Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Frank Teschemacher was born on March 13, 1906 in Kansas City, Missouri. A was a member of the Austin High School Gang, a group of young, white musicians from the Chicago, Illinois West Side, they all attended Austin High School during the early 1920s. They rose to prominence as pioneers of the Chicago Style in the 1920s, which was modeled on a faster version of New Orleans jazz.

Strongly influenced by cornetist Bix Beiderbecke, he was mainly self-taught on his instruments, clarinet and saxophone. Early on he also doubled on violin and banjo. He started playing the clarinet professionally in 1925. He began recording under his own name in 1928 and made what are believed to be his final recordings two years later, although there is now reason to believe (via sine wave recording research, aka Smith/Westbrook Method) that he appeared on unidentified recordings as late as 1932.

He first recorded with Red McKenzie and Eddie Condon’s Chicagoans in 1927 for Okeh Records. Two sessions produced Sugar, China Boy, Nobody’s Sweetheart and Liza. The players included Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, and Jim Lanigan, as well as Chicagoans Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa and Joe Sullivan, led by Red McKenzie.

1928 saw him recording with two other Red McKenzie and Eddie Condon groups, the Chicago Rhythm Kings and the Jungle Kings. The same year he made his debut as a leader recording for Brunswick Records. The group recorded under the name Frank Teschmacher’s Chicagoans. Frank’s solo work laid the groundwork for a rich sound and creative approach that is credited with influencing a young Benny Goodman and a style of which Pee Wee Russell. He also made recordings on the saxophone and would later return to the violin during the Great Depression. Although well known in the world of jazz, he did not live to enjoy popular success in the swing era.

Clarinet and alto saxophonist Frank Teschemacher, who was killed in an automobile accident while being driven by Wild Bill Davison, transitioned on March 1, 1932 at the age of 25.

More Posts: clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone,violin

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Max Gordon was born on March 12, 1903 in Svir, Russian Empire, now Belarus.  His family emigrated to the United States in 1908 at age five and settled in Portland, Oregon, where he later attended Reed College. As a young man, he was interested in Russian and French novels and saw himself as a romantic type. Pursuing his parents’ wish that he become a lawyer, he moved to New York in 1926 to attend Columbia Law School, but began working in nightclubs and dropped out, choosing to get his education where he could find it.

In 1932 Gordon opened his first venue, Village Fair, in the tradition of Viennese coffee houses as a place for artists and writers. He relocated the venue once in 1934 and opened the Village Vanguard in 1935. The Vanguard initially offered poetry and was frequented by poets Maxwell Bodenheim and Harry Kemp. Over time, the club segued into cabaret acts, comedy, folk music and jazz before going exclusively jazz in 1957. That year Sonny Rollins was the first jazz musician to record in the venue.

The club subsequently hosted a who’s who of jazz greats from the 1940s to the 1980s including John Coltrane, Sidney Bechet, Dinah Washington, Albert Ayler, Miles Davis, Wynton Marsalis, Henry Threadgill and Thelonious Monk, who at the time an unknown, discovered by Gordon’s wife Lorraine. The club’s artistic direction was in part guided by Lorraine who had a keen interest in jazz. Over time the club became a popular recording spot and over 100 jazz albums have been recorded there.

Max sought new talent and gave younger performers a platform to showcase their work. In doing so he played a role in helping launch the careers of Judy Holliday, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Barbra Streisand, Pearl Bailey, Woody Allen, Dick Gregory, Lenny Bruce, Irwin Corey, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly. He had a reputation for fairness and honesty among the performers.

In addition to the Vanguard, in 1943 Gordon opened the Blue Angel Supper Club in midtown Manhattan and was involved in its operation for fourteen years. He actively managed the Vanguard club well into his 80s. In 1982 he authored a memoir titled Live at the Village Vanguard which chronicles the history of the club.

Jazz promoter and founder of the Village Vanguard, Max Gordon, whose wife Lorraine continued the work and took an active role in managing the Vanguard club until her passing in 2018, transitioned at 86 on May 11, 1989.

