Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Earl “Fatha” Hines was born Earl Kenneth Hines on December 28, 1903 in Duquesne, Pennsylvania. The youngster took classical piano lessons and by eleven was playing organ in his local Baptist church. Having a “good ear and a good memory” he could re-play songs and numbers he heard in theaters and park concerts. At 17, with his father’s approval, Hines moved away from home to take a job playing piano in a Pittsburgh nightclub with baritone Lois Deppe & his Symphonian Serenaders. He would accompany Deppe on his concert trips to New York and record his first four sides for Gennett Records in 1923 that included Hines’ composition Congaine.
In 1925 Hines moved to Chicago, Illinois, then the world’s “jazz” capital, home to Jelly Roll Morton and King Oliver. He started in The Elite no. 2 Club but soon joined Carroll Dickerson’s band, touring with him on the Pantages Theatre Circuit to Los Angeles. He met Louis Armstrong in the poolroom at Chicago’s Musicians’ Union and becoming good friends played together Louis was astounded by Hines’s avant-garde “trumpet-style” piano playing. They played together in Dickerson’s band, Louis’ Hot Five and The Unholy Three.
Hines joined clarinetist Jimmy Noone, recorded his first piano solos for QRS Records in 1928, then for Okeh in Chicago. In Chicago he lead his own big band at the Capone controlled Grand Terrace Café, working continuously through the Great Depression. He influenced or taught Nat “King” Cole, Jay McShann and Art Tatum. Fatha brought along in his band Dizzy Gillespie, Budd Johnson, Ray Nance, Trummy Young, Harry “Pee Wee” Jackson, Charlie Parker, Scoops Carry, Teddy Wilson, Omer Simeon and Nat “King” Cole, along with vocalists Sarah Vaughan and Billy Eckstine among others.
He laid the seeds for bebop bringing modern players like Gene Ammons, Benny Carter Wardell Gray, Bennie Green and shadow Wilson to name a few. Earl would hire and all-women group during WWII, fronted Duke Ellington’s band when he was ill, and had a serious head injury from a car crash that affected his eyesight for the rest of his life.
Earl “Fatha” Hines was one of the most influential figures in the development of modern jazz piano and according to one major source, is “one of a small number of pianists whose playing shaped the history of jazz”. To name a few would be an injustice to those unmentioned as his list of recordings with jazz notables runs endlessly.
Over the course of his career Earl joined up again with Armstrong in what became the hugely successful “Louis Armstrong and his All-Stars small-band”, he won Downbeat Magazine’s Hall of Fame “International Critics Poll” and elected him the world’s “No. 1 Jazz Pianist”, made a hour long documentary at Blues Alley in Washington, DC, played solo at the White House and for The Pope, and played and sang his last show in San Francisco a few days before he died in Oakland, California on August 22.1983. On his tombstone is the inscription: “Piano Man”.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Wilcox was born in Method, North Carolina on December 27, 1907. He studied at Fisk University, where he met Jimmie Lunceford and played with him in college bands and then professionally in the mid-1920s. In 1929 he became the main arranger for the ensemble, and remained so until Lunceford’s death in 1947.
Wilcox was named co-leader with Joe Thomas after Lunceford died, and became sole leader in January 1949, where he remained until the group disbanded early in the 1950s.
His 1952 recording of the Bennie Benjamin and George David Weiss composition “Wheel of Fortune” became a hit in the U.S., peaking at #14. Following this Wilcox played solo at the Cafe Riviera in New York City for nearly a decade.
He and Teddy McRae founded the Raecox record label in the 1950s that produced and released R&B music. He also worked as an executive for Riviera and Derby record labels. Working with jazz trombonist Big Chief Russell Moore shortly before his death, pianist and arranger Eddie Wilcox passed away on September 29, 1968.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pete Rugolo was born Pietro Rugolo in San Piero Patti, Sicily, Italy on December 25, 1915. His family emigrated to the U.S. in 1920 and settled in Santa Rosa, California. He began his career in music playing the baritone saxophone, like his father, but he quickly branched out into other instruments, notably the French horn and the piano. He received a bachelor’s degree from San Francisco State College and then went on to study composition at Mills College in Oakland, earning his master’s degree.
After graduation, he was hired as an arranger and composer by guitarist and bandleader Johnny Richards and spent World War II playing with altoist Paul Desmond in an army band. After WWII, Rugolo worked for Stan Kenton, providing arrangements and original compositions that drew on his knowledge of 20th century music, sometimes blurring the boundaries between jazz and classical music.
While Rugolo continued to work occasionally with Kenton in the 1950s, he spent more time creating arrangements for pop and jazz vocalists, most extensively with former Kenton singer June Christy and others like Ernestine Anderson, Harry Belafonte, Nat King Cole, Billy Eckstine, Peggy Lee, The Four Freshman, Mel Torme to name a few.
He would work on MGM film musicals, serve as A&R director for Mercury Records and produce a handful of self-titled albums. Pete’s scores for television and film on The Fugitive, Leave It To Beaver, Run For Your Life and Where The Boys Are often demanded that he suppress his highly original style. However, there are some striking examples of his work in both TV and film such as the soundtrack for his last movie, This World, Then the Fireworks demonstrates his gift for writing music that is both sophisticated and expressive. Pete Rugolo, jazz composer and arranger, died, aged 95, on October 16, 2011 in Sherman Oaks, California.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clark Terry was born on December 14, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri. After high school he started his professional career in the early 40s playing in local clubs, and then served as a bandsman in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He influenced both Quincy Jones and Miles Davis, teaching the later while in St. Louis.
Terry’s years with Basie and Ellington in the late 1940s and 1950s established him as a world-class jazz artist, blending the St. Louis tone with contemporary styles. After leaving Ellington, Clark’s international recognition soared when he became NBC’s first African-American staff musician. He a ten-year member of The Tonight Show band where his unique “mumbling” scat singing became famous when he scored a hit with “Mumbles.”
Terry continued to play with musicians such as J. J. Johnson and Oscar Peterson, and led a popular group with Bob Brookmeyer in the early 1960s. In the 1970s he concentrated on the flugelhorn, performed studio work and teaching at jazz workshops, toured regularly in the 1980s with small groups and performed as the leader of his Big B-A-D Band.
At the behest of Billy Taylor, early in his career he and Milt Hinton bought instruments and gave instruction to young hopefuls and the idea was planted the seed that became Jazz Mobile in Harlem. He toured with the Newport Jazz All Stars and Jazz at the Philharmonic, recorded for the Red Hot + Rhapsody and Red Hot + Indigo albums, composed more than two hundred songs, performed for seven U.S. Presidents, has been both leader and sideman on more than three hundred albums performing with Clifford Brown, Gary Burton, Charlie Byrd, Tadd Dameron, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Lionel Hampton, Paul Gonsalves and Milt Jackson among others, recorded with symphonies and orchestras and established the Clark Terry Archive at William Paterson University.
Swing and bop trumpeter, pioneer of the flugelhorn and educator Clark Terry has received over 250 awards, medals and honors including a NEA Jazz Masters Award, has received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, 16 honorary degrees, a knighthood, keys to several cities, the French Order of Arts and Letters and over the course of a seventy year career is the most recorded trumpet player of all time appearing on more than 900 known recording sessions.
Trumpeter, and flugelhorn player Clark Terry passed away from complications from advanced diabetes on February 21, 2015 at the age f 94 in Pine Bluffs, Arkansas.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Purvis was born John Purvis on December 11, 1906 in Kokomo, Indiana. After his mother’s death in 1912 his behavior became uncontrollable, and, as a result of many acts of petty larceny that would remain a part of his adult life, he was sent to a reform school. While there, he discovered that he had an uncanny musical ability, and soon became proficient enough to play both the trombone and trumpet professionally. This also enabled him to leave the reformatory and continue his high school education, while he was playing paying gigs on the side.
One of the earliest jobs he had as a musician was with a band led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and not long afterward he was working with the Hal Denman dance band. After high school he played with the Original Kentucky Night Hawks, then Bud Rice, Whitey Kaufman’s Original Pennsylvanians, Arnold Johnson’s orchestra, and then traveled to France with the George Carhart band. The balance of the decade he spent recording as a leader and sideman with several bands.
In 1930, Purvis led a couple of racially mixed recording sessions including the likes of J.C. Higginbotham and Adrian Rollini. He would work with the Dorsey Brothers, Fletcher Henderson, Fred Waring, Charlie Barnet and the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra. His move to California had him in radio broadcasting, working at Warner Studios and with the George Stoll Orchestra.
By the mid Thirties he was back in New York playing with Frank Froeba’s Swing Band but this engagement and subsequent recordings were the end of his recording career. He disappeared from the music world, ultimately being sent to jail in Texas for robbery. After his second conviction and release Purvis worked as a chef, aviator, carpenter, radio repairman and even a mercenary in South America.
One account of trumpeter Jack Purvis’ death is that he gassed himself in San Francisco, California on March 30, 1962. However, his death certificate indicates the cause of death to be fatty degeneration of the liver. He was best known as the composer of Dismal Dan and Down Georgia Way, also played trombone, harp and a number of other instruments, and was one of the earliest trumpeters to incorporate the innovations pioneered by Louis Armstrong.
