Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Theodore G. Brown was born into a musical family on December 1, 1927 in Rochester, New York. He learned banjo and violin from his father who also taught him to read music at six, and clarinet and tenor sax from his uncle. After playing in army bands from 1945 to 1947 and then in Hollywood, California for the following year, he moved to New York City.

He worked with Lennie Tristano and fellow pupils and associates Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh for two years beginning in  1955. During that time Ted recorded a session for Vanguard, worked with Ronnie Ball, and played a date in Hollywood with Warne Marsh.

>Returning to New York City he worked extensively in clubs. Brown recorded with Konitz in 1959, and again in 1976, while leading his own group in the late Seventies. He also worked and recorded with Art Pepper and Hod O’Brien.

Cool jazz tenor saxophonist Ted Brown, who recorded as a leader or co-leader thirteen albums and as a sideman was a part of five albums with Tristano, Marsh and Konitz, is 97 years old.

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Jazz Poems

FOR SIDNEY BECHET

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes

Like New Orleans reflected on the water,

And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,

Building for some a legendary Quarter

Of balconies, flower-baskets and quadrilles,

Everyone making love and going shares–

Oh, play that thing! Mute glorious Storyvilles

Others may license, grouping round their chairs

Sporting-house girls like circus tigers (priced

Far above rubies) to pretend their fads,

While scholars manqués nod around unnoticed

Wrapped up in personnels like old plaids.

On me your voice falls as they say love should,

Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City

Is where your speech alone is understood,

And greeted as the natural noise of good,

Scattering long-haired grief and scored pity.

PHILIP LARKIN

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Grant Sangster was born November 17, 1928 in the Melbourne suburb of Sandringham, Victoria, Australia. He was an only child that attended primary schools in Sandringham and Vermont, and then Box Hill High School. While at high school he taught himself to play trombone and with a friend, Sid Bridle, formed a band.

In 1946 he started a civil engineering course at Melbourne Technical School. Two years later Sangster performed at the third annual Australian Jazz Convention, held in Melbourne. By the following year he led his own ensemble, John Sangster’s Jazz Six, which included Ken Evans on trombone. He provided trombone for Graeme Bell and his Australian Jazz Band, later took up the cornet and then the drums. They toured several times from 1950 to 1955, and in the late Fifties he began playing the vibraphone.

He went on to play with Don Burrows in the early 1960s, form his own quartet and experimented with group improvisatory jazz, after becoming interested in the music of Sun Ra and Archie Shepp. By the end of the Sixties his attention turned to rock musicians and he joined the expanded lineup of the Australian progressive rock group Tully, who provided the musical backing for the original Australian production of the rock musical Hair. He performed and recorded with Tully and their successors, Luke’s Walnut, throughout the two years he played in Hair. In 1970 he re-joined the Burrows group for Expo 1970 in Osaka, Japan.

In the 1970s Sangster released a series of popular The Lord of the Rings inspired albums that started with The Hobbit Suite in 1973. He was also the composer of a large number of scores for television shows, documentaries, films, and radio. In 1988, Sangster published his autobiography, Seeing the Rafters.

Trombonist John Sangster, who also plays trumpet, drums, percussion, cornet, vibraphone and is best known as a composer, died in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia on October 26, 1995 at age 66.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mickey Ashman was born on November 12, 1927 in the United Kingdom and began playing the double bass at a young age. His sojourn into the jazz world began in the early 1950s when he collaborated with Chirs Barber in one of his amateur bands. Their early 1951 recording Misty Morning hinted at his exceptional musical talent.

The mid-Fiftiess saw his transition into the professional realm of jazz, joining Humphrey Lyttelton’s band. In 1956, he returned to Chris Barber’s Jazz Band, further solidifying his reputation as a sought-after bassist. Mickey made significant contributions to two influential LP records, Echoes Of Harlem and Volume 2 in the Chris Barber Plays series.

Parting ways with Chris Barber’s band following Lonnie Donegan’s exit in 1956, he joined Lonnie in creating one of the UK’s most popular musical acts in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, he embraced leadership, forming Micky Ashman’s Ragtime Jazzmen. Although the group didn’t achieve the same level of fame as some of its contemporaries, they contributed noteworthy recordings like Tin Roof Blues.

His dedication to jazz and versatile talent solidified his place in British jazz history and his legacy continues to inspire musicians. Double bassist Mickey Ashman, also known as Micky, died on August 21, 2015.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alois Maxwell Hirt was born on November 7, 1922 in New Orleans, Louisiana to a police officer father. At the age of six, he got his first trumpet, which had been purchased at a local pawnshop. He played in the Junior Police Band with friend Roy Fernandez, the son of Alcide Nunez. By 16 he was playing professionally with his friend Pete Fountain, while attending Jesuit High School. During this time, he was hired to play at the local horse racing track, beginning a six-decade connection to the sport.

1940 saw Al in Cincinnati, Ohio studying at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music with Dr. Frank Simon. After a stint as a bugler in the Army during World War II, he performed with various swing big bands, including those of Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Ina Ray Hutton.

In 1950 Hirt became the first trumpet and featured soloist with Horace Heidt’s Orchestra and after several years on the road he returned to New Orleans working with various Dixieland groups and leading his own bands. He soon signed with RCA Victor and posted twenty-two albums on the Billboard charts in the 1950s and 1960s. He recorded the theme for the 1960s television show The Green Hornet, with arranger and composer Billy May.

From the mid-1950s to early 1960s, Hirt and his band played nightly at Dan’s Pier 600, hosted the hour-long television variety series Fanfare, as the summer replacement for Jackie Gleason and the American Scene Magazine, and would go on to play for Pope John Paul II.

Trumpeter and bandleader Al Hirt died of liver failure on April 27, 1999 at the age of 76, after having spent the previous year in a wheelchair due to edema in his leg.

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