Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Monica Zetterlund was born Eva Monica Nilsson on September 20, 1937 in Hagfors, Sweden. She began by learning the classic jazz songs from radio and records, initially not knowing the language and what they sang about in English. Her hit songs included Swedish covers of Walking My Baby Back Home. Little Green Apples, Waltz for Debby, Hit the Road Jack, and Moon Over Bourbon Street, among many others.

She also interpreted the works of Swedish singer-songwriters Evert Taube, Olle Adolphson and Povel Ramel, as well as international jazz musicians/songwriters. She worked with Louis Armstrong, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn and Quincy Jones, and in the Scandinavian jazz world with people like Georg Riedel, Egil Johansen, Arne Domnérus, Svend Asmussen and Jan Johansson.

In 1964, she recorded the jazz album Waltz for Debby, featuring Bill Evans, and was the most proud of. Her professional skill was amply demonstrated in her performance of the challenging Harold Arlen song, So Long, Big Time. Her rendition of Once Upon A Time In Stockholm, though not suitable for the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest, remained successful in Sweden.

She suffered from severe scoliosis which began after a childhood accident, and as a result was forced to retire from performing in 1999. On May 12, 2005, vocalist Monica Zetterland, as awarded the Illis quorum by the government of Sweden, died probably due to her habit of smoking in bed following an accidental fire in her apartment in Stockholm, Sweden at age 67.

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The Jazz Voyager

The Jazz Voyager has taken a couple of days to drive thirteen hundred miles from Detroit to Denver having never seen Iowa and Nebraska first hand with a stop in Chi-town for a little jazz on the way. The destination is Dazzle, an intimate 140 seat that can be expanded to another hundred. Located in the Denver Arts Complex, the venue has hopefully reached its final location.

This week I get to see one of my favorite vocalists who has taken the torch and soared to prominence on the jazz scene, Jazzmeia Horn. She won the 2013 Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Vocal Competition and the 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Competition before being signed to Concord Records and releasing her Grammy nominated debut album, A Social Call.

Dazzle’s address is 1080 14th Street, Denver, CO 80202. For more information visit https://www.rudysjazzroom.com.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Paul Hession was born on September 19, 1956 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England where his parents bought him a guitar when he was seven and encouraged his musical development by getting him in the church choir. His first paid gigs were weddings. He started playing drums around fourteen and was mainly self taught working himself through the different musical genres until he reached jazz.

After several years of playing jazz he turned to free improvisation and formed Art, Bart & Fargo with saxophonists Alan Wilkinson and Peter Malham. While living in London, England he played with numerous improvisers and formed a trio with Chris Green and Roberto Bellatalla. Returning to Leeds in the mid-Eighties he continued playing and running music workshops.

By the time he turned thirty he made a solo recording and tour and continued to play and record solo. He started working with electroacoustic dimensions as a soloist. Hession went on to run the Improvised Music Workshop in the late 1980s and a decade later founded Improvised Music Leeds, a workshop that was founded to teach drumming to youth.

Paul created his next trio, Hession/Wilkinson/Fell which became his most prolific group. They recorded for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and broadcast on the radio program Two New Hours. He toured the United States and parts of Canada before returning to Europe and playing several cities and festivals.

In 2018 he received his doctorate from the University of Leeds for research into augmenting solo percussion with analogue and digital electronics. Another trio later with Hans Peter Hilby and Michael Bardon, he remains active.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John L. Thomas was born September 18, 1902 in Louisville, Kentucky but relocated to Chicago, Illinois as a child where he received his formal education. He slid into on-stage trombone performances with the Clarence Miller Orchestra around 1923. Between 1927 and 1928 he worked with Erskine Tate, leading to Louis Armstrong’s Hot Seven. He continued freelancing with a wide range of classic jazz bandleaders Freddie Keppard,  Tate and Reuben Reeves.

He was briefly with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers in the Thirties and in 1937 he was part of a touring revue fronted by pianist and singer Nat King Cole. Thomas was once again with Tate as well as drummer Floyd Campbell’s outfit. During WWII he gave up his trombone case for a tool box in a defense plant.

His performance hiatus from playing took place prior to dropping out completely during the ’50s, as he did gig once again in a group led by guitarist Walter Dysett in 1944. Trombonist John L. Thomas died on November 7, 1971 in Chicago, Illinois.

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Jazz Poems

ALABAMA, c. 1963: 

But

Shouldn’t this state have a song?

Long, gliding figures of my breath

Of breath

Lost?

Somebody can’t sing

Because somebody’s gone

Somebody can’t sing

Because somebody’s gone.

Shouldn’t this landscape

Hold a true anthem

What

You can’t do?

Whom

You can’t invent?

Where

You can’t stay?

Why

You won’t keep it?

But

Shouldn’t this state

Have a song?

And shall we call it

My face will murder me?

And shall we call it

I’m not waiting?

CORNELIUS EADY

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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