Three Wishes
Jon Hendricks told Nica what his three wishes would be when she inquired:
- “Knowledge of God.”
- “Art.”
- “Love.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Maurice James Simon was born March 26, 1929 in Houston, Texas. Studying the saxophone in high school he was a classmate of Eric Dolphy during the 1945-46 school year. He appeared on an early 1945 Los Angeles, California recording led by Russell Jacquet along with Teddy Edwards, Charles Mingus, Bill Davis and Chico Hamilton.
1948 saw him again with Jacquet as leader, in an all-star band recording in Detroit, Michigan along with Sonny Stitt, Leo Parker, Sir Charles Thompson, Al Lucas and Shadow Wilson.
He went on to join the Gerald Wilson Orchestra that also had Snooky Young, Red Kelly and Melba Liston as members. In 1950 he recorded for Savoy Records backing Helen Humes in a big band with Dexter Gordon, Ernie Freeman, Red Callender and J.C. Heard.
He also played with Fats Domino, Papa John Creach, Big Maybelle, Faye Adams, Bumble Bee Slim, Percy Mayfield and B. B. King. In the 1970s he worked with the Duke Ellington orchestra. Baritone and tenor saxophonist Maurice Simon passed away on August 6, 2019.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Austin Percy Brice Jr. was born on March 25, 1923 in New York City. He started his professional career began around the end of World War II, when he played with Benny Carter, Mercer Ellington, Luis Russell, and Eddie Cleanhead Vinson. Playing frequently in Harlem during the early 1950s he worked with Tiny Grimes, Oscar Pettiford, Tab Smith, Lucky Thompson, and Cootie Williams. In addition to leading sessions at Minton’s Playhouse, he also played with Billy Taylor from 1954 to 1956, George Shearing between 1956 to 1958, sharing screen time in the film The Big Beat, and Kenny Burrell 1958–59.
He played behind Sarah Vaughan on tour from 1959 to 1961, then became Harry Belafonte’s drummer for most of the 1960s, but he also worked with Ahmad Jamal, Carmen McRae and Mary Lou Williams in that decade. He led a group called the New Sounds in the early 1970s, and worked with Sy Oliver and Illinois Jacquet.
Though he led a group that was active in the ’70s, the somewhat anti-jazz vibe lent to the drummer’s decision to concentrate on Broadway orchestra work, settling in for long runs on two hot shows, Eubie and Bubbling Brown Sugar. He was also active accompanying the tap group the Copasetics. He was a first~ call musician for jazz festivals and recording sessions.
The repertoire of the Percy Brice Duo with Tom Smith features songcraft from the ’20s through the ’50s. Drummer and bandleader Percy Brice, also known by his nickname Big P, passed away in November 2020 at the age of 97.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John R. T. Davies was born John Ross Twiston Davies on March 20, 1927 in Wivelsfield, Sussex, England. A trombonist, trumpeter and alto saxophonist, in the early 1950s he was a member of the Crane River Jazz Band led by Ken Colyer which spearheaded interest in the original New Orleans jazz style. Later he achieved chart success with the 1960s jazz revival band The Temperance Seven. The group’s recording of You’re Driving Me Crazy reached the top of the charts in 1961.
Considered by many as the world’s leading specialist in the art of sound restoration, he specifically focused on jazz and blues existing on pre-magnetic tape media such as shellac 78s. He was particularly interested in recordings from 1917 to 1940. Davies developed many methods for restoring old recordings and disliked modern techniques for removing surface noise.
While he appreciated attempts to clean up recordings and to create new versions of old recordings for modern audiences (e.g. the stereophonic remastered recordings by Robert Parker), in general he said he preferred remasterings which “keep everything and do as little as possible” to the original recording, and thought the remastering engineer should “Add nothing, take nothing away”. The presence of his name on the credit of a reissue is generally considered the mark of a quality product. He started his own record label called Ristic in the late 1940s which produced reissued recordings from 1949 to 1972.
Davies was always generous with his time and his collection and wanted it to be available for other people to use for research and reissues after his death. The Borthwick Archive at York University have accepted the entire collection and are housing it in ideal conditions, and making a transfer suite available so that his wish can be carried out. Information about the collection collated from the collection catalogue is also now available online from the University of York Digital Library and a small selection of the tracks have been made available to listen online.
Alto saxophonist and audio engineer John R. T. Davies, who specialized in restoring classic jazz records, passed away on May 25, 2004.
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Three Wishes
When asked what his three wishes would be, Billy Taylor told Nica he would wish for:
- “Wish I had the time to do all the things that I’m interested in.”
- “Wish I had the time to spend with all the people and things I care about.”
- “I wish I had the time.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
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