Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Garrison Fewell was born on October 14, 1953 in Charlottesville, Virginia but was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He started playing the stride guitar when he was 11 years old and becoming interested in acoustic blues, he turned to the music of Reverend Gary Davis, Fred McDowell, and Mississippi John Hurt. During the early ’70s, Fewell embarked on a tour that took him to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, and Afghanistan. Three years later he returned to the States, became a jazz student of Pat Martino and Lenny Breau, earned a degree from Berklee College of Music and by 1977 was teaching at his alma mater.
As part of a new exchange program set up between Berklee and Holland’s Rotterdam Conservatory in 1988, Garrison also taught in Rotterdam, worked with Dutch musicians and performed at the North Sea Jazz Festival. The guitarist settled in Paris the following year, playing jazz and teaching at the American School of Modern Music and played the Umbria Jazz Festival. For the next several years he taught and performed around Europe gaining more and more popularity.
In 1993 his relative obscurity at home changed with the recording of his album A Blue Deeper Than the Blue, bringing him to the attention of jazz lovers. It also bestowed upon him a number of honors with inclusion into the Coda Magazine and United Press International lists of the year’s ten best and the Boston Music Awards named the debut Best Jazz Album of the Year. Guitarist Garrison Fewell continues to perform, record, teach and tour.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Raymond Matthews Brown was born on October 13, 1926 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and started piano lessons at age eight. By high school he noticed a proliferation of pianists, unable to afford his first choice of trombone, took the upright bass vacancy in the high school jazz orchestra.
Influenced early by bassist Jimmy Blanton, the young Brown started making a name for himself around Pittsburgh playing with Jimmy Hinlsey and Snookum Russell. After graduating from high school he bought a one-way ticket to New York, met up with hank Jones, met Dizzy Gillespie who hired him on the spot and started working alongside Art Tatum and Charlie Parker.
During his five-year tenure with Gillespie he met and married Ella Fitzgerald, then worked with Jazz At The Philharmonic, recorded with Blossom Dearie on her first five albums between ‘57 and ‘59, joined Oscar Peterson in 1951 becoming a mainstay for the next 15 years.
In 1966 Ray moved to Los Angeles where he was in high demand by several television show orchestras, worked with Frank Sinatra, Billy Eckstine, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan and Nancy Wilson. Becoming a manager and promoter as well as a performer, Brown managed the Modern Jazz Quartet and a young Quincy Jones, produced shows at the Hollywood Bowl, wrote jazz bass instruction books and developed a jazz cello.
Over the course of his career he has recorded prolifically with a luminary list of musicians, was award a Grammy for his composition Gravy Waltz, reunited with the legendary Oscar Peterson Trio and subsequent albums earned no less than four Grammys. He continued to tour and perform up until the time of his death. Double bassist Ray Brown passed away in his sleep on July 2, 2002 after having played a round of golf in Indianapolis, Indiana. The following year he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
Inspire A Young Mind
The Jazz Voyager
The Lighthouse: 30 Pier Ave., Hermosa Beach, California / Telephone: 310-376-9833 / Since the 1940’s, The Lighthouse Cafe located on Pier Plaza in Hermosa Beach, has been a haven for musicians and music lovers alike. The venue first gained popularity with the world renown jazz jam group “The Lighthouse All-Stars” called the club home. For years SoCal residents swarmed to the South Bay to take part in the west coast jazz movement and to see the talents of greats such as Buddy Guy, Miles Davis, Howard Rumsey, Chet Baker, and Shorty Rodgers swing every Sunday afternoon for Jazz Brunch, a tradition that continues today.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Melvin Rhyne was born on October 12, 1936 in Indianapolis, Indiana and started playing the piano shortly thereafter. By the time he turned 19 he was playing piano with then-unknown tenor saxophonist Rahsaan Roland Kirk but quickly switched to the Hammond B3 organ. His skills as a pianist fluidly translated to the organ fluently and he soon became a sideman for B.B. King and T-Bone Walker.
Melvin’s big break came in 1959 when he joined fellow Indianapolis jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery’s newly formed trio. Playing with Montgomery for five years, he recorded four sessions with the trio: Guitar on the Go, Round Midnight, Boss Guitar, and Portrait of Wes.
After the Montgomery years, Rhyne moved to Wisconsin and largely kept to himself for the next two decades. However, in 1991 Rhyne returned to the jazz scene in full force, playing on Herb Ellis’ album Roll Call, with Brian Lynch on At the Main Event, and his own comeback The Legend. Rhyne continued to be prolific in the years to come, releasing eight more solo albums for the Criss Cross jazz label.
In 2008 Rhyne teamed up with Rob Dixon forming the Dixon-Rhyne Project, a boundary-pushing jazz quartet and released Reinvention for Owl Studios in 2008. Melvin continues to perform live and record with his trio consisting of drummer Kenny Washington and guitarist Peter Bernstein. On March 5, 2013 hard bop organist, bandleader and composer Melvin Rhyne passed away in his hometown of Indianapolis at age 76.
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is a pop song that became a jazz standard with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. The song was publicized first as the theme in the 1955 movie of the same name, winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The music was commissioned for the movie and initially featured as background music. Lyrics were subsequently added to make it eligible for the Best Original Song category of the Academy Awards. From 1967 to 1973, it was used as the theme song to the television soap opera, Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, based on the movie.
The Story: Set in 1949–50 Hong Kong it tells the story of a married, but separated, American correspondent Mark Elliot (played by William Holden), who falls in love with a Eurasian doctor Han Suyin originally from China (played by Jennifer Jones). Though they find temporary happiness, she encounters prejudice from her family and ostracized from Hong Kong society. After losing her position at the hospital, Suyin and her adopted daughter go to live with a friend while Mark is on an assignment during the Korean War. They write to each other constantly.
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