Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harlan Leonard was born on July 2, 1905 in Kansas City, Missouri. He started his career in the Territory Band of George E. Lee in 1923, then moved to Benny Moten in 1924 and joined Thamon Hayes ‘ Kansas City Rockets in 1931 with several other musicians from the band. Disbanded in 1934, they formed the basis of the new Moten Orchestra. After Moten’s death in 1935, Leonard founded his own group, bringing several Moten musicians which became Harlan Leonard and his Rockets, and soon was one of the most famous bands in Kansas City.
After Count Basie’s departure for new YorkCity, he and Jay McShann were the strongest rivals. When the first Leonard band fell apart in 1936, he then took over the musicians of the Jimmy Keith band in 1937/38. In 1938 the young Charlie Parker also belonged to the band for five weeks but was dismissed because of unreliability.
In Chicago, Illinois in 1940, the band along with singer Myra Taylor recorded sessions for Victor Records. Returning to Kansas City in 1941, they toured the Midwest, then went to New York City but were unsuccessful so they returned home. Early 1943 Leonard went on a West Coast tour, playing one-nighters and a year engagement in Los Angeles, California.
After the band’s disbandment, Leonard remained in the Los Angeles area, performing occasionally in local clubs until retiring from the music business and working for the Internal Revenue Service.
Clarinetist, saxophonist, and Swing bandleader Harlan Leonard, who was one of the leaders of Kansas City Jazz with Jay McShann, and one of the links between the swing and the subsequent bebop, passed away on November 10, 1983.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Arlt was born in Bünde, Westfalen, Germany on July 1, 1960 and began playing guitar as a teenager. From the beginning, he was interested in a musical gamut, playing in rock, blues, fusion, and free bands. Going to Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-Eighties, he studied at Berklee College of Music, took private lessons from Mike Metheny, and then continued his studies in the Netherlands at the Amsterdam Academy of Arts under Wim Overgaauw.
Since that time, Michael has performed in a variety of ensembles with musicians like Maria de Fatima, Jerry Granelli, Sigi Busch, Rick Hollander, Leszek Zadlo, Wolfgang Ekholt, Joris Teepe, Paquito D’Rivera, Herbert Joos, and Luciano Biondini. He has recorded with Roman Schwaller, Houston Person and Red Holloway. He founded his own trio and the group Brassless with who he recorded. With Don Kostelnik and Duck Scott he forms the organ trio We Three who recorded several albums.
Arlt has been a part of the Lemongrass and Weathertunes music projects, which were founded by the brothers Roland and Daniel Voss. Since the late 1990s, Arlt has been playing with Rick Hollander, in the trio of Reinette van Zijtveld and in a duo with Christian Eckert. As a lecturer, he has taught jazz guitar and harmony at the University of Music in Würzburg since 1990. Guitarist Michael Arlt continues to explore and perform in the genre. of modern jazz.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Grady Watts was born in Texarkana, Texas on June 30, 1908 and after attending the Allen Military Academy and the University of Oklahoma, he played in local jazz bands in Louisiana during the late 1920s. By 1931 he had joined the Casa Loma Orchestra, where he became a featured soloist and a composer.
Grady recorded copiously with the ensemble and remained with it until 1942. Among his compositions for the Orchestra was Rhythm Man, You Ain’t Been Livin’ Right, I Remember, and Touch and Go.
The mid-1940s saw Watts abandoning his full-time career as a performer and took jobs in artist & repertoire and as an executive in the chemical engineering industry. Trumpeter and composer Grady Watts passed away in Vero Beach, Florida in January 1986.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ken Hyder was born on June 29, 1946 in Dundee, Scotland. He began playing jazz in Scotland before moving south to London, England where he played at the legendary Little Theatre Club – an avant-garde haunt run by the late John Stevens.
For over 40 years Hyder has been playing and composing music and has produced more than three dozen albums of original material. He formed the group Talisker and recorded six albums with this pioneering and proto-type Celtic jazz group. He has recorded with Elton Dean, Chris Biscoe, Tim Hodgkinson, Paul Rogers, Maggie Nicols, Don Paterson, and Frankie Armstrong.
The 1970s saw him moving away from jazz and into collaborations with musicians from different musical backgrounds including Irish, South African and South American players. Later, he became interested in exploring spiritual aspects of music with spiritual practitioners like Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist monks, and Siberian shamans.
Ken combines folk, ethnic and Celtic music with jazz. He has worked and recorded with Dick Gaughan, Vladimir Rezitsky, Phil Minton, Lindsay L. Cooper, Sainkho Namtchylak, Jo’burg Hawk, Marcio Mattos, Jim Dvorak, John Edwards, Dave Webster, John Rangecroft, Radik Tyulyush, Julian Bahula, Lucky Ranku, Larry Stabbins, Harry Beckett, Art Themen, Gary Windo, Pete McPhail, Keith Tippett, Harry Miller, Nick Evans, Raymond Macdonald, Ntshuks Bonga, Hamish Henderson, Jon Dobie, and Lello Colombo.
Fusion drummer and percussionist Ken Hyder continues with his current projects that include K-Space, with Tim Hodgkinson and Gendos Chamzyryn; Hoots and Roots with Scottish singer Maggie Nicols; RealTime with z’ev, Andy Knight and Scipio; Raz3 with Hodgkinson and Lu Edmonds; A revived Talisker, with Nicols and Raymond MacDonald and a duo with pianist Vladimir Miller.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe “Fox” Smith was born Joseph Emory Smith on June 28, 1902 in Ripley, Ohio into a family of musicians. His father was a bandleader and his six brothers played trumpet or trombone.
Known throughout his childhood as “Toots”, he originally started as a drummer but was convinced by Ethel Waters that he was a far better trumpeter. By the time he reached New York in 1920, he had his own style, which achieved “the vocalized sound, the blues spirit, and the swing.
In 1921, Smith joined the Black Swan Jazz Masters in Chicago, Illinois directed at the time by Fletcher Henderson. He went on to work with the Jazz Hounds, the Broadway Syncopators, and finally with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers throughout the 1920s. He became famous from his work accompanying Bessie Smith, recording over 30 records. Some of the other artists he worked with include Billy Paige, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, and Allie Ross.
Trumpeter and cornetist Joe “Fox” Smith passed away from complications related to tuberculosis on December 2, 1937 in a Central Islip, New York asylum.