Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Guy Eugène Hilarion Pedersen was born on June 10, 1930 in Grand-Fort-Philippe, France. Coming from a family of popular musicians, their story begins in 1855 with all members of his maternal family being fiddlers from father to son. His uncles and his grandfather played all the balls of the region and his great-grandfather composed Tiger Rag, a jazz standard.
He began studying music theory around 1943 at the age of 13, taking free lessons at the Roubaix conservatory until 1952. Already passionate about jazz, he listened to Hugues Panassié ‘s radio broadcasts and bought his first American records by Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Lee Konitz. In 1950 he won the prize for best double bass player at the Brussels, Belgium competition, then Jazz Hot in Paris, France and decided to become a musician.
Beginning in Paris with singer Fats Edward, he went on to play with pianist Henri Renaud and drummer Jean-Louis Viale at Tabou, and at Ringside founded by Sugar Ray Robinson. Guy followed this working with Jacques Hélian and Claude Bolling to learn the trade of a large orchestra. From 1955 to 1966, he was a member with drummer Daniel Humair of one of Martial Solal trios, recording the historic Jazz à Gaveau in 1962.
Pedersen and Humair then joined the Swingle Singers to record the group’s second album. They traveled around the world with them, even passing through the White House in 1966. By 1973 he was touring with Baden Powell, recording over a dozen records with him. Between 1973 and 1980, he recorded seven albums and toured frequently with Jean-Christian Michel .
Leading an active career as a studio musician during this period he also appeared on television variety shows accompanying the group Les Troubadours. The late Sixties saw him composing, writing a lot of music for short films. Some of his recordings on Tele Music and Montparnasse 2000 are now cult, especially among disc jockeys.
A serious heart attack in 1977 sidelined the bassist from music and retiring permanently, he became a professional antique dealer. Double bassist, composer and antique dealer Guy Pedersen transitioned on January 4, 2005 in Rueil-Malmaison, Hauts-de-Seine, France at the age of 74 years old.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenny Dennis was born May 27, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began his musical career in the United States Army Band, playing drums in three bands from 1948-1952. After being discharged, he connected with junior high school mate, pianist Ray Bryant and became part of The Ray Bryant Trio along with Jimmy Rowser on bass. They became the house trio at the North Philadelphia Jazz Club, Blue Note where they played with Kai Winding, Chris Connor and Sonny Stitt among others.
Moving to New York City he worked with Miles Davis, Phineas Newborn, Jr., Billy Taylor, Erroll Garner, Charles Mingus, Johnny Griffin, Slide Hampton and Sonny Rollins. In 1957, Dennis performed in Sonny Rollins’s Trio with bassist Wendell Marshall at Carnegie Hall, a historic performance that was commemorated in 2007 with a 50th anniversary concert.
Dennis migrated to California, when Miles Davis recommended him to Lena Horne. There he recorded with Davis, Michel Legrand, Charlie Mingus, Gerald Wilson, poet Langston Hughes and Nancy Wilson, the latter he married and they had a son. He would also record with Oscar Brown Jr., Langston Hughes, Dodo Greene, Roy Ayers, Mal Waldron and Burt Bacharach.
Since 1997 drummer Kenny Dennis, who never recorded as a leader, has been an assistant director of the Lab Band at the award winning Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gene DiNovi was born Eugene Salvatore DiNovi on May 26, 1928 in New York City. While in his teens he worked with Joe Marsala and Chuck Wayne and by the late Forties was very active live and on record. During this period he worked with Buddy DeFranco, Benny Goodman, Chubby Jackson, Brew Moore, Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw, Lester Young.
At the end of the decade and into the 1950s Gene worked extensively as an accompanist for vocalists, starting with Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and Anita O’Day. He recorded with Lena Horne multiple times in the late 1950s and early 1960s and accompanied her on European tours. He also led his own small combos with sidemen including Danny Bank, Johnny Carisi, Bill Crow, Tony Fruscella, and Dave Schildkraut.
