Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carmell Jones was born in Kansas City, Kansas on July 19, 1936 and was reared by parents how were both teachers. He became interested in music and jazz, by his own admission, at the age of two. Piano lessons began at age five, gave way to the “that’s for sissy’s attitude” and trumpet started at seven.
He spent two years in the army followed by two years at the University of Kansas as a music education and trumpet major. Leaving the Midwest for the Pacific coast, he became a California studio musician in 1960 recording with such artists as Sammy Davis Jr., Bob Hope, and Nelson Riddle. During this chapter in his success story, he was being compared to Clifford Brown and Fats Navarro. Carmell developed a close association with Bud Shank as a member of his quintet. He recorded with many other notables and most importantly he recorded his first album under his own name and contract with Pacific Jazz – “The Remarkable Carmell Jones”.
In ‘64 moving to New York he joined the Horace Silver Quintet recording three albums with Silver including “Song For My Father”. Down Beat Magazine awarded Jones the designation of “New Star Trumpeter” and signing with Prestige, he recorded what he considers his most successful personal album, “Jay Hawk Talk”, with pianist Barry Harris, tenor Jimmy Heath, drummer Roger Humphreys and bassist Teddy Smith. This album received the critics 5 Star Best Album Award.
The next year Carmell left the U.S. for Germany and spent the next fifteen years working with Milo Pavlovic, Herb Geller, Leo Wright and Eugene Cicero, the SFB Big Band and Radio Free Berlin recording 8 hours a day, composing and arranging for radio, TV and film. Upon his return to the States he devoted much of his time building new musicians from the ground up teaching music in his hometown elementary schools.
Carmell Jones, trumpeter, composer, arranger, music publisher, educator and recording artist with over sixty albums to his credit passed away in Kansas City, Kansas on November 7, 1996.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Callen Radcliffe Tjader, Jr. a.k.a. Cal Tjader was born July 16, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri to touring Swedish-American vaudevillians, a tap dancing father and pianist mother. At two, his parents settled in San Mateo, California, opened a dance studio where he received piano and tap instruction from his parents. Tapping alongside his father in the Bay area he landed a role in the film “The White of the Dark Cloud of Joy” tapping with Bill “Bojangles” Robinson.
Playing in a Dixieland band around the Bay area, at sixteen Cal entered and won a Gene Krupa solo contest but the win was dampened by Pearl Harbor. After serving in the Army, he enrolled at San Jose State College and under the G.I. Bill majoring in education. He later transferred to San Francisco State College, took timpani lessons, met Dave Brubeck who introduced him to Paul Desmond. The three formed the Dave Brubeck Octet with Tjader on drums and recorded one album.
Disbanding the octet, Tjader and Brubeck formed a trio that became a fixture in the San Francisco jazz scene. During this period he taught himself the vibraphone, alternating between it and the drums depending on the song. A diving accident in 1951 forced Brubeck’s trio to dissolve, however, Tjader continued trio work with bassist Jack Weeks and pianists John Marabuto or Vince Guaraldi, recording his first 10″ LP as a leader with them for Fantasy. He went on to work with George Shearing and continued recording for Fantasy.
After a gig at the Blackhawk Cal quit Shearing and in 1954 formed The Cal Tjader Modern Mambo Quintet that produced Mambo with Tjader. The Mambo craze reached its peak in the late 1950s, and his band opened the second Monterey Jazz Festival in 1959. The Sixties was his most prolific period and his biggest success was the 1964 album Soul Sauce, the title track, a Dizzy Gillespie composition.
The 70s were lean years suffering like most jazz artists due to rock and roll’s explosive growth. During his later years he cut what most consider his seminal work “Onda Va Bien”, roughly translated as The Good Life, earning him a Grammy for Best Latin Recording.
Just as he was born on tour, he died touring on the road with his band in Manila, succumbing from a heart attack on May 5, 1982. Cal Tjader, who 40 year career playing vibraphone, drums, bongos, congas, timpani and piano stands alongside Lionel Hampton and Milt Jackson as a vital influence and is linked with swinging freely between jazz and Latin music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Rudolph Jones was born on July 15, 1923 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. The name “Philly Joe” was used to avoid confusion with Jo Jones, the drummer from the Count Basie Orchestra, who became known as “Papa Jo Jones”. In 1947 he became the house drummer at New York’s Café Society, playing with the leading bebop players of the day. His most important influence among them was Tadd Dameron.
Jones toured and recorded with Miles Davis Quintet from 1955 to 1958 — a band that became known as “The Quintet”. Miles also acknowledged that Jones was his favorite drummer (in fact, in his autobiography, Davis admitted to asking other drummers to play that “Philly Joe lick”, with mixed results). He organized the Davis Quintet in 1955 so that he and Davis would not have difficulties finding competent local musicians to play with them.
From 1958 onwards he worked as a leader, but continued to work as a sideman with other musicians, including Bill Evans and Hank Mobley. Evans also openly admitted that Philly Joe was his all-time favorite drummer. For two years (1967-69) he taught at a specially organized school in Hampstead, London but was prevented from otherwise working in the UK by the Musicians’ Union. From 1981 he helped to found the group Dameronia, dedicated to the music of the composer Tadd Dameron, and led it until his death on August 30, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leroy Vinnegar was born on July 13, 1928 in Indianapolis, Indiana and the self-taught bassist established his reputation in Los Angeles during the 50s and 60s. His trademark was the rhythmic “walking” bass line, a steady series of ascending or descending notes, and it brought him the nickname “The Walker”. Besides his jazz work, he also appeared on a number of soundtracks and pop albums, notably Van Morrison’s 1972 album, Saint Dominic’s Preview.
He recorded extensively as both a leader and sideman and came to public attention in the 1950s as a result of recording with Lee Konitz, Andre Previn, Stan Getz, Shorty Rogers, Chet Baker, Shelly Manne, Joe Castro and Serge Chaloff. He played bass on Previn and Manne’s My Fair Lady album, one of the most successful jazz records ever produced. He also performed on another of jazz’s biggest hit albums, Eddie Harris and Les McCann’s “Swiss Movement” released in 1969.
Moving to Portland, Oregon in 1986, the Oregon State Legislature honored him in 1995 by proclaiming May 1st as Leroy Vinnegar Day. The bassist died from a heart attack at the age of 71 in Portland on August 3, 1999.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Major Holley was born on July 10, 1924 in Detroit, Michigan and started his music lessons playing violin and tuba at a young age. He started playing bass while serving in the Navy. In the latter half of the 1940s he played with Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, and Ella Fitzgerald. In 1950 he and Oscar Peterson recorded duets, and he also played with Peterson and Charlie Smith in a trio setting.
In the mid-1950s Major moved to England, working at the BBC. Upon returning to America he toured with Woody Herman in 1958 and with Al Cohn/Zoot Sims in 1959-60. A prolific studio musician, he played with Duke Ellington in 1964 and with the Kenny Burrell Trio, Coleman Hawkins, Lee Konitz, Roy Eldridge, Michel Legrand, Milt Buckner, Jay McShane and Quincy Jones during the Sixties and Seventies.
He was also noted for singing along with his arco (bowed) bass solos, a technique Slam Stewart also used. Holley and Stewart recorded together on two albums during the 1970s.
Never one far from the educational process, informal or formal, Holley was a professor and taught at the Berklee College of Music from 1967 to 1970. Upright jazz bassist Major Holley passed away on October 25, 1990 in Maplewood, New Jersey.
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