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.
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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.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Manny Klein was born Emmanuel Klein on February 4, 1908. Not much is known about his youth and trumpet education but he began with Paul Whiteman in 1928. Active throughout the 1930s, he played with several major bands of the era including the Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman.
By 1937 Klein had moved to California and worked with Frank Trumbauer’s orchestra and in early 1940 he appears on Artie Shaw And His Orchestra recordings. During this period he also did soundtracks and though received no credit, played trumpet for the film From Here To Eternity, and worked with musicians associated with West Coast cool jazz in the 1950s.
A versatile player who could play in almost any setting, including first trumpet in an orchestra, classical and pop, appearing on several Dean Martin recordings during the 1960s, and played piccolo trumpet on Hugh Montenegro’s hit version of the main theme to the film, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
Regarded as one of the most proficient players of his, or any generation, he possessed an uncanny ability to mimic the styles of many other prominent trumpeters, namely Bunny Berigan and Ziggy Elman. Trumpeter Manny Klein, most associated with swing, passed away at the age of 86 in Los Angeles, California on May 31, 1994.
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Hot Lips Page was born Oran Thaddeus Page on January 27, 1908 in Dallas, Texas. His main trumpet influence was Louis Armstrong as well as early influence from Harry Smith and Benno Kennedy. In his early teens he moved to Corsicana, Texas and traveled across the Southwest and toured as far East as Atlanta and north to New York City. He played in circuses and minstrel shows and backed blues singers Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith and Ida Cox.
In 1926 he caught the eye of the bassist Walter Page (no relation) who had recently assumed leadership of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils and by 1928 was playing and touring. In 1931 he left to join the Bennie Moten Orchestra in Kansas City.
Hot Lips went on to occasionally appear as vocalist, emcee and trumpet soloist with Count Basie’s Reno Club orchestra after Moten’s sudden death disbanded the group. It was during this period that Page embarked upon a solo career, playing with small pick up bands from Kansas City. At the behest of Armstrong’s manager Joe Glaser, he moved to New York City in 1936.
His career as a bandleader got off to an auspicious start in 1937 with sold-out appearances and an extended run at Harlem’s Smalls Paradise, but struggling by 1939 he was struggling to maintain a regular working band, he led small combos and bands on 52nd Street through the Fifties. Page was known as “Mr. After Hours” to his many friends for his ability to take on all comers in late night jam sessions, recorded for the Mezzrow-Bechet Septet in 1945, as Pappa Snow White, with Mezz Mezzrow, Sidney Bechet, Pops Foster, Chu Berry, Sid Catlett and vocalist Pleasant Joe.
Over the course of his short career Hot Lips made over 200 recordings, most as a leader, for Bluebird, Vocalion, Decca and Harmony Records, among others. He toured extensively throughout the southern and northeast states and Canada, led as many as thirteen different big bands, appeared with Bud Freeman and Artie Shaw, recording over 40 sides with the latter. His band backed the singer Wynonie Harris was the leader of the Apollo Theater, recorded duets with Pearl Bailey on The Hucklebuck and Baby It’s Cold Outside and twice toured Europe.
Known as Hot Lips to the public and Lips by fellow musicians, the bandleader and trumpeter heralded as one of the giants of the Swing Era and a founder of what became rhythm and blues, passed away due to mysterious circumstances in New York on November 5, 1954 at the age of 46.
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