Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harold Leon Breeden was born on October 3, 1921 in Guthrie, Oklahoma. At three his parents moved to Wichita Falls, Texas where he grew up and graduated from high school. He attended Texas Wesleyan College in Fort Worth, Texas on a scholarship and later transferred to Texas Christian University where he completed both his bachelor’s and master’s degrees. A move to New York City had him doing graduate work at Columbia University, he studied clarinet with Reginald Kell with whom Benny Goodman studied.
In 1944 after military duty he became the Director of Bands at Texas Christian University and later served as Director of Bands at Grand Prairie High School, then Director of Jazz Studies at the University of North Texas College of Music, where Breeden remained until his retirement in 1984.
Breeden also played saxophone and studied composition and arranging at Texas Christian. As a producer of the NBC Symphony, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, he declined a position as staff writer and arranger for the orchestra to take care of his ill father. Moving back to Texas he worked as music coordinator for KXAS-TV in Fort Worth, known at the time as WBAP-TV.
In the last several years of his life, Leon frequently soloed on clarinet with The Official Texas Jazz Orchestra. In 2009, The University of North Texas awarded him with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
Clarinstist, educator, composer and director Leon Breeden, who made the One O’Clock Lab Band internationally famous, died of natural causes on August 11, 2010 in Dallas,Texas.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Bryant Woode was born September 23, 1926 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, for whom he was named, was a music teacher and pianist who had played with Hot Lips Page. He studied piano and bass in Boston, Massachusetss at Boston University and at the Conservatory of Music, as well as at the Philadelphia Academy.
He joined the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1955 and appeared on many of Ellington’s recordings, including Such Sweet Thunder and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Duke Ellington Songbook, recorded in 1957. Jimmy performed at the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival issued on Ellington at Newport. In 1960 he left the Orchestra to live in Europe.
An original member of The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band, in 1995 he also toured with Lionel Hampton’s Golden Men of Jazz. 2003 saw Woode forming a trio with drummer Pete York and German jazz musician/comedian Helge Schneider, touring in Germany with his interpretation of jazz classics like Georgia and Summertime. As a consequence of his co-operation with Schneider, he also starred in the 2004 feature film Jazzclub in the role of a struggling jazz bassist.
Woode’s song Just Give Me Time was covered by Carola in 1966, first released on her album Carola & Heikki Sarmanto Trio, reaching the Finnish charts in 2004.
Bassist Jimmy Woode, who was born on the same day, the same month, the same year as saxophonist John Coltrane, died April 23, 2005, at age 78 at his home in Lindenwold, New Jersey, of complications following a surgery for a stomach aneurysm.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Percy South was born on September 7, 1929 in Fulham, London, England. He came to prominence in the 1950s, playing with Joe Harriott, Dizzy Reece, Tony Crombie, and Tubby Hayes. In 1954, he was in the Tony Crombie Orchestra with Dizzy Reece, Les Condon, Joe Temperley, Sammy Walker, Lennie Dawes, and Ashley Kozak.
Returning from a Calcutta, India tour with the Ashley Kozak Quartet, he spent four years with the Dick Morrissey Quartet, where he both wrote and arranged material for their subsequent four albums. He formed the Harry South Big Band in 1966 with Latin, ballads and straight-forward swingers.
By the mid-1960s, he began working with British rhythm & blues singer and organist Georgie Fame, recording the album Sound Venture. He composed and arranged for Humphrey Lyttelton, Buddy Rich, Sarah Vaughan, and Jimmy Witherspoon and was musical director and arranger for Annie Ross.
He branched out into session work, writing themes for television and music libraries. He is credited with the arrangements used for Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s Works Vol. 1 (1977). In 1981, he again arranged for Annie Ross and Georgie Fame in a collaboration on what was to be Hoagy Carmichael’s last recording, In Hoagland.
Pianist, composer and arranger Harry South, who was honored with an album released by the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, died on March 12, 1990 in Lambeth, London at the age of 60.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Willox was born into a musical family in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, England on August 31,1929. At 16 he had a brief spell with Johnny Claes in 1945 and then with other bands before joining Ted Heath from 1950 to 1955.
About this time he worked in the jazz clubs in a group with Keith Christie, and with Jack Parnell followed with extensive freelance work in television, radio and the theatre. The jazz scene saw Willox in Harry South’s band during the 1960s and 1970s and returned to the Heath band for dates in the 1960s and 1970s.
He was in demand through the 1960s for many jazz big band dates, notably with Harry South and Tubby Hayes. He played throughout the 1990s and 2000s, first with The Ted Heath Band, (then led by Don Lusher), and in Lusher’s own big band until it’s last concert in 2007. He played in the Ted Heath band’s farewell concert at the Royal Festival Hall, London in 2000.
A fluent saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist Roy Willox, whose main instrument is alto saxophone, continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Vinnie Dean was born Vincent Nicholas diVittorio on August 8, 1929 in Mount Vernon, New York. He was primarily an alto saxophonist, but also played flute and piccolo.
After World War II he played in New York City with Shorty Sherock and Johnny Bothwell, and recorded with Charlie Spivak and Charlie Barnet in the late 1940s. The 1950s saw him playing with Elliot Lawrence, Stan Kenton, Ralph Burns, and Eddie Bert, recording with all of them.
He was less active from the late-1950s, but still performed or recorded later in his career with Hal McKusick, Ray McKinley, Urbie Green, Sal Salvador, and Benny Goodman, as well as returning to play with Lawrence and Barnet.
From the 1960s onward he was involved in the music business, operating a publishing outlet, a booking agency, a recording studio, and a vinyl shop. Alto saxophonist Vinnie Dean died in Danbury, Connecticut on September 14, 2010 at the age of 81.
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