Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Samuel Blythe Price was born in Honey Grove, Texas on October 6, 1908 and during his early career, he was a singer and dancer in local venues in the Dallas, Texas area. While living in Kansas City, Missouri, Chicago, Illinois and Detroit Michigan he played jazz. In 1938 he was hired by Decca Records as a session sideman on piano, assisting singers such as Trixie Smith and Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
Price was most noteworthy for his work on Decca Records leading his own band, known as the Texas Bluesicians, that included fellow musicians Don Stovall and Emmett Berry. He would also go on to have a decade-long partnership with Henry “Red” Allen.
Later in his life, Sammy partnered with the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City, and was the headline entertainment at the Crawdaddy Restaurant, a New Orleans themed restaurant in New York in the mid-1970s. Here he would play with both Benny Goodman and Buddy Rich.
During the Eighties he moved to Boston, Massachusetts switched to performing in the bar of Copley Plaza. Pianist and vocalist Sammy Price passed away from a heart attack on April 14, 1992, at home in Harlem, in New York City, at the age of 83.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Thomas Clausen was born on October 5, 1949 in Copenhagen, Denmark and grew up in a musical home with his father playing a strong and able jazz piano in swing style, his mother from a family of singers. He began playing very young with great artists of jazz and his energetic and lyrical piano playing was discovered by Dexter Gordon in 196. During that same year he joined Palle Mikkelborg’s projects and groups and was soon playing regularly with the bass players Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen, Bo Stief, and Mads Vinding, as well as with the drummers Alex Riel, Bjarne Rostvold, and Kasper Winding.
Accompanying a number of international jazz stars visiting Copenhagen, Thomas has performed with Ben Webster, Elvin Jones, Jan Garbarek, Joe Henderson, Phil Woods, Lee Konitz, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, Eddie ”Lockjaw” Davis, Jackie Mclean, Gary Bartz, and Johnny Griffin, just to mention a few. In the mid 80’s he was a regular member of the Peter Herboltzheimer International Big Band in Germany.
Clausen formed his own band in 1978, when he started Mirror, a group that recorded the first LP with his own compositions and included Jan zum Vohrde on saxophone and flute, bassist Ole Skipper Moesgaard, and Aage Tanggaard on drums. 1979 saw him leading his first jazz trio, with bassist Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen and once again Tanggaard on drums, releasing two albums by 1983. Towards the end of the decade another trio emerged with Mads Vinding and Alex Riel and participated in the first Jazzpar Prize concerts in Copenhagen, Odense, and Paris in 1990, joined by with Gary Burton. The collaboration with Burton lasted a couple of years and led to two recording sessions.
Through the Nineties he delved into Brazilian music, recording and performing with many who were living in Denmark and Germany. His Brazilian Quintet continued into the new millennium, performing and touring throughout Europe. At 67, pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Thomas Clausen has received the Ben Webster Prize, The Jasa Prize, The Fanfare Prize, and The Danish Society for Jazz, Rock and Folk Composers Prize, received support from the Danish Arts Foundation for fifteen consecutive years from 1993 to 2007 and continues to compose, perform as a leader and co-leader and to tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edgar Gómez was born October 4, 1944 in Santurce, Puerto Rico and emigrating with his family at a young age arrived in New York City, where he was raised. He started on double bass in the City’s school system at the age of eleven and at age thirteen went to the New York City High School of Music & Art. He played in the Newport Festival Youth Band, led by Marshall Brown from 1959 to 1961, and graduated from Juilliard in 1963.
Gómez has performed with Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan, John Coltrane, New York Art Quartet, Benny Goodman, Buck Clayton, Ahmad Jamal, Bill Bruford, Scott LaFaro, Marian McPartland, Paul Bley, Michael Brecker, Wayne Shorter, Steps Ahead, Steve Gadd, Ron Carter, Jeremy Steig, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams, Al Foster, Chick Corea, Mark Kramer, Eugenio Toussaint and Carli Muñoz, just to name a few giants.
Spending a total of eleven years with the Bill Evans Trio and touring the United States, Europe and Asia, as well as recording dozens of albums, in which two of the Trio’s recordings won Grammy awards. Though Eddie was a member of the Manhattan Jazz Quintet and Steps Ahead, most of his career has been as an accompanist, a position suited for his quick reflexes and flexibility. This gave him the opportunity to record some 73 albums above and beyond his projects as a leader.
He was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Music from Berklee College of Music in Valencia, Spain, and was the first honorary doctorate granted at the college’s new international campus. Double bassist Eddie Gómez continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ulysses Banks, nicknamed Buddy, was born on October 3, 1909 in Dallas, Texas and began playing saxophone in his youth. Moving to Los Angeles, California in the early Thirties he played with the Charlie Echols band from 1933 to 1937. He remained in the group after it was taken over by Claude Kennedy and subsequently by Emerson Scott due to Kennedy’s death. The group then scored a gig at the Paradise Cafe, and Cee Pee Johnson became its leader and played in Johnson’s ensemble until 1945.
Following his departure from the group Buddy led his own group that featured tenor saxophone and trombone as its most prominent instruments. Holding down the trombone chair was Allen Durham and then by Wesley Huff. Guitarist Wesley Pile and drummer Monk McFayalso recorded as members of this group. The ensemble played throughout southern California and recorded until 1949.
Banks led a new group in 1950, but disbanded it quickly and started playing piano, and though he accompanied Fluffy Hunter on tenor saxophone in 1953, he spent most of the rest of his life on piano. From 1953 to 1976 he enjoyed a piano-bass duo with Al Morgan. By 1980 he was playing solo piano.
Tenor saxophonist, pianist and bandleader Buddy Banks passed away on September 7, 1991 in Desert Hot Springs, California.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phil Urso was born on October 2, 1925 in Jersey City, New Jersey and learned clarinet as a child, but switched to tenor sax while in high school. He served in the Navy during World War II and then moved to New York City in 1947.
Once he landed in the mecca for jazz from 1948 to 1954 he played with Elliot Lawrence, Woody Herman, Terry Gibbs, Miles Davis, Oscar Pettiford , Jimmy Dorsey, and Bob Brookmeyer.
In 1955, he first began working with Chet Baker, and was a prominent contributor to Baker’s Pacific Jazz releases in 1956. Urso and Baker would collaborate sporadically for some 30 years. He also recorded with Walter Bishop Jr., Horace Silver, Percy Heath, Kenny Clarke and Bobby Timmons among others.
He went on to work with Claude Thornhill late in the 1950s, but receded from national attention in later decades. Moving to Denver, Colorado he continued performing locally into the 1990s. Tenor saxophonist Phil Urso passed away on April 7, 2008 in Denver.
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