Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Peter Michael Escovedo was born on July 13, 1935 in Pittsburg, California of Mexican heritage. With his two brothers, he formed the Escovedo Brothers Latin Jazz Sextet, before Santana hired him and his brother Coke to play in his band.
Long well known on the San Francisco Bay Area music scene for several decades, in 2002 Pete made a notable national television appearance on the “By the Hand of the Father” episode of the PBS Austin City Limits program. He would go on to lead the 14-24 piece Latin big band Azteca.
Escovedo, along with his sons Juan and Peter Michael recorded with Latin Rock group El Chicano and their 3 piece percussion is featured on the studio album.
Percussionist Pete Escovedo has recorded eleven albums as a leader for Concords Jazz, Crossover and Picante labels, Fantasy and EsGo/Fantasy. He continues to tour, perform and record Latin Jazz at 80 years old.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Will Bradley was born Wilbur Schwichtenberg on July 12, 1912 in Newton, New Jersey. He became one of the premier trombonists on the New York swing scene, and he often participated in jam sessions broadcast on The CBS Saturday Night Swing Club. In 1939 he and drummer Ray McKinley formed a big band with pianist Freddie Slack that became well known for boogie-woogie, with hit records Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar and Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat and Down the Road a Piece. The latter song was recorded with Bradley, Ray McKinley, Doc Goldberg, Freddie Slack, with guest vocals by songwriter Don Raye.
He was one of the first band-leaders in the 1940s to appear in Soundies, three-minute musical films made for coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Their wide distribution gave the band valuable exposure with drummer Ray McKinley doing most of the vocals. After McKinley left to form his own band, Bradley joined the United States Air Force, where he played in the Glenn Miller Air Force Band and he disbanded his group due to the problems of wartime. He would go on to record with Ruth Brown and Charlie Parker and he became a studio musician, playing for many years in the The Tonight Show Band during the Johnny Carson era.
He was the band-leader for the Summer Silver Theater on CBS radio in 1941, with Ed Sullivan as the show’s host. Trombonist and bandleader Will Bradley, known for swing, sweet dance music and boogie-woogie songs, passed away on July 15, 1989, three days after his 77th birthday.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tomasz Stańko was born on July 11, 1942 Rzeszów, Poland and his first encounters with jazz were through Voice of America radio programs and U.S. State Department tours. Coming of age in Communist Poland he was impressed by the correlation jazz had with a message of freedom. In 1958 he saw his first jazz concert given by Dave Brubeck.
Coming to prominence in the early 1960s alongside pianist Adam Makowicz in the Jazz Darings, the group is considered one of the first groups to play free jazz in Europe. Stańko later collaborated on pianist Krzysztof Komeda’s pivotal 1966 album Astigmatic, then formed at quintet in 1968 with Zbigniew Seifert on violin and alto saxophone and in 1975 he formed the Tomasz Stańko-Adam Makowicz Unit.
Tomasz has since established himself as a leading figure not only in Polish jazz, but on the world stage working with Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland, Reggie Workman, Rufus Reid, Lester Bowie, David Murray, Manu Katche, Taj Mahal, Chico Freeman, Howard Johnson, Don Cherry Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen, Bobo Stenson, Tony Oxley, Anders Jormin, was a member of Cecil Taylor’s big band and the Globe Unity Orchestra.
Losing his natural teeth in the 1990s, over time he developed a new embouchure with the help of a skilled dentist and monotonous practice. Trumpeter, composer and improviser Tomasz Stanko, who concentrates in the free jazz and avant-garde genres, continues to record for ECM Records, perform and tour globally.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Lee Morgan was born on July 10, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the youngest of Otto Ricardo and Nettie Beatrice Morgan’s four children. Originally interested in the vibraphone, he soon showed a growing enthusiasm for the trumpet and at thirteen his sister gave him his first trumpet, but he also knew how to play the alto saxophone. His primary stylistic influence was Clifford Brown, with whom he took a few lessons as a teenager.
He joined the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band at 18, and remained for a year and a half, until Dizzy to disband the unit in 1958. Lee began recording for Blue Note Records in 1956, eventually recording 25 albums as a leader for the label, with more than 250 musicians. He also recorded on the Vee-Jay label and one album for Riverside Records on its short-lived Jazzland subsidiary.
He was a featured sideman on several early Hank Mobley records, as well as on John Coltrane’s Blue Train, joining Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1958 further developed his talent as a soloist and composer. When Benny Golson left the Jazz Messengers, Morgan persuaded Blakey to hire tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter to fill the chair. This version of the Jazz Messengers, including pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt, recorded the classic The Freedom Rider album. However, in 1961 the drug problems of Morgan and Timmons forced them to leave the band.
Returning to New York City two years later he recorded The Sidewinder which became his greatest commercial success and was the background theme for Chrysler television commercials during the 1963 World Series. Due to the crossover success of the album’s boogaloo beat, Morgan repeated the formula several times with compositions such as Cornbread and Yes I Can, No You Can’t.
He would go on to record a string of more than twenty albums as a leader and perform and record as a sideman with Shorter, Grachan Moncur III, Stanley Turrentine, Freddie Hubbard, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Lonnie Smith, Elvin Jones, Jack Wilson, Reuben Wilson, Larry Young, Clifford Jordan, Andrew Hill, as well as on several albums with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Together with John Gilmore, this lineup was filmed by the BBC for seminal jazz television program Jazz 625.
He became more politically involved in the last two years of his life, becoming one of the leaders of the Jazz and People’s Movement. The group demonstrated during the taping of talk and variety shows during 1970-71 to protest the lack of jazz artists as guest performers and members of the programs’ bands. His working band during those last years featured reed players Billy Harper or Bennie Maupin, pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Jymie Merritt and drummers Mickey Roker or Freddie Waits and were featured on the three-disc, Live at the Lighthouse, recorded during a two-week engagement at the Hermosa Beach, California club in 1970.
Hard bop trumpeter and composer Lee Morgan passed away in the early hours of February 19, 1972 at Slug’s Saloon in the East Village of New York City. Following an altercation between sets, Morgan’s common-law wife Helen More shot him and though not immediately fatal, he bled to death, due to a heavy snowfall and the ambulance’s lengthy arrival time. He was 33 years old.
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Joe Darensbourg was born Joseph Wilmer Darensbourg on July 9, 1906 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He received some of his earliest training from Alphonse Picou. After playing with local groups, and traveling with a medicine show and a circus band, he settled in Los Angeles, California and worked with Mutt Carey’s Liberty Syncopators.
He worked in Seattle from 1929 to 1944, working on cruise lines, playing in after-hours clubs and roadhouses, and backing several non-jazz entertainers. Darensbourg resumed playing jazz in 1944, in a traditional group with Johnny Wittwer. When he returned to Los Angeles, he recorded with Kid Ory and worked briefly with R&B bandleader Joe Liggins.
From 1947 to 1953 Joe worked solely with Ory, then spent the rest of his career in traditional ensembles, working with such musicians as Gene Mayl, Teddy Buckner and Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars. He led his own groups, and had a hit with the song Yellow Dog Blues, and toured with the Legends of Jazz from 1973 to 1975. He also worked with Buddy Petit, Jelly Roll Morton, Charlie Creath, Fate Marable, Andy Kirk, Johnny Wittwer and Wingy Manone. Clarinet and saxophonist Joe Darensbourg, one of the purest soloists in traditional jazz, passed away in Van Nuys, California on May 24, 1985.
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