Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hugh Lawson was born on March 12, 1935 in Detroit, Michigan. Inspired by Bud Powell, Hampton Hawes and Bill Evans he gained recognition for his more than ten year association with Yusef Lateef during the late ‘50s. During the Sixties he would record with Harry “Sweets” Edison, Roy Brooks and again with Lateef on several sessions.
During the Lawson performed with “The Piano Choir”, a group of several pianists including Stanley Cowell, and Harold Mabern. He went on to tour with Charles Mingus, record with Charlie Rouse, George Adams and as a leader, recording Prime Time, Colour, Jazzcraft Studio recording 1977-78, Beat-EP and Constellations.
Pianist Hugh Lawson was diagnosed with colon cancer and succumbed one day before his 62nd birthday on March 11, 1997 in White Plains, New York.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Babes In Arms opened at the Shubert Theatre on April 14, 1937 and ran for two hundred and eighty-nine performances. The musical starred Mitzi Green (Billie Smith), Ray Heatherton (Valentine “Val” LaMar), Alfred Drake and the Nicholas Brothers.
The music composed by Richard Rodgers and the lyrics were provided by Lorenz Hart and from their score arose five songs that are jazz standards – I Wish I Were In Love Again, Johnny One Note, The Lady Is A Tramp, and Where Or When.
The musicals most famous and recorded composition, My Funny Valentine, in which Billie sings to Val first poking fun at some of Valentine’s characteristics but ultimately affirming that he makes her smile and that she doesn’t want him to change.
The Story: With a threat of being assigned to a work farm, the children of traveling vaudevillians band together to mount a musical revue. The show wins critical acclaim but loses money. So the children are sent to the farm. They are rescued when a French aviator on a transatlantic flight, makes an emergency landing on the farm, coming to their aid.
Jazz History: In the 1930s swing jazz emerged as a dominant form in American music, in which some virtuoso soloists became as famous as the bandleaders. Key figures in developing the “big” jazz band included bandleaders and arrangers Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw.
Ellington and his band members composed numerous swing era hits that have become standards: “It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing), Sophisticated Lady, Caravan were among them. Also during this period trumpeter, bandleader and singer Louis Armstrong was a much-imitated innovator of early jazz.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ornette Coleman was born March 9, 1930 hailing from Fort Worth, Texas where he began performing R&B and bebop on the tenor. He found his way out of Texas taking a job with traveling shows, first Silas Green and then rhythm and blues. After his tenor was destroyed in an attack, Ornette switched to alto that has remained his primary instrument.
From the beginning Coleman was ear was unorthodox, his approach to harmony and chord progression was less rigid than that of bebop musicians who considered him out-of-tune. However there were some who heard the same sound and by the 50s he was making music with Paul Bley, Don Cherry, Billy Higgins, Don Payne, Walter Norris, Shelly Manne and Charlie Haden.
Regarded by some as iconoclastic, others like conductor Leonard Bernstein and composer Virgil Thomson saw his genius and innovation. Ornette became one of the major influences in the free jazz movement and a major player in the genesis of avant-garde jazz. Throughout the sixties and seventies he played with Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Scott LaFaro and Ed Blackwell and introduced brief thematic dissonant fanfares, regular but complex pulse and solos where band mates were able to chime in as they wish.
His friendship with Albert Ayler influenced his development of the trumpet and violin. His evolution continued and subsequent quartets included his son Denardo, Sunny Murray, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones, and Dewey Redman. It also forwarded his sojourn into electrified instruments, adopting a jazz-fusion mode fashionable at the time and bringing in such artists as Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. He has brought to his recordings Pat Metheny, Geri Allen, and Joachim Kuhn but seldom appeared as a sideman.
Ornette Coleman is a saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter, and composer whose timbre is easily recognized with his keen, crying sound drawing upon the blues. In 2007 he won a Pulitzer for his album Sound Grammar and honored with a Grammy for lifetime achievement He continued to push the envelope with younger musicians from radically different cultures until his passing on June 11, 2015 in Manhattan, New York.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Edward Coleman, born March 8, 1935 in Memphis, Tennessee, taught himself to play alto saxophone during his teen years inspired by Charlie Parker. Growing up his classmates were Harold Mabern, Booker Little, Frank Strozier, Hank Crawford and Charles Lloyd.
He began his career working with Ray Charles and by 1953 joined B. B. King where he switched to tenor. Moving to Chicago with Booker Little in 1956 he started working with Gene Ammons and Johnny Griffin before joining Max Roach in ’58. Coleman recorded with Jimmy Smith, Lee Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Eddie McFadden, Kenny Burrell and Donald Bailey before moving to New York with Max Roach.
Subsequent gigs with Ron Carter, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Cobb and Wild Bill Davis led him to become a part of the Miles Davis Quintet, recording among others Seven Steps to Heaven, My Funny Valentine and Four and More. This was followed up with his joining Herbie Hancock on his seminal work Maiden Voyage.
A foray into Hollywood placed Coleman on the sets of Freejack with Estevez, Jagger and Hopkins and on the Preacher’s Wife set with Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston.
The hard bop tenor, bandleader, composer and educator George Coleman has an impressive list of performances and recordings too numerous to name but suffice it to say he has worked with everyone from Mingus to Jamal to Hampton from the 60’s to the present day. He continues to lead his own groups, performing and recording regularly both as a leader and sideman.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Leslie “Wes” Montgomery was born on March 6, 1923 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Although he started learning guitar relatively late at the age of 19 and not skilled at reading music, Wes had an incredible ear, learning by listening to the recordings of his idol Charlie Christian. He began his self-taught education in 1943 using his thumb instead of a pick and by the end of the decade he was touring with Lionel Hampton.
Montgomery’s recording can be divided into three periods. His Riverside recordings from 1959-1963 were spontaneous small group sessions; the orchestral dates with arranger Don Sebesky and producer Cecil Taylor at Verve were from ’64 to ’66; and the Creed Taylor years of simple pop melodies underscored with strings and woodwinds. The later sessions produced three best-selling albums that introduced AM radio listeners to jazz and his performances were as freewheeling as his earlier Riverside records.
Considered one of the seminal figures of jazz guitar in the company of innovators like Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt; Wes alongside Tal Farlow, Johnny Smith, Jim Raney and Barney Kessell put guitar on the map as a bebop/post-bop instrument. He is credited with influencing future guitar lions Pat Martino, George Benson, Emily Remler, Kenny Burrell, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Pat Metheny.
During his career he would team up with his brother Monk who played string and electric bass and Buddy, who played vibes and piano, releasing a number of albums as the Montgomery Brothers. His career garnered him two Grammy nominations, a Grammy award, Down Beat’s New Star award, and Down Beat Critic’s Poll award for best jazz guitarist from ‘60 to ‘63 and from ‘66 to ‘67. At the height of his career and his success, Wes Montgomery succumbed to a heart attack on June 15, 1968 in his hometown of Indianapolis.
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