Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Errol Parker was born Raphaël Schecroun on October 30,1925 in Oran, French Algeria. In 1964, Parker composed the song Lorre, which became a hit in France, and opened his own jazz club called Le Ladybird on Rue de la Huchette.
Following a serious car accident which impaired Parker’s piano playing, he emigrated to New York, where his daughter Elodie Lauten was to begin university in February 1968. It was in America that he started a second career as a record producer, but unable to find a suitable drummer, he started to perform as a jazz drummer, which was not affected by his shoulder injury.
Pianist, composer, record producer and drummer Errol Parker, who played and recorded as a leader and with Django Reinhardt, James Moody, Don Byas and Kenny Clarke among others, passed away of liver cancer at the age of 72 on July 2, 1998 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Henderson was born on October 26, 1940 in New York City. His mother was an original Cotton Club dancer and his father sang with a popular singing group of the day, Billy Williams and The Charioteers. At the age of nine he got an informal lesson by Louis Armstrong and continued his study of the instrument as a teenager at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, after his family moved there in 1954. As a young man, he performed with the San Francisco Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. In 1957 he met Miles Davis, a friend of his parents and played a gig together when he was just 17.
After three years in the Air Force, Henderson enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley graduating with a B.S. in zoology in 1964. He then studied medicine at Howard University, then went back to the Bay area undertook his residency in psychiatry in 1968, he practiced general medicine from 1975 to 1985 in San Francisco part-time for about four hours a day working at a small clinic.
His break in music came when he took a weeklong gig with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band that led to a three-year job. It was during this period in the early 70s that her recorded three albums with the group but more importantly came out as a leader and recorded his debut album Realization followed by Inside Out.
After leaving Hancock, Eddie worked extensively with Pharoah Sanders, Mike Nock, Norman Connors, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He joined Latin jazz band Azteca, recorded with Charles Earland and fronted his own bands, both jazz and rock-oriented. However, recognized for his work with Hancock, his own records were considered too commercial.
By the 1990s, Henderson returned to playing acoustic hard bop, touring with Billy Harper while also working as a physician. He recorded at Miles tribute album So What? with Bob Berg, Dave Kikoski, Ed Howard and Victor Lewis. He has collaborated with his wife Natsuko who composed Tender You, Precious Moment, Around the World in 3/4 and Be Cool.
As an educator trumpet and flugelhorn player Eddie Henderson has been a faculty member of Juilliard since 2007 and is Associate Professor of Trumpet at the Oberlin Conservatory Jazz Department, beginning in 2014. He has recorded 23 albums as a leader, has released two anthologies, and recorded nearly four-dozen sessions as a sideman with Benny Golson, Mulgrew Miller, Richard Davis, Gary Bartz, Leon Thomas, Billy Hart, McCoy Tyner, Mal Waldron, Stanley Cowell, Grover Washington, Jr., Kenny Barron, Joe Farnsworth and the Mingus Big Band to name a few.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary McFarland was born in Los Angeles, California on October 23, 1933. An influential composer, arranger, vibraphonist and vocalist, he made a name for himself on Verve and Impulse Records during the Sixties, making one of the more significant contributors to orchestral jazz. He attained a small following after working with Bill Evans, Gerry Mulligan, Johnny Hodges, John Lewis, Stan Getz, Bob Brookmeyer and Anita O’Day.
His debut as a leader came in 1961 with the Jazz Version of How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying. Gary recorded for Skye, Buddah and Cobblestone Records through the 1960s into the early Seventies. As well as eighteen of his own albums as a leader and arrangements for other musicians such as Lena Horne, Steve Kuhn, Gabor Szabo, John Lewis, Shirley Scott, Zoot Sims and Gary Burton, he composed the scores to the films Eye of the Devil in 1968 and Who Killed Mary What’s ‘Er Name in 1971.
By the end of the 1960s McFarland was moving away from jazz towards an often wistful or melancholy style of instrumental pop, as well as producing the recordings of other artists on his Skye Records label, run in partnership with Szabo and Cal Tjader until its bankruptcy in 1970.
Gary McFarland and Louis Savary wrote the classic song Sack Full Of Dreams that was first released by Grady Tate in 1968. He was considering a move into writing and arranging for film and stage when on November 3, 1971 he was poisoned with methadone in a New York City bar at the tender age of 38. In tribute Bill Evans performed Gary’s Waltz in 1979, shortly before his own death.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
J. C. Moses was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on October 18, 1936 and was related to pianist Jimmy Golden and trumpeter Clifford Thornton. Somewhat of a mystery figure in jazz history, he was a very versatile and for a time greatly in-demand drummer who played in settings ranging from mainstream to free jazz.
