Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mel Martin was born on June 7, 1942 in Sacramento, California. Both parents were singers and early piano and clarinet lessons led him to Benny Goodman and Glen Church’s Jazz Rhythm & Blues radio program. The big bands of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, Shelly Manne and His Men, and Cannonball Adderley, passing through town kept his interest high. Forming a small combo of clarinet, accordion and drums, his father got him his first gig, afterwards they played at Mel’s Drive-In for tips.
While still a teenager, Martin was good enough to sit in with Wes Montgomery and his brothers. Already jamming with Black musicians in the community, he’d hit the clubs to hear the Montgomery Brothers when they played, sometimes sitting in on flute.
At San Francisco State in 1962 while majoring in music he met fellow undergraduate John Handy and played with him in his Freedom Band. At the same time, Mel was learning how to play bop with the musicians who hung out at Bop City, Soulville, the Jazz Workshop, Shelton’s Blue Mirror, Jack’s on Sutter and later the Both/And.
In the late 1960s and early Seventies Martin played with progressive rock and Latin bands including The Loading Zone, Cold Blood, Azteca and Boz Scaggs, Doug Sahm’s Honky Blues Band, Wayne Talberty, Chuck Berry, Dr. John and others. Creating Listen in 1977 which became part of the early West Coast jazz fusion scene, he recorded three albums before the end of the decade.
He was the artistic director of Bebop and Beyond, a group he founded in 1983 and released four albums. Martin has received five National Endowment for the Arts grants, and was honored by the San Francisco Jewish Museum. As performer, composer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist he contributed music to television and film. He was a bandleader, contractor and sideman, he played in) big bands for McCoy Tyner and Dizzy Gillespie and played with the Freddie Hubbard Quintet and Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra.
As an educator he taught the Stanford Jazz Workshop at Stanford University from 1984 to 1995, produced a series of Jazz Workshops for the Marin Jewish Community Center and regularly conducts workshops at his studio in Novato and in the Marin public schools.
Saxophonist, composer, arranger, and bandleader Mel Martin, who also played flute, clarinet and piccolo, died of a heart attack on November 17, 2017 at age 75.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leroy ‘Cash’ Maxey was born on June 6, 1904 in Kansas City, Missouri, of mixed Native American heritage. He grew up receiving a musical education from Major N. Clark Smith, father of future tubist Jimmy Smith, with whom he was a student at Kansas City’s Lincoln High School. He was also in good company there with trombonist E.B. DePriest Wheeler, trumpeter Lammar Wright, trumpeter Harry Cooper, saxophonist Eli Logan, tubist Jasper ‘Jap’ Aallen, and bassist Walter Page.
Maxey’s first musical steps were in marching bands and then he made his first appearance as one of Dave Lewis’ Jazz Boys in 1917 and for the next three years held the drum seat in the spetet. This eventually evolved into the Dave Lewis Orchestra.
Throughout his career he hwld membership in the Andy Preer And The Cotton Club Orchestra, Cab Calloway And His Cotton Club Orchestra, Cab Calloway And His Orchestra, Chu Berry And His Stompy Stevedores, and The Missourians. Being a percssionist, during the Roaring Twenties, Leroy added the xylophone to his arsenal of instruments, although he never recorded playing it.
Drummer Leroy Maxey, notable for his use of the bass drum pedal and his four-to-the-floor technique, died on July 24, 1987 in Los Angeles, California.
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The Jazz Voyager
Getting out of Philadelphia the Jazz Voyager is on his way to Andy’s Jazz Club in a much warmer Chi-Town this month. Originally a lounge oasis for the newspaper personnel in the 1950s, by the late Seventies it changed hands and became a destination for jazz. Offering first Jazz at Noon, the club expanded to Jazz at Five and Jazz at Nine.
Having never seen the soul jazz, hard bop, post bop and modal group Sabertooth, this jazz voyager is anticipating a fervent showing of talent. Headed by saxophonists Cameron Pfiffner and Pat Mallinger, who put the group together thirty-five years ago, they play the classics by the likes of Horace Silver, Wayne Shorter, Lester Young, John Coltrane, covers by the Beatles, Grateful Dead, Bob Dylan, and Bob Marley as well as their original compositions.
Showtimes: 6:00pm-7:15pm & 8:15pm-9:30pm
Cover: $15.00
Andy’s Jazz Club is located at 11 E. Hubbard Street, Chicago, Illinois 60611. For more information contact the venue at https://andysjazzclub.com.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born in Quebec, Canada on June 5, 1980 pianist Chantale Gagné began studying music at the age of 8 and at fifteen she fulfilled her passion witht he piano. From 1997 to 1999 she studied jazz piano with James Gelfand at College Marie-Victorin in Montreal, Canada. Following this with four years at McGill University, she graduated with a degree in Jazz Piano Performance.
In 2005, Chantale met pianist Kenny Barron, studied with him and was inspired both as a pianist and composer of jazz. She has since been busy performing throughout Canada, United States. and Europe in trio, quartet, piano solo and big band configurations.
Silent Strength, is her self-produced debut trio album with bassist Peter Washington and drummer Lewis Nash featuring many of her original compositions. Garnering wonderful reviews it has received global radio play.
Gagné’s sophomore album, Wisdom Of The Water, released in 2010 adds a folk/heartland influence along with vibraphonist Joe Locke along with Washington and Nash. Her third album, The Left Side Of The Moon, has saxophonist Steve Wilson joining the resident rhythm team.
Pianist and composer Chantale Gagné, who has received the distinction Révélation Radio-Canada Musique 2008-09, continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Britt Woodman was born on June 4, 1920 in Los Angeles, California. A childhood friend of Charles Mingus, he first worked with Phil Moore and Les Hite. After serving in World War II he played with Boyd Raeburn before joining with Lionel Hampton in 1946.
During the 1950s he worked with Duke Ellington. As a member of Ellington’s band he can be heard on twenty-five recorings such as 1957’s Such Sweet Thunder, Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Song Book, and 1958’s Black, Brown, and Beige and Ellington Indigos.
1960 saw Britt departing from Ellington to work in a pit orchestra. He went on to later work with Mingus and can be heard on the album Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus released in 1963. In the 1970s he led his own octet and recorded with pianist Toshiko Akiyoshi. In 1989, he was part of the personnel for the album Epitaph dedicated to the previously unrecorded music of Charles Mingus.
He recorded Playing For Keeps and In L.A. as a leader, and leaves a sideman recording catalogue of ninety-three albums with Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band, Bill Berry, Ella Fitzgerald, Lionel Hampton, Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Smith, Gene Ammons, Ray Brown, Ruth Brown, Frank Capp, Nat Pierce, Benny Carter, Rosemary Clooney, John Coltrane, Randy Crawford, Tadd Dameron, Miles Davis, Booker Ervin, John Fahey, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Golson, Chico Hamilton, Jimmy Hamilton, Hank Jones, Oliver Nelson, Philly Joe Jones, Jon Lucien, Galt MacDermot, Teo Macero, Junior Mance, The Manhattan Transfer, Wade Marcus, Blue Mitchell, Grover Mitchell, James Moody, Maria Muldaur, Oliver Nelson, Oscar Peterson, Zoot Sims, Billy Taylor, Clark Terry, Teri Thornton, Jimmy Woode
Trombonisit Britt Woodman died in Hawthorne, California at the age of 80, having suffered severe respiratory problems on October 13, 2000.
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