Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Willie Maiden was born William Ralph “Willie” Maiden in Detroit, Michigan on March 12, 1928. He began on piano at age five and started playing saxophone at 11. He spent most of his career playing in big bands, and while he copiously recorded as a sideman, he never led his own session.
Willie worked with Perez Prado in 1950 and arranged for Maynard Ferguson from 1952 into the 1960s. He played with Charlie Barnet in 1966, and played baritone sax in addition to arranging for Stan Kenton between 1969 and 1973.
As an educator, hard bop tenor saxophonist and arranger Willie Maiden who also played alto and baritone, taught at the University of Maine in Augusta until his passing on May 29,1976.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ike Carpenter was born Isaac M. Carpenter on March 11, 1920 in Durham, North Carolina. He began performing on piano with bands at a very young age, in the mid-1930s. After graduating from college, he performed with a number of successful musicians, including Johnnie Davis.
In 1944, Ike worked briefly as a pianist in Boyd Raeburn’s first influential jazz group, then put together his first band, working gigs on the East coast. In 1947 he relocated to Hollywood where he formed a popular 12-man band that played primarily in the Los Angles area, but touring up the West coast as far as Canada.
By the 1950s, Carpenter left the band scene, and worked as an accompanist for Ice Capades performers. Late in the decade he briefly returned as a bandleader with small groups, before retiring to his hometown in North Carolina.
Recording for the Modern Records label, much of his music was arranged by noted jazz arranger and composer Paul Villepigue. Over the years he played and recorded with Lucky Thompson, Gerald Wilson, Ted Nash, and George Weidler among others. His band was featured in two Hollywood musical films in the 1950s, Rhythm and Rhyme and Holiday Rhythm. Bandleader and jazz pianist Ike Carpenter, popularly active in the post-World War II years on the West Coast, passed away on November 17, 1998 in his hometown of Durham. He was 78.
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Don Abney was born John Donald Abney on March 10, 1923 in Baltimore, Maryland. He studied piano and French horn at the Manhattan School of Music, playing the latter in an Army band during military service.
After being honorably discharged from the Army he played in ensembles with Wilbur de Paris, Bill Harris, Kai Winding, Chuck Wayne, Sy Oliver, and Louis Bellson. He had a sustained career as a session musician recording with Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Oscar Pettiford, Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae, Sarah Vaughan, Eartha Kitt and Pearl Bailey. His studio work included playing on a large number of recordings for more minor musicians such as Marilyn Moore, as well as on R&B, pop, rock, and doo-wop releases.
After moving to Los Angeles, California and settling in Hollywood, he worked as musical director for Universal Studios/MCA. He appeared as a pianist in the film Pete Kelly’s Blues behind Ella Fitzgerald. Additional credits include recording and arrangements for the film Lady Sings the Blues.
After touring with Anita O’Day in the 1980s he moved to Japan in the early Nineties and toured there with considerable success, and playing weekly at Tokyo’s Sanno Hotel. Upon his return to the United States in 2000, pianist Don Abney, who never recorded as a leader, passed away of complications due to kidney dialysis on January 20, 2000 in Los Angeles, California.
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Marzette Watts was born March 9, 1938 in Montgomery, Alabama. Early in his life he played piano but did not play regularly in his teens. While studying at Alabama State College he became a founding member of SNCC, however, this association led to his being forced to leave the state at the behest of the governor.
He moved to New York, where he lived in a loft building on Cooper Square where Leroi Jones aka Amiri Barak lived and with whom he participated in the Organization of Young Men.. Watts returned to college in New York, completing his studies in 1962; and then moved to Paris to study painting at the Sorbonne and began playing saxophone for extra money.
Returning to New York in 1963, Marzette studied under Don Cherry, played in his loft and around the city with Juini Booth, Henry Grimes, J.C. Moses, and others. He also continued painting, producing work strongly influenced by Willem de Kooning. His loft attracted many established and up-and-coming musicians who would hang out there and play at parties, including Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Don Cherry, Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders.
By 1965 he devoted himself to music more fully, moved to Denmark for further study. Moving back and forth between Europe and New York City, while in New York he recorded an album for ESP-Disk and another for Savoy Records, and aught briefly at Wesleyan University.
He wrote film scores and did production work for his own films, eventually abandoning music to work in film and record production. Late in his life he moved to Santa Cruz, California but free jazz tenor and soprano saxophonist, bass clarinetist and sound engineer Marzette Watts passed away in Nashville, Tennessee of heart failure on March 2, 1998.
Dose A Day-Blues Away
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gábor Szabó was born Szabó Gábor István on March 8, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary and began playing guitar at the age of 14, inspired by jazz music heard on Voice of America. He escaped Hungary in 1956, the year of the attempted revolt against Soviet dominated Communist rule, and moved to the United States. Once there he attended the Berklee School of Music.
In 1958, he was invited to perform at the Newport Jazz Festival. He then went on to perform with the quintet of Southern California drummer Chico Hamilton from 1961 to 1965, playing what has been described as chamber jazz, with “a moderate avant-gardism. In 1962 and 1963, Hamilton’s bands cut two albums consisting entirely of saxophonist Charles Lloyd compositions. The title track of Man From Two Worlds featured Szabó’s guitar on top of a propulsive beat, parrying with Lloyd’s tenor sax.
Throughout the Sixties and Seventies he cut a span of albums as a leader for Impulse! Record label, co-founded the short-lived Skye Records with Cal Tjader and Gary McFarland, recorded an album with Lena Horne, and performed and recorded with The California Dreamers, Ron Carter, Paul Desmond and Bobby Womack. His playing also influenced guitarist Carlos Santana witnessed by Szabó’s mid-1960s jazz/gypsy guitar work in his Gypsy Queen and Santana’s Black Magic Woman.
He would go on to be label mates with George Benson at CTI, became affiliated with the Church of Scientology and signed in November 1978 with their Vanguard Artists International that brought its own set of troubles to his career, eventually ended uo with cross-suits aimed at both parties. He recorded twenty-four albums as a leader, and also worked with Steve Allen, Coke Escovedo and Santana, infusing jazz, pop-rock and his native Hungarian music.
Despite his influence on jazz music and the caliber of players with whom he performed, Gábor Szabó, who felt he was never fully accepted as a jazz artist in the United States, passed away on February 26, 1982 in his hometown, Budapest.
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