Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Errol Leslie Buddle was born on April 29, 1928 and raised in Adelaide, Australia. He first learned the banjo and mandolin and began learning jazz after listening to a Bobby Limb performance in 1944. He attended the Elder Conservatorium of Music as well as the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Influenced by the sound of the bassoon in Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring and The Firebird, he began playing the instrument. Over the course of his career, Buddle played fourteen reed instruments and several others. Moving to Melbourne in 1946 he began playing the radio circuit.

Relocating to Sydney by 1951 and performed weekly at the nightclub Chequers’. Another move to Windsor, Ontario in 1952 had him joining the Windsor Symphony Orchestra.

Often performing in Detroit, Michigan, he met and collaborated with Elvin Jones and Johnnie Davis. Errol performed at the jazz club Klein’s and eventually led what later became the Errol Buddle Quartet. He also founded The Australian Jazz Quartet with Jack Brokensha, Bryce Rohde and Dick Healey. The group served as the backing band to several musicians and later played throughout North America before touring Australia in 1958, then disbanded.

He also put together a quintet in various configurations with Bryce Rohde, piano; Dick Healy, flute and alto sax; Jack Brokensha, vibes; Jimmy Gannon, bass; and Frank Capp, drums. After 1958 he performed occasionally.

Bassoon and tenor saxophonist Errol Buddle, who over the course of his career played fourteen reed instruments and several others, passed away at his home in Potts Point, New South Wales on February 22, 2018, aged 89.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Everett Barksdale, born April 28, 1910 in Detroit, Michigan, played bass and banjo before settling on guitar. During early 1930 he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he joined Erskine Tate’s band. He recorded for the first time with violinist Eddie South in 1931, who he remained with until 1939.

A move to New York City saw Everett become a member of the Benny Carter Big Band. Around that same time, he recorded with Sidney Bechet and during the 1940s, he worked for CBS as a session musician.

As a sideman, Barksdale played guitar in many genres, working with vocalists Dean Barlow, Maxine Sullivan, the Blenders, and the Clovers. He played on the hit Love Is Strange by Mickey & Sylvia, was the music director for the Ink Spots, and beginning in 1949, he worked with pianist Art Tatum until Tatum died in 1956.

During the Fifties and Sixties, he was part of the ABC house band and played on recordings with a who’s who list of vocalists and musicians not limited to Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Milt Hinton, Buddy Tate, Chet Baker, Red Allen, Harold Vick, Oscar Brown Jr., J. J. Johnson, Clark Terry, Kai Winding, Louis Armstrong, The Drifters and Ben E. King. He also played guitar in the studio for pop and soul musicians such as.

Guitarist and session musician Everett Barksdale retired from active performance in the 1970s, moved to the West Coast and passed away in Inglewood, California on January 29, 1986.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Krzysztof Komeda was born Krzysztof Trzciński on April 27, 1931 in Poznań, Poland and grew up in Częstochowa and Ostrów Wielkopolski. He took music lessons from early childhood and became a member of the Poznań conservatorium at the age of eight, but World War II thwarted his plans. He explored the theory of music, and learned to play piano during this period.

While attending the Liceum for Boys, where he graduated from in 1950, he participated in the Music and Poetry Club. After high school he entered the Medical Academy in Poznań to study medicine. He finished his six-year-long studies and obtained a medical doctor diploma in 1956. He chose to specialize as a head and neck surgeon.

Komeda was interested in light and dance music and met Witold Kujawski, a graduate of the same school and already a well-known swinging bass player. He introduced him to jazz and took him to Kraków where the romantic period of Polish jazz, called the catacombs, was in the spotlight. Jam sessions with famous musicians as Matuszkiewicz, Borowiec, Walasek, and Kujawski took place in Witold’s legendary small apartment in Kraków.

Fascinated with be-bop performed by Andrzej Trzaskowski, his fascination with jazz and the friendship with famous musicians strengthened his connections with the music. He worked for some time with the first, postwar, pioneer Polish jazz band called Melomani. Later, he played with various pop groups, a Dixieland band before turning his attention to modern jazz and the creation of the Komeda Sextet.

Trzciński used the stage name ‘Komeda’ for the first time to protect his medical profession from the scutiny of those of Polish society  who regarded jazz as a cheap suspicious music of night clubs. The sextet became the first Polish jazz group playing modern jazz, and its pioneering performances opened the way for jazz in Poland. He played jazz that related to European traditions and which was the synthesis of the two most popular groups at that time: The Modern Jazz Quartet and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.

