Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Ellington was born Henry Pitts Brown on March 17, 1916 at 155 Kennington Road, Kennington, London, England, the youngest of four children. His father, a Black music-hall comedian, and entertainer, his mother a Russian Jew. When his father died when he was four years old, he was brought up as an Orthodox Jew and attended the South London Jewish School before entering show business at the age of twelve, when he appeared in an acting role on the London stage.
His first break came in 1937 when he replaced Joe Daniels in Harry Roy and His Orchestra as the band’s drummer. His vocal talents were put to good use too, from the time of his first session when he recorded Swing for Sale. Ellington was called up in 1940, joined the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a physical training instructor where he served throughout the war. He played in various service bands including RAF Blue Eagles.
After demobilisation, Ellington resumed his career, fronting his own group, playing at The Bag O’Nails club. Early in 1947, he rejoined the Harry Roy band for a few months. The Ray Ellington Quartet was formed in the same year, specializing in jazz, while experimenting with many other genres. His musical style was heavily influenced by the comedic jump blues of Louis Jordan. His band was one of the first in the UK to feature the stripped-back guitar/bass/drums/piano format that became the basis of rock and roll, as well as being one of the first groups in Britain to prominently feature the electric and amplified guitar of Lauderic Caton. The other members of his quartet were pianist Dick Katz and bassist Coleridge Goode until 1955 when the players changed.
Vocalist, drummer and bandleader Ray Ellington passed away from cancer on February 27, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Woody Witt was born on March 16, 1969 in Omaha, Nebraska and started on the clarinet in fourth grade and switched his focus to saxophone the following year. A professional musician from the age of 16, he studied at the University of Houston, earned a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from the University of North Texas, and a doctorate from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.
As a saxophonist, Witt has recorded ten albums as a leader and over twenty-five albums as a sideman. He has collaborated with major jazz artists such as Randy Brecker, Tim Hagans, Jim Rotondi, the late James Moody, David Liebman, and Tim Armacost, Conrad Herwig, Larry Ham, Joe LoCascio, Mark Levine, Louis Hayes, Adam Nussbaum, Billy Hart, and Nancy King. He has worked with the Houston Symphony and Houston Ballet and has been featured on major third-stream works that blend together jazz and classical music.
The winner of the 2010 Chamber Music America French American Cultural Exchange grant and the 2014 International Jazz Saxophone Competition in Taiwan, Woody is the booker and the artistic director at Houston’s top jazz club, Cezanne. He has taught at Houston Community College since 2000, is an Affiliate Artist at the University of Houston, and conducts a countless number of workshops and masterclasses throughout the United States, France, Romania, Germany, and Asia. Currently, saxophonist Woody Witt is involved in several different group projects.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marty Sheller was born March 15, 1940 in Newark, New Jersey and initially studied percussion, but switched to trumpet as a teenager. He first played with Hugo Dickens in Harlem, and arranged for Sabu Martinez, and began working with Afro-Latin percussionists such as Louie Ramirez and Frankie Malabe.
In 1962 he became a trumpeter in Mongo Santamaria’s band, and worked with Santamaria for more than forty years as a composer and arranger. He also had an extensive association with Fania Records as a house arranger, working with Joe Bataan, Ruben Blades, Willie Colon, Larry Harlow, Hector Lavoe, and Ismael Miranda.
Outside of Fania, he arranged for musicians such as George Benson, David Byrne, Jon Faddis, Giovanni Hidalgo, T.S. Monk, Idris Muhammad, Manny Oquendo, Dave Pike, Tito Puente, Shirley Scott, Woody Shaw, Lew Soloff, and Steve Turre.
In the 2000s, he led his own ensemble, which included the sidemen Chris Rogers, Joe Magnarelli, Sam Burtis, Bobby Porcelli, Bob Franceschini, Oscar Hernández, Ruben Rodriquez, Vince Cherico, and Steve Berrios. Trumpeter Marty Sheller continues to perform and arrange.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Mooney was born in Paterson, New Jersey on March 14, 1911 and went blind when he was around 10 years of age. His first job, at age 12, was playing the piano for requests called in to a local radio station. He and his brother, Dan, played together on radio broadcasts in the late 1920s, and recorded between 1929 and 1931 as the Sunshine Boys and the Melotone Boys, both sang while Joe accompanied on piano. They continued performing together on WLW in Cincinnati, Ohio until 1936, after which time Dan Mooney left the music industry.
In 1937, he began working as a pianist and arranger for Frank Dailey, a role he reprised with Buddy Rogers in 1938. Through the early 1940s, Joe arranged for Paul Whiteman, Vincent Lopez, Larry Clinton, Les Brown, and The Modernaires. Putting together his own quartet in 1943, he sang and played the accordion with accompaniment on guitar, bass, and clarinet.
In the last half of the 1940s his group experienced considerable success in the United States. By 1946, a newspaper columnist wrote that Mooney’s music “has the most cynical hot jazz critics describing it in joyous terms, such as exciting, new, the best thing since Ellington, and as new to jazz as the first Dixieland jazz band was when it first arrived”. As for Mooney himself, the columnist wrote that he “played in virtuoso fashion … a fellow who knows not only his instrument, but jazz music, both to just about the ultimate degree.”
In the 1950s, Mooney sang with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra and played with Johnny Smith in 1953. After moving to Florida in 1954 he concentrated more on the organ and recorded in 1956. 1963 saw a group of friends form a company to produce a record, Joe Mooney and His Friends. He recorded again in the middle Sixties. Accordionist, organist, and vocalist Joe Mooney passed away after a stroke at age 64, on May 12, 1975, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Williams, Jr. was born on March 13, 1908 in Memphis, Tennessee he learned to play the violin as a child, switched to tuba as a teenager, playing both tuba and the stand-up bass while playing in regional territory bands in the southern states.
A move to New York City in 1936, had him working with jazz luminaries such as Red Allen, Buster Bailey, Sidney Bechet, Benny Carter, J.C. Higginbotham, Billie Holiday, Harry James, James P. Johnson, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Frankie Newton, and Teddy Wilson.
In the early 1940s he also played in the bands of Coleman Hawkins and Louis Armstrong before joining Teddy Wilson’s band once again. He and Edmond Hall recorded together in 1944 and worked together until 1947. Following this collaboration, Williams played with Tab Smith and then with Johnny Hodges in the mid-1950s.
From the 1960s onward, Williams was less active, though he worked occasionally with musicians such as Buddy Tate in 1968, Red Richards in the Seventies, and Bob Greene from 1978 to 1982. Tubist and double-bassist Johnny Wiliams Jr. performed with the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band from 1978 to1998 until he had a stroke and passed away later that year on October 23, 1998 in New York City.