Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Arthur S. Taylor, Jr. was born in New York City on April 6, 1929 and as a teenager he joined a local Harlem band that featured Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean and Kenny Drew. By the late Forties and into the Fifties he was playing in the bands of Howard McGee, Coleman Hawkins, Buddy DeFranco, Bud Powell, George Wallington, Art Farmer, Gigi Gryce and Donald Byrd.
After leaving Byrd he formed his own group, Taylor’s Wailers but between 1957 and 1963 he toured with Byrd, recorded with Miles Davis and John Coltrane, performed with Thelonious Monk and was a member of the original Kenny Dorham Quartet of 1957.
In 1963 he moved to Europe, where he lived mainly in France and Belgium for 20 years, playing with local groups and jazz musicians Johnny Griffin, John Bodwin, and Woody Shaw while he was in Paris. He returned to the States to help his ailing mother and continued freelancing. In 1993 Art organized a second band called Taylor’s Wailers.
He recorded five albums as a leader and 116 albums as a sideman with some of the most influential jazz musicians of the day – Gene Ammons, Dorothy Ashby, Benny Bailey, Kenny Burrell, Paul Chambers, Sonny Clark, James Clay, Jimmy Cleveland, Arnett Cobb, Pepper Adams, Walter Davis Jr., Red Garland, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, Continuum, Matthew Gee, Benny Golson, Dexter Gordon, Slide Hampton, Bennie Green, Tiny Grimes, Elmo Hope, Frank Foster, Erne Henry, Milt Jackson, Thad Jones, Clifford Jordan, Duke Jordan, Ken McIntrye, Lee Morgan, Oliver Nelson, Cecil Payne, Horace Silver, Dizzy Reece, Jimmy Smith, Mal Waldron, Julian Priester, Charlie Rouse, Kai Winding, J.J. Johnson, Toots Thielemans, Randy Weston, Sonny Stitt, Jack McDuff, Stanley Turrentine, and the list goes on and on.
Art Taylor helped define the sound of modern jazz drumming and authored Notes and Tones, a book based on his interviews with other musicians. He passed away in Manhattan’s Beth Israel Hospital on February 6, 1995.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hugh Ramopolo Masekela was born on April 4, 1939 in Kwa-Guqa Township of Witbank, South Africa. He began singing and playing piano as a child. At the age of 14, after seeing Kirk Douglas in the film Young Man With A Horn he took up playing the trumpet. He was given his first trumpet was given to him by anti-apartheid Archbishop Trevor Huddleston at St. Peter’s Secondary School.
Quickly mastering the instrument under the tutelage of Uncle Sauda of Johannesburg’s Native Municipal Brass Band, Masekela along with some of his schoolmates formed the Huddleston Jazz Band, South Africa’s first youth orchestra. By 1956, after leading other ensembles, he joined Alfred Hebrert’s African Jazz Revue.
In 1958 he wound up in the orchestra of South Africa’s first musical blockbuster King Kong, followed by touring the country for a sold-out year with Miriam Makeba and the Manhattan Brothers’ Nathan Mdledle in the lead. By the end of 1959 Hugh along with Dollar Brand, Kippie Moeketsi, Makhaya Ntshoko and Johnny Gertze formed the Jazz Epistles. They became the first African jazz group to record an album and perform to record-breaking audiences in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
Following the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre of 69 peacefully protesting Africans he left the country with the help of Huddleston, Yehudi Menuhin and John Dankworth for London’s Guildhall School of Music. Befriended by Harry Belafonte on a visit to the U.S. he gained admission to Manhattan School of Music studying classical trumpet.
By the late Sixties he had hits with Up, Up & Away and Grazing In The Grass, appeared at the Monterey Pop Festival, and was featured in the film Monterey Pop. In 1974, Masekela and friend Stewart Levine organized the Zaire 74 music festival around the Rumble In The Jungle boxing match.
He has played primarily in jazz ensembles, with guest appearances on recordings by The Byrds and Paul Simon. Since 1954 Hugh’s music protested about apartheid, slavery, government and the hardships individuals were living but also vividly portrayed the struggles and sorrows, as well as the joys and passions of his country. In 1987, he had a hit single with Bring Him Back Home, which became an anthem for the movement to free Nelson Mandela.
Trumpeter Hugh Masekela also plays the flugelhorn, cornet, and trombone and is a composer and singer. He has some four dozen albums to date in his catalogue, has won two Grammy Awards with seven nominations, received two honorary doctorates, and serves as a director on the board of The Lunchbox Fund, a non-profit organization that provides a daily meal to students of township schools in Soweto. He continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rocco Scott LaFaro was born on April 3, 1936 in Irvington, New Jersey and grew up in Geneva, New York when his family moved there when he was five. His father played in many big bands and started him on the piano in elementary school. He switched to the bass clarinet in junior high school and the tenor saxophone in high school. It wasn’t until he was eighteen the summer before entering Ithaca College that he finally landed on the double bass.
