Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Patrick John Halcox, born March 18, 1930 in Chelsea, London, was originally offered a band spot earlier but elected to continue his studies as a research chemist. Ken Colyer was invited to fill the vacancy in 1953, which became known as the Ken Colyer Jazz Band, playing in a New Orleans style with Chris Barber, Lonnie Donegan and Monty Sunshine.
The band effectively parted company with Colyer in 1954 after a dispute about its musical direction. Halcox took Colyer’s place, in what then become Barber’s group and as the original six-piece band eventually grew to eleven members, he remained present. Although primarily the trumpet player, he had a fine singing voice and led the band’s various renditions of Ice Cream, one of their most popular standards. He also played piano on the Lonnie Donegan recording of Digging My Potatoes.
The Pat Halcox Allstars did make a recording of their own during a Chris Barber Band summer break, now re-released as a Lake Records CD. Trumpeter and vocalist Pat Halcox announced his retirement from the Chris Barber Band at the age of 78, effective in 2008 and passed away on February 4, 2013 at the age of 82.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marty Sheller was born March 15, 1940 in Newark, New Jersey and initially studied percussion, but switched to trumpet as a teenager. He first played with Hugo Dickens in Harlem, and arranged for Sabu Martinez, and began working with Afro-Latin percussionists such as Louie Ramirez and Frankie Malabe.
In 1962 he became a trumpeter in Mongo Santamaria’s band, and worked with Santamaria for more than forty years as a composer and arranger. He also had an extensive association with Fania Records as a house arranger, working with Joe Bataan, Ruben Blades, Willie Colon, Larry Harlow, Hector Lavoe, and Ismael Miranda.
Outside of Fania, he arranged for musicians such as George Benson, David Byrne, Jon Faddis, Giovanni Hidalgo, T.S. Monk, Idris Muhammad, Manny Oquendo, Dave Pike, Tito Puente, Shirley Scott, Woody Shaw, Lew Soloff, and Steve Turre.
In the 2000s, he led his own ensemble, which included the sidemen Chris Rogers, Joe Magnarelli, Sam Burtis, Bobby Porcelli, Bob Franceschini, Oscar Hernández, Ruben Rodriquez, Vince Cherico, and Steve Berrios. Trumpeter Marty Sheller continues to perform and arrange.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Brooks was born on March 9, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan and drummed since childhood, his earliest experiences of music coming through his mother, who sang in church. He was an outstanding varsity basketball player as a teenager and was offered a scholarship to the Detroit Institute of Technology; he attended the school for three semesters and then dropped out to tour with Yusef Lateef.
After time with Lateef and Barry Harris, he played with Beans Bowles and with the Four Tops in Las Vegas. He played with Horace Silver from 1959 to 1964, including on the album Song for My Father; in 1963 he released his first album as a leader. Following this he freelanced in New York City through the 1960s and early 1970s, playing three years with Lateef again in 1967, Sonny Stitt, Lee Morgan, Dexter Gordon, Chet Baker, Junior Cook, Blue Mitchell, Charles McPherson, Pharoah Sanders in 1970, Wes Montgomery, Dollar Brand, Jackie McLean, James Moody from 1970 to 1972, Charles Mingus in 1972 and ‘73, and Milt Jackson.
His 1970 album The Free Slave featured Cecil McBee and Woody Shaw. Later in 1970, he joined Max Roach’s ensemble M’Boom, and in 1972 put together the ensemble The Artistic Truth. Brooks’s performances often included unusual instruments such as the musical saw and drums with vacuum tubes set up so as to regulate the pitch.
Suffering mental disorders he began to acquire a reputation for bizarre behavior on and off stage, and by 1975 he left New York City for Detroit where he took lithium to help regulate his behavior. By the 1980s he returned to The Artistic Truth and gigged regularly in Detroit with Kenny Cox, Harold McKinney, and Wendell Harrison. With those three he co-founded M.U.S.I.C. (Musicians United to Save Indigenous Culture) and later founded the Aboriginal Percussion Choir, an ensemble devoted to the use of non-Western percussion instruments. He used his basement as a practice and learning space, working with children as well as accomplished musicians.
The 1990s saw Detroit’s jazz scene wane and Roy stopped taking his medication, began breaking down at gigs, and in 1994 was institutionalized for three weeks. A couple of violently threatening incidents with neighbors landed him in Marquette Prison from 1997 to 2004, followed by placement in a nursing home. Drummer Roy Brooks passed away on November 15, 2005.
He recorded nearly four-dozen albums as a sideman and seven albums as a leader, his last being Roy Brooks & the Improvisational Sphere, recorded by Charles Jazzrenegade Wood on September 3, 1999, Live at Lelli’s, a well known Italian restaurant in Detroit. This is the solely available recording of the three-day performance released posthumously in 2011 by Italian label Sagittarius A-Star. The Improvisational Sphere was Roy Brooks: Drums, Marimba, Steel Drum, Keyboard; Amina Claudine Myers: Hammond B-3 Organ and Vocals; Ray Mantilla: Congas, Bells, Percussion; Jerry LeDuff: Tabla, Cuica, Shekere, Berimbau, Percussion; and Rodney Rich: Guitar.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William “Billy” Root was born March 6, 1934 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was raised in a musical family, his father played drums in Philadelphia ensembles.
Root began playing professionally in the early 1950s, with Roy Eldridge, Hal McIntyre, Red Rodney, Bennie Green, and Buddy Rich. Later in the decade he worked extensively with Stan Kenton and with Rodney, as well as with Clifford Brown, Dizzy Gillespie, Hank Mobley, Lee Morgan, and Curtis Fuller.
He led his own ensembles from the late 1950s. In the 1960s he performed with Al Grey and Dakota Staton, and in 1968 settled in Las Vegas, Nevada. Saxophonist Billy Root played the casinos for the next two decades before retiring.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Donald Percy Rendell was born in Plymouth, England on March 4, 1926 and raised in London where his father, Percy, was the musical director of the D’Oyly Carte Opera Company; his mother Vera was also a musician. He attended the City of London School, to which he gained a choral half-scholarship and during school was evacuated during the Second World War to Marlborough College, where he heard jazz for the first time.
Rendell began playing the piano at the age of five but switched to saxophone in his teens. While working for Barclay’s Bank, he left to become a professional musician and began his career on alto saxophone but changed to tenor saxophone in 1943. During the rest of the 1940s, he was in the bands of George Evans and Oscar Rabin. Beginning in 1950, he spent three years in the Johnny Dankworth Septet and performed with Billie Holiday in Manchester, England, before playing in the bands of Tony Crombie and Ted Heath.
After touring in Europe with Stan Kenton, he played in Cyprus with Tony Kinsey, then Don was a member of Woody Herman’s Anglo American Herd in 1959. During the late 1950s and early Sixties, he led bands, including one with Ian Carr that lasted until 1969, one with Barbara Thompson in the 1970s, and as the sole leader in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, the Rendell-Carr Quintet gained an international reputation, performing in France at the Antibes Festival and was the Band of the Year for three years in succession in the Melody Maker poll. He performed in festivals in England and France as well as working with Michael Garrick and Brian Priestley.
He taught at the Royal Academy of Music for three years in the early 1970s, at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama beginning in 1984 and wrote instruction books on flute and saxophone. Don Rendell, who played soprano saxophone, flute, clarinet and was also an arranger, passed away after a short illness at the age of 89 on October 20, 2015.
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