Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Shirley Scott was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on March 14, 1934. She began her musical journey with piano and trumpet in high school but her admiration for Jimmy Smith moved her to the Hammond organ as her primary instrument, though she continued to play piano.
In the Fifties she came to prominence working with saxophonist Eddie Davis, but by the ‘60s Scott married Stanley Turrentine and the subsequent musical collaboration was fruitful with releases.
A very melodic player, Shirley graduated to an aggressive, highly rhythmic approach of organ player blending intricate bebop harmonies with blues and gospel with soul jazz. Her visibility waned in the seventies as labels interest in organ combos was replaced by fusion and pop jazz.
By the 1980s she would become a jazz educator and recording for Muse with the new found interest in organ late in the decade. Scott, a superb pianist, exclusively played piano during the Nineties in Philly jazz clubs and recorded trio projects for Candid.
By the turn of the new century with her health declining, she was diagnosed with heart damage due to adverse effects from the diet pill “fen-phen”. She was awarded $8 million in a lawsuit against the drug manufacturers. Shirley Scott died of heart failure on March 10, 2002.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Blue Mitchell was born Richard Allen Mitchell on March 13, 1930 and was raised in Miami, Florida. He didn’t begin playing trumpet until high school, where he received his nickname “Blue”. In the years following he played in the rhythm and blues bands of Paul Williams, Earl Bostic and Chuck Willis but upon returning to Miami caught the ear of Cannonball Adderley, with whom he recorded in 1958 for Riverside.
He joined the Horace Silver Quintet playing alongside Junior Cook, Gene Taylor and Roy Brooks until 1964 and then formed his own band replacing Silver with Chick Corea an ailing Brooks with Al Foster. By 1969 Mitchell disbanded the group and joined Ray Charles, touring till ’71.
This stint was followed by Jazz Blues Fusion with John Mayall and throughout the seventies he recorded and worked as a session player, performed with Louis Bellson, Bill Holman, Lou Donaldson, Grant Green, Philly Joe Jones, Jackie McLean, Dexter Gordon, Hank Mobley and a host of other major players.
On May 21, 1979 the multi-faceted trumpeter Blue Mitchell, who delivered a light and swinging tone and known for his jazz, rhythm and blues, passed away from complications of cancer at age 49 in Los Angeles, California.
More Posts: trumpet
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.
More Posts: piano
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.
More Posts: broadway
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.