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joe Daniels was born in Zeerust, South Africa on March 9, 1909 and left his native South Africa for England as a young boy. In 1922 at 14 years of age he was already part of the 1920s London club scene, playing in bands led by Harry and Burton Lester, Billy Mason and Fred Elizade.

Daniels went on to play with Sid Roy before forming his own band with trumpeter Max Goldberg in 1926. Around 1930, he started recording as Joe Daniel’s Hot Shots, and they became a popular recording band. The band, with Bobby King as the vocalist, performed on early BBC radio shows many times, and recorded on Parlophone.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Joe joined the Royal Air Force, where he organized an air force band, and produced shows for the troops. After the war and throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, he played in both small and in big bands, including recording under the name Washboard Joe and His Scrubbers. Their recording of I Love Onions / Paper Kisses was released on Parlophone in 1955.

In 1957, he toured as the Big DixieLand Group, while Joe Daniels and the Hot Shots were his ballroom band for Butlin’s Holiday Camp during the mid 1960s. He often played to a full house and was in tune with the campers’ frivolity: one of the most popular dances that got everyone on the floor was the March of the Mods.

Among his more popular numbers was Experiments with Mice. Drummer Joe Daniels, who continued to play Dixieland until 1990, transitioned on July 2, 1993, in Northwood, Middlesex, England, at the age of 84.

More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Will Hudson was born Arthur Murray Hainer on March 8, 1908 in Grimsby, Ontario, Canada. His parents immigrated to the United States when he was nearly two years old. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan he graduated from Southeastern High School in 1926. He changed his name sometime between 1931 and 1933 and put together his first big band in Detroit in the early 1930s. Hudson became a United States citizen on April 14, 1941.

In 1934 Hudson joined ASCAP in 1934. At some point during the early 1930s, he became a staff arranger for Irving Mills, writing stock arrangements. Mills was notable in various roles in the development of swing and jazz — was as much a promoter of songwriters, arrangers, and big bands as he was a publisher.

Hudson was a dance-band arranger, and co-leader with Eddie DeLange of the Hudson-DeLange Orchestra. Singers with the orchestra included Ruth Gaylor, Mitchell Ayres, Georgia Gibbs, and Nan Wynn. When the orchestra was at the height of its popularity, around 1940, Hudson had to withdraw for health reasons.

Hudson also led his own band, the Will Hudson Orchestra, from 1939 to about 1941. His vocalists included Kay Kenny, Elisse Cooper, Jayne Dover and Ruth Gaylor.

DeLange and Hudson wrote the lyrics to several songs composed by Hudson and in 1941 he began focusing on arranging, full-time. Enlisting in the U.S. Army in 1943, serving in the U.S. Army Air Force. He became the arranger for the Glenn Miller Army Air Force Band until his discharge in 1945.

1948 saw Will enrolled at Juilliard where he studied orchestration and composition, earning a diploma in 1952 and post-grad diploma the following year. He also studied composition privately. His compositions include Moonglow, Tormented, Sophisticated Swing, Mr. Ghost Goes to Town, Devil’s Kitchen, You’re Not the Kind and Witch Doctor.

Composer, arranger, and big band leader Will Hudson, active from the mid-1930s through the mid-Fifties, transitioned on July 16, 1981.

More Posts: arranger,bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joseph William Yukl was born on March 5, 1909 in Los Angeles, California and  learned to play violin before switching to trombone as a teenager.

Yukl relocated to New York City in 1927 where he took a position playing in radio bands for CBS, and worked with Red Nichols and The Dorsey Brothers. During 1934 he played with Joe Haymes, then with the Dorseys once again.

Through the end of the decade he played with Louis Armstrong, Ray McKinley, Bing Crosby, Ben Pollack, Frankie Trumbauer, and Ted Fio Rito. The 1940s saw Joe working as a session musician for studio recordings in Los Angeles, California and for film and television.

He played with Wingy Manone and Charlie LaVere in the 1940s. He appears in the film Rhythm Inn in 1951 and is heard playing trombone in the 1953 movie The Glenn Miller Story.

Trombonist Joe Yukl transitioned on March 16, 1981 at the age of 72 in his hometown.

More Posts: history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone