Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pee Wee Hunt was born Walter Gerhardt Hunt on May 10, 1907 in Mount Healthy, Ohio. Developing a musical interest at an early age, his mother played the banjo and his father played the violin. The teenager was a banjoist with a local band while he was attending college at Ohio State University where he majored in Electrical Engineering. During his college years, he switched from banjo to trombone. Graduating from the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music, he joined Jean Goldkette’s Orchestra in 1928.
Pee Wee was the co-founder and featured trombonist with the Casa Loma Orchestra, but he left the group in 1943 to work as a Hollywood radio disc jockey before joining the Merchant Marine near the end of World War II. He returned to the West Coast music scene in 1946 and his Twelfth Street Rag became a three million-selling number one hit in 1948.
Hunt was satirized as Pee Wee Runt and his All-Flea Dixieland Band in Tex Avery’s animated MGM cartoon Dixieland Droopy in 1954. His second major hit was Oh! in 1953, his second million-selling disc, which reached number three in the Billboard chart.
Trombonist Pee Wee Hunt passed away after a long illness at age 72, on June 22, 1979 in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Inge born May 7, 1906 in Kansas City, Missouri and played clarinet from age 12. By 18 he was playing with George Reynolds’s Orchestra, then in the 1920s worked with Dewey Jackson, Art Sims & His Creole Roof Orchestra, and Oscar Young.
In 1930, he became a member of McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, then was offered a spot in Don Redman’s band in 1931, where he played until 1939. From there he replaced Don Byas in Andy Kirk’s band, remaining with Kirk until 1943.
By the mid~1940s Inge became more in demand as an arranger, writing charts for Louis Armstrong, Redman, and Jimmie Lunceford among many others over the course of his career. He led his own band in Cleveland, Ohio in the middle of the 1940s, then worked out of Buffalo, New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
In the 1960s he played with Cecil Johnson, and in the 1970s with C.Q. Price. His recording credits include work with The Mills Brothers, Cab Calloway, and The Boswell Sisters. Clarinetist and arranger Edward Inge passed away on October 8, 1988.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Everett Barksdale, born April 28, 1910 in Detroit, Michigan, played bass and banjo before settling on guitar. During early 1930 he moved to Chicago, Illinois where he joined Erskine Tate’s band. He recorded for the first time with violinist Eddie South in 1931, who he remained with until 1939.
A move to New York City saw Everett become a member of the Benny Carter Big Band. Around that same time, he recorded with Sidney Bechet and during the 1940s, he worked for CBS as a session musician.
As a sideman, Barksdale played guitar in many genres, working with vocalists Dean Barlow, Maxine Sullivan, the Blenders, and the Clovers. He played on the hit Love Is Strange by Mickey & Sylvia, was the music director for the Ink Spots, and beginning in 1949, he worked with pianist Art Tatum until Tatum died in 1956.
During the Fifties and Sixties, he was part of the ABC house band and played on recordings with a who’s who list of vocalists and musicians not limited to Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Milt Hinton, Buddy Tate, Chet Baker, Red Allen, Harold Vick, Oscar Brown Jr., J. J. Johnson, Clark Terry, Kai Winding, Louis Armstrong, The Drifters and Ben E. King. He also played guitar in the studio for pop and soul musicians such as.
Guitarist and session musician Everett Barksdale retired from active performance in the 1970s, moved to the West Coast and passed away in Inglewood, California on January 29, 1986.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Reuben Bloom was born on April 24, 1902 in New York City, where he learned to play the piano. During the 1920s he wrote many novelty piano solos which are still well regarded today. He recorded for the Aeolian Company’s Duo-Art reproducing piano system various titles including his Spring Fever.
In 1927 Rube had his first hit with Soliloquy and his last hit was “Here’s to My Lady” in 1952, which he wrote with Johnny Mercer. In 1928, he made a number of records with Joe Venuti’s Blue Four for OKeh Records, including five songs he sang, as well as played piano.
He formed and led a number of bands during his career, most notably Rube Bloom and His Bayou Boys. They recorded three records in 1930 that are considered some of the best made during the early years of the Depression. The Bayou Boys was an all-star studio group consisting of Benny Goodman, Adrian Rollini, Tommy Dorsey and Mannie Klein. At other times, Bloom played with other bands, such as with Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer in the Sioux City Six as well as his continued frequent work with Joe Venuti’s Blue Four.
During his career, Rube also worked with many well-known performers, including Ruth Etting, Stan Kenton, Jimmy Dorsey. He collaborated with a wide number of lyricists including Ted Koehler, and Mitchell Parish. During his lifetime he published several books on the piano method.
Bloom’s I Can’t Face the Music with lyrics by Ted Koehler was recorded by Ella Fitzgerald on her 1962 Verve release, Rhythm is My Business, in a fabulous swing/big band version with Bill Doggett. Some of his best-known composition collaborations with lyricists were Day In, Day Out and Fools Rush In (Where Angels Fear to Tread) with lyrics by Johnny Mercer; Give Me the Simple Life with Harry Ruby; and Maybe You’ll Be There with lyrics by Sammy Gallop.
Pianist, vocalist, songwriter, arranger, bandleader, recording artist, and author Rube Bloom passed away on March 30, 1976 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anthony C. Mottola was born on April 18, 1918 in Kearny, New Jersey. He started out learning to play the banjo, then took up the guitar and had his first guitar lessons from his father. In 1936 he toured with an orchestra led by George Hall, marking the beginning of his professional life.
His first recordings were duets with guitarist Carl Kress. In 1945 he collaborated with accordionist John Serry Sr. in a recording of Leone Jump for Sonora Records which was played in jukeboxes throughout the United States. Tony’s only charted single as a soloist was This Guy’s In Love With You, which reached No. 22 on the Billboard magazine Easy Listening Top 40 in the summer of 1968.
Mottola worked often on television, appearing as a regular on shows hosted by vocalist Perry Como and comedian Sid Caesar and as music director for the 1950s series Danger. From 1958–1972, he was a member of The Tonight Show Orchestra led by Skitch Henderson.
He composed music for the TV documentary Two Childhoods, which was about Vice President Hubert Humphrey and writer James Baldwin, and won an Emmy Award for his work. In 1980, Mottola began performing with Frank Sinatra, often in duets, appearing at Carnegie Hall and the White House. He retired from the music business in 1988 but kept playing at home almost every day.
Guitarist Tony Mottola, who released dozens of albums as a leader, passed away in Denville, New Jersey on August 9, 2004.
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