During the early weeks of his sophomore year Scott joined Buddy Morrow and his big band, then left them in Los Angeles, California after a cross-country tour. Luck prevailed and he quickly found work and became known as one of the best of the young bassists. He studied under Red Mitchell who taught him how to pluck the strings with both the index and middle fingers independently. By 1958 he was spending much of the year in pianist/percussionist Victor Feldman’s band.
In 1959, after many gigs with Chet Baker, Stan Kenton, Cal Tjader, and Benny Goodman he moved back east and joined Bill Evans after his recent departure from Miles Davis. Along with Paul Motian and Evans that he developed and expanded the counter-melodic style that would come to characterize his playing. The trio committed to the idea of three equal voices in the trio, collectively working together organically towards a singular musical idea, often without the time being explicitly stated. LaFaro’s prodigious technique on bass made this concept possible.
By late 1960, LaFaro replaced Charlie Haden as Ornette Coleman’s bassist. In between gigs with Evans he played with Stan Getz and got a recruitment card of interest from Miles Davis. By summer they settled into the Village Vanguard in New York City for a two-week gig. The last day of the run, June 25, was recorded live in its entirely for eventual release as two albums, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz For Debby, both considered among the finest live jazz recordings of all time.
Double bassist Scott LaFaro passed away from an automobile accident on July 6, 1961 in Flint, New York four days after accompanying Stan Getz at the Newport Jazz Festival and ten days after the Village Vanguard recordings with the Bill Evans Trio.
Posthumously, in 2009, the University of North Texas Press published Jade Visions, a biography of Scott LaFaro by his sister Helene LaFaro-Fernandez. It includes an extensive discography of his recorded work. The same year Resonance Records released Pieces of Jade, the first album released featuring Scott as a bandleader. The album includes five selections recorded in New York City during 1961 that showcase LaFaro with pianist Don Friedman and drummer Pete LaRoca, as well as 22 minutes of LaFaro and Bill Evans practicing My Foolish Heart in late 1960 during a rehearsal.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kathy Stobart was born Florence Kathleen Stobart in the coastal town of South Shields, England on April 1, 1925. She first learned piano and alto saxophone as a child. After picking up her brother’s tenor saxophone and a month’s trial, she first played in Don Rico’s all-girl band at the age of 14 and then locally in Newcastle.
It wasn’t until her joining the Peter Fielding ballroom orchestra that her interest in jazz peaked. She met saxophonists Keith Bird and Derek Neville, who were then stationed at a local RAF camp. They bought her ten jazz records for my 17th birthday and Bird painstakingly took her through various harmonic exercises and saw to it that she succeeded him when he vacated a quartet job in London in late 1942.
Moving to London in the 1940s she began playing with Denis Rose, Ted Heath and Jimmy Skidmore. Later in the decade Stobart played with Art Pepper and Peanuts Hucko. Before the end of the Forties she played with and had a brief marriage with Art Thompson.
She toured with Vic Lewis in 1949 and led her own group in early 1950s, among its members was Derek Humble, Dill Jones and Bert Courtley, whom she married in 1951 until his death in 1969. Throughout the 1950s and 60s Kathy went into semiretirement to raise her family.
Returning to performing, from 1969 to 1977 she played with Humphrey Lyttelton. Following this she led her own groups, with Harry Beckett, John Burch and Lennie Best among others. Aside from this she played with Johnny Griffin, Al Haig, Earl Hines, Buddy Tate, Zoot Sims, Marian McPartland and Dick Hyman.
From 1992 she was paying with Lyttelton again adding flute, clarinet and baritone saxophone to her arsenal of instruments. Tenor saxophonist Kathy Stobart, who held lengthy teaching assignments at City Literature Institute in London, passed away on July 5, 2014.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lanny Morgan was born March 30, 1934 in Des Moines, Iowa and raised in Los Angeles, California. In the 1950s he played with Charlie Barnet, Si Zentner, Terry Gibbs and Bob Florence.
He did a stint in the U.S. military and had to turn down an offer to play in the Stan Kenton orchestra. From 1960-65 he played in Maynard Ferguson’s orchestra after a few years in New York City Morgan returned to Los Angeles in 1969. There he did frequent studio work, performed sessions with Nancy Sinatra and Carmen McRae,
He was a member of Supersax and played in the big bands of Bill Berry, Bob Florence and Bill Holman. Alto saxophonist Lanny Morgan has chiefly been active on the West Coast jazz scene.
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