Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Buell Neidlinger was born in New York City on March 2, 1936 and raised in Westport, Connecticut, where his father ran a cargo shipping business. He played cello in his youth and began studying double bass after a music teacher recommended it to strengthen his hands. He took lessons from jazz bassist Walter Page. In his teens, suffering from a nervous breakdown, which he attributed to the pressure of being perceived as a child prodigy on cello, while institutionalized, he met jazz pianist Joe Sullivan who was in treatment for alcoholism.
Dropping out of Yale University after one year, where he had been studying orchestral music, he moved to New York City and began playing in various jazz settings. He joined Cecil Taylor’s group in 1955 and recorded extensively with Taylor’s groups with Steve Lacy and with Archie Shepp among others until 1961. He played with Herbie Nichols and was also involved with new directions in classical music.
By 1971, Buell moved to California and became the principal bassist for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and was also principal bassist in the Warner Bros. studio orchestra for 30 years. He worked extensively as an orchestral and as a session bassist before becoming a music educator at the New England Conservatory and CalArts. Together with Marty Krystall, he founded K2B2 Records. The sessions he performed on as a strings player included Tony Bennett’s I Left My Heart In San Francisco and the Eagles’ Hotel California.
In 1983, he performed on the Antilles Records release Swingrass ’83. In 1997, and moved to Whidbey Island, Washington State. There, he played in a band called Buellgrass, which included fiddler Richard Greene and featured their version of bluegrass music. Neidlinger’s fourth wife, Margaret Storer, was also a bass player. They played baroque music with friends where he played cello, while she played the violin.
His final recording was The Happenings, accompanied by Howard Alden on guitar and Marty Krystall on bass clarinet and flute, released in December 2017. Bassist and cellist Buell Neidlinger, who worked prominently with iconoclastic pianist Cecil Taylor in the 1950s and ’60s, passed away on March 16, 2018.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Hardaway was born on March 1, 1928 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a dad who earned the nickname of J.B. “Bugs” Hardaway by inventing the characters of Bugs Bunny and Woody Woodpecker. Moving to Hollywood got him his early coaching from film composer Darrell Caulkner. As an instrumentalist, he learned many fundamentals in his Air Force band, which inspired him to write music for a touring show, Air Force Frolics, which he also conducted. After military service he returned to college in Los Angeles, California then began a career as a big-band section player in reliable outfits such as Ray McKinley. It was Billy May who came through with the first recorded solo opportunity for him on a Capitol album promising an instrumental Bacchanalia.
Hardaway’s presence as a soloist was furthermore boosted on a mid-’50s series of Decca sides by bandleader Jerry Gray, among the features being the reliable “Thou Swell,” the gentle “Baby’s Lullaby,” and a pounding “Kettle Drum.” He had the first saxophone chair in the Woody Herman band in 1956 and also performed and recorded with big-band maestros Stan Kenton, Les Elgart, Benny Goodman, Alvino Rey, and Med Flory, among others. He would record on sessions with Lulu, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Diamond, Roger Neumann’s Rather Large Band, Harry Nilsson and Doris Day.
Jazz discographies alone pile up nearly 75 recording sessions involving Hardaway between 1949 and 1995. In addition, there were vocalists and vocal groups too numerous to name outside of that genre with which he recorded, usually in the company of A-list session players such as bassist Carol Kaye. At 91, multi-instrumental reedist Bob Hardaway has been retired since the Nineties.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul William Rutherford was born on February 29, 1940 in Greenwich, South East London, England. He initially played saxophone but switched to trombone. During the Sixties, he taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
By 1970, Rutherford, guitarist Derek Bailey and bassist Barry Guy formed the improvising group Iskra 1903, sans drums and percussion, permitting the players to explore a range of textures and dynamics which set it apart from such other contemporary improvising ensembles. The group stayed together until 1973, recording a double album from Incus, later reissued with much bonus material on the 3-CD set Chapter One.
The group’s name is the Russian word for spark and was the title of the Iskra revolutionary newspaper edited by Lenin. The “1903” designation means 20th-century music for the trio. Another edition of the group included Evan Parker under Iskra 1904, and Rutherford at one point assembled a 12-piece ensemble called Iskra 1912.
