Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pee Wee Moore was born Numa Smith Moore on March 5, 1928 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Attending Hampton Institute as a pre-med major, after one semester switched to music taking up the saxophone, joining the Royal Hamptonians and touring on a USO circuit. While asleep in the back seat driving back to New York, Pee Wee lost his left eye in a car accident. However this had no effect on his playing.
In the 30’s Moore played with the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, recorded with Floyd Ray and sat alongside Dizzy Gillespie in the Les Hite big band from 1939 to 1942. His first recordings with Dizzy Gillespie’s ensemble occurred from 1946-47.
Throughout the fifties Moore played with Lucky Millinder, Louis Jordan, Illinois Jacquet, James Moody, Mary Lou Williams and Dizzy Gillespie, whom he recorded several albums with for Verve. He worked with pianist Bill Doggett in the mid-sixties.
Moore moved back to Raleigh to care for his ailing mother and recover from alcohol addiction. Earning a living as a handyman, he continued to play throughout the rest of his life at various venues in the Raleigh-Durham area. On April 13, 2009 jazz saxophonist Pee Wee Moore passed away at the age of 81.
More Posts: saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Zenzile Miriam Makeba was born on March 4, 1932 in the Prospect Township of Johannesburg, South Africa. Known to her many fans as simply Miriam Makeba or Mama Afrika, her career spanned more than 50 years.
As a child, she sang at the Kilmerton Training Institute in Pretoria, while attending for eight years followed by touring with an amateur group. Her professional career began in the 1950s with the Manhattan Brothers prior to her forming her own group, The Skylarks, singing a blend of jazz and traditional melodies of South Africa.
By 1959 she was performing in the musical King Kong with her future husband Hugh Masekela and though she became a successful recording artist, she received a pittance for her work without residual royalties. However in the same year her big break arrived when she was given a short guest appearance in the indie anti-apartheid documentary “Come Back, Africa” and she made such an impression that the director managed a visa for her to leave the country for the Venice Film Festival.
Traveling to London she met Harry Belafonte who assisted her in gaining entry to and fame in the United States. She released many of her most famous hits there including “Pata Pata”, “The Click Song” and “Malaika”. In 1966, Makeba, in collaboration with Belafonte received a Grammy for Best Folk recording “An Evening With Belafonte/Makeba” that dealt South African apartheid.
Miriam went on to perform at the 1974 Rumble In The Jungle between George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, on Paul Simon’s Graceland, authored an autobiography, starred in Sarafina, guest appeared on the Cosby Show, took part in Amandla: A Revolution in Four Part Harmony and returned to South Africa under the persuasion of Nelson Mandela.
She was awarded the Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize, was named Goodwill Ambassador for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, was awarded the UN Gold Otto Hahn Peace Medal and voted 38th in the top 100 Great South Africans. While on a concert stage taking a stand against injustice against humanity singing her hit song “Pata Pata”, she succumbed to a heart attack on November 9, 2008.
More Posts: vocal
From Broadway To 52nd Street
The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936 premiered on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on January 30, 1936 and closed on May 9, 1936 after 115 performances due to Fanny Brice’s illness. The musical had a return engagement on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 14, 1936, and closed on December 19, 1936 after 112 performances. Brice reprised her role, with the additional cast that included Gypsy Rose Lee.
The musical was produced by Billie Burke Ziegfeld, Lee Shubert and J. J. Shubert; directed by John Murray Anderson and Edward Clarke Lilley; choreographed by Robert Alton; sketches directed by Edward D. Dowling; ballets directed by George Balanchine and scenic design and costumes were by Vincente Minnelli.
Vernon Duke composed the music with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and a cast starring Fanny Brice, Bob Hope, Eve Arden, Josephine Baker and the Nicholas Brothers.
The Story: In the opening number Brice mocks her famous song (“My Man”) in “He Hasn’t a Thing Except Me”, standing against a lamp-post. In “The Sweepstakes Taker” Brice portrays a Jewish Bronx housewife who wins the Irish sweepstakes. In “Fancy Free’ she becomes the affected and bored British “Zuleika” as she exchanges witty remarks with her husband Sir Robert, and, leaving behind elegance, burps in his face and utters a trade-mark “Denk you.” As Baby Snooks, Brice stars with popular stars of the day such as Clark Gable. The only song to become popular from the musical was “I Can’t Get Started” sung by Bob Hope to Eve Arden.
Broadway History: The musical was not all that was spawned from within the hallowed walls of the Broadway theatre. A new age of American playwright with the emergence of Eugene O’Neill, whose successful plays such as Beyond the Horizon, Anna Christie and The Hairy Ape proved that there was an audience for serious drama on Broadway, thus ushering major dramatists like Elmer Rice, Maxwell Anderson, Robert E. Sherwood, Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller. Comedy and classical revivals became the norm on Broadway and opened the doors for dramas addressing the rise of Nazism and America’s non-intervention in the approaching world war. The most successful was Lillian Hellman’s “Watch on the Rhine” that would open in April 1941.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Davis was born on March 2, 1922 in New York City. He was known to his friends, peers, jazz enthusiasts and aficionados by his nickname “Lockjaw” and became one of the pre-eminent jazz saxophonists of the 20th century.
In the early to mid-forties he played with Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, Andy Kirk, Louis Armstrong and Cont Basie. By 1946 he was leading his own band “Eddie Davis and His Beboppers” that housed Fats Navarro, Al Haig, Huey Long, Gene Ramey and Denzil Best.
In the 50’s he teamed with Sonny Stitt, from 1960 to ’62 he co-led a quintet with Johnny Griffin, and he and Griffin performed as part of the Kenny Clarke-Franz Boland Big Band. Davis recorded with Ella Fitzgerald, collaborated with Shirley Scott and played off and on with Count Basie’s Orchestra in the early 70’s.
In his later years he played with Harry “Sweets” Edison and remained busy as a soloist until his death on November 3, 1986 at the age of 64. Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis performed within the jazz genres swing, bop, hard bop, Latin and soul jazz.
More Posts: saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
He was born William Correa on February 28, 1934 in East Harlem, New York City but to the jazz and Latin music worlds he was simply known as Willie Bobo, a moniker given him by Mary Lou Williams after they recorded in the early 50’s. Growing up in Spanish Harlem in New York City, he began playing bongos at age 14 and started performing a year later with Perez Prado. Over the next few years he studied with Mongo Santamaria while serving as his translator and at 19 joined Tito Puente for four years.
Willie became one of the great Latin percussionists of his time, a relentless swinger on the congas and timbales, a flamboyant showman onstage, and an engaging if modestly endowed singer. He also made serious inroads into the pop, R&B and straight jazz worlds, and he always said that his favorite song was Antonio Carlos Jobim’s “Dindi.”
He worked with Cal Tjader, Herbie Mann and Santamaria with whom he recorded the evergreen Latin standard “Afro-Blue” but it was in 1963 that he made his first recording as a leader with Clark Terry and Joe Farrell. He went on to record with Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderley, Herbie Hancock, Wes Montgomery, Chico Hamilton and Sonny Stitt. In 1969, he moved to Los Angeles where he led jazz and Latin jazz combos, appeared on Bill Cosby’s first comedy series in 1969.
He recorded on his own for Sussex, Blue Note, Verve and Columbia. One of his last appearances, only three months before his death, was at the 1983 Playboy Jazz Festival where he reunited with Santamaria for the first time in 15 years. Jazz percussionist and timbale master Willie Bobo, known for his Afro-Cuban and Latin jazz succumbed to cancer on September 15, 1983 at age 49.
More Posts: drums,percussion,timbales