Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Specs Wright was born Charles Wright on September 8, 1927 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He played drums in an Army band until his discharge in 1947. Following this he played in a group with Jimmy Heath and Howard McGhee. By 1949 he had joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band alongside John Coltrane, remaining until it disbanded in mid-1950.
Wright would rejoin Dizzy late in the decade as a member of his sextet with Coltrane, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath and Milt Jackson. He would go on to play with Earl Bostic, Kenny Drew, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey and Carmen McRae as well as a member of the Hank Mobley sextet with Curtis Fuller, Ray Bryant, Tommy Bryant, Billy Root and Lee Morgan.
Not one to be idle, though never a leader, he was a sought after sideman playing with Sonny Rollins, Betty Carter, Red Garland, Coleman Hawkins and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in the early Sixties. Drummer Specs Wright passed away on February 6, 1963. He was 36 years old.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richie Powell was born on September 5, 1931 in New York City, the older brother of bebop-icon Bud Powell. He studied piano at City College of New York and played in the bands of Paul Williams, Johnny Hodges and for two years was a member of the group led by Clifford Brown and Max Roach.
Pianist McCoy Tyner, who grew up next door to Richie and brother Bud in Philadelphia, purportedly got some of his inspiration to develop his pentatonic chord voicings because he heard the Richie voice left-hand chords in fourths.
In 1956, after an informal gig at a Philadelphia store called Music City, Powell and Brown were being driven overnight by Powell’s wife Nancy to an engagement in Chicago. During the dark rainy night Nancy lost control of the vehicle on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, heading for Cleveland, and in the early hours of June 26, 1956 all three occupants were killed.
Although sometimes considered less gifted than his brother, he was a respected musician and was beginning to achieve recognition at the time of his death. He left behind a small discography, playing on albums with Dinah Washington, Sonny Rollins but mainly with Max Roach and Clifford Brown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Teri Thornton was born Shirley Enid Avery on September 1, 1934 in Detroit, Michigan. Encouraged by her mother to study classical music, as a teenager she turned to jazz, singing and playing piano. Thornton first performed in local Detroit clubs in the 1950s but her debut as a professional took place at the Ebony Club in Cleveland, Ohio. She moved to Chicago and worked with Cannonball Adderley and Johnny Griffin. Her debut release of “Devil May Care” in 1961 for Riverside brought her national attention, with and a subsequent move to New York City where she established herself on the jazz and club scene.
Scoring her biggest hit with the theme to the television show Naked City “Somewhere In The Night” in 1963, she would next appear on the Ed Sullivan Show, get a recording contract from Columbia Records and receive a personal stamp of approval from Ella Fitzgerald as her favorite singer. Thornton also found work during this period singing for television ads and recording for several different labels.
By the late Sixties, Teri faded from public view, due to poor managers, alcohol and drugs. She moved to Los Angeles and it wasn’t until 1979 that she reemerged singing in small piano bars. It was decades later that she was discovered to have been singing on various song poem records in Los Angeles on the Preview label as “Teri Summers.”
Teri moved back to New York in 1983 and once again started performing on the club circuit. In 1998 she fully revived her career after a surprise win at the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Vocal Competition. Thornton signed with Verve Records, releasing I’ll Be Easy to Find. Fame short-lived however, diagnosed with bladder cancer, jazz vocalist Teri Thornton passed away of the disease on May 2, 2000 in Englewood, New Jersey.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jewel Brown was born on August 30, 1937 in Houston, Texas and her first professional performance was at the age of 12 in the Manhattan Club in Galveston, Texas. Before she graduated from Jack Yates High School Lionel Hampton heard her sing and offered the opportunity to tour professionally in Europe.
In 1957 while on a vacation in Los Angeles, California, Jewel sat in with organist Earl Grant at the Club Pigalle and he hired her that night. Their collaboration lasted for a year. She went on to work for nightclub owner Jack Ruby in Dallas, Texas.
In the Sixties she was offered singing positions with Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong, and she chose the later, appearing with Armstrong in the films, “Louis Armstrong and All Stars” and “Solo”.
Brown recorded an exuberant solo of “Jerry” and vocal backup and “twist choreography” on “When the Saints” on the 1962 live performance “Jazz Festival, Vol. 1 with ‘Louis Armstrong All Stars”, “With Louis Armstrong: Best Live Concert 1: Jazz In Paris” and also recorded with Milton Hopkins.
She retired in 1971 to care for ailing members of her family, establishing a successful hair salon in Houston. In recent years she has revived her career, singing in the Heritage Hall Jazz Band.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bennie Maupin was born on August 29, 1940 in Detroit, Michigan and undertook extensive instrumental studies, both privately and at the Detroit Institute of Musical Art from age 14 until 1962. During this period his influences were Yusef Lateef, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. By 1966 he was working with Roy Haynes followed by a two-year tenure with Horace Silver in ’68.
Maupin joined Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi sextet and his Headhunters band, and then joined Miles Davis for the recording of Bitches Brew. He has also performed on several Meat Beat Manifesto albums.
Bennie is noted for having a harmonically advanced, “out” improvisation style, and as a composer, he has the ability to create brief melodies and song forms that create vast landscapes for improvisation.
Multireedist Bennie Maupin was also a member of the group “Almanac” with Cecil McBee, has recorded a half dozen albums as a leader and another two-dozen as a sideman. He has worked with the likes of Lee Morgan, Eddie Henderson, Marion Brown, John Beasley, Mike Clark, Jack DeJohnette, Darek Oles, Lonnie Smith, McCoy Tyner and Lenny White. He appears in the 2016 biopic I Called Him Morgan about trumpeter Lee Morgan and continues to pursue his career in music from jazz to rock to abstraction.
