Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alfred Lion was born in Berlin, Germany on April 21, 1908. His fascination and lifelong pursuit of jazz began at age 16 when he witnessed a jazz concert with Sam Wooding’s Orchestra. In 1929 he migrated to the U.S., went back to Germany, and returned to New York in ’38 where he attended a Carnegie Hall concert that inspired him to start his record label, Blue Note in 1939.
The label debuted with Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis but their first hit was Sidney Bechet’s “Summertime”. By this time childhood friend Francis Wolff joined and sustained the label while Lion served in the Army. He recorded many of the biggest names in jazz throughout the 1940s, 50s, and 60s including but not limited to Grant Green, Dexter Gordon, John Coltrane, Tina Brooks, John Patton, Miles Davis, Eric Dolphy, Lou Donaldson, Andrew Hill, Cecil Taylor, Ike Quebec, and the list goes on and on.
Lion had recruited Ike Quebec as the label’s A&R man and at his insistence Lion began to explore more modern developments in jazz bringing in Thelonious Monk as the first modern jazz musician. What became known as the “hard bop” style would predominate in Blue Note’s output during the 1950s and 1960’s. Musicians like Art Blakey and Horace Silver, among others epitomized this style. Duke Pearson took over A&R duties after Quebec’s death in 1963 ensuring the label’s roster remained fresh as a whole. Three significant elements made Blue Note releases stand out: the work of recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder, the photographs of Francis Wolff and the cover designs principally by Reid Miles.
Suffering from heart problems for some years, Lion sold the Blue Note label and catalogue to Liberty Records and retired to Mexico in 1967. Towards the end of his life, the record producer respected by musicians for his straight dealing and for ‘hanging out’ in the jazz scene, gained the recognition he had often been denied. Alfred Lion passed away on February 2, 1987 in San Diego, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alex Hill was born on April 19, 1906 in Little Rock, Arkansas to a minister father and pianist mother who taught her child prodigy to play. Defying his father’s wishes the young pianist delved into secular music and while studying at Shorter College met Alphonse Trent and began arranging for him. After graduating in 1922 he worked with several territory bands including Fats Waller and Terence Holder.
From 1924 to 1926 Alex led his own ensemble, then played with Speed Webb, and in 1927 he spent time with Mutt Carey’s Jeffersonians and Paul Howard’s Quality Serenaders. Later that same year Hill relocated to Chicago and held a job as an arranger for the Melrose Music Publishing Company, while simultaneously arranging for the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra. He began recording as a leader and a sideman in 1928 and continued through 1934.
By 1930, prior to a move to New York City, Alex had played with Jimmy Wade, Jimmie Noone and Sammy Stewart. During his time in New York he arranged for Paul Whiteman, Benny Carter, Claude Hopkins, Andy Kirk, Eddie Condon and Duke Ellington among others. Additionally, he became staff arranger for the Mills Music Company. Reuniting with Fats Waller the two did a show together in New York called “Hello 1931”, and accompanied Adelaide Hall.
Hill again put together his own group in 1935, but after playing the Savoy Ballroom he disbanded the ensemble due to his battle with tuberculosis. Moving back to Little Rock, pianist and arranger Alex Hill passed away in February 1937 at the age of 30.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eurreal Wilford “Little Brother” Montgomery was born on April 18, 1906 in the sawmill town of Kentwood, Louisiana across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans where he spent much of his childhood. As a child he looked like his father, Harper Montgomery, and was called Little Brother Harper. The name evolved into Little Brother Montgomery, a nickname that stuck. He started playing piano at the age of 4, and by age 11 he was playing at various barrelhouses in Louisiana.
Montgomery, largely self-taught, was an important blues pianist with an original style; however, he was also quite versatile working in jazz bands including larger ensembles that used written arrangements. Although he did not read music, he learned band routines by ear and once through an arrangement he had it memorized. He was a singer with an immediately recognizable, rather affecting wobble: an oral historian as full of musical anecdotes as his musical influence and frequent visitor, Jelly Roll Morton.
