Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lloyd Trotman was born on May 25, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts. He began playing the club scene on 52nd Street in New York in 1945, playing with the likes of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. One of his earliest recording sessions was on Duke Ellington’s 1950 album Great Times Piano Duets with Billy Strayhorn and Oscar Pettiford.
He worked with, traveled with, and recorded with many jazz artists including Johnny Hodges, Woody Herman, Bud Powell, Red Allen, Coleman Hawkins, Jimmy Scott, Billie Holiday, Lucky Millinder, Boyd Raeburn and Blanche Calloway. He was a member of the Apollo house band during the late 40’s and early 1950s.
During the 1950s Lloyd worked as a session musician at Atlantic, RCA Victor, Mercury, Okeh, Vik, Cadence, Brunswick and many other recording studios alongside producers and arrangers such as Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Leiber and Stoller, Jesse Stone, Sammy Lowe, Leroy Kirkland and Archie Bleyer. He played behind Sam “The Man” Taylor, King Curtis, Panama Francis, Mickey Baker, Ernie Hayes, Al Caiola among others and was a member of Alan Freed’s Rock & Roll Orchestra at the Brooklyn Paramount and Fox Theaters during the late 1950s.
He continued to play many weekend nightclub dates into the early 1980’s and after retiring from the music business, he became a loan officer at Islip National Bank. Jazz bassist Lloyd Trotman, who backed numerous jazz, Dixieland, R&B, and rock and roll artists in the 1940’s, 1950s and 1960s, passed away at the aged 84, on October 3, 2007 on Long Island, New York.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Archie Shepp was born on May 24, 1937 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida but was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He studied piano, clarinet and alto saxophone before focusing on the tenor saxophone. He studied drama at Goddard College from 1955-59, eventually turning professional.
Shepp played in a Latin jazz band for a short time before joining the band of avant-garde pianist Cecil Taylor. His debut recording as a leader was under his own name, Archie Shepp-Bill Dixon Quartet on the Savoy label. The 1962 session included an Ornette Coleman composition was the initial link to the formation of the New York Contemporary Five, which included Don Cherry. Two years later with the admiration of Coltrane he recorded Four For Trane on Impulse Records with trombonist Roswell Rudd, bassist Reggie Workman and alto John Tchicai.
Archie participated in the sessions for Coltrane’s A Love Supreme in late 1964, but none of the takes were included on the final release but has since been made available on a 2002 reissue. He would cut Ascension with Coltrane in 1965, and his place alongside Coltrane at the forefront of the avant-garde jazz scene was epitomized when the pair split the record New Thing At Newport, the first side a Coltrane set, the second a Shepp set.
During the decade he would develop his political consciousness and Afrocentric orientation, recording albums that reflected. His albums Fire Music and The Magic of Ju-Ju put him at the forefront of the free-form avant-garde movement along with Pharoah Sanders. He continued to experiment into the new decade, at various times with harmonica players and even spoken word poets. Never far from political and social commentary Archie released Attica Blues for the prison riots and The Cry Of My People that spoke to civil rights. He also wrote for theater including The Communist and Lady Day: A Musical Tragedy.
In 1971, Shepp was recruited to the University of Massachusetts Amherst that began a thirty-year career as a professor teaching Revolutionary Concepts in African-American Music and Black Musician in the Theater, also teaching African-American Studies at SUNY in Buffalo, New York.
In the late 1970s and beyond Archie would record blues, ballads, spirituals, tributes to traditional jazz musicians, as well as R&B. He would perform with Sun Ra’s Arkestra, French trumpeter Eric Le Lann, with Michel Herr creating the original score for the film Just Friends. He also appeared on the Red, Hot Organization’s tribute to Fela Kuti titled Red, Hot and Riot.
He has been featured in two documentary films, 1981’s Imagine The Sound, in which he discusses and performs his music and poetry, and Mystery Mr. Ra in which he discusses and performs his music and poetry. Shepp also appears in Mystery, Mr. Ra, a 1984 French documentary about Sun Ra.
In 2004 he founded his own record label, Archieball, together with Monette Berthomier in Paris. Tenor and soprano saxophonist, pianist, vocalist Archie Shepp continues to perform, collaborate and record.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richard Alan Berk was born on May 22, 1939 in San Francisco, California. He studied at the Berklee College of and played in the Boston area early in the 1960s.
In 1962 he moved to New York City and played with Ted Curson and Bill Barron in a quintet until 1964. Following this Dick played with Charles Mingus, Mose Allison, Freddie Hubbard, and Walter Bishop Jr. among others.
A move to Los Angeles late in the decade saw Berk playing with Milt Jackson, George Duke, Cal Tjader, John Hicks, Ray Drummond, Ted Curson, Don Friedman, . Jean-Luc Ponty and Blue Mitchell, to name a few. He went on to establish the Jazz Adoption Agency in the early 1980s, played well into the 2000s; among this group’s alumni are Andy Martin, Mike Fahn, Nick Brignola, John Noagormey, Keith Saunders, Tad Weed and John Patitucci.
He recorded eight albums as a leader and another nine as a sideman. Drummer and bandleader Dick Berk passed away on February 8, 2014 at the age of 74.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Florence was born on May 20, 1932 in Los Angeles, California. He began taking piano lessons at five and initially intended to be a concert pianist. His direction changed when he was exposed to jazz while attending Los Angeles City College.
At the beginning of his career Bob worked as a pianist and arranger with Dave Pell. He went on to found his first band in the late 1950s, working with, amongst others, Herb Geller, Bud Shank, Frank Capp and Enevoldsen.
Florence later participated in big band projects in the Los Angeles area, working mainly with session musicians and as an accompanist to various singers. Throughout his career he worked as an arranger for Harry James, Louis Bellson, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Count Basie and Doc Severinsen.
In 2000, Florence won a Grammy for Best Large Ensemble Performance. He died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California on May 15, 2008 at the age of 75.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sonny Fortune was born on May 19, 1939 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After moving to New York City in 1967 he recorded and appeared live with drummer Elvin Jones’s group. In 1968 he was a member of Mongo Santamaria’s band. He subsequently performed with singer Leon Thomas and then with McCoy Tyner from 1971–1973.
In 1974 Sonny replaced Dave Liebman in Miles Davis’s ensemble and remained until spring 1975. He went on to join Nat Adderley after his brief tenure with Davis, and then formed his own group, recording two albums for A&M’s Horizon label. During the 1990s, he recorded several acclaimed albums for Blue Note.
He has performed with Roy Brooks, Buddy Rich, George Benson, Rabih Abou Khalil, Roy Ayers, Oliver Nelson, Gary Bartz, Rashied Ali and Pharoah Sanders, and was a part of the live album The Atlantic Family Live at Montreux.
Alto saxophonist and flautist Sonny Fortune, who also played the soprano, tenor and baritone saxophone and clarinet, continued to perform, record and tour until he died of a stroke at the age of 79 on October 25, 2018.
Inspire A Young Mind