Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Lindberg was born March 16, 1959 in Royal Oak, Michigan. He began his professional career at the age of 16, eventually moving to New York City in 1977. After moving to New York, he played with the Human Arts Ensemble alongside Joseph Bowie and Bobo Shaw. In 1977, with James Emery and Billy Bang. He co-founded the String Trio of New York.
In 1980 he formed a trio with Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray. From 1980 to 1983 he lived in Paris, playing there solo and with Murray and John Tchicai. He has recorded extensively as a leader. He studied bass with the bassist from the Battle Creek, Michigan symphony orchestra and jazz musician Roscoe Mitchell.
He has to date recorded twenty-five albums as a leader, eight with the String Tio of New York, and twenty with Anthony Braxton, Human Arts Ensemble, Susie Ibarra, Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray, Kevin Norton, Wadada Leo Smith and ten with Blob.
Double bassist John Lindberg continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Sage Wilber was born on March 15, 1928 in New York City. He became interested in jazz at the age of three when his father brought home a recording of Duke Ellington’s song Mood Indigo. In 1935, the family moved to the affluent suburb of Scarsdale, New York. At the age of thirteen he began formal clarinet study under his first teacher, Willard Briggs. He began listening to jazz from New Orleans, Kansas City, and Chicago by Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Eddie Condon, and Frank Teschemacher. He played jazz in high school and with his friends formed a hot club, listening and jamming to records and graduated from high school in 1945.
Set on becoming a musician he attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York in 1945. After one term however, Bob dropped out and moved back to New York City to hang out on 52 Street and in Greenwich Village. He formed the Wildcats, with pianist Dick Wellstood and trombonist Eddie Hubble and they became the first jazz group in New York to do what Lu Watters and Turk Murphy had been doing on the Coast. They played the music of the Hot Five, the Red Hot Peppers and the Creole Jazz Band. The group performed regularly at Jimmy Ryan’s club over the next two years and was recorded in 1947 by Ramp-art Records.
Wilber worked with some of the best traditional jazz musicians of the era, including Muggsy Spanier, Baby Dodds, Danny Barker, Bud Freeman, Pee Wee Russell, George Wettling, Jimmy McPartland, Wild Bill Davison, and James P. Johnson. Fascinated with Sidney Bechet, in 1944 at sixteen, he met Bechet through Mezz Mezzrow and became Bechet’s pupil. He began studying both clarinet and soprano saxophone under his tutelage and eventually lived with him for several months.
Bob recorded for Columbia Records, Commodore, and Circle with Bechet and with his own group in the late 1940s. 1948 saw him forming a trio and playing Dixieland at intermissions at the Savoy Café in Boston, Massachusetts. Eventually, he expanded the band to a sextet and gained a strong following in the city, leading to opportunities in New York City.
Clarinet and soprano saxophonist Bob Wilber, who continued playing right up until 2017, transitioned on August 4, 2019 at age 91 in Chipping Campden, England.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carri Coltrane was born Carrie Thompson in Phoenix, Arizona on March 14, 1953. Singing professionally since childhood, she was only nine when she joined Wallace & Ladmo, a children’s program that was founded by her father. The program aired in the Phoenix Area from 1954 to 1989 and she remained with the show until she reached adolescence and outgrew her role as a little girl singer.
She moved to Seattle, Washington in 1979 and went on to sing with various rock and pop bands as an adult, and did quite a few jingles for commercials along the way. While living in Seattle she met Eugene McDaniels who really encouraged her to explore straight-ahead jazz. Carri eventually became friends and partners with McDaniels and formed Numoon Publishing with him. They have put out several allbums on the Numoon label that included jazz, contemporary pop and Christmas music.
Carri released her self-titled debut album in 1980 under her birth name. It wasn’t until 1986 that she started going by Carri Coltrane as an homage to the tenor saxophonist. She moved to New England in 1987.
