Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Edward George Themen was born November 26, 1939 in Manchester, England, where he was involved with the traditional jazz scene in the late 1950s as a self-taught musician, having started playing clarinet as a schoolboy at Manchester Grammar School.
In 1958 he began his medical studies at the University of Cambridge. While there he started playing jazz with the Cambridge University Jazz Band bandmates including Lionel Grigson, Dave Gelly, Jonathan Lynn, and John Hart. Under pianist Grigson’s leadership they achieved near professional standard with a swinging hard-bop style that swept the board in the fiercely contested Inter-University Jazz Band Competitions.
By 1964 he was an orthopaedic consultant playing blues with Jack Bruce and Alexis Korner and was a member of Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated. In 1965, Themen played with the Peter Stuyvesant Jazz Orchestra in Zürich, Switzerland going on to play with Michael Garrick, Ian Carr, and Graham Collier’s Music.
The Seventies saw him playing with Stan Tracey, touring with him all over the world as well as around the UK. Art has played and toured with visiting US musicians Charlie Rouse, Nat Adderley, Red Rodney, George Coleman, and Al Haig.
In 1995 he formed a quartet with pianist John Critchinson. Themen’s style originally owed much to the influence of Dexter Gordon and Sonny Rollins, but later influences included such disparate saxophonists as Coleman Hawkins, Evan Parker and John Coltrane. He was inspired to play saxophone after he attended a gig by the Dankworth Seven, at the local Palais, at the age of 16, with a female cousin and his future was set.
Following his retirement as a consultant orthopaedic surgery consultant, saxophonist Art Themen has focused on his jazz career.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe “Bebop” Carroll was born Joseph Paul Taylor in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on November 25, 1919. In 1949 he became a member of the Dizzy Gillespie big band. After the band broke up a year later, Carroll continued in a small group formed by Gillespie. In 1953, he left Gillespie to pursue a solo career and recorded albums for Epic Records in the 1950s.
Vocalist Joe Carroll, whose collaborations with Gillespie included the humorous songs Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac and Oo Bla Dee, transitioned on February 1, 1981.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Graeme Barnard was born on November 24, 1933 in Melbourne, Australia and his parents had formed a dance band in the 1920s, his mother was the bandleader and pianist, his father on saxophone, drums and banjo. His older brother Len joined them on drums at age 11. He took trumpet lessons from age 11 and played clarinet in a local brass band before he joined the family band at 14 in 1947.
When his brother Len formed his own group, Len’s South City Stompers the next year he joined on trumpet and they made their first recording in 1949 on his 16th birthday. The following year they began a weekly radio broadcast as Len Barnard’s Dixieland Jazz Band. He played with the group until 1955 after being cheated of their takings and stranded in Tumut, Australia. Relocating to Sydney he performed with Ray Price Trio before returning to Melbourne.
In 1958 Barnard joined the Graeme Bell band for an Australian tour. He worked for Brashs from 1958 to 1962, while performing after business hours. He went back to Sydney in 1962 and as a member of Graeme Bell and His All-Stars appeared on Trad Pad, a TV special program.
He was nominated in 1996 at the ARIA Music Awards of 1996 for Best Jazz Album for Live at the Sydney Opera House, which was recorded with the Australian Jazz Allstars.
Trumpeter and cornetist Bob Barnard, who was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for service to music, particularly jazz, transitioned on May 7, 2022.
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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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