Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kitty Margolis was born November 7, 1955 in San Mateo, California. As a child she listened to underground radio to hear the sounds of Ramsey Lewis, Beach Boys, John Lee Hooker and Santana, and Tower of Power was a local band playing at her high school dances. She would go to the Fillmore and Winterland and hear Miles Davis, Grateful Dead, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, John McLaughlin, Charles Lloyd to name a few. But an outing with her uncle to the Village Vanguard and it was a Rahsaan Roland Kirk performance that changed her life.
She went on to San Francisco State and studied jazz and recording studio arts and was soon gigging with her teachers John Handy and Hal Stein. Hanging out at Todd Barkan’s Keystone Korner she met all the heavyweights, Dexter Gordon, Art Blakey, McCoy Tyner, Betty Carter, Cedar Walton, Freddie Hubbard, Flora Purim, Airto, Horace Silver, Red Garland and many more. She even had the oppoertunity to sing Charlie Parker’s solo on Billie’s Bounce and got thumbs up from her idol Eddie Jefferson. In 1989, she made her well-received debut at the legendary Monterey Jazz Festival.
She released her debut studio album Evolution in 1993 and with guest performers Joe Henderson and Joe Louis Walker made a name for herself in the jazz community. On the heels of this album release Kitty won honor of Talent Deserving Wider Recognition in that year’s Down Beat critics’ poll, which she would repeat in 1995 and 1997. Her sophomore album, 1997’s Straight Up With a Twist, was her most eclectic outing yet, featuring quirky interpretations of standards, plus guest appearances by Roy Hargrove and Charles Brown.
Recording in between continuous performance and touring vocalist and record producer Kitty Margolis has taken time to co-found her own record label Mad Kat with Madeline Eastman. She has subsequently released five albums with a couple of live dates in San Francisco among them.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
François Boland was born on November 6, 1929 in Namur, Belgium. He was classically trained on piano and first gained notice in 1949 working with Belgian jazz greats like Bobby Jaspar and in 1955 he joined Chet Baker’s quintet.
A move to the United States saw Boland arranging for Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie. He formed an octet with drummer Kenny Clarke before returning to Europe and becoming Kurt Edelhagen’s chief arranger. In 1961, building from a rhythm section featuring Clarke, Jimmy Woods and himself, he founded the Kenny Clarke Francy Boland Big Band, which rapidly became one of the most noted big bands assembled outside the United States.
Some of band’s collaborators and members over the years included Johnny griffin, Art Farmer, Phil Woods, Ake Persson, Dusko Goykovich, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Muvaffak “Maffy” Falay, Idrees Sulieman, Herb Geller, Benny Bailey and Jimmy Wooden, among others.
After the band broke up in 1972 he concentrated on composing. From 1976 on Francy lived in Europe, primarily Switzerland, arranging music for Sarah Vaughan and others. He was a part of One World, One Peace, an effort that involved Pope John Paul II.
Belgian jazz composer and pianist Francy Boland passed away in Geneva, Switzerland on August 12, 2005.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack McVea was born in Los Angeles, California on November 5, 1914. His first instrument was a banjo, learning from his father Satchel, who was a noted banjoist. After playing jazz in Los Angeles for several years, he joined Lionel Hampton’s orchestra in 1940. From 1944 on he mostly worked as a leader, but impressively performed as a sideman in those years was at the first Jazz at the Philharmonic concert in 1944.
McVea was leader of the Black & White Records studio band and was responsible for coming up with the musical riff for the words Open the Door, Richard and Ralph Bass got him to record it in 1946. It became immensely popular, entering the national charts the following year, and was recorded by many other artists.
From 1966 till his retirement in 1992 he led a group that played Dixieland jazz in New Orleans Square at Disneyland, called The Royal Street Bachelors. When formed, the trio consisted of McVea on clarinet, Herman Mitchell on banjo, and Ernie McLean on guitar and banjo.
In 1945 he played tenor saxophone in a recording session for Slim Gaillard alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. He is also known for his playing on T-Bone Walker’s Call It Stormy Monday (But Tuesday Is Just As Bad, and has performed and recorded with B. B. King.
Tenor and baritone saxophonist Jack McVea, who also played clarinet in the swing, blues and rhythm and blues genres, passed away on December 27, 2000. He was 86.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ralph Earl Sutton was born November 4, 1922 in Hamburg, Missouri. He had a stint as a session musician playing stride piano with Jack Teagarden’s band before joining the US Army during World War II. After the war, he played at various venues in Missouri, eventually ending up at Eddie Condon’s club in Greenwich Village.
In 1956, Ralph relocated to San Francisco, California, where he recorded several albums with Bob Scobey’s Dixieland band. From the 1960s onward, he worked mostly on his own. However, when the World’s Greatest Jazz Band was established in 1968, he was the natural choice for piano. He left that band in 1974 due to the extensive travel involved, and joined an old sidekick, Peanuts Hucko in a quartet in Denver, near his home in Evergreen, Colorado.
He recorded with Ruby Braff, Dick Cary, Kenny Davern, Jay McShann and Johnny Varro. Stride pianist Ralph Sutton, who played in the tradition of James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, passed away on December 30, 2001 of a stroke in Evergreen, Colorado at the age of 79.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billy Mitchell was born in Kansas City, Missouri on November 3, 1926. In the late Forties he worked Detroit with the Nat Towles’ band before venturing to New York to join Lucky Millinder. In 1949 he recorded with Milt Jackson, worked and recorded with the big bands of Milt Buckner, Gil Fuller and toured with Woody Herman’s Second Herd.
1950 saw him back in Detroit but by mid-decade Billy was playing with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band taking a making solo on cool Breeze at the ’57 Newport Jazz Festival. From 1957 until 1961 and from 1966 to 1967 Mitchell played with Count Basie, replacing Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. In the early 1960s he co-led a group with trombonist Al Grey, and also served as musical director for Stevie Wonder during this period.
Although he had a short list of recordings as a leader Mitchell performed with jazz luminaries like Bobby Hutcherson, Gene Ammons, Rufus Reid, Tommy Flanagan, Sam Jones, Dolo Coker and Earl May among others, his “Colossus in Detroit” has remained a sought after collectible album.
Tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell, who mainly played in the hard bop genre, passed away of lung cancer on April 18, 2001 in Rockville Centre, New York.
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