Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Earl Henderson was born on July 7, 1951 in Yazoo City, Mississippi. He moved to Detroit, Michigan with his parents when he was young, his mother, Rose Williams sang in church. During his childhood, he played cello and then switched to bass guitar, teaching himself to play. When he was 10 or 11, he saved enough money to take a bus to see a bill of Motown artists at the Fox Theater. Precociously talented, he was performing with local bands before his 12th birthday.
Beginning his career early around the age of 14, he was on tour with the Detroit Emeralds when he met Stevie Wonder at a Chicago theater. In the dressing room was a piano, Stevie was playing and he sat down next to him with his bass and the meeting was fortuitous. Stevie hired Michael and they toured together for five years while working as a Motown session musician.
In 1970 at the Copacabana in Manhattan, Miles Davis heard him playing with Wonder. At that time Davis was entering his electric and rock rhythms and hired Henderson away. Over the next few years from 1970 to 1977 he recorded a string of albums with Davis, including Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, Live-Evil, On the Corner, In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall, Get Up with It, Agharta, Pangaea, and Dark Magus.
With Norman Connors he invited him to write and record Valentine Love with Jean Carne, We Both Need Each Other with Phyllis Hyman and You Are My Starship. As a solo artist he recorded Take Me I’m Yours, Wide Receiver, and Can’t We Fall in Love Again, again with Hyman.
In 2002 Henderson returned to the music of Miles Davis and with several other Davis alumni, saxophonist Sonny Fortune and drummer Ndugu Chancler, formed the group Children on the Corner. A year later, they released the album Rebirth, which reinterpreted and recreated Davis’s electric music from the 1970s. He remained in the music industry until his death.
Bass guitarist and vocalist Michael Henderson died of cancer on July 19, 2022 at his home in Dallas, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. He was 71.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chris White was born Christopher Wesley White on July 6, 1936 in Harlem, New York and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. In 1956 he graduated from City College of New York, and in 1968 from the Manhattan School of Music. Continuing his education six years later he earned his Master of Education from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. In 1994, he did postgraduate Advanced Computer Study at Berklee College of Music.
An occasional member of Cecil Taylor’s band in the 1950s, he was credited on the 1959 Love for Sale album. From 1960 to 1961 he accompanied Nina Simone and subsequently he was a member of Dizzy Gillespie’s ensemble until 1966.
He founded the band The Jazz Survivors and was a member of the band Prism. Throughout his career he collaborated with Billy Taylor, Eubie Blake, Earl Hines, Chick Corea, Teddy Wilson, Kenny Barron, Mary Lou Williams, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Carmen McRae and Billy Cobham.
Bassist, arranger, producer and educator Chris White, who was on the creative arts and technology faculty at Bloomfield College in New Jersey, died on November 2, 2014.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richard Simon was born in Kansas City, Kansas on July 5, 1949 and left a comfortable position as a college English professor to take up the upright bass at age 30. He apprenticed with the elder elite of the Los Angeles, California jazz scene, including Red Callender and John Clayton, and soon began working with Buddy Collette, Teddy Edwards, Plas Johnson and Art Hillery, as well as LA Philharmonic’s Abe Luboff.
Richard has played traditional jazz with Pete Fountain, swing with Ken Peplowski, and be-bop with Richie Cole. He has recorded with Al Viola, Houston Person, Rebecca Kilgore, Gerald Wiggins and Chico Hamilton, toured Japan three times and performed twice with the King of Thailand. He worked frequently with vocalists Sue Raney, Maria Muldaur, Maxine Weldon, as well as the late vocalists Ernie Andrews, Lorez Alexandria and Keely Smith, and Rosemary Clooney.
Deeply involved in jazz education, Simonhe is the program director for JazzAmerica, a non-profit organization that provides tuition-free jazz instruction after school and in summer WorkChops.
Bassist Richard Simon continues to perform, record and educate.
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The Jazz Voyager
The Jazz Voyager is leaving the confines of Baltimore and heading north to Old Lyme, Connecticut to pay a visit to the Old Lyme Inn the once housed a riding academy of some renown. Now it has 13 charming and luxurious guest rooms and a quaint, intimate one of a kind venue just steps away known as The Side Door.
Born into a family of musicians, painters, and poets, Tatiana Eva-Marie began her career at age four, immersed in the world of show business. Before her twenties, she had already recorded many albums, established herself as an actress and director. Choosing New York she quickly built up a reputation as a singer, and started the Avalon Jazz Band, which overnight became the number one reference for French swing around the world.
The venue is located at 85 Lyme Street 06371. For more information visit thesidedoorjazz.com.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Seger Pillot Ellis was born on July 4, 1904 in Houston, Texas and began his career as pianist playing live for a local Houston radio station in the early 1920s. In 1925, he was added to the orchestra of Lloyd Finlay for a recording session for Victor Records, and was also allowed to cut two piano solos. This led to Ellis being invited to Victor’s regular recording studio in Camden, New Jersey, to cut a number of piano solos, all or most of them compositions of his own. These were among the earliest records Victor made using the new electric microphone and recording equipment.
After his first recording experiences, Ellis returned to Houston and radio work as well as playing in vaudeville theaters. During this period Seger began adding singing to his piano playingwhich led to an invitation to New York City to make vocal test recordings. His first issued vocal record was “Sunday” on the Columbia label, then a string of records for Okeh Records.
Ellis selected many of the best jazz musicians of the time, including Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Andy Sannella and Louis Armstrong. His first recording career ended in 1931, however, in the late Thirties he returned to conducting and singing with his own big band, Choirs of Brass Orchestra. Later in his career, he focused more on songwriting, but recorded sporadically as well as playing the piano.
In 1939, Ellis reorganized and his new band featured the conventional four-man reed section. He disbanded in 1941, and was enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1942. After his discharge he moved back to Texas and began to be less active as a performer and more a songwriter and composer. His compositions were recorded by Harry James, Gene Krupa, Bing Crosby, Count Basie with a Mills Brothers vocal.
Pianist and vocalist Seger Ellis, who made a few brief film appearances in collaboration with director Ida Lupino, died on September 29, 1995 in a Houston retirement home.
Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of a Houston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…
Seger Ellis: 1904~1995 | Piano, Vocal
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