Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marian McPartland was born Margaret Marian Turner on March 20, 1920 in Windsor, England. A musical prodigy from the time she could sit at a piano at age three, she pursued classical studies on piano and violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. However, much to the dismay of her family, she developed a love for American jazz and musicians such as Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson, and Mary Lou Williams among many others.
By 1938, despite her family’s efforts to keep her at Guildhall, Marian left to join Billy Mayerl’s Claviers, a four-piano vaudeville act, performing under the stage name of Marian Page. The group toured throughout Europe during WWII entertaining Allied troops where she met and performed with Jimmy McPartland, and later married, moving to the United States.
1944 saw the McPartlands in New York with Marian forming her own trio and enjoying an 8-year engagement at the Hickory House bringing drummer Joe Morello into the fold. After many years of recording for labels such as Capitol, Savoy, Argo, Sesac, Time, and Dot, in 1969 she founded her own record label, Halcyon Records, before having a long association with the Concord Jazz label.
Marian launched a weekly radio program that featured recordings and interviews with guests in 1964 on WBAI-FM in New York City. This series paved the way for the NPR program Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz that began on June 4, 1978 and is the longest-running cultural program on NPR as well as being one of the longest-running jazz programs ever produced on public radio.
A master at adapting to her guest’s musical styles and having a well-known affinity for beautiful and harmonically rich ballads, McPartland also has recorded many tunes of her own. Her compositions include “Ambiance”, “There’ll Be Other Times”, “With You In Mind”, “Twilight World”, and “In the Days of Our Love”.
Marian a participated in 60 years of jazz evolution, was awarded a Trustees’ Lifetime Achievement Award Grammy for her work as an educator, writer, and host of Piano Jazz, and was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2010. Pianist and composer Marian McPartland passed away on August 20, 2013 of natural causes at her home in Port Washington, New York. She was 95 years old.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Dugald McPartland was born on March 15, 1907 in Chicago, Illinois and due to family problems caused Jimmy and his siblings to be partly raised in orphanages. After being kicked out of one orphanage for fighting, he got in further trouble with the law. Fortunately, he had started violin at age 5, then took up the cornet at 15 and credits music with turning him around.
A member of the legendary Austin High Gang in the 920s, they would study and attempt duplication of recordings by The New Orleans Rhythm Kings and visit with Louis Armstrong and King Oliver’s Creole Jazz Band at Lincoln Gardens. After playing through high school, their first musical job was under the name The Blue Friars. In 1924, at age 17, McPartland was then called to New York to take Bix Beiderbecke’s place in the Wolverine Orchestra and who gave him a cornet he would play throughout his career.
From 1926 to the end of the decade, Jimmy worked with Art Kassel, the McKenzie-Condon Chicagoans, Ben Pollack and Benny Goodman, moonlighted in Broadway pit bands and played in a number of small combos. By the thirties he was back in Chicago working with his brother at the Three Deuces and working with other bands around the city. He spent time in South America, returned and led his own bands until drafted into WWII.
Upon his return McPartland worked with Willie “The Lion” Smith’s band that won a Grammy for the soundtrack to the 1954 film After Hours. He soon met and married Marian, encouraged her to form her own group and subsequently landed a long residency at the Hickory House. Jimmy went on to try his hand at acting resulting in a featured role in a Sal Mineo and Ralph Meeker episode “The Magic Horn” on The Alcoa Hour in 1956.
Over the course of his career James McPartland has played with Gene Krupa, Jack Teagarden, Eddie Condon, Pee Wee Russell, Bud Freeman, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Lil Armstrong and George “Pops” Foster to name a few while also guest starring with many bands and at festivals around the world. Although he and Marian divorced in 1970, they remained friends, worked together and remarried shortly before his death of lung cancer on March 13, 1991 in Port Washington, New York, two days shy of his 84th birthday.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Freddy Johnson was born on March 12, 1904 in New York City. He eventually gained fame and popularity in the 1930s as a swing pianist. He began playing professionally as accompanist to Florence Mills and then formed his own band in 1924. In 1925 he worked with Elmer Snowden and in 1926 he worked with Billy Fowler, then briefly with Henri Saparo and Noble Sissle before joining Sam Wooding’s band on a European tour in 1928.
