Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harold “Doc” West was born on August 12, 1915 in Wolford, North Dakota. He learned to play piano and cello as a child before switching to drums. By the 1930s he was playing in Chicago with Tiny Parham, Erskine Tate and Roy Eldridge. Towards the end of the decade he filled in for Chick Webb when he was unable to lead his own orchestra.
The early 1940s Doc played with Hot Lips Page and on the emerging bebop scene at Minton’s Playhouse in New York City alongside Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Tiny Grimes and Don Byas. He played with Oscar Pettiford in 1944 and stood in for Jo Jones occasionally in Count Basie’s orchestra.
He appears on recordings led by Slam Stewart, Leo Watson, Wardell Gray, Billie Holiday, Big Joe Turner, Jay McShann and Erroll Garner, leaving a small but impressive catalogue as a sideman. Drummer Doc West passed away on May 4, 1951 in Cleveland, Ohio while on tour with Roy Eldridge.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Anthony Pompeo, better known as Johnny Rae or John Rae was born on August 11, 1934 in Saugus, Massachusetts and grew up in music, as his mother played piano in night clubs in the Boston area. His area of musical study in jazz led him to become a drummer and vibraphonist. Graduating from East Boston High School in 1952, he went on to study piano at the New England Conservatory and timpani at Berklee College of Music.
Johnny joined Herb Lee’s R&B band right out of high school, gigged with Slim Gaillard and Milt Buckner, played drums and vibes with Al Vega and Jay Migliori. Upon the recommendation of MJQ’s John Lewis, he teamed up with to play with George Shearing, alongside Toots Thielemans, Al McKibbon on bass and three Latin percussionists that included conguero Armando Peraza. It was during this period that Peraza taught him to play timbales.
He played with Johnny Smith, Ralph Sharon, Cozy Cole and Herbie Mann throughout the Fifties. The next couple of decades were equally commanding of his talents by Cal Tjader, Stan Getz, Gabor Szabo, Charlie Byrd, Earl Hines, Art Van Damme, Anita O’Day and Barney Kessel among many others. Though mainly concentrating in the context modern jazz, he never wandered far from Latin music and the Latin jazz percussion he played.
Though he was on more than three-dozen recording sessions, Johnny only recorded one as a leader, “Opus De Jazz, Volume 2” in 1960 for Savoy. A second release under his name was in actuality him fronting Herbie Mann’s band for contractual reasons.
Since the 1980s Rae has worked in music education, has authored several instruction books and was a disc jockey in San Francisco for many years. He assembled a tribute band to Tjader called Radcliff (Tjader’s middle name) and led the band until his death. Johnny Rae, drummer and vibraphonist passed away in 1993 in San Francisco, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patti Austin was born on August 10, 1950 in Harlem, New York City to a jazz musician father and grew up on Long Island. She made her debut at the Apollo Theater at age four and had a contract with RCA Records when she was five. Quincy Jones and Dinah Washington have proclaimed themselves as her godparents. But it was a reluctant outing as a teenager to hear one of Judy Garland’s last concerts and the experience-helped focus her career, giving her the desire to interpret a lyric like that.
By the late 1960s Austin was a session musician and commercial jingle singer. During the 1980s, she was signed to Jones’s Qwest Records and began her most prolific hit-making period. By this time she was both one of the leading background session vocalists and also was known as Queen of The Jingles for such companies as Burger King, Almay, KFC, McDonald’s, Avon, Stouffers, Maxwell House and the US Army.
Charting twenty R&B songs between 1969 and 1991, hitting #1 for her hits “Do You Love Me?” / “The Genie”, Baby Come To Me” – a duet with James Ingram, and also hits with “How Do you Keep The Music Playing”, again teaming with Ingram and “It’s Gonna Be Special”. She would sing background for Billy Joel’s “Just The Way You Are” along with Luther Vandross, Jocelyn Brown and Chaka Khan. She would be enlisted to sing duets with Michal Jackson, George Benson, Luther, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons, Narada Michael Walden and Johnny Mathis.
Austin would be seen leading a new group of Raelettes for the 2006 album “Ray Charles + Count Basie Orchestra = Genius”; participating in the AVO Session Basel tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, and after nine nominations, winning her first Grammy Award for Best Jazz Vocal Album for her 2008 album Avant Gershwin.
Patti co-produced and was one of over 70 artists singing on “We Are The World: 25 for Haiti” to raise awareness and aid for those affected by the 2010 earthquake. In 2011 she released a mostly covers album project titled “Sound Advice” re-working Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Brenda Russell, Bill Withers and Don McLean songs and a female take on “My Way” among others.
