Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Carcasses was born on August 29, 1938 in Kingston, Jamaica into a Cuban family. He moved with his family back to Cuba when he was four and was surrounded by the various forms of local music. Starting out as an opera singer, he switched to Cuban music and worked as a vocalist at the famous Tropicana nightclub. It was here that he first began to experiment with incorporating scat and bebop influences into his vocal style.
By 1960 he was known as a dancer and athlete, being Cuba’s Long Jump Champion for that year. Bobby was a multi-instrumentalist having mastered the trumpet, bass, congas and drums. Later in the decade he travelled, including a year in Paris playing with resident jazz greats Bud Powell and Kenny ‘Klook’ Clarke.
Returning to Cuba, Carcassés formed his own jazz group, as well as acting in films and television. The 1980s saw him organize the first Jazz Plaza Festival, bringing to Cuba a host of international artists including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Haden and Airto Moreira. The festival became an annual event, with Carcasses and his band performing each year.
He toured extensively throughout Europe and the USA, performing alongside Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri and many other big names of Latin jazz. Jazz Timbero was recorded in Havana in 1997 with an all-star Cuban big band (including members of Irakere and Los Van Van), playing a funky mix of Latin and jazz.
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The Jazz Voyager
Arrived yesterday in Washington, DC. from Tokyo, Japan in time for the DC JazzFest being held at various locations around town. It’s no longer the city I remember and with you know who on Pennsylvania Avenue, I’m grateful there’s plenty of jazz to wander in and out, though it is sometimes the bane of my existence as so much music coincides that I can’t see it all. Ugh. Be that as it may, this afternoon I’m heading to the Downtown DC Anthem Row to see four groups I have never experienced.
What I do like best about jazz festivals is that they introduce new talent to new audiences. This jazz voyager is looking forward to discovering musicians and vocalists throughout the weekend. Thursday afternoon at Anthem Row begins at 4:30 with Benjie Porecki followed by Be’La Dona at 6:00, Langston Hughes II comes on stage at 7:15 and closing out the night at 8:30pm is Brass-A-Holics.
This Jazz Voyager is spending the weekend in D.C. and indulging in as much music that is possible to hear in a day. Will be moving all over the city.The venue is located at 800 K Street NW, Washington, DC 20001. For more information contact the venue at https://www.dcjazzfest.org/artists.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Stanley Marshall was born August 28, 1941 in Isleworth, Middlesex , England and worked with various jazz and rock bands and musicians, among them J. J. Jackson, Allan Holdsworth, Barney Kessel, Alexis Korner, Graham Collier, Michael Gibbs, Arthur Brown, Keith Tippett, Centipede, Jack Bruce, John McLaughlin, Dick Morrissey, Hugh Hopper, Elton Dean, John Surman, Charlie Mariano, John Abercrombie, Arild Andersen, and Eberhard Weber’s Colours.
From 1999, he worked with former Soft Machine co-musicians in several Soft Machine-related projects like SoftWare, SoftWorks and Soft Machine Legacy. He toured as a member of the band, which operated under the name Soft Machine again, from 2015 to 2023.
Drummer John Marshall, was a founding member of Ian Carr’s jazz rock band Nucleus, and Eberhard Weber’s Colours, died on September 16, 2023, at the age of 82.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rudolf Dašek was born on August 27, 1933 in Prague, Czech Republic and studied at the Prague Conservatory from 1962 to 1966 with Milan Zelenka.
He was a member of the band SHQ led by Karel Velebný, then followed with several bands for the rest of the 1960s which included a trio with George Mraz, a trio with Lou Bennett, the quintet Jazz Cellula led by Ladislav Déczi, an orchestra conducted by Gustav Brom, and the Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra.
By the end of the decade Rudolf was working for two years in the house band at the Blue Note Club in Berlin, Germany. In the early 1970s he formed the duo System Tandem with Jiří Stivín. He also worked with guitarists Philip Catherine, Christian Escoudé, and Toto Blanke.
Guitarist Rudolf Dašek, who played solo performances in the decades following the Seventies, died on February 1, 2013.
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On The Bookshelf
Seeing Jazz: Artists & Writers On Jazz
Within these 144 pages, Seeing Jazz is a showcase of 77 paintings, sculptures, drawings, collages, and photographs, accompanied by literary selections, that express the many moods of jazz. This is jazz, art, and literature in concert.
In this museum of artists are, but not limited to, include Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam, James Phillips, Miles Davis, Gjon Mili, Jacob Lawrence, Stuart Davis, Ann Tanksley, Archibald Motley, Ed Love, Gordon Parks, JeanMichel Basquiat, Henri Matisse, William Claxton, Stuart Davis, Ed Love, and Man Ray,
A representation of authors include Julio Cortazar, Ntozake Shange, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison. The Foreword was written by trumpeter Calrk Terry, the Afterword by bassist Milt Hinton. The introduction is by Columbia University jazz scholar Robert O’Meally.
Whether it is improvisation, spontaneity, fusion, freedom or innovation, jazz has always been about more than music, and the ideas and moods of jazz have ruffled the minds of creatives throughout every category of the arts.
Seeing Jazz: 1997 | Marquette Folley-Cooper, Deborah Macanic, Janice McNeil
Chronicle Books | Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service