Vocalist Carri Coltrane, whose subtle waifish introspection continues to perform, record and publish her music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Teschemacher was born on March 13, 1906 in Kansas City, Missouri. A was a member of the Austin High School Gang, a group of young, white musicians from the Chicago, Illinois West Side, they all attended Austin High School during the early 1920s. They rose to prominence as pioneers of the Chicago Style in the 1920s, which was modeled on a faster version of New Orleans jazz.
Strongly influenced by cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, he was mainly self-taught on his instruments, clarinet and saxophone. Early on he also doubled on violin and banjo. He started playing the clarinet professionally in 1925. He began recording under his own name in 1928 and made what are believed to be his final recordings two years later, although there is now reason to believe (via sine wave recording research, aka Smith/Westbrook Method) that he appeared on unidentified recordings as late as 1932.
He first recorded with Red McKenzie and Eddie Condon’s Chicagoans in 1927 for Okeh Records. Two sessions produced Sugar, China Boy, Nobody’s Sweetheart and Liza. The players included Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, and Jim Lanigan, as well as Chicagoans Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa and Joe Sullivan, led by Red McKenzie.
1928 saw him recording with two other Red McKenzie and Eddie Condon groups, the Chicago Rhythm Kings and the Jungle Kings. The same year he made his debut as a leader recording for Brunswick Records. The group recorded under the name Frank Teschmacher’s Chicagoans. Frank’s solo work laid the groundwork for a rich sound and creative approach that is credited with influencing a young Benny Goodman and a style of which Pee Wee Russell. He also made recordings on the saxophone and would later return to the violin during the Great Depression. Although well known in the world of jazz, he did not live to enjoy popular success in the swing era.
Clarinet and alto saxophonist Frank Teschemacher, who was killed in an automobile accident while being driven by Wild Bill Davison, transitioned on March 1, 1932 at the age of 25.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Max Gordon was born on March 12, 1903 in Svir, Russian Empire, now Belarus. His family emigrated to the United States in 1908 at age five and settled in Portland, Oregon, where he later attended Reed College. As a young man, he was interested in Russian and French novels and saw himself as a romantic type. Pursuing his parents’ wish that he become a lawyer, he moved to New York in 1926 to attend Columbia Law School, but began working in nightclubs and dropped out, choosing to get his education where he could find it.
In 1932 Gordon opened his first venue, Village Fair, in the tradition of Viennese coffee houses as a place for artists and writers. He relocated the venue once in 1934 and opened the Village Vanguard in 1935. The Vanguard initially offered poetry and was frequented by poets Maxwell Bodenheim and Harry Kemp. Over time, the club segued into cabaret acts, comedy, folk music and jazz before going exclusively jazz in 1957. That year Sonny Rollins was the first jazz musician to record in the venue.
The club subsequently hosted a who’s who of jazz greats from the 1940s to the 1980s including John Coltrane, Sidney Bechet, Dinah Washington, Albert Ayler, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Henry Threadgill and Thelonious Monk, who at the time an unknown, discovered by Gordon’s wife Lorraine. The club’s artistic direction was in part guided by Lorraine who had a keen interest in jazz. Over time the club became a popular recording spot and over 100 jazz albums have been recorded there.
Max sought new talent and gave younger performers a platform to showcase their work. In doing so he played a role in helping launch the careers of Judy Holliday, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Barbra Streisand, Pearl Bailey, Woody Allen, Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, Irwin Corey, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly. He had a reputation for fairness and honesty among the performers.
In addition to the Vanguard, in 1943 Gordon opened the Blue Angel Supper Club in midtown Manhattan and was involved in its operation for fourteen years. He actively managed the Vanguard club well into his 80s. In 1982 he authored a memoir titled Live at the Village Vanguard which chronicles the history of the club.
Jazz promoter and founder of the Village Vanguard, Max Gordon, whose wife Lorraine continued the work and took an active role in managing the Vanguard club until her passing in 2018, transitioned at 86 on May 11, 1989.