Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Harry Allen was born in Washington, D.C. on October 12, 1966. When he was a small child, his father, a big band drummer, played records for him including recordings of tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, which made a lasting impression. By his high school years he was recognized as an exceptional talent being able to uncannily play tunes such as Body and Soul in the style of legendary tenor players Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Flip Phillips, or Sam Donahue.

While in high school he also added the traditional influences from Scott Hamilton to his repertoire before attending and graduating from Rutgers University in 1988. A master interpreter of standards, he has recorded with Daryl Sherman, Joe Cohn and Jan Lundgren. He is best known for his work with John Colianni, Keith Ingham, John Pizzarelli and Bucky Pizzarelli. The tenor saxophonist has about two dozen albums under his belt and continues to perform , record and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Billy Higgins was born on October 11, 1936 in Los Angeles, California. A jazz drummer who mainly played free jazz, he played on Ornette Coleman’s first records, beginning in 1958 and then freelanced extensively with hard bop and post-bop players. He was one of the house drummers for Blue Note Records and played on dozens of Blue Note albums of the 1960s. On a whole, he played on over 700 recordings, including recordings of rock and funk, and appeared as a jazz drummer in the 2001 movie Southlander.

Tipping his hat into the educator ring, in 1989 Higgins cofounded a cultural center, The World Stage, in Los Angeles to encourage and promote younger jazz musicians. The center provides workshops in performance and writing, as well as concerts and recordings. He also taught in the jazz studies program at the University of California, Los Angeles. Drummer Billy Higgins passed away of kidney and liver failure on May 3, 2001 at age 64 in Inglewood, California.

He left a legacy of music, having recorded eight albums as a leader and his sideman duties had him performing and recording with a who’s who list of musicians including but not limited to Gene Ammons, Robert Stewart, Chris Anderson, Gary Bartz, Paul Bley, Sandy Bull, Jaki Byard, Donald Byrd, Joe Castro, Don Cherry, Sonny Clark, George Coleman, John Coltrane, Bill Cosby, Stanley Cowell, Ray Drummond, Teddy Edwards, Booker Ervin, Art Farmer, Curtis Fuller, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Grant Green, Charlie Haden, Slide Hampton, Herbie Hancock, Barry Harris, Eddie Harris, Jimmy Heath, Joe Henderson, Andrew Hill, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Paul Horn, Freddie Hubbard, Bobby Hutcherson, J. J. Johnson, Hank Jones,  Dave Holland, Sam Jones, Clifford Jordan, Fred Katz, Steve Lacy, Charles Lloyd, Pat Martino, Jackie McLean, Charles McPherson, Pat Metheny, Blue Mitchell, , Red Mitchell, Hank Mobley, Thelonious Monk, Lee Morgan, Bheki Mseleku, David Murray, Horace Parlan, Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, Art Pepper, Dave Pike, Jimmy Raney, Sonny Red, Freddie Redd, Joshua Redman, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Rouse, Pharoah Sanders, John Scofield, Shirley Scott, Archie Shepp, Sonny Simmons, Sonny Stitt, Idrees Sulieman, Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor, Bobby Timmons, Mal Waldron, Cedar Walton, Don Wilkerson, David Williams and Jack Wilson, among others.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Agenor Garcia was born in Campo Grande, Brazil on October 10, 1967 and received classical training from the age of 12. He eventually moved to Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, in 1995 where he started his composition classes with Professor Bohumil Med in the Music Department at the University of Brazil. He also taught lessons at ArtMed, Bohumil Med’s music school and wrote music scores for movies and theatre plays.

Moving to the United States in 2001 Garcia recorded his debut piano trio album Alabastro. During this period he studied jazz under Cliff Korman and by 2003 he received an invitation to participate in the Jazz Walk Festival in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 2004 saw him move to Paris, France, teaching music lessons at the Bill Evans Piano Academy and working as a music director and performing solo. Returning to America, in 2009, he started to work with Steinway & Sons performing contemporary piano concerts across the country. His album “The Music of Agenor Garcia” was recorded live while on the Steinway tour.

Pianist, composer, performer and musical director Agenor Garcia has played numerous jazz festival, has received awards including the Spanish Heritage Award for Best Composition, and in 2014 released his album Symbiosis, blending improvisation with his musical influences. He continues to perform, record, tour and educate.

