Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carrie Smith was born Carrie Louise Smith on August 25, 1925 in Fort Gaines, Georgia and as a member of her church choir performed at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival.
She first won notice singing with Big Tiny Little in the early Seventies, but became internationally known in 1974 when she played Bessie Smith (no relation) in Dick Hyman’s “Satchmo Remembered” at Carnegie Hall. She then launched a solo career, performing into the 80s with the New York Jazz Repertory Orchestra, Tyree Glenn, Yank Lawson, and the World’s Greatest Jazz Band.
Carrie recorded a dozen albums as a soloist for several small labels, starred in the Broadway musical “Black and Blue” from 1989 to 1991 and though not well known in the United States, she had a cult following in Europe.
“Harlem on Parade 77” is an album credited to Smith, Buddy Tate, Doc Cheatham and Hank Jones, featuring Dick Vance, Budd Johnson, Eddie Barefield and Oliver Jackson. She was featured on Winard Harper’s Faith album, Dick Hyman’s Piano Players & Significant Others live recording, and Art Hode’s Authentic Rhythm Section. In 1995 she collaborated with Bross Townsend “I Love Jump Jazz”. Jazz singer Carrie Smith passed away on May 20, 2012.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mimi Fox was born on August 24, 1956 in New York City and started playing drums at nine and guitar when she was ten. She was inspired by the wide variety of music enjoyed by her family – show tunes, classical, Dixieland, Motown – and her own youthful inclination towards pop, folk, and R&B. By the time she was fourteen, she bought her first jazz album, John Coltrane’s classic Giant Steps, changing the course of her musical life. She began touring right out of high school and eventually settled in the San Francisco Bay area where she became a sought after player.
Mimi has released seven albums but her “Perpetually Hip” released in 2006 reached #23 on the Billboard “Top Jazz Albums” chart. This two-disc set contains standards and new tunes written by Fox, with one disc featuring solo recordings while the other is with a band composed of bassist Harvie S, drummer Billy Hart and pianist Xavier Davis.
As a composer, Mimi has received numerous grants, writing and performing original scores for orchestras, documentary films and dance projects. A dedicated educator and clinician, she is Chair of the Guitar Department, a faculty advisor and instructor at The Jazzschool for Musical Study and Performance in Berkeley, California and an Adjunct Professor at New York University. Guitarist Mimi Fox continues to compose, perform and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gil Coggins was born Alvin Gilbert Coggins on August 23, 1928 in New York City of West Indian heritage and started playing piano at an early age. He attended The High School of Music and Art in Harlem and also school in Barbados.
In 1946, Coggins met Miles Davis while stationed in Missouri and after his discharge he began playing piano professionally, working with Davis on several of his Blue Note and Prestige releases. He also recorded with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Ray Draper and Jackie McLean.
Coggins gave up playing jazz professionally in 1954 and took up a career in real estate, playing music only occasionally. He did not record as a leader until 1990, when Interplay Records released “Gil’s Mood”. He continued performing through the 190s and into the new millennium. On February 15, 2004 pianist Gil Coggins passed away from complications sustained in a car crash eight months earlier in Forest Hills, New York. His second album recorded as a leader, “Better Late Than Never”, was released posthumously in 2007 on the Smalls Records label.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Malachi Favors was born August 22, 1927 in Lexington, Mississippi. He began playing double bass at age fifteen and began performing professionally upon graduating high school. His early performances included work with Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard. But by 1965, he was a founding member of the AACM – Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band.
Malachi was a protégé of Chicago bassist Wilbur Ware. His first known recording was a 1953 session with tenor saxophonist Paul Bascomb and four years later recorded with pianist Andrew Hill. He began working with Roscoe Mitchell in 1966 and this group eventually became the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for which he is most prominently known. Favors also worked outside the group, with artists including Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp and Dewey Redman.
Favors’ most notable records include “Natural and the Spiritual”, “Sightsong” andthe 1994 Roman Bunka collaboration and recording at the Berlin Jazz Fest of the German Critics Poll Winner album “Color Me Cairo”.
At some point in his career Malachi added the word “Maghostut” to his name and because of this he is commonly listed on recordings as Malachi Favors Maghostut.
Most associated musically with bebop, hard bop and particularly free jazz, Favors not only plays the double bass but electric bass, guitar, banjo, zither, gong and other instruments. Malachi Favors died of pancreatic cancer in Chicago, Illinois on January 30, 2004 at the age of 76.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oscar Perez was born on August 21, 1974 in Queens, New York City and from the age of seven he has been expressing himself on a piano. Raised on his father’s Cuban folk music, his piano lessons and playing in the church band made his commitment to the music his life before the ninth grade. Attending LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts, jazz would take him on his musical and personal journey.
He studied with Robert Harris of Juilliard and Edgar Roberts of New York University before matriculating through the University of North Florida. Under the American Music Scholarship, he studied with jazz pianists Harry Pickens and Kevin Bales, and it was here that he began composing for small group and big band. He went on to study with Danilo Perez at the New England Conservatory in Boston, Massachusetts, weekend gigging in New York City, and a Master’s Degree at the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College in New York under the guidance of Sir Roland Hanna. While studying composition and arranging with Phillip Michael Mossman, he got many writing and arranging opportunities.
By his early twenties he was sharing the stage with Bunky Green, George Russell, Curtis Fuller and George Garzone and has played with Wycliffe Gordon, Christian McBride, Eddie Allen, Mike Lee, Steve Turre, Dave Stryker, Melissa Walker, Phoebe Snow and Charenee Wade. With saxophonist Adrian Cunningham he recorded Professor Cunningham And His Old School.
He was appointed music director for St Edward’s Church in Harlem, and the accompanist for the Nightingale/Bamford Gospel Choir. He recorded his debut CD Nuevo Comienzo in 2016 with his quintet, Afropean Affair, featuring guest artists trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and guitarist Peter Bernstein.
As an educator and performer he has taught and played at the Kupferberg Center at Queens College, the Juilliard School, Jazz Connections Camp at Montclair St. University, Carnegie Hall, the New York Pops, JazzHouse Kids and Jazz at Lincoln Center. He received the 2006 ASCAP/IAJE Commission in honor of Billy Strayhorn and premiered the work at the 2007 International Association of Jazz Education Convention. He was a finalist in the 2014 Jacksonville Jazz Piano Competition. Pianist Oscar Perez continues to compose, perform and record.
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