Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gene DiNovi was born Eugene Salvatore DiNovi on May 26, 1928 in New York City. While in his teens he worked with Joe Marsala and Chuck Wayne and by the late Forties was very active live and on record. During this period he worked with Buddy DeFranco, Benny Goodman, Chubby Jackson, Brew Moore, Boyd Raeburn, Buddy Rich, Artie Shaw, Lester Young.
At the end of the decade and into the 1950s Gene worked extensively as an accompanist for vocalists, starting with Peggy Lee, Tony Bennett and Anita O’Day. He recorded with Lena Horne multiple times in the late 1950s and early 1960s and accompanied her on European tours. He also led his own small combos with sidemen including Danny Bank, Johnny Carisi, Bill Crow, Tony Fruscella, and Dave Schildkraut.
He began working more as a studio musician and film score composer in the 1960s. Toward the end of the decade he played with Carmen McRae, then moved to Canada to take a position as a house pianist with the CBC in Toronto. In the 1980s he worked with Ruby Braff and toured and recorded in Japan, and continued to be active as a performer into the 1990s, working with James Campbell, Don Thompson, Memo Acevedo, Dave Young, and Terry Clarke.
Pianist and composer Gene DiNovi, now 95, lives a quiet life.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Marshall Belford Allen was born in Louisville, Kentucky on May 25, 1924. During World War II he enlisted in the 92nd Infantry Division and was stationed in France. He studied alto saxophone in Paris, France and played in Europe with Art Simmons and James Moody.
Best known for his mastery of explosive, jarring, chaotic sound effects on the alto saxophone, the opportunity came to create a long association with Sun Ra, with whom he performed almost exclusively from 1958 to Ra’s death in 1993. Marshall recorded with Paul Bley in 1964 and Olatunji during the mid-1960s.
Since Sun Ra death Allen has led the Arkestra and has recorded two albums. Allen often appeared in New York-area collaborations with bassist Henry Grimes, and participated in the Innerzone Orchestra with Francisco Mora Catlett, Carl Craig and others in an appreciation of Sun Ra’s music.
In 2022, the building at 5626 Morton Street known as the Arkestral Institute of Sun Ra was listed as a historic landmark in the Philadelphia Register of Historic Places. Free and avant-garde jazz alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who also plays flute, oboe, piccolo, and EWI, at the age of 99 continues to live at the Institute, which has been his home since 1968.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Alf was born Alfredo José da Silva on May 19, 1929 in Vila Isabel, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and began playing piano at age 9. His father died when he was 3 and was raised by his mother, who worked as a maid to raise him. He attended Colégio Pedro II, receiving support from his mother’s employers who had appreciation for music. He was enrolled at the IBEU, Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos, and it was there that he received his first formal musical training, studying classical piano with instructor Geni Bálsamo.
Influenced by Nat King Cole and George Sheaing, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Brazilian born Dick Fame, he eventually gained membership into the Sinatra~Farney Fan Club, a performers collective. Alf’s membership allowed him regular access to a piano as well as a group of musically sympathetic peers with which to play and experiment. They would finally get the payless opportunity to play in a few well known venues.
By 1950 he was pursuing a professional musical career and received his first professional break in 1952 when he was hired as the pianist at the newly inaugurated Cantina do César, owned by the popular radio host César de Alencar. With free musical reign. Johnny would receive frequent visits from pianist João Donato, vocalist Dolores Duran, and guitarist/vocalist João Gilberto who would sit in on the way to their gigs.
He would begin to combine Samba-cançãoes and foxtrots with American jazz styles. He would go on to record his first two albums, however, the recordings garnered no more than a pittance of recognition for Alf at the time, but would later in the early Sixties be hailed as the progenitors of the Bossa Nova style.
He continued to find nightly work in the Rio clubs and work with musical companions João Gilberto, João Donato, and the young pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim, all following him from venue to venue provided they could afford the cover fee. By 1954 he was performing regularly at the Hotel Plaza nightclub. Due to its haunted reputation Johnny was able to play his own compositions plus hold early evening jam sessions and these improvisatory collaborations that the harmonic and rhythmic structures eventually blossomed into the style now known as Bossa Nova.
