Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kamil Běhounek was born on March 29, 1916 in Blatná, Czech Republic and was an autodidact on accordion, having learned to play by imitating recordings and BBC broadcasts. While studying law in Prague he began performing in clubs and recorded his first solo accordion date in 1936. By the late 1930s, he was working with the Blue Music Orchestra, Rudolf Antonin Dvorsky, Jiří Traxler, and Karel Vlach.
In 1943, he was forcibly compelled by the Nazis to go to Berlin and make arrangements for the bands of Lutz Templin and Ernst van’t Hoff. Upon returning to Czechoslovakia in 1945, he used some of these arrangements for his own band, then returned to Germany the following year, where he continued arranging for bandleaders such as Adalbert Luczkowski, Willy Berking, Heinz Schönberger, and Werner Müller.
He played with his own ensemble, including in Bonn, Germany and after 1948 he performed in West Germany at American soldiers’ clubs. Between 1968 and 1977 he recorded several albums of folk music but continued to play swing with his own groups. He also wrote an autobiography, Má láska je jazz (Jazz is my Love), which was published posthumously in 1986.
Bohemian accordionist, bandleader, arranger, composer, and film scorer Kamil Běhounek, who occasionally played tenor saxophone, passed away on November 22, 1983 in Bonn, Germany.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Andy Raphael Thomas Hamilton, MBE was born March 26, 1918 in Port Maria, Jamaica, and learned to play saxophone on a bamboo instrument. He formed his first band in 1928 with friends who were influenced by American musicians such as Duke Ellington and Count Basie and by the Kingston-based bands of Redver Cook and Roy Coburn.
While in the U.S. he worked as a cook and farm laborer but also held short jazz residencies in Buffalo and Syracuse, New York. Returning to Jamaica, he worked as musical arranger for Errol Flynn at his hotel The Titchfield, and on his yacht the Zaka.
Hamilton emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1949 as a stowaway and eventually lived in Birmingham and worked in a factory, while at night he played jazz with his own group, the Blue Notes formed with fellow Jamaican pianist Sam Brown in 1953. He would go on to play local gigs, promote numerous Jamaican bands like Steel Pulse, and established a regular weekly venue in Bearwood, inviting visiting musicians such as Joe Newman, Al Casey, Teddy Edwards, Art Farmer, Harry Sweets Edison, and David Murray.
In 1988 EndBoards Production produced a documentary called Silver Shine about Andy Hamilton’s migration to the UK and the hurdles experienced in growing his music career, the changing musical taste of Windrush generation and their descendants. The documentary features Andy’s Band the Blue Notes with lead vocalist Ann Scott; his first youth band The Blue Pearls, Tony Sykes, Millicent Stephenson, his children Graeme and Mark.
Having recovered from a diabetic coma in 1986, he celebrated his 70th birthday in 1988 playing at his regular venue, The Bear, performed at the Soho Jazz Festival, and in 1991 at the age of 73, Hamilton made his first-ever recording with Nick Gold, Silvershine on World Circuit Records. It became the biggest selling UK Jazz Album of the Year, The Times Jazz Album of the Year, and one of the 50 Sony Recordings of the Year. It was followed two years later by Jamaica at Night, which led to Caribbean and European concerts and national tours. Playing regularly until his death, his 90th birthday concert featured Courtney Pine, Sonny Bradshaw, Myrna Hague, Lekan Babalola, Nana Tsiboe, son Mark and The Notebenders.
Saxophonist Andy Hamilton, appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours among other awards, continued to play, teach and promote music even as he approached his 94th birthday, passing away peacefully on June 3, 2012.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frankie Carle, born Francis Nunzio Carlone on March 25, 1903 in Providence, Rhode Island. The son of a factory worker who could not afford a piano, he practiced on a dummy keyboard devised by his uncle, pianist Nicholas Colangelo, until he found a broken-down instrument in a dance hall. By 1916, now a teenager, he began working with his uncle’s band as well as a number of local bands around the state. To overcome prejudice against Italians he changed his name to Carle.
In the Thirties, he started out working with a number of mainstream dance bands that included the Mal Hallett Orchestra, had his own orchestra and at one time was billed in an ad for a night club as America’s Greatest Pianist. Joining Horace Heidt and His Musical Knights in 1939, Frankie later became co-leader of the band. His popularity during his time with Heidt’s band allowed him to leave the band in 1944 and form his own band, The Frankie Carle Orchestra and his daughter, Marjorie Hughes, sang with his band. During World War II, with his orchestra, he recorded a couple of V-Disc in a program of the U.S. War Department that featured his new compositions Moonlight Whispers and Sunrise Serenade. Some eleven years later he disbanded, embarked on his solo career in 1955 and until the 1980s, maintained a close following of loyal fans.
