarist as well as an organist, and in her later years occasionally played the guitar live for audiences, but all her recordings were on the organ. She recorded dozens of albums, mostly for Decca Records.
Organist Ethel Smith, who became widely known as associated with Latin music, transitioned on May 10, 1996, at age 93 in Palm Beach, Florida.
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Jazz Poems
POEM
Little brown boy,
Slim, dark, big-eyed,
Crooning love songs to your banjo
Down at Lafayette–
Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,
High sort of and a bit to one side,
Like a prince, a jazz prince, And I love
Your eyes flashing, and your hands,
And your patent-leathered feet
And your shoulders jerking the jig-wa.
And I love your teeth flashing,
And the way your hair shines in the spotlight
Like it was the real stuff.
Gee, brown boy, I loves you all
I’m glad I’m a jig. I’m glad I can
Understand your dancin’ and your
Singin’ and feel all the happiness
And joy and don’t-care in you.
Gee, boy, when you sing, I can close my ears
And hear tom-toms just as plain.
Listen to me, will you, what do I know
About tom-toms? But I like the word, sort of,
Don’t you? It belongs to us.
Gee, boy, I love the way you hold your head,
And the way you sing and dance,
And everything.
Say, I think you’re wonderful. You’re
All right with me.
You are.
HELENE JOHNSON
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sal Salvador was born Silvio Smiraglia on November 21, 1925 in Monson, Massachusetts and began his professional career in New York City, New York. He eventually moved to Stamford, Connecticut.
In addition to recordings with Stan Kenton and with his own groups, Salvador can be heard in the film Blackboard Jungle, during a scene in a bar where a recording on which he is featured is played on the jukebox. He is also featured playing with Sonny Stitt in the film, Jazz on a Summer’s Day, at the Newport Jazz Festival.
He taught guitar at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Connecticut as well as at Western Connecticut State University in Danbury, Connecticut. He wrote several instruction books for beginning to advanced guitarists.
Guitarist and educator Sal Salvador transitioned on September 22, 1999 following a fight with cancer at the age of 73.
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