Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sidney Arodin was born in Westwego, Louisiana on March 29, 1901. He went by Sidney Arnandan, Arnondrin or Arnondin. He began playing clarinet at age 15 and played local New Orleans gatherings and on the riverboats. He made his way to New York City in the early Twenties and played with Johnny Stein’s New Orleans Jazz Band from 1922.
He performed with Jimmy Durante in the middle of the decade, then returned to Louisiana to play with Wingy Manone and Sharkey Bonano. During the 1930s he worked with Louis Prima and with a reconstituted version of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, featuring Manone.
By 1941, Arodin’s poor health prevented him from playing frequently live, but before this time he recorded with Johnnie Miller, Albert Brunies, Monk Hazel and the Jones-Collins Astoria Hot Eight. Many of his performances are mistakenly credited on original recordings to Charlie Cordella.
Clarinetist and composer Sidney Arodin, who co-wrote the standard Lazy River with Hoagy Carmichael, passed away in New Orleans, Louisiana on February 6, 1948.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Hal Kemp was born March 27, 1904 in Marion, Alabama. He studied and learned to play the saxophone and clarinet and while at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill he formed his own campus jazz group, the Carolina Club Orchestra. They recorded for English Columbia and Perfect/Pathé Records in 1924 and toured Europe that same summer under the sponsorship of bandleader Paul Specht.
Kemp returned to UNC in 1925 and put together a new edition of the Carolina Club Orchestra, featuring classmates and future stars John Scott Trotter, Saxie Dowell and Skinnay Ennis. By 1927 he turned professional and turned over the orchestra to Kay Kyser.
Basing his band in New York City, Hal’s group included Trotter, Dowell, and Ennis, and later joined by trumpeters Bunny Berigan and Jack Purvis. The sound was 1920s collegiate jazz and in the Thirties he toured Europe again and recorded regularly for Brunswick, English Duophone, Okeh and Melotone record labels.
During the height of the Depression in 1932 Kemp changed the orchestra’s style to a dance band. He incorporated an early version of the echo effect using large megaphones for the clarinets, muted trumpets and a double-octave piano. Vocalists with the band during the 1930s included Ennis, Dowell, Bob Allen, Deane Janis, Maxine Gray, Judy Starr, Nan Wynn and Janet Blair.
Hal’s band was one of the most popular bands in the 1930s and was often featured performing on NBC and CBS radio shows. The band also appeared in numerous motion-picture short subjects and was featured in the 1938 RKO film Radio City Revels. He had hits with There’s A Small Hotel, Lamplight, I Got A Date With An Angel, You’re The Top, Lullaby Of Broadway and Where or When.
On December 19, 1940, alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, composer and arranger Hal Kemp while driving from Los Angeles to a booking in San Francisco, his car collided head-on with a truck. Breaking a leg and several ribs, one of which punctured a lung, he developed pneumonia while in the hospital and died two days later in Madera, California. He was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz hall of Fame in 1992.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Shelton “Scad” Hemphill was born on March 16, 1906 in Birmingham, Alabama. While still in his teens when he played trumpet in the Fred Longshaw band that accompanied Bessie Smith on recordings in 1924–25. In 1924, at age 18, he enrolled at Wilberforce University in Ohio and was a member of Horace Henderson’s student band alongside the likes of Ted and Castor McCord.
Moving to New York late in the 1920s, he played with Benny Carter and Chick Webb before joining the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. He played with this group from 1931 to 1937, and then joined Louis Armstrong from 1937 to 1944. He followed with a five-year stint with Duke Ellington until 1949.
By the 1950s, he played occasionally in New York City but left music due to mounting health problems later in the decade.
Trumpeter Shelton Hemphill passed away in New York City on January 6, 1960 just two months and ten days before his 54th birthday. His demise was noted in the syndicated column of veteran music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
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Bertha “Chippie” Hill was born on March 15, 1905 in Charleston, South Carolina, one of sixteen children. Her family moved to New York City in 1915 and she began her musical career working as a dancer in Harlem. By the time she turned 14 in 1919 she was working with Ethel Waters and while working a t stint at then popular nightclub Leroy’s, was given her nickname Chippie because of her young age.
Chippie performed with Ma Rainey as part of the Rabbit Foot Minstrels before establishing her own song and dance act and touring on the TOBA (Theater Owners Booking Association) circuit in the early 1920s. Settling in Chicago around 1925 she worked at various venues with King Oliver’s Jazz Band, first recorded with Okey Records and was backed by Louis Armstrong and pianist Richard M. Jones. She also recorded a vocal duet in 1927 with Lonnie Johnson, another duet in 1928 with Tampa Red in 1928. Over the course of four years from 1925 to 1929 she recorded twenty-three titles.
In the 1930s she retired from singing to raise her seven children, however in 1946 Bertha Hill staged a comeback in 1946 with Lovie Austin’s Blues Serenaders, recorded for Rudi Blesh’s Circle label and began appearing on radio, in clubs and concerts in New York, including the 1948 Carnegie Hall concert with Kid Ory. She sang at the Paris Jazz Festival, and worked with Art Hodes in Chicago.
Bertha “Chippie” Hill returned to New York City in 1950 and was tragically run over by a car and killed on May 7, 1950 at the age of 45.
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Ike Carpenter was born Isaac M. Carpenter on March 11, 1920 in Durham, North Carolina. He began performing on piano with bands at a very young age, in the mid-1930s. After graduating from college, he performed with a number of successful musicians, including Johnnie Davis.
In 1944, Ike worked briefly as a pianist in Boyd Raeburn’s first influential jazz group, then put together his first band, working gigs on the East coast. In 1947 he relocated to Hollywood where he formed a popular 12-man band that played primarily in the Los Angles area, but touring up the West coast as far as Canada.
By the 1950s, Carpenter left the band scene, and worked as an accompanist for Ice Capades performers. Late in the decade he briefly returned as a bandleader with small groups, before retiring to his hometown in North Carolina.
Recording for the Modern Records label, much of his music was arranged by noted jazz arranger and composer Paul Villepigue. Over the years he played and recorded with Lucky Thompson, Gerald Wilson, Ted Nash, and George Weidler among others. His band was featured in two Hollywood musical films in the 1950s, Rhythm and Rhyme and Holiday Rhythm. Bandleader and jazz pianist Ike Carpenter, popularly active in the post-World War II years on the West Coast, passed away on November 17, 1998 in his hometown of Durham. He was 78.
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