Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gil Mellé was born December 31, 1931 in New York City and began his career in jazz as a post-bop baritone and tenor saxophonist, signed with Blue Note at the age of 19, becoming the first Caucasian on the label. Between 1953 and ’57 he recorded five 10” records and his debut 12” LP, Patterns in Jazz for Blue Note. Leaving the label he then went to Prestige releasing three albums.
In the 1950s, Mellé’s paintings and sculptures were shown in New York galleries and he created the cover art for albums by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. During this period Gil played the tenor and baritone saxophone with George Wallington, Max Roach, Tal Farlow, Oscar Pettiford, Ed Thigpen, Kenny Dorham and Zoot Sims.
It was Mellé who introduced engineer Rudy Van Gelder to Alfred Lion, Blue Note’s founder, in 1952 after Lion was impressed with the sound of Mellé’s recordings. Abandoning jazz and moving to Los Angeles in the 60s his road led to composing for film and television, and experimenting with electronic music.
As a film and television composer, Mellé was one of the first to use electronic instruments that he built himself, was first to compose a main theme for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery series arranged entirely for electronic instruments as well as The Six Million Dollar Man. Gil composed more than 125 motion picture scores including That Certain Summer, The Andromeda Strain, The Judge and Jake Wyler.
Gil Mellé died of a heart attack on October 28, 2004 in Malibu, California.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmy Jones was born James Henry Jones on December 30, 1918 in Memphis, Tennessee and learned guitar and piano as a child. By the late 1920 he was playing in various orchestras in Chicago and played a trio with Stuff Smith in the mid 40s.
Following this period Jones would play with Don Byas, Dizzy Gillespie, J.C. Heard, Buck Clayton, Etta Jones and Sarah Vaughan into the early Fifties. He recorded with Clifford Brown in 1954 and toured Europe. During the Sixties he would play with Anita O’Day, Helen Merrill, Gil Evans, Dakota Staton, Morgana King, Harry Belafonte, Johnny Hodges, Clark Terry, Duke Ellington, Kenny Burrell and Cannonball Adderley on the short list.
Jimmy had a prolific career also as an arranger, working with Wes Montgomery, Nancy Wilson, Shirley Horn, Joe Williams, Billy Taylor and Chris Connor and recorded with Harry “Sweets” Edison, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Frank Wess, Milt Jackson and others. His recording catalog was limited as a leader releasing two album for the Riverside label in 1946. Jimmy Jones passed away on April 29, 1982 in Los Angeles, California.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Danilo Pérez was born on December 29, 1965 in Panama and started his musical training at 3 years old on bongos with his father Danilo Sr., a professional bandleader and singer. By age 10 he was studying the European Classical Piano repertoire at the National Conservatory in Panama, eventually transferring to the Berklee College of Music to study Jazz composition.
During the yeas 1985 to ’88 while at Berklee, Danilo played with Jon Hendricks, Terence Blanchard, Claudio Roditi and Paquito D’Rivera. He would go on to tour Poland in ’95 and play the Summer Olympics in Atlanta in ‘96 with Wynton Marsalis, be a part of the Grammy winning album Danzon, perform at President Clinton’s Inaugural Ball and played piano on the Bill Cosby theme song.
Perez has had the fortune to play and record with such luminaries as Charlie Haden, Michael Brecker, Jack DeJohnette, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Joe Lovano, Gary Burton, Wayne Shorter, Tom Harrell, Roy Haynes, Steve Lacy and many others.
Pianist and composer Danilo Perez, whose primary influence of style and thought was Dizzy Gillespie, but as a child gleaned from the recordings the styles of Gershwin, Ellington, Coltrane and Monk. He has recorded over a dozen albums, served as a professor at the New England Conservatory of Music, and serves as the artistic director of the Berklee College of Music Global Jazz Institute.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michel Petrucciani was born on December 28 1962 in Orange, Vaucluse, France into a musical family with father playing guitar and brothers playing bass and guitar. He came into the world with a genetic disease that caused brittle bones and short stature. Due to this illness, throughout his career Michel was often carried to and from the piano when he performed.
Enthusiastic of Duke Ellington, his desire to be a pianist was driven by his main interest in jazz but trained for years as a classical musician giving his first professional concert at the age of 13. By the age of 18 he was part of a successful trio and in 1982 he moved to the US where he successfully encouraged Charles Lloyd to resume playing actively. Three years later, on February 22, 1985, with Petrucciani cradled in his arms, Lloyd walked onto the stage at Town Hall in New York City and sat him on his piano stool for what would be an historic evening in jazz history: the filming of One Night with Blue Note.
The following year Petrucciani recorded a live album with Wayne Shorter and Jim Hall and throughout his career has played with other greats like Dizzy Gillespie, Stephane Grappelli, Joe Lovano, Stanley Clark, Lenny White, Gil Goldstein and many others. He has recorded over thirty albums, wrote a biography, has a mosaic in the 18th district of Paris and in 1994 was granted a Legion d’honneur.
Michel Petrucciani, whose style is reminiscent of Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, died on January 6, 1999 from a pulmonary infection, nine days after his 36th birthday. He was posthumously honored in 2009 with a special broadcast event on the French music channel Mezzo.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Butch Ballard was born George Edward Ballard on December 26, 1918 in Camden, New Jersey but grew up in Frankford, Pennsylvania. Following American Legion parades near his home, as a child he focused on the drummer and around 10 years old, his father bought him a set of drums. He took lessons for 75 cents each and continued his musical education Northeast High School in Philadelphia.
By 16 Ballard saw Herb Thorton, sat in and played and was invited to join a band by a man who heard him, and over the next few months rehearsed and played. In 1938, he started playing with Louis Armstrong’s band The Dukes, followed by stints with Cootie Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Pearl Bailey.
Butch served in the Navy during WWII, then went to New York and worked with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Eddie Vinson, Arnett Cobb and Clark Terry. He replaced Shadow Wilson in the Basie band in the late 1940s. The Fifties saw him touring Europe with the Ellington outfit and playing with Harry Carney, Paul Gonsalves, Billy Strayhorn, Kay Davis and Wendell Marshall. He declined the invite to join permanently because he didn’t want to change his drumming style to suit Duke, though he did record with him on such tunes as Satin Doll.
By the Sixties he was back in Philadelphia leading his own band and over the course of his career worked with the likes of John Coltrane, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Cat Anderson, Fats Waller, Lucky Millinder, Bootsie Barnes and Mercer Ellington among others.
In his later years he became a music teacher and played with the Philadelphia Legends of Jazz Orchestra and was honored with the Mellon Jazz Community Award for his continued education of young jazz musicians. Butch Ballard, who got the nickname after Machine Gun Butch, a character in the 1930 film The Big House, passed away on October 1, 2011.
Jazz Is Global – Share
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