Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Otis “Candy” Finch Jr. was born on September 5, 1933 in Detroit, Michigan. He is presumed to be the son of saxophonist Otis Finch Sr. , who performed with John Lee Hooker and the Boogie Ramblers. Learning to play drums as a child he went on to perform and record in the 1960s in trio and quartet settings with among others Shirley Scott, Stanley Turrentine during the Blue Note years, and with John Patton, Grant Green, Bobby Hutcherson, Billy Mitchell and Dave Burns.
With Turrentine he recorded from 1962 and 1964 at Blue Note with Bob Cranshaw, Blue Mitchell, Curtis Fuller, Herbie Hancock, Herbie Lewis and Les McCann. In 1967 he accompanied Dizzy Gillespie on the Impulse! album Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac. The following year he joined Dizzy’s Reunion Big Band and performed with them at the Berlin Jazz Festival. He is a modern style swing drummer and was active in the 1960s and 1970s.
Bebop and swing drummer Candy Finch passed away on July 13, 1982 in Seattle, Washington. He was never recorded as a leader.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emil Richards was born Emilio Joseph Radocchia on September 2, 1932 in Hartford, Connecticut. He began playing the xylophone at age six and went on to graduate from the Julius Hartt School of Music. He took private lessons from Asher George Zlotnik and performed with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and with various jazz musicians in New England.
After serving as Assistant Band Leader of the First Cavalry Army Band for two years, his career took off. He became first call percussionists for jazz, rock and other popular music as well as performing on countless movie and television soundtracks.
In 1954 Emil moved to New York City and played jazz gigs with Charles Mingus, Ed Shaughnessy and Ed Thigpen, while doing studio recordings for artists such as Perry Como, the Ray Charles Singers and Mitch Aires. In 1955 Emil joined the George Shearing Quintet and stayed with the group for over four years, playing 51 weeks a year.
1959 saw Richards settling in Los Angeles,California and working with the Paul Horn Quintet, Jimmy Witherspoon, the Shorty Rogers Big Band, Don Ellis, Lalo Schifrin, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Kenton, Shelly Manne, Alphonse Mouzon, Dakota Staton, Gábor Szabó, Lenny Bruce and Lord Buckley. He also recorded with Frank Sinatra, Nelson Riddle, Judy Garland, Sarah Vaughan and Doris Day. In 1962, in response to a request from President John F. Kennedy, he and a small jazz combo joined Sinatra on a tour around the world for the benefit of underprivileged children.
He would go on to work with Harry Partch, go on a world tour, then return to Los Angeles to perform and record with among others the Beach Boys, Jan and Dean, Bing Crosby and Nat Cole, Frank Zappa’s Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra. He also worked on film scores for Jerry Goldsmith, John Williams, Henry Mancini, Elmer Bernstein, Johnny Mandel, Quincy Jones, Oliver Nelson, Neal Hefti, Lalo Schifrin, Dave Grusin, Michel Legrand, Alex North and Bill Conti, to name a few.
Emil began collecting ethnic percussion instruments that became so diverse and expansive that is became known as the Emil Richards Collection. Having served several terms on the Board of Directors for the Percussive Arts Society, and donating the largest single-donor collection of instruments to the society museum, he directed the sale of part of the collection to be sold to the L.A. Percussion Rentals so that the instruments continue to be heard.
Percussionist Emil Richards remains active in Musicians’ Union Local 47 as part of their campaign to get musicians credited in the film industry.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Teri Thornton was born Shirley Enid Avery on September 1, 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. She began performing in the local clubs of her home city in the 1950s. Moving to New York City in the 1960s, where she found work singing for television advertisements, and recorded for several different labels.
By the 1960s Thornton faded from public view and only decades later was discovered to have been singing on various song poem records in Los Angeles, California on the Preview label as Teri Summers. After moving back to New York City in 1983 she was back on the club circuit and in the Nineties fully revived her career. In 1998, she won the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Vocal Competition in Washington, DC. performing against runners-up Jane Monheit, Tierney Sutton and Roberta Gambarini.
Thornton signed with Verve Records in 2000, releasing I’ll Be Easy to Find, working with Ray Chew, Norman Simmons, Lonnie Plaxico, Jerome Richardson, Dave Bargeron, Howard Johnson and J. T. Lewis.
She was a resident of the Actors’ Fund Home and diagnosed with bladder cancer, vocalist Teri Thornton passed away that same year on May 2, 2000 in Englewood, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Conny Jackel was born Horst Konrad Jackel on August 30, 1931 in Offenbach am Main, Germany. He first worked as a steel fitter, then in 1951 he played at the conservatory and in the clubs of the US Army in France, the Netherlands and Germany in 1952. In 1955 he became a member of Helmut Brandt Combo, contributing to their success.
By 1959 Jackel had joined the Harald Banter Band in Cologne playing demanding arrangements for two years. In 1961 he joined the orchestra of Erwin Lehn in Stuttgart, where he also worked with Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra on stage.
From 1964 to 1969 he was a member of the Albert Mangelsdorff led Jazz Ensemble of Hessischer Rundfunk . From 1967 Conny played first trumpet in the Dance Orchestra of Hessischer Rundfunk under Willy Berking and the HR Big Band headed by Heinz Schönberger . In addition, he performed with Joki Friendand, Rudi Sehring, Attila Zoller and Charly Antolini. He recorded with Gustl Mayers Swing All Stars and the trio of Manfred Kullmann . Then he was a member of the jazz band Hanauer Sugarfoot Stompers and played with other traditional bands of the region such as the Phoenix Jazz Band.
In 1999 a bout with cancer caused Jackel to have his lower jaw removed forcing him to give up playing trumpet. Occasionally he would play drums as also in the Book Readers active as a drummer. For his contributions to jazz, he was inducted into the Knights of Ronneburg on September 9, 2006.
Trumpeter and flugelhornist Conny Jackel passed away after a long illness and the consequences of an operation on April 28, 2008 in Bad Nauheim, Germany.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bennie Maupin was born August 29, 1940 in Detroit, Michigan. He started playing tenor saxophone in high school and attended the Detroit Institute for Musical Arts, while playing locally. He moved to New York in 1963, freelancing with many groups, including ones led by Marion Brown and Pharoah Sanders.
Well known for his playing as a part of Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi sextet and Headhunters band and for performing on Miles Davis’s seminal fusion record, Bitches Brew. Maupin has collaborated with Horace Silver, Roy Haynes, Woody Shaw, Lee Morgan and many others. He has also performed on several Meat Beat Manifesto albums.
Noted for having a harmonically-advanced, “out” improvisation style, while having a different sense of melodic direction than other “out” jazz musicians such as Eric Dolphy.
Maupin was also a member of Almanac, a group with bassist Cecil McBee, pianist Mike Nock and drummer Eddie Marshall. He has recorded a half dozen albums as a leader and another three dozen as a sideman with John Beasley, Marion Brown, Mike Clark, Miles Davis, Jack DeJohnette, Eddie Henderson, Andrew Hill, Darek Oles, Lonnie Smith, McCoy Tyner, Lenny White, Patrick Gleeson and Jim Lang.
Multireedist Bennie Maupin, who plays various saxophones, flute and bass clarinet, failed to catch on as a bandleader, thus maintained a low profile during the past 15 years, until emerging in 2006 with the critically acclaimed Penumbra followed two years later Early Reflections on the Cryptogramophone label, then on Vocalion with Slow Traffic To The Left, Moonscapes. He continues to perform and tour.
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