Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Doyle was born June 26, 1944 in Birmingham, Alabama and was inspired to play music as a child after watching Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington on television. During his high school years, he began listening to Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins, and picked up gigs as a saxophonist. While still a teenager, he played with saxophonist Otto Ford, trumpeter Walter Miller and in R&B and blues groups.
After graduating high school, Doyle attended Tennessee State University in Nashville, receiving a degree in Music Education. While there he played with trumpeter Louis Smith and singers Gladys Knight and Donny Hathaway. He briefly went to Detroit, Michigan to play with hard bop trumpeter Charles Moore. He gravitated toward free jazz after playing at a Black Panthers festival.
Moving to New York City in 1968, Doyle worked with Sun Ra and Bill Dixon, and met and befriended saxophonist Pharoah Sanders and guitarist Sonny Sharrock. The following year, he recorded with Noah Howard and while in the city he met drummer Milford Graves, who encouraged him to pursue his natural affinity for pure sound. In 1977 he recorded his debut album Alabama Feeling, his first as a leader. He began playing with guitarist Rudolph Grey, and in 1980 along with Grey and drummer Beaver Harris, they became known as The Blue Humans and recorded Live NY 1980.
At around this time, Arthur began struggling with anxiety issues, and moved to Endicott, New York, where he worked as a counselor. In 1981, he moved to Paris, France where he began an association with multi-instrumentalist Alan Silva and his Celestrial Communication Orchestra, and participated in the recording of the album Desert Mirage in 1982. The following year, while in France, he was accused of rape and imprisoned. Maintaining his innocence he was pardoned and released in 1988 and during his time in prison, he wrote over 150 songs and assembled what he called the Arthur Doyle Songbook.
In the early Nineties Doyle returned to the United States, moving back to Endicott, and restarted his involvement in music. He resumed his association with Grey, playing at CBGB and releasing Arthur Doyle Plays and Sings from the Songbook Volume One on Grey’s Audible Hiss label. Over the next decade, he played and recorded with drummers Hamid Drake, Sabu Toyozumi, and Sunny Murray, among others, and formed The Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble.
Saxophonist, bass clarinetist, flutist, and vocalist Arthur Doyle, who was best known for playing what he called free jazz soul music, died on January 25, 2014 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patrick Godfrey was born in Toronto, Canada on June 25, 1948 and began playing piano for church dances at age 12. HIs early influences were Fats Domino, Henry Mancini, Leonard Bernstein and Bach. He played and sang in a number of Toronto rock bands, which led to session work with many well known Canadian musicians Bruce Cockburn, Murray McLaughlan, Raffi, Marc Jordan, Shirley Eikhard, Ben Mink, and Mendelson Joe among others.
Around 1970 he worked with singer Len Udow in Winnipeg, Canada and met Richard Condie and wrote the music for Richard’s first animation. The subsequent friendship resulted in him scoring all of his animations. Godfrey has worked with many other animators, including David Fine and Alison Snowden for whom he scored the Oscar winner Bob’s Birthday and all 52 episodes of the TV series Bob and Margaret.
In demand as a producer, Patrick has produced albums featuring artists such as Holly Cole, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, The Lafayette String Quartet, and Michael Jones. His personal recording career includes eighteen albums.
Pianist Patrick Godfrey continues to perform in concert and teaches improvisation, composition and songwriting at the Victoria Conservatory of Music, Victoria BC.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Margulis was born on July 24, 1903 in Minneapolis, Minnesota into a family of accomplished theater music performers in the 1920s. That was his introduction to the professional musician’s life which led to him working with territory bands led by Eddie Elkins and Paul Specht among others. Heading to Detroit, Michigan in 1924 he joined Jean Goldkette’s Book-Cadillac Hotel Orchestra under violinist Joe Venuti. His next move was to work with bandleader Ray Miller during a period when the trumpeter roamed back and forth between Detroit and Chicago, Illinois.
