Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack James Costanzo was born on September 24, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois to Italian parents. Starting his career as a dancer, he toured as a team with his wife before World War II. After his discharge from the Navy, he worked as a dance instructor at the Beverly Hills Hotel, where Latin band leader Bobby Ramos heard him playing bongos in a jam session and offered him a job.
He visited Havana, Cuba three times in the 1940s and learned to play Afro-Cuban rhythms on the bongos and congas. Throughout the 1940s, Costanzo worked with several Latin bands, including a revived version of the Lecuona Cuban Boys, Desi Arnaz, and Rene Touzet.
Jack toured with Stan Kenton from 1947 to 1948 and occasionally in the 1950s, and played with Nat King Cole from 1949 to 1953. He also played with the Billy May Orchestra, Peggy Lee, Danny Kaye, Perez Prado, Charlie Barnet, Pete Rugolo, Betty Grable, Harry James, Judy Garland, Patti Page, Jane Powell, Ray Anthony, Martin & Lewis, Frances Faye, Dinah Shore, Xavier Cugat, Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis, and Eddie Fisher.
Costanzo formed his own band in the 1950s which recorded and toured internationally. Hollywood stars Marlon Brando, Rita Moreno, Carolyn Jones, Hugh O’Brian, Keenan Wynn, Van Johnson, Tony Curtis, Betty Grable, Vic Damone, James Dean, and Gary Cooper among others, studied bongos with him.
He went into retirement until 1998 when he decided to make a comeback. In 2001 he recorded Back From Havana featuring Gilbert Castellanos, Steve Firerobing and singer Marilu. In 2002 he released his sophomore album with the same cast called Scorching The Skins. He continued to tour and perform in California and abroad.
Percussionist, dancer, composer and bandleader Jack Costanzo, nicknamed Mr. Bongo, died of complications from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm at his home on August 18, 2018 in Lakeside, California at the age of 98.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michel Gaudry was born on September 23, 1928 in Eu, France on 23 September 1928. He learned clarinet and piano as a child before switching to bass. Following studies at the Geneva Conservatory, he played with Michel Hausser, beginning his professional career in 1955. In the latter half of the 1950s he worked with Billie Holiday, Quentin Jackson, Carmen McRae, and Art Simmons.
In the early 1960s he was very active playing with Elek Bacsik, Kenny Clarke, Sonny Criss, Stephane Grappelli, Bud Powell, Stuff Smith, and Billy Strayhorn, as well as continuing a long time slot as a member of Jack Diéval’s group.
The Seventies he played with Gérard Badini’s group, Swing Machine, and was a regular performer at the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. In the 1980s he played with Jimmy Owens and Irvin Stokes.
In his later life, he dedicated himself to the history of World War II occupation of Normandy, France. Double bassist Michel Gaudry died on May 29, 2019 in Saint-Lô, France at the age of 90.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fletcher Smith was born on September 22, 1913 in Lincoln, Nebraska and was orphaned by the age of eight. He and his siblings moved in with their grandfather who had a nine-room house. When the Lloyd Hunter Serenaders came through Lincoln and there was a guitar player there named Finney. He asked Finney to teah him to play if he could get his uncle to buy him a banjo. He wrote out a chart of chords and gave him lessons when he came back.
Smith played for Cootie Williams in 1943 and in the following years with Slim Gaillard, King Perry, Varetta Dillard, Jimmy Rushing, Big Maybelle, Linda Hopkins, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Stick McGhee, Mickey Baker, Percy Mayfield, and Geechie Smith. In the Fifties he performed with Earl Bostic, Percy Mayfield, Benny Carter, Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton, Les Hite, and the Ink Spots, among others.
Under his own name, Fletcher Smith’s Squares and Fletcher Smith’s band, he played in the 1950s and recorded several singles such as Mean Poor Gal, Ting Ting Boom Scat or Shout, Shout, Shout. He recorded extensively as a sideman and toured most of the United States with various organizations. During the early 1970s he was a popular artist in Paris, France performing with the Golden Gate Quartet. From 1981 to 1991 he was featured in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Upon his return to Los Angeles, he became one of the mainstays of the Southern California music scene, he continued playing and honing his book of tunes and arrangements until his death. Pianist and bandleader Fletcher Smith died on August 15, 1993 in Los Angeles, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Shafi Hadi was born William Curtis Porter on September 21, 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to William Porter and Harrietti Porter. He received piano lessons from his grandmother at age 6. He went on to study musical composition at Howard University and University of Detroit. He performed with rhythm and blues artists such as Paul Williams, Ruth Brown, and the Griffin Brothers.
He recorded with bassist Charles Mingus between 1956 and 1958. He also recorded with tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. Hadi improvised the soundtrack music for John Cassavetes’s film Shadows, then returned to Mingus’s group in 1959. He also collaborated with Mary Lou Williams on her 1977 composition “Shafi”, although the extent of his contribution is unclear.
Between 1965 and 1969 Shafi co-wrote five songs with Lionel Hampton or Gladys Hampton: Bye, Bye, Hamp Stamps, No, Say No, A Sketch Of Gladys, and Mama Knows.
Tenor and alto saxophonist Shafi Hadi died in June 1976, at the age of 46.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Monica Zetterlund was born Eva Monica Nilsson on September 20, 1937 in Hagfors, Sweden. She began by learning the classic jazz songs from radio and records, initially not knowing the language and what they sang about in English. Her hit songs included Swedish covers of Walking My Baby Back Home. Little Green Apples, Waltz for Debby, Hit the Road Jack, and Moon Over Bourbon Street, among many others.
She also interpreted the works of Swedish singer-songwriters Evert Taube, Olle Adolphson and Povel Ramel, as well as international jazz musicians/songwriters. She worked with Louis Armstrong, Bill Evans, Stan Getz, Steve Kuhn and Quincy Jones, and in the Scandinavian jazz world with people like Georg Riedel, Egil Johansen, Arne Domnérus, Svend Asmussen and Jan Johansson.
In 1964, she recorded the jazz album Waltz for Debby, featuring Bill Evans, and was the most proud of. Her professional skill was amply demonstrated in her performance of the challenging Harold Arlen song, So Long, Big Time. Her rendition of Once Upon A Time In Stockholm, though not suitable for the 1963 Eurovision Song Contest, remained successful in Sweden.
She suffered from severe scoliosis which began after a childhood accident, and as a result was forced to retire from performing in 1999. On May 12, 2005, vocalist Monica Zetterland, as awarded the Illis quorum by the government of Sweden, died probably due to her habit of smoking in bed following an accidental fire in her apartment in Stockholm, Sweden at age 67.
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