Daily Dose Of Jazz…
René Marie was born René Marie Stevens on November 7, 1955 in Warrenton, Virginia. With the encouragement of her children, the jazz vocalist and songwriter started her professional musical career in 1997 at the age of 42.
Performing at Washington D.C.’s Blues Alley in 1999, René signed with the MaxJazz label out of St. Louis and released four albums to critical acclaim and her sophomore project “Vertigo” received a coronet ranking by the “Penguin Guide to Jazz”, a distinction given to less than 85 other recordings in jazz history.
Her work often combines contrasting songs such as “Dixie” and the anti-lynching “Strange Fruit” on Vertigo or Ravel’s Bolero with Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne” on Live at Jazz Standard.
Attracting controversy and national attention in 2008, René substituted the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” when invited to sing the national anthem at a civic event in Denver. This arrangement of the national anthem forms part of the titular suite of Marie’s 2011 CD, “The Voice of My Beautiful Country” on the Motema Music label.
René Marie specializes in writing her own music, and she comments on the fact that this is not the norm in jazz in one of her songs, “This for Joe,” after a club manager who got mad at her for singing originals. Her 8th release, Black Lace Freudian Slip, maintains the tradition.
She followed that project by steering away from tradition with a rare tribute album to Eartha Kitt, her latest titled “I Want To Be Evil”. Vocalist Rene Marie continues to record, perform and tour worldwide.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
More Posts: vocal
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Raymond Conniff was born on November 6, 1916 in Attleboro, Massachusetts, learned to play trombone from his father and learned music arranging from a course book.
Post World War II he joined the Artie Shaw big band writing many of his arrangements. Hired by Mitch Miller, head of A&R at Columbia Records, Ray became the house arranger. During this period he worked with Rosemary Clooney, Johnny Mathis, Frankie Laine, Marty Robbins and Johnny Ray among others. In 1955 Ray wrote a top 10 arrangement for Don Cherry’s “Band of Gold” that sold more than a million copies.
From 1957 to 1969 Conniff arranged and recorded as a leader and sideman for Columbia and their subsidiary label Epic, became a bandleader and had 28 albums in the American Top 40, created the Ray Conniff Singers, toured Europe, was the first American popular artist to record in Russia and stepping out of his element he produced a couple of light jazz albums sans vocals.
Conniff’s most famous album was his 1966 release of “Somewhere My Love” written to the tune Lara’s Theme from the 1965 film Dr. Zhivago. It featured the 12 female and 13 male Ray Conniff Singers. The album went platinum, hit the top of the American and European charts and grabbed a Grammy Award.
The next three decades were equally lucrative for Ray recording mainly out of Los Angeles and finding fame touring Latin and South America. He recorded an average of two instrumental and one vocal album a year and sold over 70 million albums worldwide. He continued to record and perform until his death on October 12, 2002 in Escondido, California.
Jazz Is Global – Share
More Posts: trombone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carlos “Patato” Valdes was born on November 4, 1926 in Cuba and learned to play the conga in his native land. Moving to New York in 1954 he began playing around the city working with Willie Bobo in Harlem. Known by his nickname “Patato”, he invented and patented the tunable conga drum in the late Forties that revolutionized use of the instrument as earlier drums only had nailed heads.
Since the 1950s Patato is among the Congueros that were in highest demand in the Latin Music and jazz world. He played, toured and recorded together with singer Miguelito Valdes, Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Machito, Herbie Mann, Cachao Lopez, Cal Tjader, Kenny Dorham, Art Blakey and Elvin Jones among others. He also worked in the bands of and toured Europe with Dizzy Gillespie, Quincy Jones and Mario Bauza.
Patato acted in and composed the title song of The Bill Cosby Show, contributed to the soundtrack of the film The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, gave Bridget Bardot mambo lessons in the film “And God Created Woman, led his own band Afrojazzia and toured Europe once again and mastered to the delight of his audiences, the art of actually dancing atop his congas during his performances.
For over 60 years Valdes demonstrated in his conga playing how a musician could combine technical skill with superb showmanship, fusing melody and rhythm, and understanding the rhythm is rooted in dancing. Carlos “Patato” Valdes, whose spontaneity and charm enabled him to bring together audiences of varied backgrounds and cultures to the Afro-Cuban rhythms and who Tito Puente once referred to as “the greatest conguero alive today”, passed away on December 4, 2007 in New York City.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
More Posts: conga
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bunny Berigan was born Rowland Bernard Berigan on November 2, 1908 in Hilbert, Wisconsin. Raised in Fort Lake the child prodigy learned violin and trumpet at an early age and played in local orchestras by his late teens. He joined the Hal Kemp Orchestra in mid 1930 recording his first trumpet solos and touring England. Upon his return in ’31 he was a sought after studio musician and recorded his first vocal “At Your Command”, then worked with the bands of Paul Whiteman and Abe Lyman by 1934.
He continued freelancing in the recording and radio studios, most notably with the Dorsey Brothers and on Glenn Miller’s earliest recording date as a leader in 1935, an association that graduated him to fame in his own right when he joined Benny Goodman’s re-formed band that included drummer Gene Krupa. The band made the legendary tour that ended with their unexpectedly headline-making stand at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles, California, which has often been credited with the “formal” launch of the swing era.
Berigan went on to work with Tommy Dorsey recording one of his signature solos on the hit “Marie”, recorded under his own name his biggest hit “I Can’t Get Started”, led his own big band for three years that included Buddy Rich and Ray Conniff. He was a fixture on CBS Radio’s coast-to-coast broadcasts of Saturday Night Swing Club from 1937 to 1940, that helped further popularize jazz as the swing era climbed to its peak.
Already a heavy drinker and the band failing financially, Bunny drinking took a toll suffering pneumonia and then stricken with cirrhosis and ignoring his doctor’s advice, trumpeter, composer and bandleader Bunny Berigan, who modeled his playing in part on Louis Armstrong’s style lost his battle with alcoholism passing away of a massive hemorrhage on June 2, 1942 at age 33.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
More Posts: trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pucho was born Henry Lee Brown on November 1, 1938 in New York City. Living in Harlem he cultivated a love for jazz, rhythm and blues, and mambo and largely self-taught imitating his favorite musician, Tito Puente. He started playing timbales professionally in New York City at the age of sixteen in bands led by Joe Panama in Harlem and the Bronx.
He formed his own band, Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers in 1959 as a Latin jazz, soul jazz and R&B group and appeared at Count Basie’s club and a Carnegie Hall festival. Over the course of the group’s tenure of thirteen years, of the many musicians that worked in his group, Chick Corea is listed among them.
From 1966 until ’74 he recorded a series of albums for Prestige Records, and due to their musical range recorded with George Benson, Lonnie Smith and Gene Ammons. Disbanding the group in the mid Seventies he concentrated on more traditional Latin music. During the late ‘70s and ‘80s he worked the Catskill Mountain resorts with a small trio until a resurgence of interest through the acid-jazz movement in the Nineties gave way for him to re-form the group and tour Britain and Japan.
Pucho, the timbales player who just may have been to eclectic for a wider jazz audience acceptance, has since released new material, had his early material reissued and continues to perform.
Give A Gift Of Jazz – Share
More Posts: timbales