Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born John Norman Mapp on March 31, 1928 and raised in Queens, New York. He started his music career as a singer with the U.S. Army band during World War II while stationed in Europe. Receiving his honorable discharge, he returned home to continue singing in New York City.
After an evening of performing, Dinah Washington went uptown to a Harlem night club to hear Norman sing at his debut. Impressed by his performance she adopted him as her protégé, encouraged him to continue singing and writing songs, and helped him start his career as a soloist and big-band musician.
As a composer, Mapp’s songs include Jazz Ain’t Nothin’ but Soul, I Worry ‘Bout You, Mr. Ugly, In the Night, Free Spirits, and Foul Play. His songs have been performed by Count Basie, Betty Carter, Marvin Gaye, Gigi Gryce, Peggy Lee, and Arthur Prysock.
Vocalist and composer Norman Mapp, who never regretted making music his career…because it brought him a wealth of experience, passed away in 1988.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Hughes was born William Henry Hughes in Dallas, Texas on March 28, 1930. His family moved to Washington, D.C., when he was nine years old where his father worked at the Bureau of Engraving and played trombone in the Elks Club marching band. He began learning to play the trombone around age twelve and was performing in Washington jazz venues by the age of sixteen. One of the clubs was the 7T Club, where he met and performed with saxophonist and flutist Frank Wess.
While students at Howard University, Hughes and Wess played in the Howard Swingmasters, along with bassist Eddie Jones. Though interested in music he originally wanted to pursue a career as a pharmacist and graduated from the University’s School of Pharmacy in 1952 and began working at the National Institutes of Health.
His career plans changed the following year when Wess, a member of the Count Basie Orchestra, suggested that Count Basie invite him to join the band. Also asked to join the Duke Ellington Orchestra, he declined and in 1953, he joined the Basie band where he already knew members Frank Wess, Eddie Jones, and Benny Powell. He played in a three-piece tenor trombone section with Powell and Henry Coker until 1957, when he decided to take a break from touring in order to help raise his family.
During this hiatus, Bill worked for the United States Postal Service and played trombone at the Howard Theater as well as with some small groups in Washington. A few years after returning to the band in 1963, he switched from the tenor to the bass trombone. In 2003 he took over leadership of the band following the death of Grover Mitchell. He retired from the band in 2010 and spent the last years of his life in Staten Island, New York with his wife and three children. On January 14, 2018 trombonist Bill Hughes passed away at the age of 87.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Barron, Jr. was born on March 27, 1927 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where he spent his formative years. Moving to New York City in 1958 and came to the jazz world’s attention when he first appeared on a Cecil Taylor recording in 1959, later recorded extensively with Philly Joe Jones, after which he co-led a fine post-bop quartet with Ted Curson.
His younger brother, pianist Kenny appeared on all of the sessions that the elder Barron led. Other musicians he recorded with included Charles Mingus and Ollie Shearer.
Barron spent much of the remainder of his career as an educator, directing a jazz workshop at the Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, teaching at City College of New York, and becoming the chairman of the music department at Wesleyan University.
His day job made it possible for him to consistently record non-commercial music for Savoy, recording that label’s last jazz record in 1972, and Dauntless and Muse. The Bill Barron Collection is housed at the Institute of Jazz Studies of the Rutgers University Libraries,
Tenor and soprano saxophonist William Barron Jr., who never compromised his music or received much recognition, passed away in Middletown, Connecticut on September 21, 1989.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Burns was born on March 24, 1924 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and began playing trumpet when he was nine years old. As a teenager, he heard bebop performances at Minton’s Playhouse, among others Dizzy Gillespie. His first ensemble was in Al Cooper’s Savoy Sultans, with whom he played from 1941 to 1943, prior to joining the Army Air Force. There he led a band from 1943 to 1945 that included James Moody as a sideman.
He joined Gillespie’s band in 1946 and appeared with Gillespie in Jivin’ in Bebop in 1947. After leaving Gillespie’s band in 1949, he worked with Duke Ellington from 1950 to 1952 and then with James Moody until 1957.
The late 1950s saw Dave playing shows in New York City and in the Sixties recorded for Vanguard Records. He worked with Billy Mitchell, Al Grey, Willie Bobo, Art Taylor, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Leo Parker, and Milt Jackson. From the 1970s through the end of his career he increased his work as an educator. Trumpeter, flugelhornist, arranger, composer, and teacher Dave Burns passed away on April 5, 2009 in Freeport, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lawrence Joseph Elgart was born in New London, Connecticut on March 20, 1922, four years younger than his brother, Les, and grew up in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey. Mother and father both played piano, the former being a concert pianist. He attended Pompton Lakes High School and began playing in jazz ensembles in their teens, and he played with jazz musicians such as Charlie Spivak, Woody Herman, Red Norvo, Freddie Slack and Tommy Dorsey.
In the mid-1940s, the brothers started up their own ensemble, hiring Nelson Riddle, Bill Finegan and Ralph Flanagan to arrange tunes for them. Their ensemble was not successful, and after a few years, they scuttled the band and sold the arrangements they had commissioned to Tommy Dorsey. Both returned to sideman positions in various orchestras.
By 1953, Larry met Charles Albertine and recorded two of his experimental compositions, Impressions of Outer Space and Music for Barefoot Ballerinas. Released on 10″ vinyl, these recordings became collectors’ items for fans of avant-garde jazz, though not commercially successful. Putting together a more traditional ensemble they, produced what came to be known as the Elgart Sound in their recordings. This configuration proved to be very commercially successful, and throughout the 1950s, Larry and Les enjoyed a run of successful albums and singles on the Columbia label. Their initial LP, “Sophisticated Swing,” released in late 1953, was credited to The Les Elgart Orchestra, because, according to Larry, Les was more interested than his brother in fronting the band.
In 1954, the Elgarts left their permanent mark on music history in recording Albertine’s Bandstand Boogie, for the legendary television show originally hosted by Bob Horn, and two years later, by Dick Clark. In 1956, Clark took the show from its local broadcast in Philadelphia, to ABC-TV for national distribution as American Bandstand. He remained host for another 32 years. Variations of the original song surfaced as the show’s theme in later years.
In 1955, the band became The Les and Larry Elgart Orchestra, but split up in 1959, subsequently releasing his own series of LPs. Larry signed with RCA Victor and his 1959 album, New Sounds At the Roosevelt, was nominated that year for a Grammy Award. From 1960-62, he released music on MGM Records. The brothers reunited in 1963, recorded several more albums and ended with 1967’s “Wonderful World of Today’s Hits,” after which they once again went their separate ways.
His biggest exposure came in 1982, with the smash success of a recording titled Hooked on Swing. The instrumental was a medley of swing jazz hits – In the Mood, Cherokee, Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree, American Patrol, Sing, Sing, Sing, Don’t Be That Way, Little Brown Jug, Opus #1, Take the A Train, Zing Went the Strings of My Heart and A String of Pearls. The album became so popular it cracked the US Billboard Pop Singles chart at #31 and Adult Contemporary chart #20. This was the final hit for any artist in the year-long “medley craze,” that lasted from 1981 to 1982.
Continuing to tour internationally and record into the 2000s, alto saxophonist Larry Elgart, who over the course of his career recorded twenty-eight albums as a leader and recorded two-dozen with his brother, passed away at a hospice center in Sarasota, Florida on August 29, 2017 at the age of 95.
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