Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Lim was born on February 23, 1919 in Batavia, Jakarta, Indonesia. He grew up in the Netherlands where he became very fond of jazz, moving to the U.S. in 1939. After working as a freelance record producer, he was the Keystone label’s jazz producer from 1943-46, putting together scores of classic sessions. His emphasis was on small-group jazz that ranged from Dixieland to bop but mostly focused on top swing all-stars.
Although he was a lifelong fan of jazz, he was primarily active in jazz during two different periods. The quality of the music under Harry’s guidance was very high but unfortunately, however, in 1946 John Hammond replaced him and Keynote subsequently declined and became defunct. Lim had his own short-lived HL label in 1949, produced a few obscure sessions for Seeco, and tried reviving Keynote in 1955, but ended up working at Sam Goody’s New York record store from 1956-73.
During his years at Keystone he was able to produce sessions by Count Basie, Roy Eldridge, Cozy Cole, Barney Bigard, George Barnes, Paul Gonsalves, Bud Freeman, Ann Hathaway, Coleman Hawkins, J.C. Heard, Neal Hefti, Earl Hines, Milt Hinton, Chubby Jackson, Ted Nash, Jonah Jones, Paul Robeson, Red Rodney, Charlie Shavers, Wilie Smith, Rex Stewart, Juan Tizol, Dinah Washington, Lennie Tristano, George Wetting, Lester Young, and the list just goes on.
Harry didn’t return to producing until 1972 when he formed the Famous Door label, a top mainstream record company that recorded a variety of valuable and now hard-to-find sessions with Bill Watrous, Red Norvo, Zoot Sims, and others up until his death.
Record producer Harry Lim passed away on July 27, 1990 in New York City. He was most active on the jazz scene between 1940s to through the 1950s, and happily was still living when Polygram reissued all of the Keynote jazz sessions on a huge LP box set in 1986.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alec Wilder was born Alexander Lafayette Chew Wilder in Rochester, New York on February 16, 1907 into a prominent family that now has a building bearing the family name. As a young boy, he traveled to New York City with his mother and stayed at the Algonquin Hotel that would later become his home for the last 40 or so years of his life. Unhappily attending several prep schools as a teenager, he hired a lawyer and essentially “divorced” himself from his family, gaining for himself some portion of the family fortune.
Wilder was largely self-taught as a composer; he studied privately with the composers Herman Inch and Edward Royce, who taught at the Eastman School of Music in the 1920s, but never registered for classes, never received his degree but eventually was awarded an honorary degree in 1973. While there, he edited a humor magazine and scored music for short films directed by James Sibley Watson.
Alec would eventually become good friends with Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and others in the American pop canon. He wrote hits like his most famous song “I’ll Be Around” (lyrics also), as well as “While We’re Young”, “Where Do You Go” and “Trouble Is A Man”.
Over the years Alec worked with lyricists Loonis McGlohon, William Engvick, Fran Landesman and Johnny Mercer. Not tied to popular song, Wilder composed classical pieces, operas, jazz influenced numbers for television, songs for a theme park and arranged a series of Christmas carols. He wrote the definitive book American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900–1950.
His love of puzzles led him to create his own cryptic crosswords and spend hours on jigsaw puzzles. He would compose music for twelve operas, four musicals, six films, two large ensembles, and twenty-two songs. His octet, that included Eastman classmate Mitch Miller, would record many of his compositions.
Composer Alec Wilder passed away on December 24, 1980 at age 73 in Gainesville, Florida and is buried in Avon, New York, outside his hometown of Rochester.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Les Hite was born in DuQuoin, Illinois on February 13, 1903. He attended the University of Illinois and played saxophone with family members in a band in the 1920s. Following this, he played with Detroit Shannon, then with the Helen Dewey Show, but when this group disbanded abruptly, he relocated to Los Angeles, California.
In L.A. he played with The Spike Brothers Orchestra, Mutt Carey, Curtis Mosby and Paul Howard. He became leader of Howard’s band in 1930, and played at the Cotton Club in Los Angeles for several years, accompanying Louis Armstrong and Fats Waller among others. The band also recorded frequently for film soundtracks and occasionally appeared on camera.
Hite’s big band, known as Sebastian’s Cotton Club Orchestra, primarily played in Los Angeles, though they occasionally went on tour. Musicians who played in the band included Lionel Hampton, Marshal Royal, Lawrence Brown, Britt Woodman, Joe Wilder, T-Bone Walker and Dizzy Gillespie.
