Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sidney De Paris was born on May 30, 1905 in Crawfordsville, Indiana, the younger brother of trombonist Wilbur De Paris. A distinctive trumpeter who fit into both New Orleans jazz and swing settings, he was particularly expert with mutes. He was also a versatile musician, playing tuba, cornet, flugelhorn and singing from time to time.
From 1926 on into the Sixties, Sidney worked with Charlie Johnson’s Paradise Ten, Don Redman, Zutty Singleton, Benny Carter, Art Hodes, Jelly Roll Morton and Sidney Bechet. He recorded on the famed Panassie sessions of 1938 and as a leader recorded some highly enjoyable and freewheeling sessions in the Forties for Commodore and Blue Note.
He played with his brother Wilbur’s New New Orleans Jazz Band through the ’50s before ill health forced his retirement in the 1960s. Trumpeter Sidney De Paris passed away on September 13, 1967 in New York City.
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George Auld was born John Altwerger on May 19, 1919 in Toronto, Canada but lived in the U.S. from the late 1920s. He was most noteworthy for his tenor saxophone work Bunny Berigan, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Erroll Garner, Dizzy Gillespie, Al Porcino, Billy Eckstine, Tiny Kahn, Frank Rosolino and many others.
Primarily a swing saxophonist, he did many big band stints in his career, and led several big bands, including Georgie Auld and His Orchestra and Georgie Auld and His Hollywood All Stars. Auld also played some rock´n roll working for Alan Freed in 1959.
George can be heard playing sax on the 1968 Ella Fitzgerald album “30 by Ella” and in 1977 he played a bandleader in “New York, New York” starring Liza Minelli and Robert DeNiro and also acted as a technical consultant for the film. The tenor saxophonist, clarinetist and bandleader George Auld died in Palm Springs, California at the age of 71 on January 8, 1990.
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Jack Jenney was born Truman Eliot Jenney May 12, 1910 in Mason City, Iowa and started playing in his father’s band from the age of 11. The trombonist’s first professional work began with Austin Wylie in 1928 but he would go on to work with Isham James, Red Norvo, Artie Shaw, Mal Hallett and Waring’s Pennsylvanians.
Jack led his own band for a year in 1939-40, which included Peanuts Hucko, Paul Fredricks and Hugo Winterhalter. Although this band received good reviews it was a financial failure. Best known for instrumental versions of the song Stardust, he won the Down Beat Reader’s Poll for trombone in 1940 and would appear in the 1942 film “Syncopation”.
After his return from being drafted into the United States Navy, trombonist Jack Jenney died of complications related to appendicitis in Los Angeles, California on December 16, 1945.
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George Thomas Simon was born on May 9, 1912 in New York City into a wealthy and talented family, with his brother co-founding the publishing house Simon & Schuster and also his niece, singer Carly Simon. He began as a drummer and was an early drummer in Glenn Miller’s orchestra.
After graduating from Harvard University in 1934 he began working for the Metronome magazine the following year, then became editor-in-chief from 1939 to 1955and shifted it, from writing technical articles, to being a chronicler of the swing era. Simon was probably the most influential jazz commentator during the swing era and with his inside connections in the jazz world, he was able to report information about bands and their personnel with great accuracy.
Leaving Metronome he went to the Jazztone Society, consulted for the Timex Jazz Shows, wrote about jazz for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Post newspapers. He also did liner notes for a variety of jazz musicians including Thelonious Monk who was stylistically quite different from the swing-era musicians Simon championed.
In 1978, he won a Grammy Award for Best Album Notes, was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame and on February 13, 2001 after years of suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he died of pneumonia in New York City.
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John Aaron Lewis was born in LaGrange, Illinois on May 3, 1920 but was raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He learned classical music and piano from his mother starting at the age of seven, then continued his musical training at the University of New Mexico and also studied anthropology. He served in the Army stationed in France during World War II and during his three-year tour of duty he met and performed with Kenny Clarke. Together they formed a band and in the bop style, John composed and arranged.
After the war he went to New York where he found work in the 52nd Street clubs with Allen Eager, Hot Lips Page and others. This led to him joining dizzy Gillespie’s bop-style big band and further developing his skill as a composer and arranger while matriculating through the Manhattan School of Music. He soon returned to Europe on tour, remained a continued to write and study piano. By ’48 he was back in the States playing with Charlie Parker, Illinois Jacquet, Lester Young, Miles Davis and Ella Fitzgerald.
Lewis, vibraphonist Milt Jackson, drummer Kenny Clarke, and bassist Ray Brown had been the small group within the Gillespie big band that played their own short sets when the brass and reeds needed a break. This led to the foursome forming a full-time working group in 1950, known at first as the Milt Jackson Quartet. After replacing Brown with Percy Heath the name was changed to the Modern Jazz Quartet and assuming the role of musical director from 1954 to 1974, John oriented it toward a quiet, chamber style of music that found a balance between his gentle, almost mannered compositions and Jackson’s more elemental writing and playing.
Over a long and illustrious career, John directed the School of Jazz at the Music Inn, was musical director for the Monterey Jazz Festival from 1958 to 1982, taught at City College of New York and Harvard University, rejoined the re-formed MJQ, led his own sextet, founded the American Jazz Orchestra, participated in Re-Birth of the Cool, was involved in various Third Stream Projects all while continuing to teach, compose and perform.
John Lewis, conservative bop pianist, composer, arranger and musical director for the Modern Jazz Quartet passed away in New York City on March 29, 2001.
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