By 1927 Charlie began working with Paul Whiteman, the relationship lasting nearly three years and concluding in a traditional manner for progressive jazz bands, with various sidemen stranded on the West coast. He managed to straggle back to New York City, bad luck perched on his shoulder. He got so sick that he had to return to California in order to recover but by the middle of the ’30s was well enough to log in for a New York City recording session with the Dorsey Brothers.
Caught up in the excitement of the new swing style, Margulis tried out life as a bandleader as well as spending a year on tour with Glenn Miller. His role as a bandleader was offset with work in the recording studios embracing doo-wop and r&b styles. He would go on to freelance, sometimes under the name Charlie Marlowe in California, under his own name in New York City during the Forties and Fifties.
Trumpeter Charlie Margulis died on April 24, 1967 at the age of 63 in Little Falls, Minnesota.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Miller was born Edward Raymond Müller on June 23, 1911 in New Orleans, Louisiana. In his early teens he got a job selling newspapers, so he would be eligible for a newsboys’ band. His professional career began in New Orleans at 16, with his recording debut occurring in 1930 with Julie Wintz.
He went on to work in Ben Pollack’s orchestra and then stayed when Bob Crosby took over its leadership. He stayed with Crosby until the band broke up in 1942. He had his own band for a brief time after that, before being drafted. However, he was discharged from the military early because of illness.
Settling in Los Angeles, California he worked with Pete Fountain, appeared in most of Crosby’s reunions, did club work and also played with trumpeter Al Hirt.
As a songwriter Eddie composed Slow Mood, which later became known as Lazy Mood after Johnny Mercer noticed the tune and composed lyrics. Miller was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame in 1998. He won numerous Playboy and Esquire Jazz polls. Miller finished his career as the lead saxophonist with Pete Fountain, living in New Orleans.
Tenor saxophone and clarinet Eddie Miller died at age 79 in Van Nuys, California of pneumonia on April 1, 1991.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ben Pollack was born on June 22, 1903 in Chicago, Illinois and learned to play drums in high school. He formed groups on the side, performing professionally in his teens. He joined the New Orleans Rhythm Kings in Chicago in 1923 and later went out to Los Angeles, California and joined Harry Bastin Band.
In 1924, returning to Chicago he played for several bands including Art Kessel. That association led to his forming Ben Pollack and His Californians, the 12-piece Venice Ballroom Orchestra in 1925. He had some performances broadcast on WLW radio in Cincinnati, Ohio. Over time the band included Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Jack Teagarden, Jimmy McPartland and Gil Rodin. From about 1928, with involvement from Irving Mills, members of Pollack’s band moonlighted at Plaza-ARC and recorded a vast quantity of hot dance and jazz for their dime store labels.
His band played in Chicago and moved to New York City in 1928, having obtained McPartland and Teagarden around that time. This outfit enjoyed immense success, playing for Broadway shows and winning an exclusive engagement at the Park Central Hotel. Pollack’s band was involved in extensive recording activity at that time, using a variety of pseudonyms in the studios. The orchestra also made a Vitaphone short subject sound film.
Fancying himelf more as a bandleader-singer type he signed Ray Bauduc to handle the drumming chores. They became known as Ben Pollack and his Park Central Orchestra. When Benny Goodman and Jimmy McPartland left the band in mid-1929. They were replaced by Matty Matlock on clarinet and Jack Teagarden’s brother, Charlie, on trumpet and tenor saxophonist Eddie Miller in 1930. Five years later the band broke up.
Pollack formed a new band with Harry James and Irving Fazola, the former with whom he wrote the hit “Peckin'”. In the early 1940s, he organized a band led by comedian Chico Marx, started Jewel Records, opened restaurants in Hollywood and Palm Springs, and appeared as himself in the movie The Benny Goodman Story, and made a cameo in The Glenn Miller Story.
Drummer Ben Pollack, who appeared in five films in the late Forties and Fifties, suffered a series of financial losses, grew despondent and hanged himself in his home in Palm Springs on June 7, 1971.
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