Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Russo was born William Russo on June 25, 1928 in Chicago, Illinois and studied piano under Lennie Tristano. He would become an arranger and composer and by the 1950s was writing groundbreaking orchestral scores for the Stan Kenton Orchestra. He would compose for Kenton 23 Degrees N 82 Degrees W, Frank Speaking, Portrait of a Count and one of his most famous Halls Of Brass, featuring Buddy Childers, Maynard Ferguson and Milt Bernhart.
By the 60s Russo moved to England, founded the London Jazz Orchestra, and contributed to the Third Stream movement that sought to close the gap between jazz and classical music. Returning to Chicago by mid-decade he founded Columbia College’s music department, became the director of its Center for New Music, the college’s first full-time faculty member and the Director of Orchestral Studies at Scuola Europea d’Orchestra Jazz in Palermo, Italy.
Bill has composed classical symphonies, choral works, operas and several works for the theater. He has received a Koussevitsky award, had his work performed by the New York Philharmonic, the San Francisco and Chicago Symphony Orchestras, and has set music to the poetry of Gertrude Stein as well as scores for dance and film.
Russo has worked with Manny Albam, Teo Macero, Teddy Charles, Donald Byrd, Phil Woods, Bill Evans, Eddie Costa, Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn and Art Farmer among others. Starting the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, which is dedicated to preserving and expanding jazz, He was succeeded by Jon Faddis and it is currently under the artistic direction of Dana Hall. Trombonist, composer, arranger, eudcator and author Bill Russo passed away on January 11, 2003 after a bout with cancer. He was 74 years old.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Lowe was born on June 24, 1943 and raised in Memphis, Tennessee. Taking up the tenor saxophonist he was extremely influenced by the first and second waves of free jazz throughout the 1960s. He moved to San Francisco, California to explore the avant-garde jazz scene. While making several visits to New York City he began playing with Sun Ra and Alice Coltrane, recording with the later in 1971.
As a leader he recorded two-dozen albums between 1973 and 2002 working with the likes of Don Cherry, Billy Bang, Jack Walrath, James Carter, Geri Allen, Charnett Moffett, Carlos Ward and numerous others.
Composer and tenor saxophonist Frank Lowe passed away on September 19, 2003 of lung cancer. His legacy was a varied body of recordings and memorable performances and his composition “Spirits in the Field” was performed on Arthur Blythe’s 1977 album The Grip.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Milt Hinton was born Milton John Hinton on June 23, 1910 in Vicksburg, Mississippi but grew up in Chicago, Illinois from age eleven. He attended Wendell Phillips High School and Crane Junior College and learned to first play violin followed by bass horn, tuba, cello and the double bass.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he worked as a freelance musician in Chicago playing with Jabbo Smith, Eddie South, and Art Tatum. In 1936, he joined Cab Calloway’s band playing alongside Chu Berry, Cozy Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Jonah Jones, Ike Quebec, Ben Webster, and Danny Barker, where he was equally adept at bowing, pizzicato, and “slapping” a technique for which he became famous while playing in the big band from 1936 to 1951.
Milt later became a television staff musician, working regularly on shows by Jackie Gleason and Dick Cavett, recorded eleven albums as a leader and worked as a sideman on numerous albums with Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, Elvin Jones, Charles Mingus, Ike Quebec, Ralph Sutton, Ruby Braff, Clark Terry and Branford Marsalis.
He has twice received awards from the National Endowment For The Arts for his work as a jazz educator and a fellow and is a 1993 NEA Jazz Master. Bassist Milt Hinton, who photographically documented many of the jazz greats, was nicknamed “The Judge”, was heralded as the “the dean of jazz bass players”, passed away on December 19, 2000 in New York City at age 90.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ella Johnson was born Ella Mae Jackson on June 22, 1919 in Darlington, South Carolina. She joined her brother Buddy Johnson in New York as a teenager, where he was leading a popular band at the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.
Ella scored her first hit in 1940 with “Please, Mr. Johnson” with subsequent hits included “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball?”, “When My Man Comes Home” and “Hittin’ On Me”. Her popular 1945 recording of “Since I Fell For You” composed by her brother, led to its eventual establishment as a jazz standard.
She continued to perform with Buddy Johnson into the 1960s and her singing drew comparisons to Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. In February 2004, she died in New York City of Alzheimer’s disease, at the age of 84.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lalo Schifrin was born Boris Claudio Schifrin in Buenos Aires, Argentina on June 21, 1932. At the age of six he began a six-year course of study on piano with Enrique Barenboim and at 16 studied piano with Andreas Karalis and harmony with Argentine composer Juan Carlos Paz. By twenty he was attending the Paris Conservatoire during the day and playing at night in jazz clubs.
1955 saw Lalo playing with Astor Piazzolla and on stage at the International Jazz Festival in Paris. Back in Argentina he formed a jazz orchestra, met Dizzy in ’58 and wrote Gillespiana for his big band. He would go on to work with Xavier Cugat, move to New York, take the piano chair in Dizzy’s quintet and wrote a second extended composition titled, The New Continent.
The Sixties had MGM signing Schifrin to his first movie score, he moved to Hollywood, changed The Man from U.N.C.L.E. to a jazz melody and won an Emmy for the theme. He would go on to score television and movies like Mission Impossible, Mannix, Cool Hand Luke, Dirty Harry, The Exorcist, Bullitt and even ABC’s Eyewitness News.
Over the course of his career Lalo Schifrin has recorded over 50 albums and soundtracks, 90 television and film scores as a leader, composer and conductor; and has worked with Cannonball Adderley, Eddie Harris, Count Basie, Luiz Bonfa, Candido Camera, Louis Bellson, Al Hirt, Jimmy Smith, Sarah Vaughan, Cal Tjader, Paul Horn and many others.
In 1997, the composer founded Aleph Records; played an orchestra conductor in Red Dragon, has had his music sampled by hip-hop artists, has been nominated twenty-one times and won four Grammy Awards, one Cable Ace Award, received six Oscar nominations and has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame. He continues to compose, conduct and perform.