He had early exposure on the radio as a pianist for The Four Belles, a singing group distributed by the World Broadcasting System. In the mid-1940s, he and singer Allan Jones starred in the Old Gold Show on CBS radio and was also featured on the shows Pot o’ Gold, Treasure Chest, and The Chesterfield Supper Club. Over the course of his career, he recorded some four-dozen albums, composed over two-dozen popular romantic dance melodies. Pianist and bandleader Frankie Carle, whose #1 hit Sunrise Serenade sold over a million copies, passed away on March 7, 2001.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Hayes was born Henry Richard Hayes in Marylebone in the West End of London, England on March 23, 1909, a bookmaker’s son. Winning a scholarship to his local grammar school, he was given a soprano saxophone by his father when he was 11 and by age 16, made his professional debut as an alto player at the Regent dance hall in Brighton. He was soon playing at London’s Kit Kat Club and the Piccadilly hotel. In 1927, he joined Elizalde at the Savoy, working alongside Americans like saxophonists Adrian Rollini, Fud Livingstone and Bobby Davis, trumpeter Chelsea Quealey, and pianist Jack Russin.
He became highly successful during the big band era of popular music that dominated by radio and bands playing London hotels and clubs. The late 1920s through the 30s, Hayes worked with musicians and bands such as Sydney Kyte at Ciro’s Club, pianist Billy Mason at the Cafe de Paris, Spike Hughes’s Orchestra at the Empress Rooms, Leslie “Hutch” Hutchinson, and Maurice Winnick at the Carlton, with Harry Roy at the Mayfair and with Sydney Lipton at the Grosvenor House. In 1932, he was featured in the band that accompanied Louis Armstrong’s first British tour.
Called up in 1940, Hayes served in the Welsh Guards band but continued to perform with others. After his discharge in 1944, he formed an eight-piece band, which went on to record sessions for HMV at Abbey Road featuring some of the best players of the day including Harry Roche, Norman Stenfalt, a young George Shearing and tenor saxophone Tommy Whittle. He played with Benny Carter, and appeared in a London Jazz At The Philharmonic concert with Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Lester Young.
By 1947, Hayes was playing Charlie Parker bebop, and opening his first music shop in Shaftesbury Avenue. He was also active as a music teacher. While working with Kenny Baker in the 1950s, he led his own band at various London nightspots. Retiring from regular playing in 1965, he continued to run his shops until 1985. He was granted the freedom of the City of London in 1988 nd his last performance was at the Birmingham international jazz festival in 1992. Saxophonist and shopkeeper Harry Hayes passed away at the age of 92 on March 17, 2002.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sonny Burke, born Joseph Francis Burke on March 22, 1914 in Scranton, Pennsylvania and in the Thirties attended Duke University where he formed and led the jazz big band called The Duke Ambassadors. Graduating in 1937, during the 1930s and 1940s, he was a big band arranger in New York City, working with Sam Donahue’s band.
In the 1940s and 1950s, he worked as an arranger for the Charlie Spivak and Jimmy Dorsey bands, among others. 1955 saw him writing, along with Peggy Lee, the songs to Disney’s Lady and the Tramp. He also wrote songs with John Elliot for Disney’s Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom, which won the 1953 Oscar for Best Short Animated Feature.
Burke wrote the music for number of popular songs that continue to be regarded as jazz standards including Black Coffee, with lyric by Paul Francis Webster, and Midnight Sun, co-written with jazz vibraphonist Lionel Hampton. An active arranger, conductor and A&R man at major Hollywood record labels, especially Decca Records, he worked with Charles “Bud” Dant. He also wrote and arranged the theme for the early 1960s television show Hennesey, a jazzy update of the Sailor’s Hornpipe.
Later Sonny went on to become musical director at Warner Bros./Reprise Records. He was responsible for many of Frank Sinatra’s albums and produced Sinatra’s iconic recording of My Way and Petula Clark’s classic This Is My Song written by Charles Chaplin for his movie A Countess From Hong Kong. He was also the bandleader for recordings of leading singers such as Dinah Shore, Bing Crosby, The Andrews Sisters, The Mills Brothers, Ella Fitzgerald, and Mel Tormé.
Arranger, composer, big band leader, and producer Sonny Burke passed away from cancer on May 31, 1980 in Santa Monica, California at the age of 66.
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