Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Benny Featherstone was born on July 30, 1912 in Brown’s Creek, Tasmania, Australia. His family moved to Melbourne, Australia around the time he was six where he attended Melbourne Grammar and played trombone with the school orchestra and its Footwarmers band between 1926 and 1927. He went on to play drums with Joe Watson and His Green Mill/Wentworth Hotel Orchestra for three years when he was 17. During those years he recorded with the Beachcombers.
Between 1931 and 1933 he worked with bands led by Maurice Guttridge, Les Raphael, Em Pettifer, Geoff Smith and the 3DB Radio Studio Band. Mid 1933 he went to Englandwhere he heard and met Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and had a short residency at the Silver Slipper Club. Returning home he joined Art Chapman’s New Embassy Band and led a group at Rex Cabaret. He joined Art Chapman’s New Embassy Band and led a group at Rex Cabaret.
In Sydney, Australia he led the Benny Featherstone Famous Band for a year residency at the Manhattan Club/Cabaret.that only lasted eight weeks when the club went bankrupt. He led the Commodore Cabaret Band, was a member of Art Chapman’s Orchestra at Wattle Palais, then reformed his band in 1935. Two years later he worked with popular dance, swing and show bands. He contributed to the legendary Fawker Park Kiosk Jam Sessions on weekends.
He led his own swing quartet, sextet, Six Stars of Swing, and the Dixielanders. Joining the merchant navy late in 1943 he played in American Servicemen’s clubs in Queensland and in Oakland, California. He disappeared from music in 1945 became a shipping clerk from 1958 to 1975 but played the occasional jam session.
Trumpeter Benny Featherstone became reclusive in his later years and died in Melbourne on April 6, 1977.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eduard “Eddie” Brunner was born on July 19, 1912 in Zürich, Switzerland. He learned to play clarinet, piano, and tenor and alto saxophone before beginning to perform professionally. In the early 1930s he worked with Rene Dumont, Jack and Louis de Vries, and Marek Weber.
By 1936 he moved to Paris, France and recorded under his own name as well as with Goldene Sieben and Louis Bacon. He returned to Switzerland once World War II broke out. Brunner joined Teddy Stauffer’s band, and in 1941 took over leadership of the group until 1947, when it dissolved.
He led a new six-piece ensemble in 1948, and recorded for radio and television broadcasts in the 1950s.
Reedist and bandleader Eddie Brunner died on July 18, 1960 in his city of birth.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sahib Shihab was born Edmund Gregory on June 23, 1925 in Savannah, Georgia. Schooled in New York from age 3, he first played alto saxophone professionally for Luther Henderson at 13. He studied at the Boston Conservatory, and played in and around New York with Art Blakey, Gigi Gryce, Benny Golson, Thelonious Monk, Oscar Pettiford, Dizzy Gillespie. He toured with the bands of Fletcher Henderson, Buddy Johnson, Roy Eldridge, Andy Kirk, Duke Ellington, Count Basie and the original 17 Messengers of Blakey.
During the late 1940s, Shihab played with Thelonious Monk, and on July 23, 1951 he recorded with Monk that was later issued on the album Genius of Modern Music: Volume 2. During the decade he recorded with Art Blakey, Kenny Dorham and Benny Golson. The invitation to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band saw his switch to baritone saxophone.
Between 1952 to 1955 he toured with Illinois Jacquet in Europe, as well as with Coleman Hawkins and Sarah Vaughn and toured with Dakota Stanton from 1956 to 1958. He was one of the musicians who showed up for the Art Kane photograph A Great Day In Harlem. Closing out the Fifteies he toured Europe with Quincy Jones, and subsequently settled in Scandinavia in 1960, married and raising a family. Shihab, disillusioned with racial politics in the United States, decided around this time to move to Europe.
As an educator he worked for Copenhagen Polytechnic and wrote scores for television, cinema and theatre. He composed and arranged for Swedish and Danish radio orchestras. He went on to perform with bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and together with pianist Kenny Drew, he ran a publishing firm and record company. Through the Sixties he joined the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band and remained a member of the band during its 12 years existence.
Returning to the United States in 1973 he toured with Quincy Jones and The Brothers Johnson. He returned to Copenhagen, Denmark three years later, where he produced albums for Metronome Records, along with Kenny Drew. The album is titled Brief Encounter, and features the voices of Debby Cameron and Richard Boone. At decade’s end he started a record company with Kenny Drew called Matrix and spent his remaining years between New York and Copenhagen, performed in partnership with Art Farmer and led his own jazz combo called Dues.
Hard bop baritone, alto, and soprano saxophonist and flautist, composer, arranger, producer and educator Sahib Shihab, who beginning of 1986 was a visiting artist at Rutgers University, died from cancer on October 24, 1989, in Nashville, Tennessee at age 64.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Thomas Jefferson was born on June 20, 1920 in Chicago, Illinois. He played drums and French horn while young before switching to trumpet and was strongly influenced by Louis Armstrong. His professional career began when he was 14 playing with Billie and De De Pierce.
He played with Papa Celestin’s orchestra in 1936, as well as with New Orleans jazz musicians Sidney Desvigne and Armand “Jump” Jackson. The 1950s saw him working with Johnny St. Cyr, Santo Pecora, and George Lewis. In 1966, Andrew Morgan recruited Jefferson to play lead trumpet for the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. Subsequently, Jefferson led a jazz band which performed at the New Orleans jazz club Maison Bourbon.
Thomas recorded sparingly as a leader; sessions include dates for Southland Records in the 1960s and Maison Bourbon Records in the 1970s. Jefferson had a cameo as a jazz musician in the 1975 film Hard Times.
Trumpeter Thomas Jefferson, who recorded six albums as a leader and played Dixieland, died in New Orleans, Louisiana on December 13, 1986.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alfred Viola was born on June 16, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in an Italian family. He learned to play the guitar and mandolin as a teenager. Enlisting in the Army during World War II and played in an Army jazz band from 1942 to 1945.
He started a trio with pianist Page Cavanaugh and bassist Lloyd Pratt. The band appeared in several films, including Romance on the High Seas with Doris Day, and played a few dates in 1946 and 1947 with Frank Sinatra. Viola continued to work with Sinatra regularly, accompanying him on several hundred studio recordings and concert dates between 1956 and 1980.
Viola was a session musician in Los Angeles, California performing in films and television. His mandolin playing can be heard on the soundtrack of The Godfather. Other credits include West Side Story and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? He continued playing jazz as well, with Bobby Troup, Ray Anthony, Harry James, Buddy Collette, Stan Kenton, Gerald Wilson and Terry Gibbs.
He worked as a session musician on over 500 albums, including releases by Natalie Cole, Neil Diamond, Marvin Gaye, Julie London, Steve Lawrence, Linda Ronstadt, Jimmy Witherspoon, Helen Humes, June Christy, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O’Day, Nelson Riddle, and Joe Williams.
Viola and Cavanaugh reunited in the 1980s with Phil Mallory and continued to play regularly in Los Angeles until the late 1990s.
Guitarist Al Viola, recorded ten albums as a leader, died of cancer on February 21, 2007 at the age of 87 in Los Angeles.
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