Wooding and Johnson parted ways a year later and Johnson returned to Paris to do solo work. While in Paris, Freddy along with trumpeter Arthur Briggs and put together a band. Between late 1933 and 1934 Johnson worked with Freddy Taylor’s band, then left for work in Belgium and The Netherlands. In the mid 30’s he made some recordings with the Quintette du Hot Club de France.
While living in Amsterdam he co-lead a band with Lex Van Spall, and they played regularly at the Negro Palace in a trio with Coleman Hawkins. He later worked at the Negro Palace, then with Max Woiski at La Cubana, in Amsterdam where he was arrested by the Nazis and was remanded to a prison camp in Bavaria from 1942-44.
After returning to the States he worked with George James and Gavin Bushell in New York City but by the late 40s and early 50s he worked mostly as a piano and voice coach and also did some solo residencies at Well’s New York. Soon after a touring stint in Europe he became very ill with cancer, infirmed at a Copenhagen hospital in 1960, returned to New York and stayed in St. Barnabas Hospital until his death on March 24, 1961.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herschel “Tex” Evans was born March 9, 1909 in Denton, Texas but spent much of his childhood in Kansas City, Kansas learning to play alto saxophone. It was his trombone and guitar-playing cousin, Eddie Dunham who convince him to switch to the tenor, which ultimately established his reputation.
After perfecting his craft in the famous jam sessions held in the jazz district between 12th and 18th streets in Kansas City, Evans returned to Texas in the 1920s and joined the Troy Floyd orchestra in San Antonio in 1929. He stayed with the band until it dispersed in 1932. Evans performed for a time with Lionel Hampton and Buck Clayton in Los Angeles, and in the mid-1930s returned to Kansas City to become a featured soloist in Count Basie’s big band.
For the next three years Herschel’s reputation as a tenor saxophonist was at its peak. His musical duels with fellow band member Lester Young are considered jazz classics. Count Basie’s popular “One O’Clock Jump” featured the contrasting styles of the two musicians and brought to each the praise of both critics and the general public. Evans’s greatest single success was his featured solo on Basie’s hit “Blue and Sentimental”.
Evans also made records with such notable jazz figures as Harry James, Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton. Evans has been credited with influencing fellow tenorists Buddy Tate, Illinois Jacquet, and Arnett Cobb. Although not a prolific composer, Evans wrote a number of popular works including the hits “Texas Shuffle” and “Doggin’ Around”. On February 9, 1939, at the age of 29, he died of heart disease in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nathaniel Charles Gonella was born March 7, 1908 in East London, England and took up cornet as a child while at St. Mary’s Guardian School, an institution for underprivileged children. His first professional job interrupted his stint as a furrier’s apprentice when he joined Archie Pitt’s Busby Boy’s Band in 1924. He remained with the band until 1928, and it was during this period that he became acquainted with the early recordings of Louis Armstrong and the New Orleans jazz style.
Nat played and recorded with many prominent jazz musicians, including Billy Cotton, Archie Alexander, Digby Fairweather, Lew Stone, Bob Bryden and Roy Fox. His distinctive vocal style was reminiscent of his idol, Louis Armstrong, though his voice was often eclipsed by his achievements as a bandleader and trumpeter.
Gonella’s standing grew even more quickly after the formation of his own band, “The Georgians”, in 1935, taking the name from his highly popular recording of “Georgia On My Mind” in 1932. He later formed a big band and quickly became a headliner on the variety circuit.
Nat flirted briefly with bebop but returned to the variety stage until a revival of tradition jazz came in the late Fifties. His performing and recording success lasted until the advent of The Beatles in the Sixties, however he toured the northern club circuit and over the next thirty years he continued to sing occasionally with various bands until his death in Gosport on August 6, 1998 at age 90.
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