Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Al Belletto was born on January 3, 1928 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He graduated from Warren Easton Charter High School before entering Loyola University New Orleans studying music and then earning a master’s degree from Louisiana State University.

Belletto played with Sharkey Bonano, Louis Prima, Wingy Manone and the Dukes of Dixieland in the 1940s and 1950s. He went on to lead his own band and record several albums on Capitol Records from 1952. Along with his ensemble they became part of Woody Herman’s band for U. S. State Department tours of South America in 1958 and 1959.

In the Sixtiess, Al worked at the New Orleans Playboy Club fronting the house band and serving as Musical/Entertainment Director, booking nationally known acts into the venue.

Saxophonist and clarinetist Al Belletto, who recorded six albums as a leader, died on December 26, 2014 in Metairie, Louisiana.

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Jazz Poems

FOR MILES

Your sound is faultless

pure & round

holy

almost profound

Your sound is your sound

true & from within

a confession

soulful & lovely

Poet whose sound is played

lost or recorded

but heard

can you recall that 54 night at the Open Door

when you & bird

wailed five in the morning some wondrous

yet unimaginable score?

GREG CORSO | 1930~2001

Youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Jazz Poems

SOLOING

My mother tells me she dreamed

of John Coltrane, a young Trane

playing his music with such joy

and contained energy and rage

she could not hold back her tears.

And sitting awake now, her hands

crossed in her lap, the tears start

in her blind eyes. The TV set

behind her is gray, expressionless.

It is late, the neighbors quiet,

even the city–Los Angeles–quiet.

I have driven for hours down 99,

>over the Grapevine into heaven

to be here. I place my left hand

on her shoulder, and she smiles.

What a world, a mother and son

finding solace in California

just where we told it would

be, among the palm trees and all-

night super markets pushing orange

back-lighted oranges at 2 A.M.

“He was alone,” she says, and does

not say, just as I am, “soloing.”

What a world, a great man half

her age comes to my mother

in sleep to give her the gift

of song, which–shaking the tears

away–she passes on to me, for now

I can hear the music of the world

in the silence and that word:

soloing. What a world–when I

arrived the great bowl of mountains

was hidden in a cloud of exhaust,

the sea spread out like a carpet

of oil, the roses I had bought

from Fresno browned on the seat

beside me, and I could have

turned back and lost the music.

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bill McGuffie was born on December 11, 1927 in Carmyle near Glasgow, Scotland. After three years studying the piano he had an accident as a child which caused the loss of his second finger of his right hand, but despite the accident he started playing again and modified his technique. By the time he turned eleven he was awarded the Victoria Medal for his piano proficiency by the Victoria College, Glasgow.

Finding it difficult he decided to stop playing until friends and colleagues suggested playing dance music. Towards the end of World War II when he was 17, he moved to London and began a career in 1946 playing in the Teddy Foster Orchestra at the Lyceum.

Working with other top bands followed until 1952 when he got his big break when the BBC formed their own show band run by Cyril Stapleton. McGuffie was a featured artist with a big public following, which led to a recording contract and he was voted in top place in the Melody Maker readers’ poll from 1953 to 1955. This led to him appearing in the early Esquire jazz poll winners records and recorded with trumpeter Kenny Baker’s Dozen.

He made a limited number of records which were jazz tinged and a big band record. Bigger success came with his light music and his albums with strings. Noted for his great musicianship and his impeccable good taste, his jazz records with the Kenny Baker Dozen and one track from the Melody Maker’s All-Stars are available. He also recorded albums with no jazz content, and worked extensively with bandleader Joe Loss, where he was featured.

He won an Ivor Novello Award in 1960 for his composition Sweet September, a Song Writers’ Guild Badge of Merit, and the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors Gold Badge of Merit.

Pianist Bill McGuffie, who went on to be a film composer and conductor, and with the onset of cancer, died on March 22, 1987 at the age of 59.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz

George Robert Swope was born December 2, 1926 in Washington, D.C. By 1947 he was playing with Buddy Rich, recording with Jerry Wald, and followed with a two year stint with Chubby Jackson in 1948. He closed out the decade working with Gene Krupa in 1949-50, then with Elliot Lawrence in 1950-51.

He led his own trio in the D.C. area in the early Fifties, and also was a member of The Orchestra, the band which accompanied Charlie Parker in 1953 and Dizzy Gillespie in 1955. Spending time in New York City in the latter half of the decade, he played alongside Larry Sonn, Boyd Raeburn, Claude Thornhill, Jimmy Dorsey, and Louie Bellson.

In the 1960s he worked in Washington, D.C. often as a leader. On January 9, 1967 trombonist Rob Swope, the younger brother to trombonist Earl, died in his hometown.

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