Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tisziji Muñoz was born July 15, 1946 in Brooklyn, New York. He learned to play guitar as a child using a single-line playing style, due to a childhood wrist injury. Spirit-taught, the avant-garde jazz virtuoso and extreme guitarist is best known for his uniquely original guitar sound and playing style, likened to that of a spiritual tornado.

Tisziji became interested in jazz in 1968 when he was introduced to the music of John Coltrane while enlisted in the US Army 440th General’s Band. Upon discharge he pursued his musical interests in Canada and took a lead role in the development of Toronto’s underground music scene, where he began a long lasting working relationship with pianist Paul Shaffer and performed as guitarist in the musicals Hair and Godspell.

In the mid-70’s, Muñoz returned to New York City and began collaborating and performing with saxophonist Pharoah Sanders followed by projects and releases with Ravi Coltrane, Dave Liebman, Marilyn Crispell, Paul Shaffer, Steve Kuhn, Lam Sobo John Medeski, Bernie Senensky, Chris Caswell, Henry Kaiser, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Don Pate, John Lockwood, David Finck and the late greats Rashied Ali, Lew Soloff, John Hicks, Nick Brignola and Hilton Ruiz.

Tisziji has performed at the Montreal Jazz Festival, appeared on The late Show with David Letterman, played Carnegie Hall, The Village Vanguard and Gate, Iridium, Dizzy Club coca Cola and Jazz at Lincoln Center among other venues.

An accomplished author, Tisziji has independently published numerous written works encompassing his own Heart-Fire Sound realization and embracing the subjects of spirituality, genius, creativity and time mastery. His books and music have radically transformed the manner in which musicians think and play music, validating the spirit of the genuine creative artist – from the inside out. Avant-garde jazz guitarist continues to compose, record and perform.

Dose A Day – Blues Away

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Akua Dixon was born July 14^th and raised in New York City, growing up in a family suffused with music, starting with her early experience singing in the Baptist church. She began playing cello in the fourth grade and soon was playing with her sister, the late violinist Gayle Dixon. By junior high they were playing little gigs and in high school she started freelancing.

After graduating from the High School of the Performing Arts, Dixon studied at the Manhattan School of Music and post graduation she joined the pit band at the Apollo Theater as an essential proving ground. There she backed such artists as Rev. James Cleveland, Barry White, James Brown and Dionne Warwick, but after Sammy Davis Jr. insisted the Westbury Music Fair include Black musicians in the orchestra she broke into Broadway pit bands and worked shows the likes of Charles Aznavour, Liza Minnelli (Liza with a Z), La Cage Aux Folles, Cats, Doonesbury, Dream Girls, and many others.

Finding a home with the Symphony of the New World, she experienced the Ellingtonian epiphany that led her to her study and immersion into jazz, spirituals and the secret s of improvising. In the Seventies she joined Noel Pointer’s String Reunion, served as director of new music and supplied the group with a steady stream of compositions and arrangements. At the same time, Akua launched her own string quartet, Quartette Indigo, which made its big league debut at the Village Gate with her sister Gayle Dixon, Maxine Roach, and John Blake Jr.

Throughout her career Dixon has worked and collaborated with Archie Shepp, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Woody Shaw, Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster, Leroy Jenkins, Charles Burnham, Abdul Wadud, Archie Shepp, Don Cherry, Buster Williams, Carmen McRae, Dizzy Gillespie, Abbey Lincoln, Tom Harrell, and her former husband Steve Turre, She was a founding member of the Max Roach Double Quartet where she learned to phrase bebop. She’s conducted for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre, lectured at the Smithsonian Institution, and composed an opera commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, The Opera of Marie Laveau that premiered at Henry Street New Federal Theatre in New York City.

As an educator she has spent much of her time teaching at various institutions and conducting dozens of performances through the Carnegie Hall Neighborhood Concert Series. Cellist, arranger, composer, vocalist and educator Akua Dixon stays busy composing new music for her string group, the Moving On Quartet and other ensembles in addition to performing and recording.

Take A Dose On The Road

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Albert Ayler was born on July 13, 1936 in Cleveland Heights, Ohio and was first taught alto saxophone by his father Edward, who was a semiprofessional saxophonist and violinist. They played alto saxophone duets in church and often listened to jazz records together, including swing era jazz and then-new bop albums. He attended John Adams High School adding oboe to his instruments, followed after graduation with studies at the Academy of Music with jazz saxophonist Benny Miller. It was during his teenage years that he picked up the nickname “Little Bird” because of his understanding of bebop style and mastery of standard repertoire.

In 1952, at the age of 16, Ayler began playing bar-walking, honking, R&B style tenor with blues singer and harmonica player Little Walter, spending two summer vacations with the band. By 1958 he was in the Army, switched from alto to tenor sax, playing in the regiment band and jamming with other enlisted musicians, including tenor Stanley Turrentine. Stationed in France a year later, he was further exposed to the martial music that would be a core influence on his later work. After his discharge from the army, Ayler tried to find work in Los Angeles and Cleveland, but his increasingly iconoclastic playing, which had moved away from traditional harmony, was not welcomed by traditionalists.

