Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rusty Bryant was born Royal Gordon Bryant on November 25, 1929 in Huntington, West Virginia and grew up in Columbus, Ohio where he became a fixture of the local jazz scene.
He worked with Tiny Grimes and Stomp Gordon before founding his own ensemble, the Carolyn Club Band in 1951. Signing with Dot Records in 1954 Rusty released several albums as a leader in the second half of the 1950s. In 1953, his live recording All Nite Long which was a faster version of Night Train, became a hit R&B single in the U.S.
With his Dot contract ending in 1957 he returned to Columbus to do mostly local engagements, playing often with pianist-organist Hank Marr and a young Nancy Wilson also sang in his group. It was not until his appearance on the 1968 Groove Holmes album That Healin’ Feelin’ that he resurfaced beyond regional acclaim, and soon after he began leading dates for Prestige Records.
Bryant recorded extensively for the label from 1969 through the middle of the 1970s, being a sideman with Ivan “Boogaloo Joe” Jones, Johnny “Hammond” Smith, Charles Kynard, and Sonny Phillips. His 1970 release Soul Liberation was his most commercially successful, reaching No. 35 on the U.S. Black Albums chart and No. 15 on the Top Jazz Albums chart.
Tenor and alto saxophonist Rusty Bryant, who recorded into the early 1980s before returning to Columbus and played mostly local dates, died on March 25, 1991.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pat Patrick was born Laurdine Kenneth Patrick Jr. on November 23, 1929 in East Moline, Illinois, to Laverne and Laurdine Kenneth Patrick. He first learned piano, drums, and trumpet as a child, and then switched to saxophones. He attended and studied music at DuSable High School in Chicago, Illinois where he met fellow students and future musicians bassist Richard Davis and saxophonists John Gilmore and Clifford Jordan. While still in school he was baritone saxophonist for the Regal Theater’s house band.
1949 saw Pat enrolled at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, but soon returned to Chicago to study at Wilson Junior College. Around 1950 he first played in one of Sun Ra’s bands as part of a trio and occasionally in Sun Ra’s Arkestra. By 1954 he became a regular member of the band. He moved to New York City in 1961, spent several years in the Arkestra’s communal residences in the East Village and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He went on to play and record with John Coltrane, Blue Mitchell, Mongo Santamaría, Thelonious Monk, and Babatunde Olatunji. In 1972, Patrick co-founded the Baritone Saxophone Retinue, which featured Charles Davis and recorded two albums for Saturn Records.
He toured Europe with Sun Ra in 1970 and 1976, and was part of some other Arkestra performances in that decade, but he also devoted time to teaching at the State University of New York at Old Westbury.>
Baritone and alto saxophonist, bassist, flutist, percussionist and composer Pat Patrick, who is known for his 40-year association with Sun Ra, died from leukemia in Moline on December 31, 1991.
More Posts: bandleader,bass,composer,flute,history,instrumental,jazz,music,percussion,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Silva was born on November 12, 1925 in New York City, New York. After World War II he worked with Hot Lips Page, Milt Buckner Trio, the Robert Mavounzy Quintette and others. For a decade beginning in 1958 he was a member of Sammy Davis Jr.’s band.
In 1971 he settled in Paris, France where he recorded two albums with Ralph Sutton. Drummer Michael Silva died on March 8, 1990.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Toshiyuki Miyama was born on October 31, 1921 in Chiba, Japan. He played in a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force band during World War II. After the war, he joined the Lucky Puppy Orchestra.
From 1950 he led his own ensemble, Jive Ace, however, eight years later the group expanded to big-band size and changed its name to the New Herd. The ensemble’s arranger was Kozaburo Yamaki.
New Herd recorded with Charles Mingus in 1971 and toured worldwide throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Miyama led the ensemble for more than fifty years, continuing to perform into the 2000s.
Clarinetist and bandleader Toshiyuki Miyama died on May 24, 2016 at 94 years.
More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Henry Basil Mayer was born on October 28, 1930 in Calcutta, Bengal, British India, to an Anglo-Indian father and Tamil mother. After studying with Phillipe Sandre in Calcutta and Melhi Mehta in Bombay, he won a scholarship to London’s Royal Academy of Music in 1952, where he studied composition with Matyas Seiber, as well as comparative music and religion in eastern and western cultures.
He worked for five years as a violinist with the London Philharmonic Orchestra beginning in 1953 and then with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra from 1958 to 1965. During that period John was also composing fusions of Hindustani classical and Western classical forms fused with jazz undertones. His Violin Sonata was performed by Yehudi Menuhin and his Shanta Quintet was recorded by jazz sitarist Diwan Motihar and Denis Preston’s Lansdowne String Quartet in 1967.
In the 1960s he worked extensively with the Jamaican-born jazz musician Joe Harriott, with whom he formed the group Indo-Jazz Fusions. John also composed for film, and the BBC quiz show Ask the Family. From 1989 onwards he taught composition at Birmingham Conservatoire where he introduced the BMus Indian music course in 1997. He continued to compose concert works for chamber, solo and orchestral projects and record jazz-fusion albums.
Composer and sitarist John Mayer, known primarily for his fusions of jazz with Indian music, was fatally injured when hit by a motorist in North London and died on March 9, 2004.
More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,sitar