Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Louis Smith was born May 20, 1931 in Memphis, Tennessee, and while studying at the University of Michigan, he played with visiting musicians such as Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Thad Jones and Billy Mitchell. He followed this array of musicians by going on to play with Sonny Stitt, Count Basie, Al McKibbon, Cannonball Adderley, Percy Heath, Philly Joe Jones, Lou Donaldson, Donald Byrd, Kenny Dorham and Zoot Sims.
He began his recording career with two albums for Blue Note, the first being Here Comes Louis Smith, originally recorded for the Boston-based Transition Records, featured Cannonball Adderley (then under contract to Mercury) playing under the pseudonym “Buckshot La Funke”, Tommy Flanagan, Duke Jordan, Art Taylor and Doug Watkins.
Smith’s initial music career was brief, opting to become a teacher at the University of Michigan and Ann Arbor’s public school system.He would later recorded for the SteepleChase label. in 2006 Louis suffered a stroke and was seen occasionally enjoying live jazz in the Detroit/Ann Arbor area, but he never returned to performing. He recorded fourteen albums as a leader and recorded Down Home Reunion with his cousin trumpeter Booker Little.
Trumpeter Louis Smith, who recorded both volumes of Blue Lights with Kenny Burrell and Live at Newport ‘58 with Horace Silver, passed away on August 20, 2016, at age 85 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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The Jazz Voyager
The Jazz Voyager is heading to the eastern Mediterranean for some jazz on the island of Cypress. Nestled on the southern coast of the island is the city of Limassol, where my travels end listening to jazz at a wine bar called Vinylio.
Hosting regular jazz nights within its warm, atmospheric interior one can retreat from the chilly evenings. With candlelight flickering across the walls I look forward to enjoying the music of popular local bands such as Mood Indigo or Ioanna Troullidou & George Morfitis.
Vinylio is open 7:00pm until 1:00am and is located in the old town of Limassol at 33 Agkiris St, Limassol. For more information on who’s playing live jazz every Friday and Saturday night, the number is (+357) 96-810119. #jazzvoyager#wannabewhereyouare
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kyle Eastwood was born on May 19, 1968 in Los Angeles, California and is the son of actor Clint Eastwood. Growing up with a father’s love of jazz for the music of Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk and the Stan Kenton Big Band, he developed a similar love for jazz that was prominent in the home. This was coupled with a father and mother who played piano and a and grandmother who taught music at Northwestern University. Attending several Monterey Jazz Festivals in his youth with his dad, got him access backstage to meet people who a great influence on him like Dizzy Gillespie and Sarah Vaughan.
Eastwood began playing electric bass in high school, learning R&B, Motown, and reggae tunes by ear. After studying with French bassist Bunny Brunel, he began playing gigs around the New York and Los Angeles areas, eventually forming the Kyle Eastwood Quartet. In 1996 he contributed to Eastwood After Hours: Live at Carnegie Hall performance and ultimate recording, then two years later released his debut CD as a leader, From There to Here, on the Sony label. He moved on to record with the UK’s Candid Records and then to Rendezvous.
He has contributed music to nine films The Rookie, Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby, Flags of Our Fathers, Changeling, Gran Torino, Invictus and J. Edgar and has been nominated for a Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Original Score for the film Letters from Iwo Jima. He has also contributed to the score of the documentary Homme Less about homeless photographer Mark Reay. Bassist and bass guitarist Kyle Eastwood currently has eight albums released, tours around the world playing clubs and festivals and continues to write, compose, arrange and perform.
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Atlanta Jazz Festival…2016
Last year signaled the mounting of the 39th time that Office of Cultural Affairs, under the current Director Camille Russell Love leadership, that she and her staff brought local favorites, emerging musicians and national performers to Piedmont Park for the 2016 jazz festival weekend that ran from May 27th – 29th.
Thousands turned out to grill, eat and sit on blankets, lawn chairs and under tents before three stages, Legends, International and Local to enjoy as eyewitnesses the talents of Alex Lattimore, Anonymous DaBand, Assaf Kehati, Band Room Nation, Camila Meza, Chandra Currelley, Chargaux, Daby Touré, Eliane Elias, Enoch, Etienne Charles, Eugenie Jones, Gregory Porter, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Jamison Ross, Joe Alterman, JOI, King Ace Beats, KP the Great, Mabu’s Ark Band, Mette Henriette, Navy Bound Southeast V.I.P. Protocol Combo, Next Collective, Rialto Jazz for Kids, Rialto Youth Jazz Orchestra, Tatran, The Benny Golson Quartet, The Headhunters, Theo Croker, and Tomeka Reid
Drummer Lil John Roberts and trumpeter Russell Gunn Quartet hosted respective nights of the Late Night Jazz Jam.
Sponsors for this year’s festival were Bank of America, Publix, PNC Bank, Loews Atlanta Hotel, MARTA, Cantoni, The Coca-Cola Company and the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau. #AJF40
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mike Zwerin was born May 18, 1930 in New York on May 18, 1930. He studied at the High School of Music and Art and began leading bands in his teens, employing several up-and-coming musicians. At the age of 18, while on summer break from the University of Miami, he was the trombonist in Miles Davis’s nonet at the Royal Roost club in New York. This band was recorded performing the live sessions in 1948 and its music the following year culminated in the album that became immortalized as Birth of the Cool.
He abandoned his musical life for much of the 1950s but after a spell in France he returned to New York in 1958 and played the trombone in several big bands. However, in 1960 after his father’s death, he returned to the world of business and he took over as president of his dad’s company, the Capitol Steel Corporation. Over the next four years Mike kept a hand in jazz, working in John Lewis’s big band Orchestra USA, with whom he recorded and directed a small group. He also worked briefly with pianist Earl Hines but by the mid-1960s he withdrew from the business.
Zwerin moved to London in 1969 and then, in 1972, to Paris, which would be his home for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he kept his hand in as a trombonist throughout the 1980s, working with his fellow expatriate Hal Singer and with the guitarist Christian Escoudé. In 1988 he toured with the Big Band Charles Mingus, played briefly with t Swiss bandleader George Gruntz and played with the French fusion band Telephone.
As a music critic and columnist he wrote for the Village Voice, Down Beat, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, the International Herald Tribune and Bloomberg News. He authored several books about his own life in the world of jazz, most notably The Silent Sound of Needles, about his struggles with drug addiction, Close Enough for Jazz and The Parisian Jazz Chronicles: An Improvisational Memoir, but his most ambitious book may be La Tristesse de Saint Louis: Swing Under the Nazis that included the story of the Kille Dillers and the Ghetto Swingers, two bands that played in concentration camps, and how jazz survived across Europe though banned by the Nazis and labeled degenerate music.
Throughout his career trombonist and bass trumpeter Mike Zwerin would perform and record with Miles Davis, Maynard Ferguson, John Lewis, Archie Shepp, Claude Thornhill and Bill Russo, arrange, direct and produce an album of Kurt Weill songs with the Sextet of Orchestra U.S.A., before passing away after a long illness on April 2, 2010 in Paris, France at the age of 79.
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