He would go on to tour Moscow, Grenoble,  Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Prague, Blend, Koenigsberg, Bulgaria and both West and East Germany. He was a part of a show called Jazz and Poetry, began scoring films and overall, Komeda composed more than 70 soundtracks. While staying in Los Angeles, California in 1968 he composed the film music for Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Kulik’s The Riot.

In 1968, in Los Angeles, while having a friendly rough-and-tumble with writer Marek Hłasko he was pushed over an escarpment and suffered a haematoma of the brain. Medical treatment in the US hospital did not save his life. After being transported home to Poland in a coma and in a terminal state. Pianst  Krzysztof Komeda, who is credited with creating an original style, often described as the Polish school of jazz, hung on until passing away on April 23, 1969 at the age of 37.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Preston Haynes Love, born April 26, 1921 in Omaha, Nebraska, grew up in the North Omaha and graduated from North High. He became renowned as a professional sideman and saxophone balladeer in the heyday of the big band era. He was a member of the bands of Nat Towles, Lloyd Hunter, Snub Mosley, Lucky Millinder and Fats Waller before getting his big break with the Count Basie Orchestra when he was 22. Love played and recorded with the Count’s band from 1945–1947 and played on Basie’s only #1 hit record, Open The Door Richard.

Love eventually became a bandleader and played behind Lena Horne, Billie Holiday, his friends Johnny Otis and Wynonie Harris, with whom he had several hits.

In 1952, he launched the short-lived Spin Records, as a joint effort with songwriter Otis René (When It’s Sleepy Time Down South). The label released material by the Preston Love Orchestra, among others.

As the music changed so did he and in the early 1960s Love moved to Los Angeles, California and began working with Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, eventually becoming Motown’s West Coast house bandleader with whom he played & toured with The Four Tops, The Temptations, Tammi Terrell, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross, and Stevie Wonder among others.

He recorded with Nichelle Nichols, Janis Joplin, Frank Zappa, Shuggie Otis, T-Bone Walker, Charles Brown, Ruth Brown, and many others. Preston also appears in the Clint Eastwood film Play Misty For Me with the Johnny Otis band. He toured the U.S. and Europe quite frequently into the 2000s, additionally lecturing and writing about the history he was part of.

In his later years Love moved back to Omaha, wrote a book, led bands, the last of which featured his daughter vocalist Portia Love, drummer Gary E. Foster, pianist Orville Johnson, and bassist Nate Mickels. He was an advertising agent for the Omaha Star, a local newspaper serving the city Black community.

A recipient of several awards and honors including induction into the Omaha Black Music Hall Of Fame, saxophonist, bandleader, and songwriter Preston Love, who released three albums as a leader, passed away on February 12, 2004, after battling prostate cancer.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Digby Fairweather was born Richard John Charles Fairweather in Rochford, Essex, England on April 25, 1946. Before becoming a professional musician, he was a librarian, which embarked him on a lifetime interest in jazz bibliography and archiving.

In 1971 he led his first band, Dig’s Half Dozen, and recorded in 1973 with Alex Welsh. Four years later he was a member of the band Velvet with Ike Isaacs, Len Skeat, and Denny Wright, then a member of the Midnite Follies Orchestra and the Pizza Express All-Stars.

The early 1980s saw Fairweather starting a band that performed music by Nat Gonella. He worked as a sideman for George Chisholm, Alex Welsh, Tiny Winters, and Brian Priestley. Through the 1980s and ’90s he led the Jazz Superkings, the Great British Jazz Band, and the Half Dozen.

From 1992 to 1998 he pursued a parallel career as a broadcaster on BBC Radio and Jazz FM, occasionally deputizing Humphrey Lyttelton on his show Best of Jazz and successively presenting Jazz Parade and Jazz Notes. He was also part of the Salute to Satchmo.

Fairweather and Stan Barker started the Jazz College charity to introduce improvisation in schools. He established the Association of British Jazz Musicians and the National Jazz Foundation Archive. He wrote Jazz: The Essential Companion in 1987 with Brian Priestly and Ian Carr. In 2000 it was renamed The Rough Guide to Jazz.

Digby’s Half Dozen toured and recorded with singer George Melly, and in the later years of his career from 2003 to 2007. Apart from his playing and group leading, Fairweather wrote the book How to Play Trumpet. In 2016, founded The Jazz Centre (UK), a charity whose aim is to promote, preserve and celebrate the culture of jazz in all its forms.

Cornetist, author, and broadcaster Digby Fairweather, who has recorded nineteen albums as a leader, published four books and has received several awards for jazz, continues his career as a musician.

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