Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Daniel Humair was born May 23, 1938 in Geneva, Switzerland and played clarinet and drums from the age of seven and won a competition for jazz performance in his teens. By the time he was twenty he was in Paris, France accompanying visiting musicians with his most celebrated season with tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson at a club called Le Chat Qui Pèche.
Humair became the drummer American musicians would ask to work with, despite a gig with the Swingle Singers in the early 60s. In 1967 he played on violinist Jean-Luc Ponty’s debut Sunday Walk, also contributing the title track. When alto saxophonist Phil Woods emigrated to Paris in 1968 it was natural that Humair should be the drummer in what Woods called the European Rhythm Machine.
In 1969 he won the Downbeat critics’ poll as Talent Deserving Wider Recognition. Humair was so in demand that his job-sheet reads like a list of the pre-eminent names in jazz, Herbie Mann , Roy Eldridge, Stéphane Grappelli, Chet Baker, Michel Portal, Martial Solal, Dexter Gordon, and Anthony Braxton all availed themselves of his graceful, incisive drums. He played with Gato Barbieri on the soundtrack to Last Tango In Paris in 1972.
In 1986, Daniel’s record Welcome on Soul Note, a record which listed all members of the quartet as leaders, was a perfect demonstration of his warmth and responsiveness as a drummer and continued to top drum polls in France well into the 90s. In 1991, Surrounded documented a selection of his work from 1964-87, including tracks with legends such as Eric Dolphy, Gerry Mulligan and Johnny Griffin – a neat way of giving Humair centre-stage and celebrating the breadth of his involvement with jazz history.
To date he has recorded more than four-dozen albums as a leader, became a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1986 and Officier in 1992. A talented painter, he describes his own work as figurative abstract. Drummer Daniel Humair continues to perform and record.
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