In 1962 Albert relocated to Sweden, where his recording career began, leading Swedish and Danish groups on radio sessions, and jamming as an unpaid member of Cecil Taylor’s band. It was here in Copenhagen that he recorded My Name Is Albert Ayler with Niels-Henning Orsted Pedersen and Ronnie Gardiner. 1963 saw his return to settle in New York City, develop his personal style, record his debut as a leader titled Witches and Devils and begin a relationship with ESP-Disk Records in 1964, recording his breakthrough album Spiritual Unity with Gary Peacock and Sunny Murray, which was also the label’s first jazz album. His trio would go on to record with Don Cherry, John Tchicai and Roswell Rudd on the soundtrack to New York Eye and Ear Control, which was followed by a tour with his trio plus Cherry producing the albums The Copenhagen Tapes, Vibrations, and The Hilversum Session.

In 1966 Ayler signed with Impulse Records at the urging of Coltrane but his radically different music never found a sizable audience. However his first set titled Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village with his brother Donald, Michael Samson, Beaver Harris, Henry Grimes and Bill Folwell too Ayler back to the alto on his tribute tune “For John Coltrane”. He first sang on a recording in a version of “Ghosts” performed in Paris in 1966. He would go on to record three albums of lyrics and vocals of his girlfriend Mary Maria Parks and introduce regular chord changes, funky beats and electronic instruments.

Avant-garde jazz saxophonist, singer and composer Albert Ayler disappeared on November 5, 1970, and he was found dead in New York City’s East River on November 25,1970, a presumed suicide. In tribute, Swedish filmmaker Kasper Collin was so inspired by hiss music and life that he produced a documentary by the name of My Name is Albert Ayler, which includes interviews with ESP-Disk founder Bernard Stollman, along with interviews with his family and band mates.

Give The Gift Of Knowledge

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Big John Patton was born on July 12, 1935 in Kansas City, Missouri. His mother, a church pianist, taught him how to play the fundamentals. When he was about 13 years old, in 1948, he began to teach himself. He was inspired by the music he heard in Kansas City, but he wanted to play beyond his hometown jazz scene.

In 1954 after high school, he headed east and found professional work in Washington D.C., he found out that R&B star Lloyd Price was playing at the Howard Theater, that he had just fired his pianist and needed a new player. John played a few bars from the introduction to “Lawdy, Miss Clawdy” and was given the job.

It was a five-year relationship that gave him an education he couldn’t have gotten elsewhere. He was Lloyd’s “straw boss” and the leader, he recruited top players including drummer Ben Dixon, who encourage him to check out the Hammond B-3 organ when they played in clubs that had one. A man called Butts first showed Patton how to set up the organ and find the right registrations. When he moved to New York in late 1959, it was his friend Herman Green who played with Lionel Hampton who helped him learn how to play it.

That same year Big John formed his own Hammond organ trio. Blue Note artist Ike Quebec became his mentor, introducing him into Blue Note and to one of the most important relationships in his career, with guitarist Grant Green. He went on to work as a sideman for Lou Donaldson for three and a half years. During the 1960s he became one of the most recognizable figures on the jazz scene and was a driving force of the sound of electric organ.

Over the years he recorded for Blue Note with Harold Alexander, George Coleman, George Braith, Don Wilkerson, Clifford Jordan, Harold Vick, Johnny Griffin, Grachan Moncur III, Ron Carter, Black Star, James “Blood” Ulmer, John Gilmore, John Zorn, Jimmy Ponder, Johnny Lytle, Red Holloway, Art Blakey and Marshall Allen to name a few.

Patton’s style has been resistant to imitation because of its space and economy, often being called minimalist. But he claimed that he emulated the sounds of his favorite trumpet and reed players. By the time the Acid Jazz movement emerged in the 1980s there was a resurgence in interest in his music in the UK and he made several trips to England where he was embraced by the Acid Jazz community.

Patton continued recording until the late Nineties and he developed a loyal following in both Japan and Europe, both of which he toured in addition to his dates in the United States. He recorded as a part of the Red Hot Organization’s compilation album Red Hot + Indigo in tribute to Duke Ellington. He recorded 16 albums as a leader and another twenty-six as a sideman.

Pianist and organist Big John Patton, a major figure in the development of the funk and blues rooted jazz known as soul jazz and considered the inspiration for the Acid Jazz movement, passed away from complications arising from diabetes in Montclair, New Jersey on March 19, 2002.

Put A Dose In Your Pocket

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Carol Morgan was born on July 11, 1968. Originally from Texas, she decided to matriculate through and graduated from The Julliard School, subsequently making her home in New York City. A definitive voice unto herself, the influences of Woody Shaw, Freddie Hubbard, Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong can be heard in her playing. She has released five CDs as a leader working in trio, quartet and quintet setings with her latest in 2013 titled Retroactive.

She has worked with Chris Gekker, Mark Gould, Ingrid Jensen, Dennis Dotson Mike Stern, Chris Cortez, Danielle Reich, Harvie S, Rich DeRosa, Joel Frahm, Martin Wind and Matt Wilson among others. She has been a side-woman on recording dates with the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, Hawk-Richard Jazz Orchestra, the Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, and NPR’s The Engine Of Our Ingenuity.

As a composer Carol has been commissioned to create works for the Diverse Works, the Michele Brangwen Dance Ensemble, the Archdiocese of Houston/Galveston and the St. Thomas Presbyterian Church in Houston. She has authored The Practicing Improviser, a highly regarded method for jazz improvisation.

She is a member of the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, a variety of ensembles under the name of Stiggall & Associates and the group Gingerbread led by Brad Linde. Trumpeter, composer, educator and author Carol Morgan continues to record and perform across the United States and in Europe.

Jazz Is Global – Share

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