Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carol Kaye was born March 24, 1935 in Everett, Washington to professional musicians Clyde and Dot Smith. Growing up in poverty near the Port of Los Angeles, she began teaching guitar professionally in 1949 at age 14. Throughout the fifties Kaye played bebop in L. A. clubs with Bob Neal, Jack Sheldon who backed Lenny Bruce, Teddy Edwards and Billy Higgins.
One of the most prolific and widely heard bass players of her time she played many of Phil Spector’s sessions, Brian Wilson productions, Richie Valens, Simon and Garfunkel, Quincy Jones and Dave Grusin. Her television credits are a who’s who with shows like M*A*S*H, Get Smart, Kojak, It Takes A thief, The Love Boat, Hogan’s Heroes, Mannix, The Cosby Show, Wonder Woman, Mission Impossible and so on and so on.
An educator, Carol wrote beginning in 1969, How To Play The Electric Bass, the first of many bass tutoring books and DVD Courses. By the late 70’s she retired from playing due to arthritis but later returned to session work, teaching both bass and guitar to the likes of John Clayton, and performing, giving seminars and interviews.
A noted session player she carved out a lucrative career beginning with backing the likes of Sam Cooke in 1957 and working with leading producers like Michel Legrand, Lalo Schifrin, Hugh Montenegro, John Williams and Steven Spielberg. She is estimated to have played on 10,000 recording sessions over a career spanning 55 years.
From Broadway To 52nd Street
I’d Rather Be Right opened at the Alvin Theatre on November 2, 1937 and ran two hundred and ninety performances. The play starred Joy Hodges, Austin Marshall and George M. Cohen. The composers of the play’s music were Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart and one of their songs emerge to become a jazz standard – Have You Met Miss Jones.
The Story: As the story goes, a couple, Phil & Peggy, who wish to marry cannot do so until he receives a raise in pay. This raise was contingent on President Roosevelt balancing the budget. Falling asleep in Central Park, Phil dreams that he and Peggy meet the President. The President, in turn, summons the Cabinet, goes to battle with the Supreme Court, all to help the youngsters. Seemingly stymied, the President then suggests the young lovers marry anyway. When Phil awakens, that’s what they do.
Jazz History: Swing was dance music. It was a “live” broadcast nightly on the radio across America for many years especially by Earl “Fatha” Hines and his Grand Terrace Cafe Orchestra broadcasting coast-to-coast from Chicago. Although it was a collective sound, swing also offered individual musicians a chance to “solo” and “improvise” melodic, thematic solos, which could at times be very complex and “important” music. Over time, social strictures regarding racial segregation began to relax in America: white bandleaders began to recruit black musicians and black bandleaders. In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman hired pianist Teddy Wilson, vibraphonist Lionel Hampton and guitarist Charlie Christian to join small groups.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harold Mabern was born on March 20, 1936 in Memphis, Tennessee and initially started learning the drums before turning his attention to the piano. Attending Douglass High School he played with Frank Strozier, George Coleman, Booker Little but was most influenced by the piano of Phineas Newborn Jr. After graduating from high school he moved to Chicago where he went to street school listening to Ahmad Jamal and others in clubs to increase his proficiency.
Early in his career Harold played in Chicago with Walter Perkins’ MJT + 3 in the late 1950s before moving to New York in 1959. Heading straight to Birdland where he met Cannonball Adderley who introduced him to Harry “Sweets” Edison who was looking for a replacement for Tommy Flanagan. A quick audition was followed by an offer and a few week later they were in the studio recording with Jimmy Forrest.
Mabern grew his reputation as a sideman and in the tradition of hard bop and soul jazz, the pianist worked with Lionel Hampton, the Jazztet, Donald Byrd, Miles Davis, J. J. Johnson, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Sonny Rollins, Freddie Hubbard, Wes Montgomery, Joe Williams and Sarah Vaughan to name a few.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mabern led four albums for Prestige Records and recorded with Stanley Cowell’s Piano Choir. Harold Mabern also recorded as a leader for DIW/Columbia and Sackville and toured with the Contemporary Piano Ensemble.
Pianist Harold Maben has twenty sessions as a leader and another six-dozen as a sideman in his catalogue. In more recent years, Harold is a frequent instructor at the Stanford Jazz Workshop, has recorded extensively with his former William Patterson University student, the tenor saxophonist Eric Alexander and continues to perform and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bill Henderson was born William Randall Henderson on March 19, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois. He didn’t begin his musical career until 26 years later performing around his home city with Ramsey Lewis before moving to New
York in 1958. A singer of blues, ballads and swing, he follows in the tradition of Joe Williams and Ernie Andrews but clearly brings his own personality to each performance.
His early big hit was Senor Blues, recorded with Horace Silver and worked with the Jimmy Smith trio. During his tenure at Vee-Jay in which he recorded several fine albums he worked with Ramsey Lewis, Yusef Lateef, Booker Little and Eddie Harris. A move to MGM had him working with Oscar Peterson in 1963 and touring with Count Basie from 1965-66.
Settling in Los Angeles, Bill began working as an actor in film and television in the seventies, taking minor or supporting roles and one-time appearances in such movies as Trouble Man, Silver Streak, City Slickers, Hoodlum, and television with Happy Days, Hill Street Blues, The Jeffersons, MacGyver, Cold Case and My Name Is Earl.
The late nineties saw his participation on Charlie Haden’s album “The Art Of The Song” alongside Shirley Horn, followed by a Live at the Kennedy Center and Beautiful Memory: Live at The Vic releases. Still in great form at the age of 86, vocalist and actor Bill Henderson, who amassed some four-dozen albums and 45s over his career, continued to perform around Los Angeles until his death at age 90 on April 3, 2016 from Alzheimer’s Disease.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Trombonist and bandleader Grover Curry Mitchell was born on March 17, 1930 in Whatley, Alabama. By age eight he was living in Pittsburgh where jazz took hold of him. During his teen years after an initial desire to play trumpet, the school took note of his long arms and trained him to play the trombone.
After high school he enlisted playing in the U.S. Marine Band, then went on to play with Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington. But his best-known association was with Count Basie from 1962 to 1978, when he founded his own band, the Jazz Chronicles.
In the seventies he started writing music for television and film including the 1972 Lady Sings The Blues. returned to the Count Basie Band in 1980 and continued to lead the band and served as the director from ’95 until his death, winning a Grammy for the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album twice.
The mellow-toned trombonist lost a quiet battle with cancer on August 6, 2003 in New York City’s Sloan Kettering Hospital. Grover Mitchell was inducted posthumously into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008.
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