Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Fraser MacPherson was born on April 10, 1928 in Saint Boniface, Manitoba, Canada. He moved with his parents to Victoria, British Columbia, Canada as a child where he learned piano, clarinet, and alto and tenor saxophones. After relocating to Vancouver, British Columbia to continue a commerce degree, he played in bands led by Ray Norris, Dave Robbins, Paul Ruhland, and Doug Parke.

He led his own groups and eventually took over the leadership of the Cave supper club band.In 1958 Fraser took a year’s leave to study in New York City, adding flute to his list of instruments.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s MacPherson was a first-call studio player in Vancouver, as well as leading the house band at the Cave supper club. He also taught briefly in the Jazz and Commercial Music department at Vancouver Community College, where his students included future Powder Blues Band baritone saxophonist Gordie Bertram and New Orleans based saxophonist and jazz educator John Doheny.

Fraser’s debut album as leader of a small jazz group, Live at the Planetarium, was recorded for broadcast on the French-language CBC radio network. He leased the master tapes and released them on his own independent label, West End Records. The album was re-released by Concord Records, and he recorded several other releases for them. He also recorded for Sackville and Justin Time record labels.

In the summer of 1993, Pacific Music Industry Association (PMIA) created the Fraser MacPherson Scholarship Fund which annually awards grants of $2000 to four to eight aspiring music students.

Fraser MacPherson, who won a Juno Award for Best Jazz Album and was awarded the Order of Canada, transitioned in Vancouver at the age of 65 on September 27, 1993.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Derek Hogg was born April 8, 1928 in Oldham, England and started playing early in his career with marching bands. He began working in professional ensembles in the Fifties, including those of Freddy Randall, Don Rendell, Joe Saye, Ken Moule, Buddy Featherstonhaugh, Kenny Baker, Sandy Brown and Al Fairweather’s All Stars group. 

He played with Vic Lewis in 1959-1960, then with The Squadronaires and Dudley Moore in the first few years of the decade. In 1962 he began working with Danny Moss, with whom he would continue to perform until the end of his career. Hogg went on to perform with Rosemary Clooney, Tony Coe, Digby Fairweather, Budd Johnson, Colin Purbrook, Benny Waters and Teddy Wilson. 

Drummer Derek Hogg retired from active performance in 1987.

Confer a dose of an Oldham drummer to those seeking a greater insight about the musicians around the world who are members of the pantheon of jazz…

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eric “Big Daddy” Dixon was born on March 28, 1930 in New York City, New York. Although he played bugle as a child,he switched to the tenor saxophone at the age of 12. Following a stint as a musician in the US Army from 1951 to 1953 he played in groups that sometimes included Mal Waldron, with whom he would later record.

In 1954, he played with Cootie Williams and the following year with Johnny Hodges. In 1956, he performed and recorded with Bennie Green and also took up the flute.

The late Fifties had him spending four years in the house band led by Reuben Phillips at the Apollo Theatre in New York. At the end of the decade he toured Europe and recorded with the Cooper Brothers.

He also worked with Paul Gonsalves, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Oliver Nelson, Quincy Jones, Jack McDuff, Joe Williams, Frank Foster, and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, but is probably best known for his tenure in Count Basie’s band, which lasted almost two decades. Dixon continued to play in the ghost band after Basie’s death.

Tenor saxophonist, flautist, composer, and arranger Eric Dixon, who has been credited on as many as 200 recordings, transitioned on October 19, 1989 in New York City.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Fred Anderson was born in Monroe, Louisiana on March 22, 1929.  When he was ten, his parents separated, and he moved to Evanston, Illinois, where he initially lived with his mother and aunt in a one-room apartment. When Anderson was a teenager, a friend introduced him to the music of Charlie Parker, and he soon decided he wanted to play saxophone, purchasing his first instrument for $45. He listened to Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Dexter Gordon, Gene Ammons, and Illinois Jacquet, all of whom would influence his playing. He also heard Young and Parker in concert on multiple occasions.

Unlike many musicians at the time, Anderson did not play with dance bands or school ensembles, and instead focused on practicing, taking private lessons, and studying music theory at the Roy Knapp Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois all the while supporting his family by working as a waiter. He also began making an effort to develop a personal sound on his instrument, with the goal of combining Ammons’ big sound with Parker’s speed.

At around this time, he began to develop a series of exercises which he incorporated into his daily practice routine, and which eventually became a book titled Exercises for the Creative Musician.

In the early 1960s, Anderson began listening to and studying the music of Ornette Coleman, and immediately related Coleman’s playing to that of Charlie Parker. Influenced by Coleman, he formed a piano-less band with trumpeter Bill Brimfield, bassist Bill Fletcher, and drummer Vernon Thomas, playing a mixture of bebop standards and Anderson originals. During the decade he would go on to play weekly jam sessions, joined the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) and remained in the States when many of his AACM colleagues left for Europe seeking better opportuities.

In the Seventies he formed the Fred Anderson Sextet, with trombonist George E. Lewis, reedist Douglas Ewart, bassist Felix Blackmon, drummer Hamid Drake, and vocalist Iqua Colson.  By 1977 he and Brimfield visited Europe, where they recorded Accents with the Austrian trio Neighbours, then returned and opened a venue in Chicago that he named the Birdhouse, after Charlie Parker. Unfortunately, Anderson encountered resistance and harassment from officials and people in the neighborhood, who were suspicious of his motives, and he ended up closing the club a year later.

The following decade saw Fred taking over ownership of a bar in Chicago called the Velvet Lounge, and transformed it into a center for the city’s jazz and experimental music scenes, hosting Sunday jam sessions and numerous concerts. The club expanded and relocated in the summer of 2006.

Though he remained an active performer, Anderson rarely recorded for about a decade beginning in the early Eighties. In 1990, however, he received the first Jazz Masters Fellowship from Arts Midwest, and by the mid-1990s, he resumed a more active recording schedule, both as a solo artist, and in collaboration with younger performers. He would go on to perform as a soloist with 30 piece orchestras, mentor young musicians, and his Velvet Lounge has international fame.

Tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, rooted in the swing, hard bop and free jazz idioms, who continued to record and tour throughout the 2000s and was scheduled to perform the day he died, transitioned on June 24, 2010.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

James R. Coe was born in Tompkinsville, Kentucky on March 20, 1921 and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana with his family as a child. He first played in a band with Erroll “Groundhog” Grandy, who mentored J. J. Johnson and Wes Montgomery.

From 1938 to 1940, Coe performed with Buddy Bryant’s band and by the age of 20, was already touring with the Jay McShann band, which included Charlie Parker, Al Hibbler, Walter Brown, Bernard Anderson, Gene Ramey and Doc West.

In the 1950s Jimmy recorded for King Records as a member of Tiny Bradshaw’s band, then made a session with his own combo, though the company oddly insisted on billing him as Jimmy Cole. 1953 saw States recording his Gay Cats of Rhythm. By the late 1950s, he led the house band for the small Indianapolis-based label Note Records. Some of the material was licensed to Checker, which had better distribution.

Coe backed performers Wes Montgomery, Slide Hampton, David Baker, Freddie Hubbard, Carl Perkins, Larry Ridley, Leroy Vinnegar, as well as Aretha Franklin, Roy Hamilton, Gladys Knight & the Pips. and doo-wop performers, The Students.

Saxophonist Jimmy Coe transitioned in Indianapolis on February 26, 2004 at the age of 82.

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