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…
Lammar Wright Sr. was born on June 20, 1907 in Texarkana, Texas but grew up in Kansas City, Missouri. He began his musical career playing and recording with Bennie Moten’s band in 1923. Relocating to New York City in 1927 Lammar played with The Missourians, staying with the group after Cab Calloway became its leader. Wright remained Calloway’s lead trumpeter until 1942.
Playing sporadically with Calloway through the rest of the decade, Wright would also played with Don Redman, Claude Hopkins, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, Sy Oliver and Louis Armstrong.
In the 1950s and 1960s he taught music and worked as a studio musician, in addition to recording with Arnett Cobb, Count Basie, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra and George Shearing.
Wright led his own groups from time to time, had a role in the 1968 film The Night They Raided Minksy’s. Trumpeter Lammar Wright passed away on April 13, 1973 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Alden Lambert was born on June 19, 1917 in Boston, Massachusetts. His band debut was with Johnny Long’s Orchestra in the early 1940s and along with early partner Buddy Stewart; he successfully brought singing into modern jazz, concurrently with Ella Fitzgerald.
In the late 1950s Lambert teamed with wordsmith and vocalese pioneer Jon Hendricks. Annie Ross later joined the two vocalists and the trio lineup was a hit. After Ross left the group in 1962, Lambert and Hendricks went on without her by using various replacements, but the partnership ended in 1964.
Dave formed a quintet called “Lambert & Co.” which included the multiple voices of Mary Vonnie, Leslie Dorsey, David Lucas and Sarah Boatner. The group auditioned for RCA and was documented in a 15-minute documentary entitled Audition at RCA, and the Charlie Parker with Voices. It was one of the last images recorded of Lambert.
Lyricist and jazz singer Dave Lambert, an originator of vocalese best known for his work in Lambert, Hendricks and Ross, and who spent a lifetime experimenting with the human voice and expanding the possibilities of its use in jazz, was struck and killed by a truck on the Connecticut Turnpike while changing a flat tire, passed away on October 3, 1966.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sammy Cahn was born Samuel Cohen on June 18, 1913 in the lower East side of New York City and began his music career studying the violin. After only three lessons at thirteen years he joined a small Dixieland band called Pals of Harmony, touring the Catskill Mountains summer resorts and play private parties. By16 he was writing his first lyric “Like Niagara Falls, I’m Falling For You” and his songs were being sung on the vaudeville stage by Jack Osterman.
Much of Cahn’s early work was written in partnership with Saul Chaplin writing witty special material for Warner Brothers musical short subjects. They continued to work with then up-and-comers Milton Berle, Danny Kaye, Phil Silvers and Bob Hope. Cahn soon began a partnership with Lou Levy and writing for Jimmie Lunceford, Glen Gray, Tommy Dorsey and eventually teaming with Jimmy Van Heusen and writing for Frank Sinatra.
His impressive career spawned lyrics for Until The Real Thing Comes Along, Love and Marriage, Three Coins In The fountain, I Fall In Love Too Easily, All The Way, I’ll Never Stop Loving You, The Second Time Around and All My Tomorrows among many more.
Cahn was inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame, nominated for 23 Academy Awards, five Golden Globes and an Emmy. He received four Oscars, and had the Sammy Awards created in his honor for movie songs and scores.
Sammy Cahn, best known for his romantic lyrics for film, Broadway and stand alone songs, many of which have become jazz standards, passed away on January 15, 1993 at age 79 in Los Angeles California.
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