Daily Dose Of jazz…
Joe Bushkin was born on November 7, 1916 in New York City and began his career playing trumpet and piano with New York City dance bands. He acquired a lot of experience performing with Frank LaMare’s Band at the Roseland Ballroom in Brooklyn, New York.
In 1935 he joined Bunny Berigan’s band, played with Eddie Condon from 1936 to 1937, and with Max Kaminsky and Joe Marsala, before rejoining Berigan in 1938. He then left to join Muggsy Spanier’s Ragtime Band in 1939. From the late Thirties through to the late 1940s he also recorded with Eddie Condon as well as performing on radio and television. After his World War II service he worked with Louis Armstrong, Bud Freeman and Benny Goodman.
Best-known for his composition Oh! Look at Me Now with John DeVries, composed when he was working in Tommy Dorsey’s band. The song would become Frank Sinatra’s first hit. In his 60s, Bushkin’s semi-retirement was ended by an offer from Bing Crosby for them to tour together in 1976 and 1977. He also appeared on Crosby’s 1975 Christmas TV special with Fred Astaire, performed in a concert series at New York’s St. Regis Hotel in 1984 that celebrated his 50 years in show business.
Pianist Joe Bushkin passed away in Santa Barbara, California on November 3, 2004, three days shy of his 88th birthday, which he had dreamed of celebrating the 88 piano keys.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hadda Brooks was born Hattie L. Hapgood on October 29, 1916 in Los Angeles, California. Raised in the Boyle Heights area by her parents who had migrated from the South her mother, Goldie Wright, was a doctor and her father, John Hapgood, a deputy sheriff, but it was her grandfather, who introduced her to theater and the operatic voices of Amelita Galli-Curci and Enrico Caruso. In her youth she formally studied classical music with an Italian piano instructor, Florence Bruni, with whom she trained for twenty years.
She attended the University of Chicago, later returned to Los Angeles, becoming to love the subtle comedy of black theater and vaudeville entertainer and singer Bert Williams. She began playing piano professionally in the early 1940s at a tap-dance studio owned by Hollywood choreographer and dancer Willie Covan. For ten dollars a week, she played the popular tunes of the day while Covan worked with such stars as Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, and Shirley Temple.
Preferring ballads to boogie-woogie, Brooks worked up her style by listening to Albert Ammons, Pete Johnson, and Meade Lux Lewis records. Her first recording, the pounding Swingin’ the Boogie, for Jules Bihari’s Modern Records, was a regional hit in 1945, and her most famous song Out of the Blue, the title track to the film of the same name she appeared in on the recommendation of Benny Goodman.
She went on to begin singing with the encouragement Charlie Barnet, and recorded her first vocal recording You Won’t Let Me Go, played the small part of a lounge piano player in films, and was the second Black woman to host her own television show in 1957 with The Hadda Brooks Show after The Hazel Scott Show on DuMont in 1950. She toured Europe, Australia
In the 1970s, she commuted to Europe for performances in nightclubs and festivals, but performed rarely in the United States, living for many years in Australia and Hawaii. Retiring from music for sixteen years, she resurfaced to open Perino’s in Los Angeles and clubs in San Francisco and New York City as well as resuming her recording career. She continued appearing in films throughout the rest of her career, received the Pioneer Award from the Smithsonian and the Los Angeles Music Awards honored her with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Pianist, vocalist and composer Hadda Brooks, who got her name from Jules Bihari, passed away Los Angeles, following open-heart surgery at age 86 on November 21, 2002.
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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