Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Glenn Miller was born Alton Glenn Miller on March 1, 1904 on a farm in Clarinda, Iowa. Though his early musical schooling was in Nebraska by 1915 his education continued in Missouri. Working to save money by milking cows, he bought his first trombone and played in the town orchestra. By high school his interest turned towards a new style of music called “dance band” and led a band with classmates. His unsuccessful foray into college caused him to concentrate on becoming a professional musician.
The mid-twenties saw Glenn touring with several bands including Red Nichols in Broadway show pits performing with band mates were Benny Goodman and Gene Krupa. In 1929 he was part of the band backing a recording of “If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight” featuring Pee Wee Russell, Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa and Coleman Hawkins.
He went on to work with the Dorsey brothers and British bandleader Ray Noble, then transitioning into motion pictures for Paramount and 20th Century with such stars as Bing Crosby, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Ethel Merman, Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, Dorothy Dandridge and the Nicholas Brothers.
From 1938 to 1942 Miller amassed great fame with his songs “Tuxedo Junction”, “Moonlight Serenade”, “Little Brown Jug” and “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” breaking all sales and chart records. In 1942 Glenn joined the war effort joining first the Army and then the Army Air Force forming marching bands and orchestras and performing for soldiers. Sadly, on a flight from England to Paris on December 15, 1944, Glenn Miller’s plane went missing over the English Channel. His body was never recovered.
The jazz musician, arranger, composer and swing era bandleader was posthumously issued a postage stamp, three songs are in the Grammy Hall of Fame and in 2003 he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Claude “Fiddler” Williams, born on February 22, 1908 in Muskogee, Oklahoma, by the age of 10 had learned to play guitar, mandolin, banjo and cello and was inspired to learn the violin after hearing Joe Venuti play. He played around Oklahoma with bassist Oscar Pettiford and by 1927 had his first professional gig with Terence Holder’s territory band that soon became known as the Clouds of Joy led by Andy Kirk after Holder’s ouster.
Claude enjoyed a great deal of success due to the performing and composing talents of Mary Lou Williams. Their short-lived relationship ended due to health issues but during the thirties he worked with Alphonse Trent, George E. Lee, Chick Stevens, Nat King Cole and his brother Eddie.
In 1936 Claude became the first guitarist to record with Count Basie and throughout the 30’s and 40’s worked Chicago, Cleveland and Flint with the Four Shades of Rhythm. Throughout the 50’s he worked with Jay McShann, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson and Hank Jones.
Settling in Kansas City in 1953 he spent most of the next 20 years leading his own groups. By the 70’s a gig with McShann led to his first recordings in three decades and his second career was born. Over the next two decades he toured with McShann, worked as a feature soloist at jazz festivals, Parisian musical Black & Blue, a New York date with Roland Hanna and Grady Tate, played Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, and President Bill Clinton’s first inauguration. In 1997 Williams was the first inductee of the Oklahoma Jazz Hall Of Fame.
Claude “Fiddler” Williams, the venerable elder statesman of jazz, who outlasted virtually all his contemporaries and achieved his greatest successes at an advanced age and was the last surviving jazz musician to be recorded before 1930, passed away at the age of 96 of pneumonia in Kansas City on April 26, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cleveland, Ohio was the birthplace of Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron on February 21, 1917. Tadd as he was known in the jazz world became the definitive arranger/composer of the bop era writing such standards as “Good Bait,” “Our Delight,” “Hot House,” “Lady Bird,” and “If You Could See Me Now.” Not only did he write melody lines, he also wrote full arrangements. Though he never financially prospered, Dameron was an influential force from the mid-’40s till his death.
Dameron started out in the swing era touring with the Zack Whyte and Blanche Calloway bands, he wrote for Vido Musso in New York and most importantly, contributed arrangements for Harlan Leonard’s Kansas City Orchestra, some of which were recorded.
Soon he was writing charts for such bands as Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, Billy Eckstine, and Dizzy Gillespie (1945-1947) in addition to Sarah Vaughan. Always very modest about his own piano playing but he did gig with Babs Gonzales’ Three Bips & a Bop in 1947 and led a sextet featuring Fats Navarro at the Royal Roost during 1948-1949.
Dameron co-led a group with Davis at the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival, stayed in Europe for a few months (writing for Ted Heath), and then returned to New York. He wrote for Artie Shaw’s last orchestra that year, played and arranged R&B for Bull Moose Jackson (1951-1952) and in ‘53 led a nonet featuring Clifford Brown and Philly Joe Jones.
He also led bands that included Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Wardell Gray. Drug problems, however, started to get in the way of his music. After recording a couple of albums including 1958’s Mating Call with John Coltrane, drug addiction caused him to spend much of 1959-1961 in jail. After he was released, Dameron wrote for Sonny Stitt, Blue Mitchell, Milt Jackson, Benny Goodman, suffered several heart attacks and diagnosed with cancer from which he would eventually succumb to on March 8, 1965 in New York City.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Irving Gordon was born in Brooklyn, New York on February 14, 1915 and as a child, studied violin. After attending public schools in New York City, he went to work in the Catskill Mountains at some of the resort hotels in the area. While working the resorts, he took to writing parody lyrics to some of the popular songs of the day. He has been credited with writing “Who’s On First” made famous by Abbott and Costello, according to his son William.
In the 1930s, he took a job with the music-publishing firm headed by talent agent Irving Mills, at first writing only lyrics but subsequently writing music as well. Together they wrote two songs for Duke Ellington, Please Forgive Me and Prelude To A Kiss and co-wrote Blue Prelude with Ellington.
After writing Mister and Mississippi, a Patti Page hit, Irving decided he enjoyed puns on state names, and some years later wrote Delaware, a Perry Como hit. He also went on to write for Bing Crosby, Eddy Arnold and Billie Holiday. But he is perhaps best known for his song, “Unforgettable” recorded by Nat King Cole in 1951 and then three Grammys in 1992 by his daughter Natalie Cole, in which Gordon himself received a Grammy. Nat’s version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000.
In the 1940’s he moved to Los Angeles where he spent the rest of his life continually writing and composing and is noted for his contribution in music and lyrics of the Americana genre. Songwriter Irving Gordon passed away in his home of cancer on December 1, 1996.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul Bascomb was born into a family with nine siblings on February 12, 1912 in Birmingham Alabama. From an early age he felt the urge to create music and by his late teens he was an accomplished clarinetist and tenor saxophonist. Attending Alabama State Teacher’s College he was a founding member of the Bama State Collegians, a respected regional swing band that stayed together from the mid-thirties on assuming leadership under Erskine Hawkins. Paul was a part of this band till the mid 40’s, save a stint with Count Basie’s band from 38-39. During this period he co-wrote the tune Tuxedo Junction with Hawkins but by 1945 left the band a co-led small combos with his brother Dud.
1946 saw Bascomb in New York recording with a small combo for Alert records. A year later he moved to the Jersey based Manor label recording a series of sides for them, went to the London label and recorded Pink Cadillac and in ’48 did a session with The Riffs who eventually became famous with King Pleasure.
In 1950 Paul relocated to the Midwest and began a long association with the Chicago and Detroit nightclubs where owners were allowing black and white musicians to play together. By 1952 he started recording extensively with United Records and later for Mercury as he ventured into the R&B world.
By the late fifties he demand changed and took a job with the city of Chicago. He returned to music in the late 70s, was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1979, and played well into the 80s for well receiving European audiences. It was the last hurrah for tenor saxophonist Paul Bascomb, who passed away at 74 years old on December 2, 1986.
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