Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lenny McBrowne was born Leonard Louis McBrowne in Brooklyn, New York on January 24, 1933. Influenced by his drummer father Arnold he took up drums at a young age, playing in street marching bands between ages 12 and 15, while also taking lessons on the bass. Graduating high school in 1951 he studied under Max Roach for one year and Sticks Evans.

McBrowne began his professional career in Pete Brown’s group, which featured Paul Bley. He also played with Randy Weston and Cecil Payne in various Brooklyn clubs, and with Paul Bley’s Trio in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. By 1956 he was playing with Tony Scott in New York City, and continued performing with Paul Bley in a college tour that led to his relocation to California.

His first West Coast dates included the likes of Billie Holiday, Sonny Stitt, Harold Land, Benny Golson, Curtis Fuller, Fred Katz and Sonny Rollins. 1959 saw Lenny forming his own group, The Four Souls, with pianist Terry Trotter, bassist Herbie Lewis, tenor saxophonist and composer Daniel Jackson, and trumpeter Donald Sleet.

Between January and March 1960, The band recorded their debut album Lenny McBrowne and the 4 Souls in 1960 that was released by Pacific Jazz Records. Shortly after they relocated to New York City and recorded their second and final album Eastern Lights with Jimmy Bond on bass. Cannonball Adderley was the producer and supervisor and the album was released by Riverside Records.

Described as a highly close-knit and well-rehearsed combo with fluid and competent soloing by several leading jazz magazines, the group was destined for dissolution.  Lenny then free-lanced with Sal Salvador, Chris Connor and Carmen McRae. During the 1960s, he played with Sarah Vaughan, Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan, Randy Weston, Booker Ervin, Ray Bryant, Teddy Wilson, and toured Japan with Thelonious Monk.

In the second half of the 1960s, McBrowne played primarily with Ervin’s band. He then relocated to San Francisco, California and began to perform with Kenny Burrell on a regular basis until 1976, when he made his last recording. Hard bop and soul jazz drummer Lenny McBrowne transitioned on October 4, 1980 at 47 in San Francisco, California.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Benjamin Waters was born on January 23, 1902 in Brighton, Baltimore, Maryland. He began on organ, then switched to clarinet and later added saxophone. The first band he joined in 1918 was Charly Miller’s band. In 1922 he attended the New England Conservatory of Music where he gave lessons to Harry Carney.

From 1926 until 1931, Waters was a member of Charlie Johnson’s band. He would later work with King Oliver, Fletcher Henderson, Claude Hopkins, and others. During these years he made several recordings with King Oliver and Clarence Williams.

In the years 1941 and 1942 he played with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, and later in the 1940s with Roy Milton. He went on to form his own band, playing at the Red Mill in New York City. After this stint in the city he moved to California for four years.

From 1952 to 1992 Benny lived in Paris, France. In 1996, he received the Legion of Honour from the French Ministry of Culture. He continued to perform regularly up to his 95th birthday.

Saxophonist and clarinetist Benny Waters, who became blind in 1992 due to cataracts, transitioned on August 11, 1998 in Columbia, Maryland.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

André Hodeir was born January 22, 1921 in Paris, France and trained as a classical violinist and composer. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, where he was taught by Olivier Messiaen and won first prizes in fugue, harmony, and music history. While pursuing these studies he discovered jazz and various music forms besides jazz and classical. He recorded on violin under the pseudonym Claude Laurence.

In 1954 he was a founder and director of Jazz Groupe de Paris, which included Bobby Jaspar, Pierre Michelot and Nat Peck. In 1957, at the invitation of Ozzie Cadena of Savoy Records, he recorded an album of his compositions with Donald Byrd, Idrees Sulieman, Frank Rehak, Hal McKusick, Eddie Costa, George Duvivier, and Annie Ross.

In addition to two books of Essais (1954 and 1956), he wrote film scores, including Le Palais Idéal by Ado Kyrou for the film Chutes de pierres, danger de mort by Michel Fano, and Brigitte Bardot’s Une Parisienne.

He founded an orchestra during the Sixties and composed a work based on the Anna Livia Plurabelle story from the novel Finnegans Wake by James Joyce. Violinist, composer, arranger and musicologist André Hodeir transitioned on November 1, 2011.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

The Orphan Who Became Malta’s Jazz Star
Some jazz stories follow a straight line from struggle to success. Juice Wilson’s story? It’s a globe-spanning odyssey that most musicians couldn’t dream up if they tried.

A Child Finding His Voice Through Music
Born January 21, 1904, Wilson was orphaned young and raised by his uncle in Chicago from age three. In a city that could be brutally indifferent to a child without parents, music became his lifeline, his identity, his way forward.

