Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Thore Ehrling was born December 29, 1912 in Stockholm, Sweden and played with the Frank Vernon Ensemble from 1930 to 1934. At the same time he studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
From 1935 to 1938 he played under Håkan von Eichwald and did arrangement and composition work on the side. He started his own ensemble in 1938, which grew into a big band in the nineteen years it was active. This group played popular music and jazz, recorded frequently, and played often on Swedish radio.
The group featured many sidemen who went on to become prominent on the Swedish jazz scene, such as Uffe Baadh and Carl-Henrik Norin, and accompanied popular Swedish singers such as Inger Berggren and Lily Berglund.
Trumpeter, composer and bandleader Thore Ehrling, who led jazz and popular music ensembles, died in Stockholm, Sweden on October 21, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edwin A. Finckel was born on December 23, 1917 in Washington, D.C. to musical parents and was the youngest of six children. Left to his own devices his artistic talents won him a scholarship at the Corcoran School of Art. Finding access to a piano within a year he had taught himself to play, albeit without the ability to read music. He took to jazz although he also showed skill as a tennis player while still a teenager.
Well regarded for his ability to improvise music he went on to arrange others and later composed over 200 of his own melodies. He appeared professionally as a teenager and he went on to introduce string instruments into his arrangement for big bands. His best known song may be Where Is The One, which was recorded by Frank Sinatra..
In the Forties he wrote songs for film, was chosen as a representative of a musical, then went into teaching in the music department at Far Brook School in New Jersey for 39 years. There he gave private lessons, conducted the choir and orchestra, and wrote much of the music that the children sing. He continued to perform jazz and in his forties he also wrote classical music.
Pianist, composer and arranger Edwin Finckel, who ran a summer camp with his wife for 17 years while performing jazz and composing classical music, died on 7 May 7, 2001 at 83 in Madison, Wisconsin.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Erkki Vilhelm Aho was born December 10, 1918 in Helsinki, Finland. He led the Rytmi orchestra which was formed in 1938. In the orchestra, Olavi Virta and Raija Valtonen acted as soloists, the pianist was Toivo Kärki and another famous member was Pauli Granfelt.
Aho’s orchestra was one of the top Finnish orchestras. During the Continuation War, his orchestra consisted of 14 men before it was taken over in 1945 by drummer Osmo “Ossi” Aalto. In the spring of 1944, the orchestra recorded American evergreens arranged by Kärjen Syväri.
Trombonist, trumpeter and conductor Erkki Aho died on August 19, 2002.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Babbitt was born November 2, 1913 in St. Louis, Missouri. He organized his own band after high school, directing the group in addition to singing and playing saxophone and drums.
With his baritone voice Babbitt joined the Kay Kyser band in 1936 and recorded several hits, his biggest was the cover of Vera Lynn’s The White Cliffs of Dover. He appeared as a regular on Kyser’s radio program, Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge and in seven movies with Kyser between 1939 to 1944.
Serving in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946, he returned to Kyser’s band, but eventually left for good in 1949. Harry hosted an early morning radio show, The Second Cup of Coffee Club on CBS, which ran 10 years in the 1940s and 1950s. He also co-starred with Mary Small on By Popular Demand in the mid-Forties.
He retired from show business in 1964 and made money in real estate, managed the Newport Tennis Club and headed public relations for a retirement community in Orange County, California.
After Kyser died he went on tour with a new band, using Kyser’s name and music. He retired from that in the mid-1990s. Vocalist Harry Babbitt, who found fame during the big band era, died at the age of 90 in Aliso Viejo, California on April 9, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Sebastian “Sabby” Lewis was born November 1, 1914 in Middleburg, North Carolina. Raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania he started taking piano lessons when he was five and moved to Boston, Massachusetts in 1932 at fourteen. After working with Tasker Crosson’s Ten Statesmen two years later, he organized his own seven-piece band in 1936.
The late 1930s and early Forties saw Sabby and his band as mainstays at notable Boston jazz venues. In 1942, Lewis’ band won a listener contest on a broadcast from the Statler Hotel’s Terrace Room in Boston. The win garnered the band a regular gig on NBC’s The Fitch Bandwagon, heard on 120 stations at the time.
Though Lewis did not tour frequently nor leave Boston often, he did perform on Broadway, in ballrooms and clubs in Manhattan on 52nd Street. He performed with Dinah Washington and Billy Eckstine. During World War II his orchestra included tenor saxophonist Paul Gonsalves, and drummer Alan Dawson spent much of the 1950s in the band. His band also included trumpeter Cat Anderson, Sonny Stitt, Roy Haynes, Al Morgan, Idrees Sulieman and Joe Gordon.
Having been seriously injured in an automobile accident in 1962, his performing was greatly curtailed. Sabby became Boston’s first Black disk jockey at WBMS, which later became WILD in the Fifties. He went on to be a housing investigator for the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination until his retirement in 1984.
Pianist, bandleader, and arranger Sabby Lewis died on July 9, 1994.
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