Three Wishes
When Panninica asked Max Roach what his three wishes would be, he simply said:
- “Wishes would be a superfluous luxury for me, because I have everything I desire. That’s the most important thing in the world.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
More Posts: baroness,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music,pannonica,three,wishes
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Red Balaban was born Leonard Balaban on December 22, 1929 in Chicago, Illinois. Moving the family to New York, he completed his early education at the Ethical Culture School. After graduating from Milford Academy in Connecticut, he graduated from Brown University.
Moving south to the panhandle, he raised breeding cattle on a farm in Bonifay, Florida and as a musician, he was a sideman, bandleader, and club owner. He played in regional ensembles from the 1950s, Red went on to hold a regular gig from 1966 at the Dixieland jazz club Your Father’s Mustache in New York City.
Balaban worked extensively as a sideman, for musicians such as Wild Bill Davison, Eddie Condon, Gene Krupa, Dick Wellstood, and Kenny Davern. He co-led Eddie Condon’s house band with Ed Polcer from 1975, and noted musicians in this outfit included Vic Dickenson, Warren Vache, and Connie Kay, before the club closed in the mid-1980s.
Tubist and sousaphonist Red Balaban, who also played banjo, stand-up bass, slide trombone, ukulele, and rhythm guitar, passed away after a brief illness seven days past his 84th birthday on December 29, 2013 in Milford, Connecticut.
More Posts: banjo,bass,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music,slide trombone,sousaphone,tuba,ukulele
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Albert Francis Jones was born on December 18, 1930 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and started to play the drums at the tender age of three. In 1949 he played with Lionel Hampton and with Dizzy Gillespie in 1951~1953 that included four tours of Europe.
In the early Fifties he also worked with Joe Carroll, Miles Davis, Milt Jackson, and Wade Legge. Later that decade he played with Arnett Cobb and accompanied Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Dinah Washington.
After touring Europe with alto saxophonist Jackie McLean and the Living Theater of New York in 1962, he permanently moved to Belgium. There he led a group with Jean Fanis and Roger van Haverbeke, that became the house band in a Belgian club. This ensemble played with visiting musicians such as Dexter Gordon, Milt Jackson, Art Farmer, Clark Terry. and Dany Doriz.
Drummer Al Jones passed away in April 1976.
More Posts: drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Daniel Eugene Quill was born on December 15, 1927 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He played often with Phil Woods in the duet Phil and Quill. The two often engaged in celebrated alto battles, exemplifying musical sportsmanship at its finest. As a leader, he recorded three albums and collaborating with Phil Woods recorded six albums between 1956 and 1959.
Recording for Roost and Dawn on his own dates, Quill certainly had no problem playing melodically and was in very melodic settings when employed in Claude Thornhill’s big band and Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band from 1960-1962.
Working as a sideman, Gene recorded forty-three albums for Buddy DeFranco, Quincy Jones, Gene Krupa, Gerry Mulligan, Manny Albam, Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn, Michel Legrand, Joe Newman, Johnny Richards, Steve Allen, Buddy Arnold, Gil Evans, Dick Garcia, Billie Holiday, Teddi King, Jimmy Knepper, Mundell Lowe, Oscar Pettiford, Pony Poindexter, Bill Potts, Buddy Rich, Jimmy Rushing, and George Williams.
During the last years of his life, he was in extremely poor health during the last years of his life, after suffering brain damage and partial paralysis. On December 8, 1988 alto saxophonist Gene Quill passed away at the age of 60 in his hometown of Atlantic City.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rafael Antonio Cortijo was born on December 11, 1928 in Santurce, Puerto Rico and as a child became interested in Caribbean music and enjoyed the works of some of the era’s most successful Bomba y Plena music musicians. Throughout his life, he had a chance to meet and work with some of them and learned how to make his own congas and pleneras, the handheld drums used in bomba y plena music.
He met salsa composer and singer Ismael Rivera when both were youngsters growing up in the Villa Palmeras neighborhood. They became lifelong friends and Rivera impressed with his friend’s conga-playing skills, asked him to join his orchestra, which played at Fiestas patronales all over Puerto Rico.
Becoming well known across Latin America, Rafael attributed his success to the sound of his percussion, as Afro-Caribbean music was known worldwide. As a member of the Conjunto Monterrey, based in Monterrey, Mexico, he later toured with Daniel Santos’ orchestra and worked on radio.
By 1954, as a member of El Combo, Cortijo’s big break came when El Combo’s leader and pianist Mario Román left the band to him. Ismael Rivera, then the lead singer of Lito Peña’s Orquesta Panamericana, joined Cortijo’s orchestra known as Cortijo y su Combo in 1955. From then until 1960, his orchestra played live on Puerto Rican television shows, and sometime during the 60s, they became the house band at La Taberna India.
The orchestra virtually disbanded in 1962 when Ismael Rivera was arrested for drug possession in Panama. Rafael and the other bandmates went on to found Puerto Rico’s salsa group, El Gran Combo. He went on to create another orchestra, El Bonche, where he was joined by his adopted niece, Fe Cortijo, who would become a well-known singer on her own. He and Rivera went on to live in New York City but he soon returned impoverished to Puerto Rico, where he forged a friendship with composer Tite Curet Alonsothe who helped produce a comeback album. In 1974, Coco Records reunited all the former members of “Cortijo y su Combo” orchestra for a one-time-only concert and a subsequent studio recording issued a few months afterward.
Their friendship was so important to Rivera, that when orchestra leader, musician, and composer Rafael Cortijo passed away of pancreatic cancer on October 3, 1982 at his sister Rosa Cortijo’s apartment in the Luis Llorens Torres public housing project in Santurce, Rivera said he would no longer sing.
More Posts: bandleader,conga,history,instrumental,jazz,music