Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jay Leonhart was born December 6, 1940 in Baltimore, Maryland and grew up in a musical family, with his parents and six siblings all played the piano. By the age of seven he and his older brother Bil were playing banjos, guitars, mandolins and basses. They played country music, jazz and anything with a beat. In their early teens, the brothers were television stars in Baltimore and were touring the country performing on their banjos.
By fourteen Jay started playing the bass in The Pier Five Dixieland Jazz Band in his hometown. He studied at The Peabody Institute, attended The Berklee College of Music and The Advanced School of Contemporary Music in Toronto. He then left school to start touring with the traveling big bands of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
At 21 Leonhart moved to New York City to start his career and played lots of funky road gigs with big bands, small bands and singers, visiting many little jazz joints around the world. He eventually began playing for many of the great jazz musicians, big bands, and singers like Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Lou Marini, Tony Bennett, Marian McPartland, and Jim Hall.
Becoming a very busy New York City studio musician he played every musical genre from James Taylor to Ozzy Osbourne and Queen Latifah, as well as Barbara Carroll, Peggy Lee, Eddie Higgins, Terry Clarke, Gerry Mulligan, Donnie O’Brien, Bucky Pizzarelli, Daryl Sherman and Bluesiana Triangle. Between 1975 and 1995 he was named The Most Valuable Bassist in the recording industry three times by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Bassist Jay Leonhart has now recorded fifteen solo albums and is performing a one-man show called The Bass Lesson about his life in the music business and song. He has toured worldwide for more than forty years and currently performs regularly with trombonist Wycliffe Gordon in a duo which began as a result of their recording This Rhythm on My Mind.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alvin Owens “Red” Tyler was born on December 5, 1925 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was known as “Red” because of his light tanned skin.He grew up listening to the city’s marching bands but didn’t begin playing saxophone until after he joined the US Navy in 1945. After his discharge he joined the Grunewald School of Music and by 1949 he started his career by joining the Dave Bartholomew’s R&B band, whose other members included Ernest McLean, Frank Fields, and Earl Palmer.
Red made his recording debut on Fats Domino’s first session at Cosimo Matassa’s studio, when he recorded The Fat Man. He went on to play on recording sessions for Little Richard, Lloyd Price, Aaron Neville, Lee Dorsey, and numerous other rhythm and blues artists, often helping with the songs’ arrangements. In 1955, he began working for Johnny Vincent’s Ace Records as an A&R man, overseeing sessions by Huey “Piano” Smith, Frankie Ford and others. He also recorded an album, Rockin’ and Rollin’, credited to Alvin ‘Red’ Tyler and the Gyros, with a band that included Fields, Allen Toussaint, and James Booker.
Leaving Ace in 1961, Tyler helped Harold Battiste found his AFO (All For One) record label, which had a hit with Barbara George’s I Know in 1962. He then moved to California where he recorded with Sam Cooke, Larry Williams and others, before returning to New Orleans in the mid-1960s. He co-owned Parlo Records, which found success in 1967 with Aaron Neville’s Tell It Like It Is. He is listed as one of three songwriters of the instrumental, Java, originally recorded by Allen Toussaint. Covered by New Orleans trumpet player Al Hirt, it eventually reached the charts in 1964 and peaked at #4.
Though he primarily played R&B during th early part of his career, during this period Red also played jazz in club jam sessions and regarded himself as primarily a jazz musician. From the mid-1960s Red worked as a liquor salesman and began leading his own jazz band, the Gentlemen Of Jazz, in clubs and hotel residencies in New Orleans, and played with other jazz musicians including Ellis Marsalis.
The baritone saxophone had been his primary instrument during his years as a studio musician, but his jazz playing gradually came to rely on the tenor saxophone. He recorded two jazz albums, Graciously and Heritage In the mid-1980s, with vocals by Johnny Adams and Germaine Bazzle, on the Rounder Records label. In 1994, he recorded the album The Ultimate Session with Toussaint, Earl Palmer, Mac Rebennack, and other New Orleans musicians.
Red Tyler passed away at age 72 in New Orleans on April 3, 1998. After his death, the New Orleans Jazz Festival organised a concert in his honor, featuring many New Orleans leading musicians.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Russell Jacquet was born on December 4, 1917 in Saint Martinville, Louisiana, the elder brother of tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet. He had stints with Floyd Ray and Milt Larkin before he studying music at Wiley College and Texas Southern University.
Moving west he played with his brother’s band for a time, later forming his own group, that became the house band at the Cotton Club from 1945 to 1949. After that residency ended Russell rejoined his brother’s group. He would later play with several small groups in Oakland, California, as well as in Houston, Texas with Arnett Cobb. He also performed with his brother on a few dates in New York City.
Trumpeter Russell Jacquet passed away on February 28, 1990 in Los Angeles, California. He left a small catalogue of recordings as a leader during his Cotton Club years and four as a sideman with his brother, recorded between 1951 and 1969 on Clef, Argo and Prestige record labels.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul Lingle was born on December 3, 1902 in Denver, Colorado and began learning to play the piano at age six. He first played professionally in the San Francisco, California area in the 1920s. He often accompanied Al Jolson in the late Twenties, including for his film soundtracks.
In the 1930s Paul worked mainly on radio, and also played with the Al Zohn band. He tuned pianos early in the 1940s and worked as a soloist in local San Francisco clubs, accompanying visiting musicians such as Lead Belly and Bunk Johnson.
Lingle released almost no recorded material during his lifetime, doing only one session for Good Time Jazz in 1952. This session for Good Time Jazz produced eight recorded numbers. After his death, Euphonic Records released several volumes of private recordings which were critically acclaimed.
Pianist Paul Lingle performed locally until his death on October 30, 1963 in Honolulu, Hawaii, relocating there in 1952.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Ernest Sauter was born December 2, 1914 in Brooklyn, New York and studied music at Columbia University and the Juilliard School. He began as a drummer and then played trumpet professionally, most notably with Red Norvo’s orchestra, eventually becoming Norvo’s full-time arranger.
Eddie went on to arrange and compose for Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman and Benny Goodman, earning a reputation for intricate, complex, and carefully crafted works such as Benny Rides Again, Moonlight on the Ganges and Clarinet a la King.
From 1952 to 1958 he co-led the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra and between 1957 and 1959 he was Kurt Edelhagen’s successor as leader of the SWF Orchestra in Baden-Baden, Germany. By 1961, he was working with tenor saxophonist Stan Getz on Focus, a unique collaboration of string compositions, and featuring drummer Roy Haynes on I’m Late, I’m Late, the only selection to feature a non-string instrument other than Getz. They collaborated again during Sauter’s work composing the score for the 1965 film Mickey One, starring Warren Beatty.
He would venture into composing for television including the third season theme to Rod Serling’s Night Gallery. He also orchestrated a number of Broadway musicals, most notably 1776, but also The Apple Tree and It’s a Bird…It’s a Plane…It’s Superman. His composition World Without Time is used as the theme music for the public affairs show The Open Mind.
Composer, arranger, drummer and trumpeter Eddie Sauter, who was prominent during the swing era, passed away of a heart attack in New York City on April 21, 1981.
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