Moving to Sao Paulo in 1955 he became the house pianist at a new club, Baiúca and formed a short-lived duo with double-bassist Sabá. Unfortunately the group only established a moderate following before Baiúca was closed down for health-code violations. In 1961 he declined the invitation to play at Carnegie Hall’s historic Bossa Nova Festival because he didn’t like the connotation bossa nova brought with it. That decision sent him towards obscurity and very little was heard from Alf, although he infrequently produce albums throughout the 60s and early 70s. He would continue to collaborate, record and perform to earn a living and eventually landed a position at a local conservatory of music.
Pianist, vocalist, composer and educator Johnny Alf, who is widely considered the Father of Bossa Nova, transitioned from complications caused by prostate cancer on March 4, 2010 in Santo Andre, just outside São Paulo, Brazil. This was his home for the last fifty years of his life. He left no immediate survivors.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karl Drewo was born May 17, 1929 in Vienna, Austria and as a child studied piano and accordion, but switched to tenor saxophone in his teens. In the late 1940s he worked with Charlie Gaudriot and Paul Reischman, followed by performing with Gert Steffens and Horst Winter in the early Fifties. He was a member of the Austrian All Stars in the mid-1950s and from 1956 to 1958 he worked with Fatty George.
He continued on by becoming a member of Kurt Edelhagen’s orchestra, where he played into the early 1970s. In the 1960s he recorded with Francy Boland, Kenny Clarke, Zoot Sims, and Jimmy Woode, among others.
After leaving Edelhagen’s group, he played with the Österreichischer Rundfunk band, and in the 1980s was a member of Peter Herbolzheimer’s ensemble. Later that decade he took a position as a lecturer at an arts school in Graz, Austria. In the Nineties he played with the Lungau Big Band, Rudolf Josel, and Rudi Wilfer.
Saxophonist Karl Drewo, often spelled Carl Drewo or Drevo, transitioned on May 10, 1995 in Wels, Austria.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Friedrich Gulda was born on May 16, 1930 in Vienna, Austria and as the son of a teacher began learning to play the piano at age 7 with Felix Pazofsky at the Wiener Volkskonservatorium. In 1942, he entered the Vienna Music Academy, where he studied piano and musical theory under Bruno Seidlhofer and Joseph Marx.
During World War II as teenagers, Gulda and his friend Joe Zawinul were rebellious and would perform forbidden music, including jazz, in violation of the government’s prohibition of playing such music. Winning first prize at the Geneva International Music Competition in 1946, he began to play concerts worldwide, making his Carnegie Hall debut in 1950, and with Jörg Demus and Paul Badura-Skoda, formed what became known as the “Viennese troika”. Friedrich enjoyed a renowned classical career for years before his 1956 engagement at Birdland in New York City and at the Newport Jazz Festival.
In 1966 he organized the International Competition for Modern Jazz in 1966, and established the International Musikforum, a school in Ossiach, Austria two years later, for students who wanted to learn improvisation. From the 1950s on Gulda cultivated a professional interest in jazz, writing songs and free improvisation or open music improvisations. He also recorded as a vocalist under the pseudonym “Albert Golowin”, fooling music critics for years until it was realized that Gulda and Golowin were the same person.
In jazz, he found “the rhythmic drive, the risk, the absolute contrast to the pale, academic approach I had been taught. He also took up playing the baritone saxophone. His 1970 album, As You Like It, includes the standards Round Midnight and What Is This Thing Called Love?, as well as his own classic Blues For H.G. that is dedicated to Hans Georg Brunner-Schwer.
From the late 1960s through the 1980s he continued his straight-ahead swing and bop-based jazz often in European Jazz big bands, which he often organized yearly performances and recordings. He performed and recorded playing clavichord, percussion instruments, and a bass recorder wooden flute with musicians involved in free improvisation, including Cecil Taylor, Barre Phillips, Ursula Anders, John Surman, Albert Mangelsdorff, Stu Martin, and Fritz Pauer. He would go on to collaborate in the coming decades with Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, and Chick Corea.
When the Vienna Music Academy awarded him its Beethoven Ring in recognition of his performances, he accepted it but then later reconsidered and returned it. To promote a concert in 1999, he announced his own death in a press release so that the concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus could serve as a resurrection party.
Pianist and composer Friedrich Gulda, who worked in both the classical and jazz fields, transitioned from heart failure at the age of 69 on January 27, 2000 at his home in Weissenbach, Austria.
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