Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clyde Bernhardt, born July 11, 1905 in Gold Hill, North Carolina, grew up in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He started playing trombone at 17 and in the Twenties performed in a series of lesser-known ensembles such as Bill Eady’s Ellwood Syncopators, Tillie Vennie, Odie Cromwell’s Wolverine Syncopators and The Whitman Sisters to name a few. In 1931 he worked with King Oliver and throughout the thirties played with Alex Hill, The Alabamians, Billy Fowler, Ira Coffey’s Walkathonians and Vernon Andrade.
In 1937 he joined the orchestra of Edgar Haye until 1942 then worked with Jay McShann, Cecil Scott, Luis Russell, Leonard Feather, Pete Johnson, Wynonie Harris, Claude Hopkins and the Bascomb brothers. He led his own ensemble, called the Blue Blazers, before returning to play with Russell from 1948-51. He recorded as a leader between 1946 and 1953, and on some of the recordings he sings under the pseudonym Ed Barron.
From 1952 to 1970 he played part-time with Joe Garland’s Society Orchestra followed with his leading the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band from 1972 and 1979 with sidemen Doc Cheatham, Charlie Holmes, Happy Caldwell, Tommy Benford and Miss Rhapsody. Shortly before his death he published his autobiography “I Remember” co-written with Sheldon Harris. As Bernhardt’s health began to fail in 1979, he gave up band leadership but played in Barry Martyn’s Legends of Jazz until his death on May 20, 1986 in Newark, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Major Holley was born on July 10, 1924 in Detroit, Michigan and started his music lessons playing violin and tuba at a young age. He started playing bass while serving in the Navy. In the latter half of the 1940s he played with Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, and Ella Fitzgerald. In 1950 he and Oscar Peterson recorded duets, and he also played with Peterson and Charlie Smith in a trio setting.
In the mid-1950s Major moved to England, working at the BBC. Upon returning to America he toured with Woody Herman in 1958 and with Al Cohn/Zoot Sims in 1959-60. A prolific studio musician, he played with Duke Ellington in 1964 and with the Kenny Burrell Trio, Coleman Hawkins, Lee Konitz, Roy Eldridge, Michel Legrand, Milt Buckner, Jay McShane and Quincy Jones during the Sixties and Seventies.
He was also noted for singing along with his arco (bowed) bass solos, a technique Slam Stewart also used. Holley and Stewart recorded together on two albums during the 1970s.
Never one far from the educational process, informal or formal, Holley was a professor and taught at the Berklee College of Music from 1967 to 1970. Upright jazz bassist Major Holley passed away on October 25, 1990 in Maplewood, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Colin James Bailey was born July 9, 1934 in Swindon, England and learned to play drums as a child, studying formally from age seven. Living in Australia from 1958 into the early 1960s, he played with Bryce Rohode and the Australian Jazz Quartet. While the AJQ toured the U.S., Bailey was hired by Vince Guaraldi to play alongside Jimmy Witherspoon and Ben Webster until 1963.
Settling in California, Bailey worked throughout the sixties with Claire Fischer, Victor Feldman, Joe Pass and Miles Davis; toured worldwide with Benny Goodman and George Shearing, played on a television program with Terry Gibbs and played with Chet Baker, Ray Brown, Joao Gilberto and Blossom Dearie in 1975.
In 1970, Bailey became an American citizen and spent six years as Ed Shaughnessy’s backup in the Tonight Show band, and starred in Fernwood Tonight in a drumming role in 1977-78. After a move to Texas in 1979, he became a faculty member at North Texas State University from 1981-84.
Drummer Colin Bailey’s later work includes time with Richie Cole, Jimmy Rowles, Red Mitchell, Stefan Scaggliari, Ron Affif, John Pisano, Weslia Whitfield, George H. Russell, Shelly Manne, Victor Feldman and re-teaming with Joe Pass.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Clarence Eckstine was born on July 8, 1914 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania but grew up in Washington, DC of Prussian and African American heritage. He began singing at the age of seven, entering amateur talent shows while dreaming of a football career that was sidelined when he broke his collarbone. Focusing on music he worked his way west to Chicago, joining Earl Hines’ Grand Terrace Orchestra as vocalist and occasionally trumpeter from1939 – 1943. During his tenure he made a name for himself through the Hines band’s radio shows with such jukebox hits as “Stormy Monday Blues” and his own “Jelly Jelly”.
Eckstine formed the first bop big band in 1944 making it a fountainhead for young musicians who would reshape jazz by the end of the decade, including Dizzy Gillespie, Dexter Gordon, Miles Davis, Art Blakey, Charlie Parker, Fats Navarro and Sarah Vaughn, with Tadd Dameron and Gil Fuller were among the band’s arrangers. Billy hit the charts often during the mid-’40s, with Top Ten entries including “A Cottage For Sale” and “Prisoner of Love”.
Breaking down barriers throughout the Forties as a leader of the original bop big band and as the first romantic black male in popular music, Mr. B, as he was affectionately known, went solo in 1947. His seamless transition to string-filled balladry saw him recording more than a dozen hits by the end of the decade and winning numerous awards from Esquire, Down Beat and Metronome magazines. His 1950 appearance at New York’s Paramount Theatre greatly surpassed Sinatra’s audience draw at the same venue.
Over the course of the next two decades Billy appeared on every major television variety show from Ed Sullivan to Nat King Cole, Jack Paar, Steve Allen, Joey Bishop, Flip Wilson and Playboy After Dark. After a long series of hit tunes and recordings by the 70’s Billy’s recordings came sparingly although he still performed before adoring audiences throughout the world. He made his final Grammy-nominated recording singing with Benny Carter in 1986.
Billy Eckstine, vocalist, bandleader, trumpeter, valve trombonist and guitarist passed away on March 8, 1993, at age 78, in his hometown of Pittsburgh.
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The Jazz Voyager
Green Mill Jazz Club: 4802 N. Broadway Avenue, Chicago, IL 60640 / Telephone: 773.878.5552.
The club presents a variety of jazz – Dixieland, traditional, bebop, contemporary and progressive – played by such legendary figures as Von Freeman, Franz Jackson and Wilbur Campbell, as well as young lions Kurt Elling, Eric Alexander and Orbert Davis. All capture the broad spectrum of jazz from its root rhythms in New Orleans to New York avant-garde. Deep smokey jazz sounds fill the club in the early morning hours when soulful musicians continue to express their love of jazz by jamming ’til the early dawn.