Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ida Cox was born Ida Prather on February 25, 1896 in Toccoa, Georgia but grew up in Cedartown, Georgia and grew up in Cedartown, Georgia singing in the local African Methodist Church choir. She left home to tour with traveling minstrel shows, often appearing in blackface into the 1910s.
By 1920, she was appearing as a headline act at the 81 Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia along with another headliner at that time, Jelly Roll Morton. It was during this period that a demand for recordings of race music grew and the classic female blues era had begun and would extend through the 1920s. From 1923 through to 1929, Cox made numerous recordings for Paramount Records and headlined touring companies, sometimes billed as the “Sepia Mae West”, continuing into the 1930s.
During the 1920s, she also managed Ida Cox and Her Raisin’ Cain Company, her own vaudeville troupe. At some point in her career, she played alongside Ibrahim Khalil, a Native American and one of the several jazz musicians of that era who belonged from the Ahmadiyya Muslim community.
In 1939 she appeared at Café Society Downtown in New York’s Greenwich Village, participated in the historic Carnegie Hall concert “From Spirituals to Swing”, and resumed her recording career with a series of sessions for Vocalion Records and Okeh Records, with groups that at various times included Charlie Christian, Hot Lips Page, Henry “Red” Allen, J. C. Higginbotham and Lionel Hampton.
By the Sixties after spending several years in retirement Cox recorded a final album on the Riverside label with Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins Sammy Price, Milt Hinton and Jo Jones titled Blues For Rampart Street that included “Wild Women Don’t Have The Blues” that gained a new audience.
She returned to live with her daughter in Knoxville, Tennessee where she passed away of cancer in November 10, 1967.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michel Jean Legrand was born February 24, 1932, in Bécon-les-Bruyères outside Paris, France into a musical family. His father Raymond, a conductor and composer best known for the film score “Irma La Douce”. A virtuoso jazz and classical pianist, Michel studied at the Paris Conservatory for nine years from age 11, graduating with top honors as both composer and pianist.
In the early 1950s, Legrand was one of the first Europeans to work with jazz innovators such as Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Getz. While visiting the U.S. in 1958, Legrand collaborated with among others Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Phil Woods, Ben Webster, Hank Jones and Art Farmer in an album of inventive orchestrations of jazz standards titled “Legrand Jazz”.
The following year he recorded an album of Paris-themed songs arranged for jazz piano trio, titled Paris Jazz Piano and nearly a decade later in 1968, he recorded At Shelly’s Manne-Hole a live trio session with bassist Ray Brown and drummer Shelly Manne, in which four of the compositions were improvised on the spot.
His piano style is reminiscent of Art Tatum, Erroll Garner, Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans from whom he has drawn influence. Throughout a prolific career Legrand has mixed jazz recordings with varied orchestral projects and film and television scores that number well above two hundred.
A number of his songs, including “What Are You Doing the Rest of Your Life”, “Watch What Happens”, “The Summer Knows”, “The Windmills Of Your Mind” and “You Must Believe In Spring” have become jazz standards covered frequently by other artists.
The composer, arranger, conductor, and pianist has won three Oscars out of 13 nominations, five Grammys and has been nominated for an Emmy. His first album “I Love Paris” at age 21 has become one of the best-selling instrumental albums ever released.
Always creative he has conducted orchestras in St. Petersburg, Vancouver, Montreal, Atlanta and Denver; has recorded over 100 albums collaborating with Phil Woods, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Lena Horne, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan, Shirley Bassey and the list grows as he continues to divide his time between America and France.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Dorman “Scoops” Carry was born on January 23, 1915 in Chicago, Illinois. His mother a music teacher, his brother Ed a Chicago based bandleader and guitarist put Scoops in good company during his childhood. Starting on horn at the age of eight, he later went on to study at the Chicago College of Music and Iowa University.
He worked with Cassino Simpson, the Midnight Revellers and Boyd Atkin’s Firecrackers in the late 1920s and 30s while still a teenager. In 1931 Carry played with Lucky Millinder in RKO theater palaces. Reuniting with his brother in 1932, the pair co-led an orchestra through the middle of the 1930s. Following this, Scoops played with Zutty Singleton, Fletcher Henderson and Roy Eldridge. By 1938 he was with Art Tatum, a year later with Horace Henderson and at the end of the decade he worked briefly with Darnell Howard before joining Earl Hines’s band in 1940.
Carry remained in Hines’s employ until 1946, working with him in both large and small ensemble settings. After his tenure with Hines, Carry left music and entered law school in 1947, eventually working in the office of the Illinois state attorney.
Scoops Carry, alto saxophonist and clarinetist during the swing era, passed away on August 4, 1970.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Samuel David “Dave” Bailey was born on February 22, 1926 in Portsmouth, Virginia. He studied drumming in New York City at the Music Center Conservatory following his stint in the Air Force in World War II.
Dave played with Herbie Jones from 1951-53, and later with Johnny Hodges, Charles Mingus, Lou Donaldson, Curtis Fuller, Billy Taylor, Art Farmer, Ben Webster, and Horace Silver. Between 1954 and 1968 he played on several recording sessions led by Gerry Mulligan, and during the 60s he also played with Clark Terry, Kenny Dorham, Lee Konitz, Cal Tjader, Roger Kellaway and Bob Brookmeyer.
In 1957 and 1958 he performed at the Newport Jazz Festival and appeared in the documentary “Jazz on a Summer’s Day”. He recorded and released “One Foot In The Gutter” in 1960 on the Spanish label Lonehill Jazz. He followed up that recording with another “Gutter” release of the recording “Two Feet In The Gutter”. Although he is not commonly credited for his role in helping popularize the bossa nova in the ’60s, Bailey learned the rhythm while touring South America in 1959 and helped many American drummers master the sound.
A solid swing and bop drummer, Dave retired from music in 1969 and became a flight instructor. From 1973 he worked in music education in New York and among other pursuits, he served as executive director of The Jazzmobile in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nina Simone was born Eunice Kathleen Waymon on February 21, 1933 in Tryon, North Carolina, the sixth of eight children. She began playing piano at age three and demonstrating a talent with the instrument, she performed at her local church but her concert debut, a classical recital, was given when she was twelve. With the financial assistance of her mother’s employer, Nina was able to take piano lessons, graduated from high school and studied at Julliard School of Music.
Her ambition to become the first black concert pianist was thwarted by the realities of poverty, racial prejudice and denial for full scholarship at the prestigious Curtis Institute of Philadelphia. So changing direction she began playing in a small club in Philadelphia to fund her continuing musical education to become a classical pianist, and was required to sing. Approached by Bethlehem Records, she recorded her debut album “Little Girl Blue” in which “I Loves You, Porgy” became a smash hit in 1958.
Her original style arose from a fusion of gospel and pop songs with classical music accompanied with her expressive jazz-like singing in characteristic low tenor injecting as much of her classical background to give it more depth and quality.
A vocal civil rights activist, Simone’s music became highly influential in the fight black people faced for equal rights at this time in America and was a source of inspiration and enjoyment for her generation, continuing to be for those that follow.
Nina Simone, singer, songwriter, pianist and arranger widely associated with jazz passed away quietly in her sleep after a long battle with breast cancer on April 21, 2003 in Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhone, France. She recorded over forty albums, mostly between 1958 and 1974 but left a legacy of music that has influenced generations of artists from Cat Stevens and Van Morrison to Talib Kweli and Mos Def to Christina Aguilera, Mary J. Blige and John Legend.