Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Lee Porter was born on July 30, 1923 in Walsenburg, Colorado and moved from Walsenburg to Colorado Springs when he was eight years old and began playing drums in rhythm and blues bands while a teenager. He attended Wiley College in Texas briefly, where trumpeter Kenny Dorham was a fellow student. He joined Milt Larkin’s band in 1943, replacing Joe Marshall.
After military service Porter settled in Los Angeles, California and his talents were soon in demand by some of the pioneers of bebop. He worked with Teddy Bunn and Howard McGhee, making his first recordings with the latter. In 1946 he backed Charlie Parker on such Dial classics as A Night In Tunisia, Yardbird Suite, Ornithology and the unfortunate recording of Lover Man.
Playing on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue afforded him opportunities to perform with with Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Teddy Edwards. In San Francisco, California he performed with Hampton Hawes and Sonny Criss. In 1949 Roy organized and went on the road with a big band that included Art Farmer, Jimmy Knepper and Eric Dolphy.
During the 1950s he was inactive as a jazz musician due to drug problems and only returned to music infrequently afterwards. Drummer Roy Porter never led a recording session and passed away on January 24 or 25, 1998 in Los Angeles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Reed “Charlie” Biddle, CM was born and raised in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 28, 1926. After completing military duties in the US Armed Forces during World War II, serving in China, India and Burma, he returned home and went on to study music at Temple University, where he started playing bass. In 1948, he arrived in Montreal while touring with Vernon Isaac’s Three Jacks and a Jill. Fascinated by the lack of racism among musicians in Canada, particularly Quebec, where he saw black jazz musicians playing alongside white jazz musicians as the best of friends, he settled in Montreal.
Employed as a car salesman from 1954 to 1972, he performed with pianists Charlie Ramsey, Milt Sealey, Alfie Wade, Sadik Hakim, and Stan Patrick in local Montreal nightclubs. As a promoter, Charlie booked musicians Johnny Hodges, John Coltrane, Pepper Adams, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Tommy Flanagan and Thad Jones to perform in Montreal.
He performed off and on with guitarist Nelson Symonds between 1959 and 1978, changing leadership and performing as a duo. He was an important supporter and promoter of jazz in Montreal, organizing outdoor festivals of local jazz musicians, particularly Jazz Chez Nous, a 3-day jazz festival in 1979 and another in 1983 which laid the foundation for the Montreal International Jazz Festival, now the world’s largest jazz festival.
In 1981 he lent his name to a jazz club in downtown Montreal that became Biddle’s, now known as House of Jazz. It was featured in the Bruce Willis film The Whole Nine Yards with his daughter Stephanie Biddle on vocals, and he was featured in The Moderns and the French-Canadian film Les Portes Tournantes.
Biddle’s remained at the heart of jazz culture in Montreal during his lifetime. When performing at the club he would use the title, ‘Charlie Biddle on the fiddle‘, led trios at the club on a regular weekly basis, along with pianists Oliver Jones, Steve Holt, Wray Downes, and Jon Ballantyne, and recorded albums with Jones, Milt Sealey and Ted Curson.
Bassist Charlie Biddle was awarded the Oscar Peterson Prize, was made a member of the Order of Canada, was honored with the Prix Calixa-Lavallée and became a Canadian citizen three years prior to his passing away on February 4, 2003 in his Montreal home surrounded by family.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur Edgehill was born July 21, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York and studied drumming during his youth. His first professional work came while touring with Mercer Ellington in 1948, and in 1953 he toured with Ben Webster. He went on to play with Kenny Dorham’s Jazz Prophets in 1956 and with Gigi Gryce and in 1957-58 toured with Dinah Washington.
He would go on to become a member of Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis’ quartet with George Duvivier and/or Wendell Marshall, and recorded with Shirley Scott, not only on her debut album, Great Scott! In 1958, but also on her Very Saxy album in 1959 with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Buddy Tate, Coleman Hawkins, and Arnett Cobb on tenors.
Edgehill played in quartets led by Horace Silver, one featuring Cecil Payne, and at Minton’s with Hank Mobley and Doug Watkins, and jammed with Charlie Parker and Annie Laurie.
Hard bop jazz drummer Arthur Edgehill, originally spelt Edghill, not retired at the age of 90, was active from the 1950s through the 1970s. He appeared on several of the Prestige recordings from the Van Gelder Studios in Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. He recorded on Mal Waldron’s debut album Mal-1 in 1956 and continued recording with Little Jimmy Scott, Mildred Anderson and David Amram among others.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karel Krautgartner was born on July 20, 1922 in Mikulov, Moravia and began to play piano at the age of eight. In 1935, after moving to Brno, he found interest mainly in the radio broadcasting and especially in jazz. He began to study clarinet privately with Stanislav Krtička, acquiring necessary skills and inherited a fanatic passion for clarinet construction and its components.
In 1936 Krautgartner founded the student orchestra Quick Band and six years later signed his first professional contract as a saxophonist in the Gustav Brom Orchestra in the hotel Passage in Brno. In 1943 he gradually created Dixie Club and started to arrange in the Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller styles. During 1945 – 1955, the core of the Dixie Club moved gradually to Prague and became a part of Karel Vlach orchestra. Karel became leader of the saxophone section and started to contributing his own compositions.
1956 saw him founding the Karel Krautgartner Quintet along with Karel Velebný. The group played in various line-ups modern jazz, swing, dixieland and accompanied popular singers. From 1958 to 1960 he performed with the All star band, an orchestra playing in west-coast style, and dixieland with Studio 5. Between 1960 and 1968 he became the head of the Taneční Orchestr Československého Rozhlasu (Dance Orchestra of Czechoslovakia Radio), renamed to Karel Krautgartner Orchestra in 1967.
Following the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he emigrated to Vienna, Austria in 1968 and became the chief conductor of the 0RF Bigband. Later he moved to Cologne, Germany. Clarinetist, saxophonist, arranger, composer, conductor and teacher Karel Krautgartner passed away on September 20, 1982 in Germany.
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Bobby Lee Bradford was born July 19, 1934 in Cleveland, Mississippi and at age eleven his family moved to Dallas, Texas in 1946. He moved to Los Angeles, California in 1953 where he reunited with childhood friend from Texas, Ornette Coleman. He subsequently joined Coleman’s ensemble but was drafted into the U.S. Air Force and replaced by Don Cherry.
After playing in military bands from late 1954 to late 1958, Bradford reunited with Coleman’s quartet from 1961 to 1963, infrequently performing in public, but prolifically recorded under Coleman’s Atlantic contract. Unfortunately these tapes were among those many destroyed in the Great Atlantic Vault Fire. Returning to the West Coast to pursue further studies, he would eventually receive his B.M. degree from Huston-Tillotson College.
He soon began a long-running and relatively well-documented association with the clarinetist John Carter, a pairing that brought both increased exposure at international festivals. Following Carter’s death in 1991, Bobby fronted his own ensemble known as The Mo’tet.
Bradford has performed with Eric Dolphy, Leon “Ndugu” Chancler, Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten, Bob Stewart, Charlie Haden, George Lewis, James Newton, Frode Gjerstad, Vinny Golia, Nels Cline, William Parker, Paal Nilssen-Love, and David Murray, among others.
An educator, he is a professor at Pasadena City College in California and Pomona College in Claremont, California, where he teaches The History of Jazz. Trumpeter and cornetist Bobby Bradford is the father of drummer Dennis Bradford and jazz vocalist Carmen Bradford. He has recorded eight albums as a leader, ten as a co-leader, seventeen as a sideman and continues to perform with his group The Mo’tet.