The group was later revived with Philipp Wachsmann replacing Bailey, a phase of the group’s life that lasted from roughly 1977 to 1995, documenting their earlier work on Chapter Two (Emanem, 2006) and its final recordings were issued on Maya (Iskra 1903) and Emanem (Frankfurt 1991).
Rutherford went on to play with Globe Unity Orchestra, London Jazz Composer’s Orchestra, Centipede, the Mike Westbrook Orchestra, and the Orckestra, a merger of avant-rock group Henry Cow, the Mike Westbrook Brass Band and folk singer Frankie Armstrong. He also played a very small number of gigs with Soft Machine.
He is perhaps most famous for solo trombone improvisations. His album The Gentle Harm of the Bourgeoisie is a landmark recording in solo trombone and his 1983 trio album Gheim, recorded at the Bracknell Jazz Festival is another acclaimed work. A film soundtrack was separately released as Buzz Soundtrack.
A major player in the British free improvisation scene and part of the European free jazz scene, he was one of the first to use unorthodox playing techniques for improvisation. Trombonist Paul Rutherford, one of the first to use trombone multiphonics, i.e. he sang into the trombone and blew at the same time, passed away from cirrhosis of the liver and a ruptured aorta on August 5, 2007, at the age of 67.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chuck Wayne was born Charles Jagelka on February 27, 1923 in New York City to a Czechoslovakian family. As a boy, he learned banjo, mandolin, and balalaika. By the early 1940s he was playing in jazz bands on 52nd Street and after two years in the Army, he returned to New York City, joined Joe Marsala’s band, and settled in Staten Island until a 1991 move to New Jersey. He changed his musical style after hearing Charlie Parker, recording with Dizzy Gillespie in 1945. Frustrated with the difficulty of getting the sound he wanted, he considered switching to saxophone.
Wayne was a member of Woody Herman’s First Herd, the first guitarist in the George Shearing quintet, worked with Coleman Hawkins, Red Norvo, Bud Powell, Jack Teagarden, George Shearing, Lester Young, and Barbara Carroll. During the 1950s, he played with Tony Bennett, Gil Evans, Brew Moore, Zoot Sims, and George Wallington. In the Sixties, CBS hired him as a staff guitarist and for the next two decades, he played on Broadway, accompanied vocalists, and performed in guitar duos with Joe Puma and Tal Farlow.
He wrote Sonny in honor of Sonny Berman. Years later, Miles Davis took the song, renamed it Solar, and claimed he wrote it. His Butterfingers and Prospecting have been incorrectly attributed to Zoot Sims. Chuck was known for a bebop style influenced by saxophone players of his time and he developed a technique not widely adopted, and also developed a comprehensive approach to guitar chords and arpeggios.
Over the course of his career, he recorded eight albums as a leader beginning with his 1953 album The Chuck Wayne Quintet on the Progressive label. He worked as a sideman with Gil Evans, Anthony Perkins, Dick Katz, Duke Jordan, and Frank Wess, among others. Guitarist Chuck Wayne, one of the first jazz guitarists to learn bebop, passed away on July 29, 1997.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chris Anderson was born on February 26, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois and was a self-taught pianist. He began playing in Chicago clubs in the mid-1940s and played with Von Freeman and Charlie Parker, among others. Hired as Dinah Washington’s accompanist in New York City, his tenure with Washington was a brief six weeks as she changed accompanists frequently. After his firing, he decided to stay in the city.
In 1960 he recorded what might be his best-regarded album My Romance on the VeeJay label with bassist Bill Lee and drummer Art Taylor. He was a great influence on his student Herbie Hancock.
Despite the respect of his peers, Anderson had difficulty finding work or popular acclaim due in large to his disabilities. He was blind and his bones were unusually fragile, causing numerous fractures, which at times compromised his ability to perform at the times or places requested, although he continued to record until he was well into his 70s. A DownBeat profile indicated he had osteogenesis, probably meaning osteogenesis imperfecta.
He would record his first album as a leader in 1960 and ultimately record a total of ten. As a sideman, he worked with Charlie Haden, Clifford Jordan, Sun Ra, and Frank Strozier. Pianist Chris Anderson passed away on February 4, 2008 in Manhattan, New York City.
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