Early on he played the Black lumber and turpentine camps in Louisiana and Mississippi, then with the bands of Clarence Desdunes and Buddy Petit. He first went to Chicago from 1928 to 1931, making his first recordings and from 1931 through 1938 he led a band in Jackson, Mississippi. By 1942 Montgomery moved back to Chicago, toured other cities and Europe with a repertoire alternating between blues and traditional jazz. During the ‘60s his fame grew and he continued to make many recordings, including on his own record label, FM Records.
Never straying too far from the blues Montgomery appeared at many blues and folk festivals during the following decade and was considered a living legend, a link to the early days of blues and New Orleans. Little Brother Montgomery passed away on September 6, 1985 in Champaign, Illinois.
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Daily Dose OF Jazz…
Red Norvo was born Kenneth Norville on March 31, 1908 in Beardstown, Illinois. It is said that he sold his pet pony to help pay for his first marimba. He began his career in 1925 in Chicago playing with a band called “The Collegians”, in 1925. He played with many other bands, including an all-marimba band on the vaudeville circuit along with the bands of Paul Whiteman, Benny Goodman, Charlie Barnet and Woody Herman.
By 1933 he had recorded two sessions for Brunswick under his own name including two of the earliest, most modern pieces of chamber jazz: Bix Beiderbecke’s “In A Mist” and his own “Dance of the Octopus”. For these he put aside the xylophone for the marimba yet outraged the label’s head that tore up his contract and threw him out, though the album remained in print throughout the 30s.
From 1934-35 Red recorded 8 modern swing sides for Columbia followed by 15 sides of Decca and their short-lived Champion label series in 1936. From there he formed a Swing Orchestra and recorded for ARC, Vocalion and Columbia featuring brilliant arrangements by Eddie Sauter and often vocals by Mildred Bailey.
In 1938, Red Norvo and His Orchestra reached number one with their recordings of “Please Be Kind” and “Says My Heart”. He went on to record with Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie in 1945, hit the West Coast in ’47, helped Charles Mingus rise to prominence in his trio, recorded for Savoy, recorded with Sinatra in Australia and released by Blue Note, appeared on the Dinah Shore Chevy Show and appeared in the movie Screaming Mimi as himself.
Red Norvo, helped to establish the xylophone, marimba and vibraphone as a viable jazz instrument continued to record and tour throughout his career until a stroke in the mid-1980s forced him into retirement. He died at a convalescent home on April 6, 1999 in Santa Monica, California at the age of 91.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Benjamin Francis Webster was born on March 27, 1909 in Kansas City, Missouri and learned to play piano and violin at an early age, before learning to play the saxophone, although he did return to the piano from time to time, even recording on the instrument occasionally. But it was Budd Johnson who showed him some basics on the saxophone. Webster began to play that instrument in the Young Family Band that at the time included Lester Young.
Kansas City at this point was a melting pot from which emerged some of the biggest names in 1930s jazz and Webster spent time with the Andy Kirk orchestra, joined Bennie Moten’s legendary 1932 band that included Count Basie, Oran Page and Walter Page, Fletcher Henderson’s Orchestra, then Benny Carter, Willie Bryant, Cab Calloway and the Teddy Wilson orchestras.
Also known as “The Brute” or “Frog”, Ben was an influential jazz tenor saxophonist who had a tough, raspy, and brutal tone on stomps (with his own distinctive growls), yet on ballads he played with warmth and sentiment. Stylistically he was indebted to alto star Johnny Hodges, who, he said, taught him to play his instrument.
By the mid thirties he was playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra as the featured tenor on recordings of Cotton Tail and All Too Soon. His contribution to the band, along with bassist Jimmy Blanton, was so important that Ellington’s orchestra during that period is known as the Blanton-Webster band.
After Ellington in 1943, Webster worked on 52nd Street in New York City; recorded frequently as both a leader and a sideman. He worked with jazz giants Jay McShann, Oscar Peterson, Sid Catlett, Herb Ellis, Coleman Hawkins, Ray Brown, Alvin Stoller and Art Tatum, to name a few.
Webster generally worked steadily but in 1964 he moved permanently to join other American jazz musicians in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he played when he pleased during his last decade. In 1971 Webster reunited with Duke Ellington Big Band and he recorded “live” in France with Earl Hines.
Tenorist Ben Webster died in Amsterdam, The Netherlands on September 20, 1973. He remained rooted in the blues and swing-era ballads but he could swing with the best.
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