Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Red Richards was born Charles Coleridge Richards on October 19, 1912 in New York City and began playing classical piano at age ten. After hearing Fats Waller at age 26 he concentrated on jazz. His first major professional gig was with Tab Smith at the Savoy Ballroom in New York from 1945 to 1949. He went on to play and record with Pee Wee Russell, Bob Wilber, Sidney Bechet, Buck Clayton, Big Chief Moore, Muggsy Spanier,  Fletcher Henderson through the Fifties.

Richards toured Italy and France with Mezz Mezzrow, accompanied Frank Sinatra while in Italy, became a solo performer for a year in Columbus, Ohio, and played with Wild Bill Davison in the late 50s and again in 1962.

In 1960 Red formed Saints & Sinners with  Vic Dickenson, playing with this ensemble until 1970. He joined jazz drummer Chuck Slate’s band in 1971, recorded an album with him called “Bix ‘N All That Jazz”.  Through the mid-Seventies he worked with  Eddie Condon, put together his own trio for two years, played with Panama Francis and the Savoy Sultans, touring with them from 1979 through the Eighties.

Pianist Red Richards recorded nine albums as a leader, recorded with  Bill Coleman in 1980 and continued to tour nearly till the time of his death on March 12, 1998 in Scarsdale, New York.

More Posts: piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Art Blakey was born Arthur Blakey on October 11, 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. By the time he was a teenager, he was playing the piano full-time, leading a commercial band. Shortly afterwards, he taught himself to play the drums in the aggressive swing style of Chick Webb, Sid Catlett and Ray Bauduc. He joined  Mary Lou Williams  in 1942, then toured with the  Fletcher Henderson  Orchestra, spent three years with  Billy Eckstine’s big band and became associated with the bebop movement along with his fellow band members  Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Fats Navarro, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Sarah Vaughan and others.

He recorded on  Thelonious Monk’s first and last sessions as a leader, organized a rehearsal band called the Seventeen Messengers in 1947, recorded with an octet call the Jazz Messengers co-led with Horace Silver, and the group recorded with Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson and Gene Ramey  live at Birdland and formed a regular cooperative group with  Hank Mobley and  Kenny Dorham in 1953.

Along with Kenny Clarke and Max Roach, Art was one of the inventors of the modern bebop style of drumming. Known as a powerful musician and a vital groover, his brand of bluesy, funky hard bop was and continues to be profoundly influential on mainstream jazz. For more than 30 years his band, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, included many young musicians who went on to become prominent names in jazz.

Blakey’s Messengers would go on to enlist musicians like Doug Watkins, Donald Byrd, Johnny Griffin, Benny Golson,  Jymie Merritt, Lee Morgan, Bobby Timmons, Curtis Fuller, Freddie Hubbard, Cedar Walton and Wayne Shorter, all of whom made an indelible impression on Blakey’s repertoire with their original compositions such as Dat Dere, Moanin’ and Lester Left Town.

Art recorded dozens of albums both as a sideman and a leader with a constantly changing group of Jazz Messengers, toured with the Giants of Jazz in early Seventies, revitalized the band in the 80s with players like Wynton Marsalis, Johnny O’Neal ,  Philip Harper , Terence Blanchard, Joanne Brackeen, Donald Harrison, Kenny Garrett, Bobby Broom, Robin Eubanks, Kevin Eubanks, Ralph Peterson Jr.. and Mulgrew Miller

Over the years group members went on to find their own star including but not limited to Brian Lynch, Javon Jackson, Geoffrey Keezer, Valery Ponomarev, Wallace Roney, Charles Fambrough, Essiet Okon Essiet, Kenny Washington, Chuck Mangione, Keith Jarrett, Woody Shaw, Branford Marsalis, Terence Blanchard, Donald Harrison, and Reggie Workman.

Also known as Abdullah Ibn Buhaina after converting to Islam and nicknamed “Bu”, was inducted into the Jazz Hall of Fame in 1982, won a Grammy for Best Group Jazz Instrumental Performance for New York Scene, was inducted in the Newport Jazz Festival and Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fames, and was posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001 and was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. Drummer, bandleader, educator and mentor Art Blakey died on October 16, 1990.

More Posts: drums

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, Tennessee and by the time he was five his family moved to Detroit. Throughout his early life Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell

Proficient on saxophone by graduation from high school at the age of 18, he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands. In 1949, he was touring with Dizzy Gillespie and his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam.

Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records overlapping with Prestige Records subsidiary label New Jazz, collaborating with  Wilbur Harden, Herman Wright, Frank Gant, and Hugh Lawson  among others. By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds his dominant presence within a group context had emerged and his ‘Eastern’ influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings.

Along with trumpeter Don Cherry, Yusef can lay claim to being among the first exponents of the world music as sub-genres of jazz. He played on numerous albums, was a member of Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet during the early Sixties, was a major influence on John Coltrane, he began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, founded his own label YAL Records and was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra to compose the African American Epic Suite.

Lateef has written and published a number of books including two novellas and Yusef Lateef’s Flute Book of the Blues. He has received the Jazz Master Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has had aired a special-documentary program for Lateef, titled A Portrait of Saxophonist Yusef Lateef In His Own Words and Music. He has recorded nearly six-dozen records as both a leader and sideman and continued to compose, perform, record and tour until his transition at age 93 on December 23, 2013 in Shutesbury, Massachusetts.

More Posts: bamboo flute,bassoon,koto,oboe,piano,saxophone,shehnai,shofar,vocal

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Gerry Moore was born Gerald Asher Moore on October 8, 1903 in London, England. As a pianist, he spent the years 1922-1939 working freelance jazz gigs in his hometown, playing movie palaces and nightclubs. Among the clubs in which he worked are Sherry’s and the Empress Rooms through the Twenties and in the 30s he played Chez Rex Evans, the Bag o’ Nails, the 43 Club and Mema’s.

In 1939 Gerry worked with Buddy Featherstonhaugh, Adelaide Hall, Vic Lewis, and with Max Geldray in Germany, along with Carlo Krahmer at the Paris Jazz Fair and the Palm Beach Hotel in Cannes. He played with Harry and Laurie Gold and worked as a pianist on the Queen Mary and Caronia in the Fifties. From the mid-1960s up until his passing on January 29, 1993 in Twickenham, pianist Gerry Moore played the clubs of London.

More Posts: piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tommy Potter was born Charles Thomas Potter in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 21, 1918. He began on the bass fairly late, originally playing piano and guitar and not switching to bass until he was already 21 in 1940. He played with John Hardee and Max Roach before joining Charlie Parker’s “classic quintet”, first playing with him in 1944, then John Malachi and Trummy Young before hitting with Billy Eckstine‘s band with Dizzy Gillespie, Lucky Thompson and Art Blakey, and worked with Miles Davis between 1947 and 1950.

In the 1950s he remained in demand though never a major soloist himself on the level of an Oscar Pettiford, Potter was really an advanced swing stylist who was flexible and skilled enough to keep up with Parker’s rapid tempos.

Potter performed and recorded with such notable jazz musicians including Al Cohn, Count Basie, Buck Clayton, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Stan Getz, Tyree Glenn, Eddie Heywood, Earl Hines, Charles Lloyd, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, Jimmy Forrest, Gene Ammons, Cecil Payne, Sonny Stitt, Artie Shaw and numerous others.

After playing in a Charlie Parker memorial group in 1965, he gradually dropped out of music, becoming semi-retired and on March 1, 1988 double bassist Tommy Potter passed away.

More Posts: bass