Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carl Kress was born on October 20, 1907 in Newark, New Jersey and started on piano before picking up the banjo. Beginning in 1926, he played guitar during his brief time as a member of the Paul Whiteman orchestra. For most of his career, he was a studio musician and sideman buried in large orchestras, and his name was little known.
During the 1920s and 1930s Carl worked recording sessions with The Boswell Sisters, The Dorsey Brothers, Bix Beiderbecke, Hoagy Carmichael, Miff Mole, Red Nichols, Adrian Rollini, and Frankie Trumbauer.
Outside of orchestras, Kress played in several guitar duets with Eddie Lang and Dick McDonough in the Thirties, Tony Mottola in 1941, and George Barnes in the Sixties. The late Thirties saw him recording as a solo with Peg Leg Shuffle, Helena, Love Song, Sutton Mutton and Afterthoughts. During the 1940s, he played Dixieland jazz with Bobby Hackett, Pee Wee Russell, and Muggsy Spanier.
Moving to New York City with his wife Helen who sang with the Satisifiers, Perry Como, Frank Sinatra and Jo Stafford. Guitarist Carl Kress continued a career as a bandleader and session player until his passing away of a heart attack on June 10, 1967 while he was on tour in Reno, Nevada.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul Evans was born on October 18, 1904 in Lawrence, Kansas. Picking up the nickname Stump, originated in his petite size, he was largely taught music by his father, an alto horn player named Clarence Evans. He started out on the same instrument, stretching into trombone for a position in the Lawrence High School Band.
Switching back to alto saxophone not too far into his professional career, he soon became known as one of the better baritone sax players on the scene. He had a reputation for brandishing the full array of saxophones through his many band jobs, even playing the justifiably obscure C-Melody saxophone.
A move to Chicago saw him gigging with a variety of groups including King Oliver’s Original Creole Orchestra, Jelly Roll Morton, Kid Ory and Erskine Tate. He had to quit the latter band due to tuberculosis. Saxophonist Stump Evans passed away from tuberculosis at age 24 on August 29, 1928 in Douglas County, Kansas.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Herman Chittison was born on October 15, 1908 in Flemingsburg, Kentucky. Known as Ivory in the jazz world he began his career in Zack Whyte’s territory band in Ohio in 1928. In the early Thirties he moved to New York City and found work as an accompanist to Ethel Waters, Adelaide Hall, and Clarence Williams. It was during these years that he visited Boston for the first time with a traveling show headlined by comic actor Stepin Fetchit.
In late 1933 he went to Europe with the Willie Lewis Orchestra and toured Europe and the following year he recorded with Louis Armstrong in Paris, France. Chittison and trumpeter Bill Coleman left Lewis in 1938 and formed a band that worked extensively in Cairo, Egypt and traveled as far east as India. The two musicians would later lead the Harlem Rhythm Makers.
By 1959 Ivory arrived in Boston for a stay of two years and took up residence as the house pianist at the Red Garter bar in the Lenox Hotel. He then moved to the Mayfair Lounge, in Bay Village. He was one of the earliest and most important ambassadors of American jazz in Europe.
Stride pianist, accompanist and virtuoso Herman Chittison, whose style and technique were very similar to Art Tatum, passed away on March 8, 1967 in Cleveland, Ohio.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Teddy Weatherford was born on October 11, 1903 in Pocahontas, Virginia and was raised in neighboring Bluefield, West Virginia where he learned to play the piano. But it was while living in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1915 through 1920, that he learned to play jazz piano.
Moving to Chicago, Illinois he worked with the bands of Erskine Tate through the 1920s and with such jazz notables as Louis Armstrong and Johnny Dodds and impressed the young Earl Hines. Restless to experience the world, Weatherford then traveled, first to Amsterdam and then around Asia playing professionally. In the early 1930s, he led a band at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay, now Mumbai, India. He joined Crickett Smith’s band in Jakarta, Indonesia and took over leadership of Smith’s band in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in 1937.
During World War II, Teddy led a band in Calcutta, where he made radio broadcasts for the U. S. Armed Forces Radio Service. Performers with in his band included Bridget Althea Moe, Jimmy Witherspoon, Roy Butler and Gery Scott.
Pianist and bandleader Teddy Weatherford, who was also an accomplished stride pianist, passed away of cholera in Calcutta, aged 41, on April 25, 1945.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karel Vlach, born in Prague, Czech Republic on October 8, 1911 and founded his first orchestra in 1938. Over the years many important composers, instrumentalists and arrangers of the Czech jazz scene went through his band.
From 1947 to 1948 Vlach’s orchestra performed at the V+W Theatre, recorded prolifically with Supraphon and his albums include both light classical, orchestral, jazz and pop arrangements for big band with strings.
During the decades from 1940to 1980 Karel arranged and conducted many Czech film scores, launched the singing careers of Czech artists Yvetta Simonová and Milan Chladil. He and his musical colleagues Dalibor Brazda and Gustav Brom also arranged and recorded many titles that are now a part of the Great American Songbook for British singer Gery Scott in the late 1950s.
Dance orchestra conductor and arranger Karel Vlach passed away on February 26, 1986 in Prague.