Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Leo Smith was born Ishmael Wadada Leo Smith on December 18, 1941 in Leland, Mississippi. He started out playing drums, mellophone and French horn before he settled on the trumpet. He played in various R&B groups and by 1967 became a member of the AACM and co-founded the Creative Construction Company, a trio with Leroy Jenkins and Anthony Braxton. In 1971 he formed his own label, Kabell, formed another band, the New Dalta Ahkri, with members including Henry Threadgill, Anthony Davis and Oliver Lake.

In the Seventies, Smith studied ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University and spent this time playing again with Anthony Braxton and recording with Derek Bailey’s Company. In the mid-1980s, Smith became Rastafarian and began using the name Wadada. In 1993, he began teaching at Cal Arts, a position he presently holds and has taught instrument making.

By 1998, Leo and guitarist Henry Kaiser released Yo, Miles! a tribute to Miles Davis’s lesser-known electric period. He has performed and/or recorded with Jack DeJohnette, Malachi Favors, John Zorn, Marion Brown, Frank Lowe and Matthew Shipp among others. In addition to playing the trumpet and flugelhorn, he plays several world music instruments, including the koto, kalimba and the ateneben.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Sonny Red was born Sylvester Kyner Jr. on December 17, 1932 in Detroit, Michigan. He learned a lot in the shadow of hard bopper Charlie Parker but went on to develop his own voice and style.

He started professionally in the 1940s playing with Detroit pianist Barry Harris. By the mid-Fifties he was playing tenor with both the trombonist Frank Rosolino, and Art Blakey. Three years later he performing and recording in New York with the trombonist Curtis Fuller.

A fluent soloist, Sonny found success as a sideman and in the late 1950s and early Sixties his reputation increased leading albums for the Blue Note and Jazzland labels. With Barry Harris and Cedar Walton splitting piano duties on the “The Mode” and Harris solely on “Images” these two albums showcased his talent and established his voice. He would go on to work as a sideman with Clifford Jordan, Donald Byrd, Bill Hardman, Paul Quinichette, Bobby Timmons, Frank West and others.

The fortunes of jazz diminishing and changes in the music offered limited opportunities for him to record a slim discography and unfortunately gained him a modest reputation. Sonny Red fell into obscurity in the Seventies and he died in his hometown on March 20, 1981 at 49 years old.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

René McLean was born on December 16, 1946 in New York City, the son of altoist Jackie McLean. He started playing guitar before receiving his alto saxophone and instruction from his father at age nine. He made his debut with his father’s band in the mid Sixties as well as leading his own bands. His debut as a bandleader and producer began at the age of 16 in 1963.

He later studied music with the Jazz Arts Society, Haryou Act Cultural Program, and the Jazz Mobile, New York College of Music, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and privately with George Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Frank Foster, Kenny Dorham and Barry Harris among others. By the mid -1970’s McLean played in a quintet with Woody Shaw and Louis Hayes and toured with Hugh Masekela in 1978.

René has performed and recorded extensively as a leader and featured sideman with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, Lionel Hampton All Stars, Tito Puente Orchestra, Horace Silver, Dr. Bill Taylor, Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba, Abbey Lincoln, Dexter Gordon, James Moody, Yusef Lateef, Jaco Pastorius and Jerry Gonzales’ Forte Apache Band, as well as collaborating with poet-activist Amiri Baraka.

As a music educator McLean has performed, conducted workshops and lectured at numerous universities and cultural programs in the U.S. and Caribbean (including Cuba), as well as in South America, Europe, Lebanon, Japan, Indonesia, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Namibia, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Madagascar and Mauritius and is presently Professor of African American music of the Jackie McLean Institute at The Hartt School, University of Hartford and Master Artist-in-Residence of Music at the Artists Collective in Hartford, Connecticut.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eddie Palmieri was born of Puerto Rican parentage on December 15, 1936 in Bronx, New York and when he was only 8 years old, he would musically accompany his older brother Charlie and together they entered and participated in many talent contests

Palmieri continued his education in the city’s public school system where he was constantly exposed to music, specifically jazz. He took piano lessons and performed at Carnegie Hall when he was 11 years old. Influenced by Thelonious Monk and McCoy Tyner and inspired by his brother he formed his own band in 1950 at age 14.

