The Jazz Voyager
The Jazz Voyager is off to the Saint Lawrence to the city that sits on the river, Quebec, to check out a venue called Bar Ste-Angèle. Above the big green door that fronts the opening resides a little sign announcing you have arrived at 26 Rue Sainte Angèle, QC G1R 4G4, Canada.
This warm, wood-clad lounge opens at 8:00 pm and stays lively until 3:00 am. Offering live jazz performances alongside beer, wine & cocktails. This voyager will be seated and enjoying the repast as the jazz gets underway the live performance by Club Chaud n°24.
With top-notch jazz, an agreeable barman, and super reasonably priced drinks, it is said it is best to get there early to afford standing room only in this tiny basement club for what has been touted as a great place for jazz. For more information, the number to call is +1 418-692-2171.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mercer Kennedy Ellington was born on March 11, 1919 in Washington, D.C. and is the only child of the composer, pianist, and bandleader Duke Ellington and his high school sweetheart Edna Thompson. He grew up primarily in Harlem from the age of eight and by the age of eighteen, he had written his first piece to be recorded by his father, Pigeons and Peppers. He attended New College for the Education of Teachers at Columbia University, New York University, and the Juilliard School.
In 1939, 1946 through 1949, and 1959, Mercer led his own bands, many of whose members later performed with his father, or achieved a successful career in their own right including Dizzy Gillespie, Kenny Dorham, Idrees Sulieman, Chico Hamilton, Charles Mingus, and Carmen McRae. During the 1940s, in particular, he wrote pieces that became standards, Things Ain’t What They Used to Be, Jumpin’ Punkins, Moon Mist, and Blue Serge. He also wrote the lyrics to Hillis Walters’ popular song, Pass Me By in 1946), which was recorded by Lena Horne, Carmen McRae, and Peggy Lee.
Composing for his father from 1940 until 1941, he later worked as the road manager for Cootie Williams’ orchestra in 1941 until 1943 and again in 1954. Ellington returned to work for his father playing alto horn in 1950, and then as general manager and copyist from 1955 until 1959. In 1960, he became Della Reese’s musical director, then later went on to take a job as a radio DJ in New York for three years beginning in 1962. He again returned to his father’s orchestra in 1965, this time as trumpeter and road manager. When his father died in 1974, Ellington took over the orchestra, traveling on tour to Europe in 1975 and 1977.
In the early 1980s, Ellington became the first conductor for a Broadway musical of his father’s music, Sophisticated Ladies which ran from 1981 until 1983. Mercer’s Digital Duke won the 1988 Grammy Award for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album. From 1982 until the early 1990s, the Duke Ellington Orchestra included Barrie Lee Hall, Rocky White, Tommy James, Gregory Charles Royal, J.J. Wiggins, Onzy Matthews, and Shelly Carrol among others.
Trumpeter, composer, arranger, and bandleader Mercer Ellington, who recorded ten albums as a leader and arranged Clark Terry’s Duke With A Difference album, passed away from a heart attack on February 8, 1996 at age 76 in Copenhagen, Denmark.
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Three Wishes
Gil Coggins had only one answer when asked what his three wishes would be:
- “A cold bottle of ale! No, seriously, I don’t know yet.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ofer Assaf was born in Israel on March 10, 1976 and started learning to play the saxophone as a youth. He attended the Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts dividing his time between his two passions ~ music and dance the latter actually training as a professional ballet dancer at the age of eight before switching over to a full-time jazz career. As a member of the Air Force and IDF Orchestras of the Israeli Army, he performed for former President Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for Jerusalem’s 3,000th-anniversary celebration. During the Nineties, he was a member of the Tel Aviv Big Band as well as performing on a diverse array of national TV and radio shows.
After moving to New York City, he entered The New School University’s jazz program and studied with tenor saxophonist Billy Harper, bassist Reggie Workman, pianist Richie Beirach, trumpeter Jimmy Owens, percussionists Bobby Sanabria and Jamey Haddad. In 2002 upon graduation he performed with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock at Carnegie Hall as part of the JVC Jazz Festival.
In 1991 he won the Israeli National Competition in Jazz and Contemporary Music for young musicians, received scholarships and awards from the Eubie Blake National Jazz Institute from 1999 to 2001, and was pre-nominated for the Grammy Awards in the “Best Jazz Instrumental Album” category in 2009 for his debut album Tangible Reality on Summit Records. He was joined by trumpeter Jim Rotondi, Don Pate and Essiet Essiet on the bass and drummer Bruce Cox. With the Bernie Worrell Orchestra, he was awarded “Best Funk/Fusion/Jam Song of the Year” at the 12th annual Independent Music Awards in 2013. Tenor saxophonist, composer and educator Ofer Assaf continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Brooks was born on March 9, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan and drummed since childhood, his earliest experiences of music coming through his mother, who sang in church. He was an outstanding varsity basketball player as a teenager and was offered a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology; he attended the school for three semesters and then dropped out to tour with Yusef Lateef.
After time with Lateef and Barry Harris, he played with Beans Bowles and with the Four Tops in Las Vegas. He played with Horace Silver from 1959 to 1964, including on the album Song for My Father; in 1963 he released his first album as a leader. Following this he freelanced in New York City through the 1960s and early 1970s, playing three years with Lateef again in 1967, Sonny Stitt, Lee Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, Junior Cook, Blue Mitchell, Charles McPherson, Pharoah Sanders in 1970, Wes Montgomery, Dollar Brand, Jackie McLean, James Moody from 1970 to 1972, Charles Mingus in 1972 and ‘73, and Milt Jackson.
His 1970 album The Free Slave featured Cecil McBee and Woody Shaw. Later in 1970, he joined Max Roach’s ensemble M’Boom, and in 1972 put together the ensemble The Artistic Truth. Brooks’s performances often included unusual instruments such as the musical saw and drums with vacuum tubes set up so as to regulate the pitch.
Suffering mental disorders he began to acquire a reputation for bizarre behavior on and off stage, and by 1975 he left New York City for Detroit where he took lithium to help regulate his behavior. By the 1980s he returned to The Artistic Truth and gigged regularly in Detroit with Kenny Cox, Harold McKinney, and Wendell Harrison. With those three he co-founded M.U.S.I.C. (Musicians United to Save Indigenous Culture) and later founded the Aboriginal Percussion Choir, an ensemble devoted to the use of non-Western percussion instruments. He used his basement as a practice and learning space, working with children as well as accomplished musicians.
The 1990s saw Detroit’s jazz scene wane and Roy stopped taking his medication, began breaking down at gigs, and in 1994 was institutionalized for three weeks. A couple of violently threatening incidents with neighbors landed him in Marquette Prison from 1997 to 2004, followed by placement in a nursing home. Drummer Roy Brooks passed away on November 15, 2005.
He recorded nearly four-dozen albums as a sideman and seven albums as a leader, his last being Roy Brooks & the Improvisational Sphere, recorded by Charles Jazzrenegade Wood on September 3, 1999, Live at Lelli’s, a well known Italian restaurant in Detroit. This is the solely available recording of the three-day performance released posthumously in 2011 by Italian label Sagittarius A-Star. The Improvisational Sphere was Roy Brooks: Drums, Marimba, Steel Drum, Keyboard; Amina Claudine Myers: Hammond B-3 Organ and Vocals; Ray Mantilla: Congas, Bells, Percussion; Jerry LeDuff: Tabla, Cuica, Shekere, Berimbau, Percussion; and Rodney Rich: Guitar.
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