Rarely recorded, for this reason much of the details of his life and work are poorly documented. The only sessions he did were 14 numbers recorded between 1940 and 1942. Saxophonist and bandleader Les Hite passed away at St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, California on February 6, 1962 from complications following a heart attack one week before his 59th birthday.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chick Webb was born William Henry Webb on February 10, 1905 in Baltimore, Maryland. Suffering from tuberculosis of the spine as a child, it left him short of stature and with a badly deformed spine, causing him to appear hunchbacked. His doctor suggested playing an instrument would loosen up his bones and after saving up his newspaper boy money bought a set of drums and was playing professionally by age 11.
At the age of 17 Chick moved to New York City, took drum lessons from Tommy Benford and by 1926 was leading his own band in Harlem. He alternated between band tours and residencies at New York City clubs through the late 1920s and by 1931 his band became the house band at the Savoy Ballroom. He became one of the best-regarded bandleaders and drummers of the new swing style.
Webb couldn’t read music but memorized the arrangements played by the band and conducted from a platform in the center. Although his band was not as influential and revered in the long term, it was feared in the battle of the bands, with the Savoy often featured “Battle of the Bands” where Webb’s band always came out on top over Goodman’s or Basie’s band. He was crowned the first King of Swing and didn’t lose until 1937 to Duke Ellington.
In 1935 he began featuring a teenaged Ella Fitzgerald and the two electrified the Swing Era with hits like Van Alexander’s A-Tisket A-Tasket. By 1938, Webb’s health began to decline; for a time, however, disregarding his own discomfort he continued to play, refusing to give up touring so that his band could remain employed during the Great Depression. Finally, following a major operation at John Hopkins Hospital, drummer and bandleader William Henry “Chick” Webb passed away from spinal tuberculosis at age 34 on June 16, 1939, in Baltimore, Maryland.
His death hit the jazz/swing community very hard and after his death Ella Fitzgerald led the band until it disbanded when she left to focus on her solo career in 1942.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Blanche Calloway was born Blanche Dorothea Jones Calloway on February 9, 1902 in Rochester, New York. Her mother was a music teacher and gave her children a passion for music. The older sister of Cab Calloway, she was a successful singer before her brother.
Influenced as a youth by Florence Mills and Ida Cox, she was encouraged to audition for a local talent scout and dropped out of Morgan College in the early 1920s to pursue her music career. Blanche made her professional debut in Baltimore in 1921 with Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle’s musical Shuffle Along but her big break came two years later on the national tour of Plantation Days. With the tour ending in Chicago, she decided to stayand gained popularity on the town’s jazz scene.
By 1925 she recorded two blues songs accompanied by Louis Armstrong and Richard M. Jones that became the first inception of her Joy Boys orchestra. She would perform with Rueben Reeves and record for Vocalion Records, work with Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy, and worte and recorded three songs of which her theme song would emerge, I Need Lovin’. Calloway would go on to form another Joy Boys big band with Ben Webster, Cozy Cole, Andy Kirk, Chick Webb and Zack Whythe, making her the first woman to lead an all-male jazz orchestra.
She struggled in the racially segregated and male-dominated music industry of the period, frequently played to segregated audiences and arrested for using white only restrooms on the road. While sitting in a Mississippi jail a band member stole the group’s money and she had to sell her yellow Cadillac to leave the state. Though an exceptional musician, she received few opportunities outside singer and dancer due to gender roles of the time. By the mid-1930s Calloway began to struggle to find bookings, just as her brother’s own career grew in popularity.
After years of struggling for major success, in 1938 she declared bankruptcy, broke up her orchestra and a couple of yeas later put together a short-lived all-female orchestra during World War II. Struggling once again for bookings she moved to the Philadelphia suburbs and became a socialite, served as a Democratic committeewoman, moved to Washington, DC and managed the Crystal Caverns nightclub. She hired Ruth Brown to perform and gained credit for discovering her and getting her a record deal with Atlantic Records.
In the late 1950s she moved to Florida and became a deejay for WMBM in Miami Beach, then became the program director for twenty years. She became the first Black woman to vote in Florida, was an active member of the NAACP and the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and served on the board of the National Urban League.
Vocalist, composer and bandleader Blanche Calloway, whose flamboyant style was a major influence on her brother Cab, eventually moved back to Baltimore, and married her high school sweetheart, passing away on December 16, 1978, from breast cancer, aged 76.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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