Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hal Russell was born Harold Russell Luttenbacher on August 28, 1926 in Detroit, Michigan. Raised in Chicago, Illinois from the eighth grade, he began playing drums at age four, but majored in trumpet at college. He subsequently drummed in several big bands, including those of Woody Herman and Boyd Raeburn.
As with many young players in the mid-1940s, Russell’s life was irreversibly changed by bebop. In the 1950s he worked with Miles Davis, Billie Holiday, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, and Duke Ellington. During this period he succumbed to drugs and was a heroin addict for ten years. In 1959, he joined the Joe Daley Trio, whose Newport’ 1963, which was mostly studio material, was reputedly one of the earliest free jazz records.
The early 1970s saw Hal as the regular percussionist for the band at the suburban Chicago Candlelight Dinner Playhouse. He played mostly drums, but occasionally vibes and keyboards. By the end of the decade he formed the NRG Ensemble, which featured saxophonist Mars Williams, multi-instrumentalist Brian Sandstrom, and percussionist Steve Hunt, among others. During this period he started playing tenor and soprano saxophone and trumpet, in addition to drums and vibes.
Issuing his first album in 1981 for the Nessa label, in the late Eighties the group began playing frequently in Europe, and began recording for ECM with The Finnish/Swiss Tour. In addition to the NRG Ensemble, Russell always maintained several bands, the rock-oriented trio NRG 3 and The Flying Luttenbachers.
Tenor and soprano saxophonist, trumpeter, vibraphonist and drummer Hal Russell, shortly after completing the semi-autobiographical album The Hal Russell Story, transitioned from a heart attack on September 5,1992 in La Grange, Illinois.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tony Crombie was born Anthony John Kronenberg on August 27, 1925 in London, England’s East End Jewish community. A self-taught musician, he began playing the drums at the age of fourteen. He was one of a group of young men from the East End of London who ultimately formed the co-operative Club Eleven bringing modern jazz to Britain. He went to New York with his friend Ronnie Scott in 1947, witnessing the playing of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he and like-minded musicians such as Johnny Dankworth, and Scott and Denis Rose, brought be-bop to the UK. This group of musicians were the ones called upon if and when modern jazz gigs were available.
In 1948, Crombie toured Britain and Europe with Duke Ellington, who had been unable to bring his own musicians with him, except for Ray Nance and Kay Davis. Picking up a rhythm section in London, he chose Crombie on the recommendation of Lena Horne, with whom Crombie had worked when she appeared at the Palladium.
By 1956 Tony temporarily left jazz to set up a rock and roll band he called The Rockets, modeling themselves after Bill Haley’s Comets and Freddie Bell & the Bellboys. They released several singles for Decca and Columbia. He is credited with introducing rock and roll music to Iceland, performing there in 1957.
The next year the Rockets had become a jazz group with Scott and Tubby Hayes. During the following year, Crombie started Jazz Inc. with pianist Stan Tracey. During the Sixties he scored for television and film and established a residency at a hotel in Monte Carlo. He toured the UK with Conway Twitty, Freddy Cannon, Johnny Preston, and Wee Willie Harris.
In the early 1960s, Crombie’s friend, Victor Feldman, passed one of his compositions to Miles Davis, who recorded the piece on his album Seven Steps to Heaven. The song, “So Near, So Far”, has been recorded by players including Joe Henderson, who named a tribute album to Miles Davis using the title.
Over the next thirty years, Crombie worked with many American jazz musicians, including Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Joe Pass, Mark Murphy and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.
After breaking his arm in a fall in the mid-1990s he stopped playing the drums, but continued composing until his death. Drummer, pianist, vibraphonist, bandleader and composer Tony Crombie, was regarded as one of the finest English jazz drummers and bandleaders, transitioned on October 18, 1999, aged 74.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lou Colombo was born on August 22, 1927 and raised in Brockton, Massachusetts. He began playing trumpet in the 1940s, at age 12. Aftere serving in the Army band in World War II he had hopes of playing professional baseball, saw him signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, but a broken ankle forced him to curtail that dream. He then formed his own band in the 1950s and toured with Buddy Morrow, Perez Prado, Dick Johnson and the Artie Shaw Orchestra. He also played with Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong during his career.
So he dove into music and his trumpet. His career included stints with the Charlie Spivak and Perez Prado bands and the Artie Shaw Orchestra. On Cape Cod, Lou’s gigs with Dick Johnson and Dave McKenna were legendary, as is their superb Concord album, I Remember Bobby, a tribute to Bobby Hackett.
Known for his one-handed trumpet style, he was a mainstay in the Cape Cod, Massachusetts jazz scene for more than six decades and maintained a home in Fort Myers, Florida. Trumpeter Lou Columbo, who also played flugelhorn, baritone horn and pocket trumpet, transitioned unexpectedly at 84 on March 4, 2019 in a car crash in Fort Myers after making a turn and his vehicle was struck by another.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Christiane Legrand was born on August 21, 1930 in Paris, France. Her father Raymond Legrand was a conductor and composer renowned for hits such as Irma la douce. She studied piano and classical music from the time she was four and was discovered by jazz critic and composer André Hodeir in 1957. She became the lead singer in the most notable French jazz vocal groups of the 1960s, including Les Double Six.
She was the original lead soprano of The Swingle Singers and was the vocalist who dubbed the part of Madame Emery in Les parapluies de Cherbourg, the music was composed by her brother Michel Legrand. She also sang the part of Judith in his Les demoiselles de Rochefort. Christiane had several commercial recordings over the course of her career.
Legrand sang the lead role on the French Disney recording of the score to the film Mary Poppins in 1964 and lent her talents to numerous other film projects. She was the featured soprano on the track “Fires (Which Burn Brightly)” on the 1973 Procol Harum album Grand Hotel.
Soprano vocalist Christiane Legrand transitioned on November 1, 2011.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Sharpe was born on August 19, 1930 in London, England. He began playing tenor saxophone at age eighteen. He played with Vic Lewis and Teddy Foster in the early 1950s and freelanced in the London area.
While working as a taxi driver in 1953 he played with Dizzy Reece in 1954, then in Tubby Hayes’s band the following year until 1956. Jack played with Mike Senn in the Downbeaters after 1957, worked further with Hayes, and led his own sextet in 1958. He went on to promote and book other musicians.
In the early 1970s Sharpe managed a nightclub where he led the house band on weekends. By 1975 he had left music intermittently to continue driving a cab. He returned to jazz in 1985, playing with Alan Branscombe and leading a Tubby Hayes tribute band.
Tenor saxophonist and bandleader Jack Sharpe, who was mainly active on the London jazz scene, transitioned on November 4, 1994.
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