No to be idle Austin co-wrote and sings in the star-studded L.O.V.E. – Let One Voice Emerge, encouraging especially younger Americans to get out there and exercise their right to vote; has been seen in the Bridges/Coppola film “Ticker: The Man And His Dream, and appears in the Academy Award-winning documentary film “20 Feet From Stardom” in 2013. She continues to perform, compose and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roberta Piket was born on August 9, 1966 in Brooklyn, New York. Her father, the composer Frederick Piket, gave her first piano lessons when she was seven. She began playing jazz in her early teens, studying jazz piano with Walter Bishop, Jr and classical piano with Vera Wels. After graduating from prestigious Hunter College High School, she entered the joint double-degree program at Tufts University and the New England Conservatory of Music, earning a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer ScienceAll Postsfrom the former and a Bachelor’s Degree in Jazz Studies from the latter. She studied privately with Fred Hersch, Stanley Cowell, Jim McNeely, Bob Moses, Richie Beirach and Sofia Rosoff.
Roberta’s swinging and inventive straight-ahead jazz playing as well as her powerful and sensitive work in creative improvised music has gained her the respect of the jazz community. She has been a side woman performing or recording with David Liebman, Rufus Reid, Billy Hart, Michael Formanek, Lionel Hampton, Mickey Roker, Billy Mintz, Harvey Wainapel, Eliot Zigmund, Benny Golson, Ratzo Harris and the BMI/NY Jazz Orchestra.
Having appeared twice on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz, Piket has performed in Europe and japan as well both as a side woman and leader of her own trio and was a finalist in the Thelonious Monk BMI Composers’ Competition. She has released ten albums under her own name and frequently make the “best of” lists of the major jazz magazines and earning rave reviews in Jazz Times, Downbeat, the Washington Post, and Jazziz. A musical pioneer in several ways, Roberta is the first and only woman leader with a release on the prestigious Criss Cross label.
As an educator Roberta hold master classes at the Eastman School of Music, Rutgers University, Cal Arts, Duke University, the Northwestern University Composers’ Colloquium, among others around the world; has taught at the Litchfield Jazz Camp and the Vermont Jazz Center and has coached ensembles at Long Island University and maintained several private students.
Pianist and composer Roberta Piket occasionally performs on B3 organ, as she continues to record, perform and tour throughout Europe America and Japan.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lucky Millinder was born Lucius Venable Millinder on August 8, 1910 in Anniston, Alabama but was raised in Chicago, Illinois. While a teenager in the 1920s he worked in clubs, ballrooms, and theatres in Chicago as a master of ceremonies and dancer. He first fronted a band in 1931 for an RKO theater tour, and in 1932 took over leadership of Doc Crawford’s orchestra in Harlem, New York City, as well as freelancing elsewhere.
The Thirties saw Lucky touring Europe with his own orchestra and playing residencies in Monte Carlo and Paris, returning to New York to lead the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, discovering Rosetta Tharpe, teaming with Bill Doggett’s group, established a residency at the Savoy Ballroom and signed a contract with Decca Records, in which Dizzy Gillespie sat in the trumpet seat.
Millinder would record “Trouble In Mind” in 1941 with Rosetta Tharpe, as well as his #1 hit “When The Lights Go On Again (All Over The World)” followed by “Apollo Jump” and “Sweet Slumber”. But by the mid-1940s the band was drifting towards what would be known as rhythm and blues and was comprised of saxophonist Bull “Moose” Jackson, Tab Smith, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and pianist Sir Charles Thompson and singer Wynonie Harris. Their recording of “Who Threw The Whiskey In The Well” became the group’s biggest hit in 1945, staying at #1 on the charts for 8 weeks. Vocalist Ruth Brown replaced Wynonie for a short period until her solo career took flight.
Throughout the decade the band continued to remain popular and toured all the large R&B auditoriums, changed labels a few times until their last big hit was “I’m Waiting Just for You” with Annisteen Allen in 1951. A year later Lucky was working as a radio deejay, continued to tour and took over the leadership of the Apollo Theater band for a while. Retiring from performing he recorded his final sessions in 1960 and became active in music publishing, and in public relations for a whiskey distillery.
Swing and rhythm and blues bandleader Lucky Millinder, never learned to read or write music, nor play an instrument and rarely sang, it is said it was his showmanship and musical taste made his bands successful. He passed away from a liver ailment in New York City on September 28, 1966. Twenty years later he would posthumously be inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.
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