In 1961, Palmieri formed the band Conjunto La Perfecta, featuring legendary singer Ismael Quintana and replaced the traditional violins with trombones to create a more robust sound by including a touch of jazz in his recordings and incorporating a popular Cuban rhythm known as Mozambique.

Eddie disbanded the band in 1968 but three years later was recording with his brother and in 1974 was the first Latin musician to win a Grammy Award for Best Latin Recording with The Sun of Latin Music. Through the Eighties he continued performing and recording, winning two Grammys for his Palo Pa Rumba and Solito albums.

In the 1990s Palmieri was part of various concerts and recordings with the Fania All-Stars and the Tico All-Stars; he introduced La India with the production of Llego La India via Eddie Palmieri released in 1992. In 2000, Palmieri announced his retirement from the world of music. He recorded Masterpiece with Tito Puente, won 2 Grammys and was also named the “Outstanding Producer of the Year” by the National Foundation of Popular Culture. Palmieri has won a total of 9 Grammy Awards in his career, most recently for his 2006 album with Brian Lynch – Simpatico.

Palmieri teamed up with longtime trumpeter and band member Brian Lynch, has worked with Phil Woods, Lila Downs, Donald Harrison, Conrad Herwig, Gregory Tardy, Edsel Gomez and Rubén Rodríguez among others. With more than three-dozen albums to his credit he continues to perform and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Clark Terry was born on December 14, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri. After high school he started his professional career in the early 40s playing in local clubs, and then served as a bandsman in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He influenced both Quincy Jones and Miles Davis, teaching the later while in St. Louis.

Terry’s years with Basie and Ellington in the late 1940s and 1950s established him as a world-class jazz artist, blending the St. Louis tone with contemporary styles.  After leaving Ellington, Clark’s international recognition soared when he became NBC’s first African-American staff musician. He a ten-year member of The Tonight Show band where his unique “mumbling” scat singing became famous when he scored a hit with “Mumbles.”

Terry continued to play with musicians such as J. J. Johnson and Oscar Peterson, and led a popular group with Bob Brookmeyer in the early 1960s. In the 1970s he concentrated on the flugelhorn, performed studio work and teaching at jazz workshops, toured regularly in the 1980s with small groups and performed as the leader of his Big B-A-D Band.

At the behest of Billy Taylor, early in his career he and Milt Hinton bought instruments and gave instruction to young hopefuls and the idea was planted the seed that became Jazz Mobile in Harlem. He toured with the Newport Jazz All Stars and Jazz at the Philharmonic, recorded for the Red Hot + Rhapsody and Red Hot + Indigo albums, composed more than two hundred songs, performed for seven U.S. Presidents, has been both leader and sideman on more than three hundred albums performing with Clifford Brown, Gary Burton, Charlie Byrd, Tadd Dameron, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Lionel Hampton, Paul Gonsalves and Milt Jackson among others, recorded with symphonies and orchestras and established the Clark Terry Archive at William Paterson University.

Swing and bop trumpeter, pioneer of the flugelhorn and educator Clark Terry has received over 250 awards, medals and honors including a NEA Jazz Masters Award, has received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 16 honorary degrees, a knighthood, keys to several cities, the French Order of Arts and Letters and over the course of a seventy year career is the most recorded trumpet player of all time appearing on more than 900 known recording sessions.

Trumpeter, and flugelhorn player Clark Terry passed away from complications from advanced diabetes on February 21, 2015 at the age f 94 in Pine Bluffs, Arkansas.

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