Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ottilie Patterson was born Anna Ottilie Patterson on January 31, 1932 in Comber, County Down, Northern Ireland, the youngest of four children. With both sides of the family musical, she trained as a classical pianist from the age of eleven, but never received any formal training as a singer.
In 1949 Ottilie went to study art at Belfast College of Technology where a fellow student introduced her to the music of Bessie Smith, Jelly Roll Morton and Meade Lux Lewis. By 1951 she began singing with Jimmy Compton’s Jazz Band, and in 1952 she formed the Muskrat Ramblers with Al Watt and Derek Martin.
The summer of 1954, while on holiday in London, Ottilie met Beryl Bryden who introduced her to the Chris Barber Jazz Band. She joined the Barber band full-time in December of that year and her first public appearance was at the Royal Festival Hall the following January. Between 1955 and 1962 she extensively toured with Barber and issued many recordings both as a leader and vocalist with Barber, and whom she would marry and divorce 24 years later.
From approximately 1963 she began to suffer throat problems and ceased to appear and record regularly with her husband until officially retiring from the band in 1973. During this period she recorded some non-jazz/blues material and in 1969 issued a now sought after collectible solo LP, 3000 Years With Ottilie.
During her recording period she released nineteen singles, five EPs, four solo LPs, twenty albums with Barber, and performed on twenty-five other CD projects. Traditional jazz and blues singer Ottilie Patterson passed away June 20, 2011.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ahmed Abdul-Malik was born Jonathan Tim, Jr. on January 30, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York. Taking violin lessons from his father, by age seven he was attending the Vardi School of Music and Art to continue his violin training. Over time he took up the piano, cello, bass, and tuba. He continued studying with local bassist Franklin Skeete before joining the High School of Music & Art in Harlem, where his skills on violin and viola earned him a spot in the All-City Orchestra.
In the mid-1970s, Abdul-Malik was a substitute teacher at Junior High School 281, in Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn as well as the strings instructor at Junior High School 117 in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant under the supervision of Andrew Liotta. While seeking a teaching certification, in addition to study under Liotta in orchestration and composition, Abdul-Malik also taught Sudanese in the junior high school language department. In the late 1970s he taught individual students private instruction in jazz improvisation at New York University.
Abdul-Malik is noted for integrating Middle Eastern and North African music styles in his jazz music. He recorded six albums as a leader with Johnny Griffin, Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, James Richardson and Benny Golson. He also held down the sideman duties as the bassist performing and recording nineteen albums with Art Blakey, Randy Weston, Thelonious Monk, Earl Hines, John Coltrane, Walt Dickerson, Jutta Hipp, Odetta, Herbie Mann and Dave Pike among others.
As an oud player he was engaged as a musical ambassador by the United States Department of State to tour South America, and he also performed at an African jazz festival in Morocco. On October 2, 1993 double bassist and oud player Ahmed Abdul-Malik passed away at the age of 66.
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Talib Ahmad Dawood, formerly Alfonso Nelson Rainey, was born on January 26, 1923 on Antigua. He first took lessons from his father, a trumpeter who played in marching bands; his mother was a singer who accompanied him on piano. He also learned to play the banjo and the pipe organ.
His further education came in the United States at from his high school and music school experiences at the end of the 1930s in New York. Because of the support he received fromof the Barrymore Foundation, Talib first took the stage name Barrymore Rainey. After studying at the Juilliard School in 1940, he played with Tiny Bradshaw, Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter, Andy Kirk, Jimmie Lunceford, Roy Eldridge and other swing orchestras.
In Philadelphia he met Sheikh Nasir Ahmad, an Ahmadiyya missionary, through whom he converted to Islam and took the name Talib Dawud. In the second half of the 1940s and again in 1956 he was a member of the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band, performing with in 1957 at the Newport Jazz Festival.
1958 saw Dawud married to singer Dakota Staton who was no longer actively working since 1959 and the two operated an Africa-Import Shop in New York City. As a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim sect, which distanced itself from the Nation of Islam, he wrote numerous articles in the African-American Chicago daily New Crusader on the controversy between Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X.
Trumpeter Talib Dawud never had the opportunity to record as a leader, and on July 9, 1999 he passed away in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Julius Arthur Hemphill was born on January 24, 1938 in Fort Worth, Texas and attended M. Terrell High School, studied clarinet with John Carter before taking up the saxophone due to the early influence of Gerry Mulligan.
Hemphill joined the Army in 1964, served for several years, and later, for a brief period, performed with Ike Turner. In 1968 he moved to St. Louis, Missouri and co-founded the multidisciplinary arts collective. This brought together saxophonists Oliver Lake and Hamiet Bluiett, trumpeters Baikida Carroll and Floyd LeFlore and writer/director Malinke Robert Elliott.
A move to New York City in the mid-1970s witnessed Julius thriving in the free jazz community. He gave saxophone lessons to David Sanborn, and Tim Berne among others. He founded the World Saxophone Quartet in 1976 after collaboration with Anthony Braxton. He remained a member until the early 1990s and then formed a saxophone quintet.
Hemphill recorded over twenty albums as a leader and another ten records with the World Saxophone Quartet and recorded or performed with Bjork, Bill Frisell, Jean-Pau Bourelly and others. Late in his life his ill-health including diabetes and heart surgery, forced Hemphill to stop playing saxophone, but he continued writing music. His saxophone sextet, led by Marty Ehrlich, also released several albums of Hemphill’s music, but without Hemphill playing. The most recent is entitled The Hard Blues, posthumously recorded live in Lisbon.
Prior to his death on April 2, 1995 in new York City, composer and alto saxophonist and flautist recorded a multi-hour interview on his life and music for the Smithsonian Institute and it is held at the archive center of the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C.
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Johnny Costa was born in Arnold, Pennsylvania on January 17, 1922. He learned to play accordion at age 7 and was reading music three years later. He was encouraged by his high school music teacher, Frank Oliver, to learn the piano after discovering he had perfect pitch. Costa graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in music and education.
After college Johnny began working the same day as the house pianist for a Pittsburgh radio station and television station providing piano and organ music for many programs, eventually teaming with Fred Rogers to arrange and perform the music heard on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for which he served as musical director until his death. He insisted on not playing “baby” music, believing children understood good music and each day, his trio, Carl McVicker Jr. on bass and Bobby Rawsthorne on percussion played live in the studio for the taping.
Costa’s debut recording was The Amazing Johnny Costa, on the Savoy label. He gave up his lucrative career and international recognition to stay near family and friends, resigning as musical director of the Mike Douglas Show to perform only in western Pennsylvania for the remainder of his life. Costa appeared along with guitarist Joe Negri on the 1954 Ken Griffin TV series 67 Melody Lane performing After You’ve Gone and Little Brown Jug, with the latter being accompanied by Ken Griffin at the organ.
Pianist Johnny Costa, given the title “The White Tatum” by jazz legend Art Tatum, passed away of anemia on October 11, 1996, at age 74 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Much of the music heard on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood continued to be his and the show’s closing continued to list Costa as its Musical Director.
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