He started on drums with the Chicago Militia Boys Band, then switched to violin at eight—an instrument that would eventually carry him around the world. By twelve, he was already gigging professionally with bandleader Jimmy Wade. At fourteen, he was playing alongside the legendary cornetist Freddie Keppard, one of New Orleans’ pioneering jazz voices.

This wasn’t just prodigious talent—this was a kid who had to grow up fast, and music was both his emotional escape and his economic future.

Building His Reputation, City by City
The 1920s found Wilson working Great Lakes steamboats (those floating conservatories where so many musicians learned their craft), doing residencies with trombonist Jimmy Harrison in Ohio, playing in Erie with pianist Hersal Brassfield, then moving to Buffalo to work with bandleader Eugene Primus and even the Buffalo Junior Symphony Orchestra.

He was building his chops, city by city, gig by gig, learning to navigate both the world of jazz and the world of classical music—a versatility that would serve him well in the years ahead.

New York, Then the World
In 1928, Wilson made the inevitable move to New York City, where he played the legendary Savoy Ballroom with Lloyd Scott’s orchestra—the big time, the room where reputations were made and broken nightly.

But then something remarkable happened: at decade’s end, Wilson toured Europe with Noble Sissle’s celebrated orchestra and made a decision that would define the rest of his life—he decided to stay abroad.

A European Adventure
What followed reads like an adventure novel. Wilson worked in Holland with bandleaders Ed Swayzee and Leon Abbey, performed with the Utica Jubilee Singers, joined the Louis Douglass Revue, played with Little Mike McKendrick’s International Band, and worked with Tom Chase’s ensemble. He traveled to Spain and North Africa, soaking up sounds, languages, and cultures that most American jazz musicians would never experience firsthand.

He was bringing American jazz to audiences who’d only heard it on scratchy recordings, if at all. And he was absorbing Mediterranean and North African musical traditions in return, creating his own unique fusion.

Finding Home in Malta
perhaps Malta discovered him. Wilson became a beloved figure on the sun-drenched Mediterranean island, working throughout the 1940s and 1950s as a multi-instrumentalist and entertainer. He made the island his home base while continuing to tour the region, becoming a bridge between American jazz and European audiences.

Full Circle
Wilson finally returned to the United States in the 1960s, bringing with him decades of stories, experiences, and musical adventures that few of his American contemporaries could match.

A Life Well Traveled
Think about that journey: from an orphaned child in Chicago to a beloved musician on a Mediterranean island halfway around the world, carrying American jazz to corners of the globe that rarely heard it performed live. When Juice Wilson died peacefully on May 22, 1993, he left behind a life that proves jazz was always meant to be a universal language—you just had to be brave enough to speak it anywhere, to anyone who would listen.

Some musicians stay in one city their whole lives, perfecting their craft in familiar surroundings. Juice Wilson chose the harder path—and became living proof that home isn’t where you’re born, but where your music is welcomed and celebrated.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Connie Haines was born Yvonne Marie Antoinette Jasme on January 20, 1921 in Savannah, Georgia. She began performing at age four as a singer in Pick Malone’s Saucy Baby Show in her hometown and by age 9 had a regular radio show performing as Baby Yvonne Marie, the Little Princess of the Air. Her professional debut in New York City came at the Roxy Theatre when she was 14.

After gaining regional successes and winning the Major Bowes contest, she was hired by Harry James, who asked her to change her name. She did and went on to become the lead singer on The Abbott and Costello Show from 1942 to 1946. She later joined Tommy Dorsey, and Haines credited him with further developing her style.

In the early 1950s, Haines had a program, Connie Haines Entertains, did a television show with Frankie Laine, and had her own TV program, the Connie Haines Show. During this period she joined Jane Russell, Beryl Davis and Della Russell to do an impromptu performance of the spiritual Do Lord which led to a recording contract, gospel recordings and appearances of The Colgate Comedy Hour and the Arthur Murray program on television

She became part of Motown Records in 1965 becoming one of the first white singers to record for the label. She recorded 14 songs written by Smokey Robinson, including her 1965 release What’s Easy For Two Is Hard For One previously recorded by Mary Wells, and the first version of For Once in My Life, which wasn’t released until 2015.

In 1969, Haines became hostess of the Prize Movie weekday broadcast on Channel 7 in San Francisco, California. In 1980, she performed on “G.I. Jive,” a television musical special produced by PBS for its fundraising drive. Vocalist Connie Haines, who performed in a number of films, transitioned of myasthenia gravis on September 22, 2008 at age 87.

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