Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Paul D. “Polo” Barnes was born November 22, 1901 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He attended St. Paul Lutheran College and began playing alto saxophone in 1919. He and Lawrence Marrero formed the Original Diamond Band, which would become known as the Young Tuxedo Band.

He was with Kid Rena in 1922, the Maple Leaf Orchestra in 1923, and Papa Celestin’s Original Tuxedo Band later that year. Celestin’s group recorded his tune My Josephine, which became quite popular. Polo played with Chick Webb in 1927, toured with Jelly Roll Morton in 1928-29 and with King Oliver three times in 1927, 1931, and 1934–35.

In 1932 and 1933 Barnes led his own band. He would go on to play with Chester Zardis and Kid Howard through the Thirties. He played in Algiers, Louisiana in a Navy band from 1942 to 1945, then returned to work with Celestin from 1946 to 1951.

Moving to California he left music from 1952 to 1957. Returning to New Orleans in 1959 he played with Paul Barbarin. In 1962 to 1965 Polo joined the Young Men From New Orleans band that played on a riverboat at Disneyland. He came back home again in 1964 and played at Preservation Hall and Dixieland Hall. He toured Europe in 1973 and 1974, but poor health ended his career in 1977.

Clarinetist and saxophonist Polo Barnes, who was the brother of clarinetist Emile Barnes and was a mainstay of the New Orleans jazz scene during the jazz age, transitioned on April 3, 1981.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. was born November 19, 1905 in Mahanoy Plane, Pennsylvania, the second of four children born to bandleader Thomas Francis Dorsey Sr. He studied the trumpet with his father but later switched to trombone. At age 15, Jimmy recommended him to replace Russ Morgan in the Scranton Sirens, a territory band in the 1920s. He worked in bands led by Tal Henry, Rudy Vallee, Vincent Lopez, and Nathaniel Shilkret. In 1923 he went to Detroit to play in Jean Goldkette’s band but returned to New York in 1925 to play with the California Ramblers. Two years later he joined Paul Whiteman, then in 1929, the Dorsey Brothers had their first hit with Coquette for OKeh Records.

In 1934, as the Dorsey Brothers, the band signed with Decca, having a hit with I Believe in Miracles. However, acrimony between the brothers led to Tommy walking out and forming his own band in 1935 and having a hit with Every Little Moment. His orchestra rendered ballads at dance tempos and frequently featured singers Jack Leonard and Frank Sinatra. The band was popular almost from the moment it signed with RCA Victor for “On Treasure Island”, the first of four hits in 1935.

He would go on to have a Dixieland group called Clambake Seven, co-host The Raleigh-Kool Program on the radio and hire arranger Sy Oliver away from Jimmie Lunceford to put more jazz into his pop music. Hiring Sinatra from Harry James helped people the singer to fame and learned breath control from the trombonist. Dorsey’s staff of arrangers included Axel Stordahl, Nelson Riddle, Paul Weston, and Bill Finegan.

Throughout the course of the bands life Bunny Berigan, Doc Severinsen, and Charlie Shavers, Buddy DeFranco, Peanuts Hucko, Buddy Rich, Louie Bellson, Dave Tough, Edythe Wright, Jo Stafford with the Pied Pipers, Gene Krupa, Dick Haymes, Connie Haines, and The Clark Sisters all worked with Tommy.

Dorsey owned two music publishing companies, a ballroom, trade magazine, sponsored other bands, and disbanded the orchestra afte World War II. Teaming up with his brother once more, the took the unit on tour and onto their own television show, Stage Show, from 1954 to 1956. In January 1956, they made rock music history introducing Elvis Presley on his national television debut. Tommy Dorsey, who had a run of 286 Billboard chart hits, of which were seventeen number-one hits with his orchestra transitioned on November 26, 1956 at his home in Greenwich, Connecticut, a week after his 51st birthday. He had begun taking sleeping pills regularly at this time, causing him to become heavily sedated; he choked to death in his sleep after having eaten a large meal.

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Three Wishes

When Nica queried Budd Johnson as to what he would wish if given the opportunity to have three wishes granted and he related this to her:

1. 1. “That’s a very good question. First of all, I would love to play my instrument – I mean, give it all I have to give. I would love to get recognition. And play my horn the way I know I could – and it’s just me, the reason, if I don’t! I would really love to play as well as I think I can.”
   2. “This may sound very corny, but I have a very wonderful wife, and I would like to make her very happy. The only way I think I could do this is: get with that instrument and really play it, so I could make the money to do the things I want to do for her.”
   3. “I want recognition amongst my friends. I crave sincere friendship. I do have a lot of friends, but I think this might bring us closer together. I seem to have lost track of all them. I had to go my way, reasons… everybody had to do what they had to do.

This is how you get separated. When I used to live up to 152nd Street, They all used to come up to my house, Monk, Bird. They all used to come by and we exchange ideas, and they would say, ‘Write this down for me.’ They would hum it, and I would write it down. They remember my son when he was a little baby in the crib! And I miss all of them.

The reason I put that first is that if I were able to master the horn – I guess nobody can have all this – I would have all my friends, be able to visit them, and be around. I have a lot of dear friends who have gone to the top. And they still like me. But they are busy and I am still scuffling! It’s a funny thing. The better you get, you travel in different circles, automatically. I hope someday to attain all this. This is all I know, the music. All this is one thing.”

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joe Rushton was born in Evanston, Illinois on November 7, 1907. He started out playing clarinet and all of the other standard saxophone varieties, and was occasionally recorded with these other instruments. Settling on the bass saxophone, through the early to mid Forties he worked with Ted Weems, Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, Floyd O’Brien, Benny Goodman, and Horace Heidt.

Joining Red Nichols’s Five Pennies in 1947 became a musical relationship and collaboration that went well into the early 1960s. He recorded six sides for Jump Records in 1945/47, but otherwise appears on record only as a sideman.

Bass saxophonist Joe Rushton, who is one of the best-known jazz performers to concentrate on bass saxophone, aside from Adrian Rollini, which he played from 1928. transitioned on March 2, 1964, in San Francisco, California at the age of 56.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Edgar Melvin Sampson was born on October 31, 1907 in New York City, New York. He began playing violin aged six and picked up the saxophone in high school, then started his professional career in 1924 in a violin piano duo with Joe Colman. Through the rest of the 1920s and early 1930s, he played with many big bands, including those of Charlie “Fess” Johnson, Duke Ellington, Rex Stewart and Fletcher Henderson.

In 1934, Sampson joined the Chick Webb outfit and during his period he created his most enduring work as a composer, writing Stompin’ at the Savoy and Don’t Be That Way. Leaving Webb in 1936, his reputation as a composer and arranger led to freelance work with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Red Norvo, Teddy Hill, Teddy Wilson and Webb.

Becoming a student of the Schillinger System in the early 1940s, Edgar continued to play saxophone through the late 1940s and started his own band at the end of the decade. He worked with Latin performers such as Marcelino Guerra, Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente as an arranger.

He recorded one album under his own name, Swing Softly Sweet Sampson, in 1956. Due to illness, he stopped working in the late Sixties. Composer, arranger, saxophonist, and violinist Edgar Sampson, nicknamed The Lamb, transitioned on January 16, 1973.

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