Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emily Remler was born September 18, 1957 in New York City and began playing the guitar when she was ten. Initially inspired by hard rock and other pop styles, she experienced a musical epiphany during her studies, from 1974 to 1976 while at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She began listening to Wes Montgomery, Miles Davis and John Coltrane taking up jazz with a ferocious intensity, practicing almost constantly, and never looked back.
After Berklee, she hit the New Orleans blues and jazz clubs working with FourPlay, and Little Queenie and the Percolators before beginning her recording career in 1981. Championed by guitar great Herb Ellis, he referred to her as “the new superstar of guitar”.
Emily recorded on the Concord label, quickly developing a distinctive style with her diverse influences through versions of standard tunes and genres. Her first album as a leader “Firefly” won immediate acclaim and her bop guitar on her follow up “Take Two” was equally well received. Her next two albums, “Transitions” and “Catwalk” traced the emergence of a more individual voice, with many striking original tunes, while her love of Wes Montgomery shone through on the stylish “East to Wes”.
In addition to her recording career as a leader and composer, Emily played in blues groups, on Broadway and with artists as diverse as Larry Coryell, Astrud Gilberto and Rosemary Clooney, produced two popular guitar instruction videos, won the “Guitarist Of The Year” award in Down Beat Jazz Magazine’s international poll, in 1988 she was “Artist in Residence” at Duquesne University and in 1989 received Berklee’s “Distinguished Alumni” award.
Guitarist, leader and composer Emily Remler died of heart failure at the age of 32 at the Connells Point home of musician Ed Gaston, while on tour in Australia on May 4, 1990.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
“Brother” Jack McDuff was born Eugene McDuffy on September 17, 1926 in Champaign, Illinois. He began his musical career playing bass first with Joe Farrell followed by Willis Jackson who encouraged him to take up the organ. In the late 50’s he moved to his new instrument and began attracting the attention of Prestige Records. He soon became a bandleader, leading groups that featured then, young guitarist George Benson, saxophonist Red Holloway and drummer Joe Dukes.
McDuff’s debut recording “Brother Jack” for Prestige was followed by his sophomore project, The Honeydripper, featuring Jimmy Forrest and Grant Green. After his Prestige tenure he joined the Atlantic Records family for a brief period and then by the 70s was recording for Blue Note.
The decreasing interest in jazz and blues during the late 70s and 1980s meant that many jazz musicians went through a lean time and it wasn’t until the late 1980s, with The Re-Entry, recorded for the Muse label in 1988, and once again began a successful period of recordings, initially for Muse, then on the Concord Jazz label from 1991. George Benson appeared on his mentor’s 1992 Colour Me Blue album.
Despite health problems, Brother Jack continued working and recording throughout the 1980s and 1990s, touring Japan with Atsuko Hashimoto in 2000. “Captain” Jack McDuff, as he later became known, was one of the most prominent jazz organist and organ trio bandleader during the hard bop and soul jazz era of the Sixties. He passed away of heart failure on January 23, 2001 at the age of 74 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jon Hendricks was born John Carl Hendricks on September 16, 1921 in Newark, Ohio and along with his 14 siblings moved around a lot until his A.M.E. pastor father settled in Toledo. As a teenager, Jon’s first interest was in the drums, but before long he was singing on the radio regularly with another Toledo native, pianist Art Tatum. Out of high school Jon served in the Army during WWII and after his discharge entered pre-law at the University of Toledo but stop at the graduate level because his G.I. benefits ran out. Charting a new course on the advice and encouragement given him by Charlie Parker, he moved to New York and began his singing career.
In 1957, he teamed with Dave Lambert and Annie Ross to form the legendary vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross. With Jon as lyricist, the trio perfected the art of vocalese and took it around the world, earning them the designation of the “Number One Vocal Group in the World” for five years in a row from Melody Maker magazine. After six years the trio disbanded for solo careers but not before leaving behind a catalog of legendary recordings, most of which have never gone out of print.
Pursuing a solo career, Hendricks moved his young family to London, England in 1968, toured Europe and Africa, performed frequently on British television, and appeared in British and French films and his sold-out club dates drew fans such as the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Five years later the Hendricks settled in California, worked as the jazz critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, and taught classes at California State University, Sonoma and the University of California, Berkeley.
Over the course of his career Hendricks wrote a stage piece about the history of jazz, “Evolution of the Blues” that ran an unprecedented five years at the Off-Broadway Theatre in San Francisco and another year in Los Angeles; and his television documentary, “Somewhere to Lay My Weary Head” received an Emmy, Iris and Peabody awards; has recorded several critically-acclaimed albums on his own, collaborated with his wife and daughters, with the Manhattan Transfer on 7 Grammy winning “Vocalese”, has served on the Kennedy Center Honors committee under Presidents Carter, Reagan, and Clinton; has been appointed distinguished Professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Toledo; selected as the first American jazz artist to lecture at the Sorbonne in Paris.
Jon has toured worldwide with the “Four Brothers” comprised of Kurt Elling, Mark Murphy and Kevin Mahogany as well as working with his 15 member vocal group Vocalstra. Countless of singers and critics cite him as the one of the originators of vocalese and he has influenced just as many from Van Morrison and Al Jarreau to Bobby McFerrin and Georgie Fame. Time Magazine dubbed him the “James Joyce of Jive” while Leonard Feather called him the “Poet Laureate of Jazz”.
Vocalist Jon Hendricks endlessly performed, toured and recorded until he transitioned on November 22, 2017 in Manhattan, New York City, at age 96.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cannonball Adderley was born Julian Edwin Adderley on September 15, 1928 in Tampa, Florida but moved with his parents to Tallahassee when his parents accepted teaching positions at Florida A&M University. While there both he and his brother Nat played with Ray Charles during the early forties, with Cannonball becoming a local legend prior to moving to New York in 1955.
It was in New York during this time that Adderley’s prolific career began when he visited Cafe Bohemia and witnessed the Oscar Pettiford group playing that night. Bringing his saxophone into the club with him, for fear of it being stolen, he was asked to sit in, as the saxophone player was late. In true Cannonball style, he soared through the changes, and became a sensation in the following weeks.
Cannonball formed his own group with his brother Nat after signing onto the Savoy jazz label in 1957. He was noticed by Miles Davis and it was because of his blues-rooted alto saxophone that Davis asked him to play with his group in October, three months before Coltrane’s return to the group. This group released the seminal “Milestones” and “Kind of Blue” and the association with Bill Evans produced “Portrait of Cannonball” and Know What I Mean”.
By the end of ‘60s, Adderley’s playing began to reflect the influence of the electric jazz avant-garde producing such albums as “Accent on Africa” and “The Price You Got To Pay to Be Free”. In 1970 his quintet played the Monterey Jazz Festival and a brief scene of that performance was featured in the Clint Eastwood film “Play Misty For Me”, and shortly before his death in 1975 he was casted in an episodic role alongside Jose Feliciano and David Carradine in Kung Fu.
His interest as an educator led him to teach applied instrumental music classes at Dillard High School in Fort Lauderdale; and carried over to him narrating and recording “The Child’s Introduction to Jazz” released in 1961 on Riverside Records.
Joe Zawinul’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” and “Walk Tall”, “This Here” written by Bobby Timmons, “The Jive Samba” and “Work Song” are a few of the songs made famous by Cannonball. Joe Zawinul composed “Cannon Ball” that was recorded on the Weather Report album Black Market as a tribute to his former leader.
Alto saxophonist and educator Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, who added so much to the hard bop era of the ‘50s and ‘60s, died of a stroke on August 8, 1975. Later that year he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oliver Lake was born in Marianna, Arkansas on September 14,1942 and his family moved to St. Louis when he was two. He began drawing at the age of thirteen and soon after began playing cymbals and the bass drum in a variety of drum and bugle corps. At 17, he began to take a serious interest in jazz and started playing percussion followed by alto saxophone. His piercing, bluesy, biting sound is his trademark and his explosive unpredictable solos are akin to Eric Dolphy.
During the 1960s Oliver taught school, worked in several contexts around St. Louis and led along with Julius Hemphill and Charles “Bobo” Shaw, BAG, the Black Artists Group. In 1972 Lake moved to Paris for two years working with his colleagues from BAG, returned to New York and immersed himself into the then burgeoning jazz loft scene. Like many other members of BAG, (Black Artists Group) and its Chicago-based sister organization, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), he moved to New York in the mid-’70s, working the fertile ground of the downtown loft scene and quickly establishing himself as one of its most adventurous and multi-faceted musician.
Oliver is co-founder of the internationally acclaimed World Saxophone Quartet with Julius Hemphill, Hamiet Bluiett and David Murray in 1977. Over the next two decades the group crossed over to new audiences, in part, due to their late 80s albums of Ellington and popular R&B tunes. He leads his own Steel Quartet and Big Band; has worked with hip hop artists Mos Def and A Tribe Called Quest and Me’shell Ndegeocello; has created a groundbreaking roots/reggae ensemble “Jump Up”; founded Passin’ Thru, Inc. – a non-profit dedicated to fostering, promoting and advancing the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of jazz, new music and other disciplines related to music.
Oliver Lake, the alto saxophonist, flautist, composer, poet and painter has collaborated with numerous notable choreographers, poets and a veritable Who’s Who of the progressive jazz scene of the late 20th century. He has recorded as a leader for Freedom, Black Saint, and Black Lion, Novus, Gramavision, Blue Heron Gazell, Soul Note and other record labels. The mainstay of the avant-garde and free jazz realms continually performs all over the U.S. as well as in Europe, Japan, the Middle East, Africa and Australia. He paints daily, using oil, acrylics, wood, canvas, and mixed media.