Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hank Frederic Gregson Wayland was born January 21, 1906 in Fall River, Massachusetts. He learned music from his father who was a musician and played in high school bands. He moved to New York City in 1926, where he played the double bass in theater orchestras and in the studios.
In the 1930s he performed and/or recorded with Benny Goodman, Red Norvo, Artie Shaw, Bunny Berigan, and Larry Clinton. During The Depression, Wayland was forced to send his sons to Florida to live with his wife’s brother while he toured the US and in Europe.
In the early Forties Hank played with Bob Chester, then moved to California the following year where he played with Eddie Miller and Wingy Manone in addition to more work as a studio musician. He appeared in bit parts in low budget Hollywood films, however he did appear without credit in the film Stars and Stripes Forever.
During The Depression, Wayland was forced to send his sons to Florida to live with his wife’s brother while he toured the US and in Europe. He eventually relocated his family to Glendale, California and faded from the scene after the 1950s. He officially retired from his music career in 1968.
Diagnosed with colon cancer in 1978 he underwent a colectomy. Later that year he was suspected of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Double bassist Hank Wayland, who never led a recording session, died peacefully on March 27, 1983 while living in a retirement home.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick Lammi was born on January 15, 1909 in Red Lodge, Montana. Early in his career he played violin and banjo, playing as a banjoist in various dance bands and orchestras in the Pacific Northwest in the late 1920s. Settlling in Portland, Oregon in the early Thirties, and played bass in a group there.
After a move to San Francisco, California in 1936 he began playing tuba alongside bass. His best-known work was as a member of Lu Watters’s rehearsal band, which evolved into the Yerba Buena Jazz Band, playing regularly at the Dawn Club.
With World War II interrupting his tenure with the ensemble, after his discharge he rejoined the YBJB and stayed with them until they disbanded in 1950. The Fifties saw Dick working with Bob Scobey, Turk Murphy, Wally Rose, and Clancy Hayes. He recorded little after the early 1960s.
Tubist and bassist Dick Lammi, who was the first tuba player to record during the San Francisco revival, died on November 29, 1969 in San Francisco.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Otis Johnson was born on January 13, 1908 in Richmond, Virginia. He began his career in the late 1920s, working with Gene Rodgers, Henri Saparo, Eugene Kennedy, and Charlie Skeete. In 1929 he joined Luis Russell’s band, and rejoined Kennedy’s group before working with Benny Carter in 1934. He played with Charlie Turner and Willie Bryant in the mid-1930s.
Toward the end of the decade he performed with Louis Armstrong and Don Redman. On December 30, 1940 Otis enlisted in the 369th Coast Artillery of the New York Army National Guard. He was discharged on October 13, 1945.
Trumpeter Otis Johnson, who never returned to active performance after leaving the military, died on February 28, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Vernon Brown was born on January 6, 1907 in Venice, Illinois. He began his career as a jazz trombonist playing in St. Louis, Missouri with Frankie Trumbauer in 1925, and then moved through a variety of groups at the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s, including those of Jean Goldkette, Benny Meroff, and Mezz Mezzrow.
In 1937 Brown joined Benny Goodman’s orchestra, remaining there until 1940. While only soloing occasionally with Goodman, this association got him well known. The Forties saw him performing with Artie Shaw, Jan Savitt, Muggsy Spanier, and the Casa Loma Orchestra. In the 1940s, Brown switched focus from swing to Dixieland, playing often in studio recordings and working with Sidney Bechet.
Brown performed with Louis Armstrong and his All Stars for the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert in 1953 at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, California. The concert also featured that day were Roy Brown and his Orchestra, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, Nat “King” Cole, and Shorty Rogers and his Orchestra.
He led his own band in the Pacific Northwest in 1950 and did reunion tours with Goodman in that decade. He worked with Tony Parenti in 1963, and remained a studio musician into the early-1970s
Trombonist Vernon Brown, who later in his life lived in Roslyn Heights, New York, died in Los Angeles on May 18, 1979.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clyde Lee McCoy was born December 29, 1903 in Ashland, Kentucky to the family that feuded with the Hatfields. He began mastering the trumpet without formal instruction, after the family moved to Portsmouth, Ohio in 1912. This led him to perform regularly at church and school affairs. Five years later he was performing on the Cincinnati riverboats, and on the Mississippi River side-wheelers the Island Queen and the Bernard McSwain. He became one of the youngest musicians on the river at age 14.
In 1920, accepting an invitation for a small band to play at a Knoxville, Tennessee resort, his Chicago Orchestra rehearsed on the train and won the approval of George Whittle and the patrons of the Whittle Springs Hotel and Spa. After a two month engagement the band officially became known as the Clyde McCoy Orchestra.
In the late 1920s McCoy developed the signature “wah-wah” sound by fluttering a Harmon mute in the bell of his trumpet. In 1967, a similar effect was made for electric guitar with the introduction of the Vox Clyde McCoy Wah-Wah Pedal. Having nothing to do with the use or development of the pedal,Clyde’s name was only used for promotion.
Over the course of a seven decade career Clyde was based at various times in New York City, Los Angeles, California and Chicago, Illinois. He is best remembered for his theme song Sugar Blues, written by Clarence Williams and Lucy Fletcher, and also as a co-founder of Down Beat magazine in 1935. The song was performed with vocals by Bob Wills and his Texas Playboys, Fats Waller and Ella Fitzgerald.
Trumpeter and bandleader Clyde McCoy, who has a star on the Holywood Walk of Fame, transitioned on June 11, 1990 in Memphis, Tennessee.
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