He began working more as a studio musician and film score composer in the 1960s. Toward the end of the decade he played with Carmen McRae, then moved to Canada to take a position as a house pianist with the CBC in Toronto. In the 1980s he worked with Ruby Braff and toured and recorded in Japan, and continued to be active as a performer into the 1990s, working with James Campbell, Don Thompson, Memo Acevedo, Dave Young, and Terry Clarke.
Pianist and composer Gene DiNovi, now 95, lives a quiet life.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marshall Belford Allen was born in Louisville, Kentucky on May 25, 1924. During World War II he enlisted in the 92nd Infantry Division and was stationed in France. He studied alto saxophone in Paris, France and played in Europe with Art Simmons and James Moody.
Best known for his mastery of explosive, jarring, chaotic sound effects on the alto saxophone, the opportunity came to create a long association with Sun Ra, with whom he performed almost exclusively from 1958 to Ra’s death in 1993. Marshall recorded with Paul Bley in 1964 and Olatunji during the mid-1960s.
Since Sun Ra death Allen has led the Arkestra and has recorded two albums. Allen often appeared in New York-area collaborations with bassist Henry Grimes, and participated in the Innerzone Orchestra with Francisco Mora Catlett, Carl Craig and others in an appreciation of Sun Ra’s music.
In 2022, the building at 5626 Morton Street known as the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra was listed as a historic landmark in the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. Free and avant-garde jazz alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who also plays flute, oboe, piccolo, and EWI, at the age of 99 continues to live at the Institute, which has been his home since 1968.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Alf was born Alfredo José da Silva on May 19, 1929 in Vila Isabel, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and began playing piano at age 9. His father died when he was 3 and was raised by his mother, who worked as a maid to raise him. He attended Colégio Pedro II, receiving support from his mother’s employers who had appreciation for music. He was enrolled at the IBEU, Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos, and it was there that he received his first formal musical training, studying classical piano with instructor Geni Bálsamo.
Influenced by Nat King Cole and George Sheaing, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Brazilian born Dick Fame, he eventually gained membership into the Sinatra~Farney Fan Club, a performers collective. Alf’s membership allowed him regular access to a piano as well as a group of musically sympathetic peers with which to play and experiment. They would finally get the payless opportunity to play in a few well known venues.
By 1950 he was pursuing a professional musical career and received his first professional break in 1952 when he was hired as the pianist at the newly inaugurated Cantina do César, owned by the popular radio host César de Alencar. With free musical reign. Johnny would receive frequent visits from pianist João Donato, vocalist Dolores Duran, and guitarist/vocalist João Gilberto who would sit in on the way to their gigs.
He would begin to combine Samba-cançãoes and foxtrots with American jazz styles. He would go on to record his first two albums, however, the recordings garnered no more than a pittance of recognition for Alf at the time, but would later in the early Sixties be hailed as the progenitors of the Bossa Nova style.
He continued to find nightly work in the Rio clubs and work with musical companions João Gilberto, João Donato, and the young pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim, all following him from venue to venue provided they could afford the cover fee. By 1954 he was performing regularly at the Hotel Plaza nightclub. Due to its haunted reputation Johnny was able to play his own compositions plus hold early evening jam sessions and these improvisatory collaborations that the harmonic and rhythmic structures eventually blossomed into the style now known as Bossa Nova.
Moving to Sao Paulo in 1955 he became the house pianist at a new club, Baiúca and formed a short-lived duo with double-bassist Sabá. Unfortunately the group only established a moderate following before Baiúca was closed down for health-code violations. In 1961 he declined the invitation to play at Carnegie Hall’s historic Bossa Nova Festival because he didn’t like the connotation bossa nova brought with it. That decision sent him towards obscurity and very little was heard from Alf, although he infrequently produce albums throughout the 60s and early 70s. He would continue to collaborate, record and perform to earn a living and eventually landed a position at a local conservatory of music.
Pianist, vocalist, composer and educator Johnny Alf, who is widely considered the Father of Bossa Nova, transitioned from complications caused by prostate cancer on March 4, 2010 in Santo Andre, just outside São Paulo, Brazil. This was his home for the last fifty years of his life. He left no immediate survivors.
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