Moses first gained the attention of the jazz world in the early 1960s, when he recorded with Clifford Jordan, Kenny Dorham and Eric Dolphy. As a member of the New York Contemporary Five with Archie Shepp, John Tchicai and Don Cherry, he toured Scandinavia in 1963 and recorded in Denmark. Returning to New York the following year, J. C. recorded with Bud Powell on the album The Return of Bud Powell, was with the New York Art Quartet, then was with an early version of Charles Lloyd’s Quartet and spent two years with Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
During this period drummer J. C. Moses also worked with Archie Shepp, Andrew Hill and Sam Rivers. By 1969 he played regularly in Copenhagen as the house drummer at the Montmartre Club. However, erratic health forced him to cut back on his activities in the early 1970s and he returned to Pittsburgh. Unfortunately he never led his own record date but he would occasionally played with Nathan Davis and Eric Kloss before his untimely death in 1977.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sathima Bea Benjamin was born Beatrice Bertha Benjamin on October 17, 1936 in Claremont, Cape Town, South Africa. As an adolescent, she first performed popular music in talent contests at the local cinema (bioscope) during the intermission. By the 1950s she was singing at various nightclubs, community dances and social events, performing with notable Cape Town pianists Tony Schilder and Henry February, among others. She built her repertoire watching British and American movies and transcribing lyrics from songs heard on the radio. She discovered Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Doris Day and Ella Fitzgerald who greatly influenced her singing style, phrasing and diction.
At 21, she joined Arthur Klugman’s traveling show, Coloured Jazz and Variety, touring South Africa. When the production failed, she found herself stranded in Mozambique where she met South African saxophonist Kippie Moekets. Returning to Cape Town’s now thriving jazz scene in 1959, Sathima met pianist Dollar Brand, later known to the world as Abdullah Ibrahim. She would marry him in 1965 and the same year record with his trio what would have been the first jazz album in South Africa titled My Songs For You, but it was never released.
In the aftermath of South Africa’s 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, Benjamin and Ibrahim left South Africa for Europe, settling in Zurich. Along with bassist Johnny Gertze and drummer Makhaya Ntshoko they worked throughout Germany and Scandinavia, meeting and occasional working with American jazz players, such as, Don Byas, Dexter Gordon, Kenny Drew, Ben Webster, Bud Powell, John Coltrane and Thelonious Monk. The artist who would have the greatest impact on Benjamin’s life, however, was Duke Ellington.
Benjamin met Duke Ellington while he was in Zurich in 1963 asked that he hear her husband’s trio at the Club Africana. Obliging but insisting that she sing for him. Following this encounter, Ellington arranged for the couple to fly to Paris and record separate albums for Sinatra’s Reprise label. Her recording, A Morning in Paris, was thought lost and remained unreleased until 1966. Maintaining her musical relationship with Ellington she performed with his band in the U.S. at the Newport Jazz Festival. He subsequently asked her to join his band permanently but being newly wedded she declined.
Throughout the 1960s, Sathima moved back and forth between Europe and New York City as manager and agent for her husband while raising their son, Tsakwe. Returning to South Africa 1976 she gave birth to a daughter and recorded African Songbird, and then returned to New york City the following year. Launching her own record label, ekapa rpm, to produce, publish and distribute her and Ibrahim’s music, between 1979 and 2002, she released eight of her own albums on ekapa: Sathima Sings Ellington, Memories and Dreams, Windsong, Lovelight, Southern Touch, Cape Town Love, Musical Echoes and Dedications, the last receiving a Grammy nomination.
Benjamin collaborated on these albums with saxophonist Carlos Ward, pianists Stephen Scott, Kenny Baron,, Larry Willis and Onaje Allan Gumbs, bassist Buster Williams and drummers Billy Higgins and Ben Riley. She has been the recipient of South Africa’s Order of Ikhamanga Silver Award, was the feature of a 2010 documentary film Sathima’s Windsong, and has had a co-authorhip of her life Musical Echoes: South African Women Thinking In Jazz.
Sathima Bea Benjamin returned to Cape Town in 2011, where she continued to work as a vocalist until passing away on August 20, 2013, aged 76.
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