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Bebo Valdés was born Dionisio Ramón Emilio Valdés Amaro on October 9, 1918 in Quivicán, Cuba. He started his career as a pianist in the nightclubs of Havana during the 1940s, replacing René Hernández as pianist and arranger in Julio Cueva’s band. In 1946 the band recorded Rareza del Siglo, one of his most famous mambos and from 1948 to 1957 he worked as pianist and arranger for the vedette Rita Montaner, who was the lead act in the Tropicana cabaret.

His orchestra, Sabor de Cuba, and that of Armando Valdés, alternated at the Tropicana, backing singers such as Benny Moré and Pío Leyva. Bebo played a role in the adaptation of the mambo into the big band format from the previously performed charangas during the late 1940s and 1950s. He developed a new rhythm to compete with Perez Prado’s mambo, called the batanga. He was also an important figure in the incipient Afro-Cuban jazz scene in Havana, taking part in sessions commissioned by American producer Norman Granz during 1952.

By the late 1950s he was recording with Nat “King” Cole and in 1960, along with Sabor de Cuba’s lead vocalist Rolando Laserie, Bebo defected from Cuba to Mexico. He then lived briefly in the United States before touring Europe, and eventually settled in Stockholm, spreading the techniques of Cuban music and Latin jazz. His career got a late boost in 1994 when he teamed up with saxophone player Paquito D’Rivera to release a CD called Bebo Rides Again.  2000 saw him in the film Calle 54 by Fernando Trueba giving his piano playing a wider audience and in 2003, Valdés and flamenco singer Diego El Cigala, recorded the album Lágrimas Negras (Black Tears).

During his career Bebo won seven Grammy Awards, His last musical production was recorded with his son in 2008, Bebo y Chucho Valdés: Juntos para Siempre (Together Forever). For that recording they won the Grammy for Best Latin Jazz Album.

Pianist, bandleader, composer and arranger Bebo Valdés, who led two famous big bands, was being treated for Alzheimer’s disease, which he had suffered for several years,  when he passed away in Stockholm, Sweden, on March 22, 2013 at age 94.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Hal Singer was born Harold Joseph Singer on October 8, 1919 in Greenwood, the Black section of Tulsa, Oklahoma. After surviving the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, he grew up in Greenwood where he studied violin as a child but, as a teenager, switched to clarinet and then tenor saxophone, which became his instrument of choice. From the late 1930s he began playing in local bands, including Ernie Fields’, before joining Jay McShann’s orchestra in 1943. Moving to New York he worked in other bands, then joined Oran “Hot Lips” Page’s band in 1947 and began working as a session musician with King Records.

By early 1948 Hal left Page, formed his own small group, and was signed to Mercury Records where he cut his first single Fine As Wine with a B side Rock Around the Clock co-written with Sam Theard and not the same title made famous by Bill Haley. He got his nickname when he recorded the tune Corn Bread for the Savoy label in Newark, New Jersey after the instrumental reached #1 on the R&B charts later that year.

The early to mid 1950s he continued recording with Mercury, toured with The Orioles and Charles Brown, and increased his work as a session musician. In 1958 he began recording with Prestige Records as a jazz soloist and performing at the Metropole Cafe in New York with jazz musicians such as Roy Eldridge and Coleman Hawkins. In 1965, after touring Europe with Earl “Fatha” Hines’ band, Singer stayed in France and settled near Paris. He continued to record and tour extensively around Europe and Africa, performing with various bands including Charlie Watts’ and the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Hal’s 1969 album, Paris Soul Food, featured him on saxophone and singing; Robin Hemingway, vocals, arrangements and album production; and Manu Dibango, saxophone, organ and arrangements that won a French Record Academy award for best international LP in 1969. He went on a State Department tour of Africa in 1974  with Horace Parlan, appeared on the 1981 live recording Rocket 88 with the UK-based boogie-woogie band and  in the summer of 1981 recorded two albums for John Stedman’s  JSP record label, Swing On It, with Jim Mullen, Peter King, Mike Carr and Harold Smith, while the second Big Blues, recorded a day later with the same group, also featured Jimmy Witherspoon.

Singer shared artist billing along with Al Copley for 1989’s Royal Blue, appeared as an actor in the award-winning 1990 feature film Taxi Blues and in 1992 was awarded the title of Chevalier des Arts by the French government. A documentary film, Hal Singer, Keep the Music Going, was made by Haitian-American director Guetty Felin in 1999, in which he shares a duet with Jessica Care Moore. He was also an educator teaching jazz to younger generations of French jazz musicians. Bandleader and tenor saxophonist Hal Cornbread Singer recorded sixteen albums as a leader and currently is 96 years of age.

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