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.
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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.
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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.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sol Yaged was born on December 8, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York and began playing the clarinet at the age of 12 after hearing Benny Goodman’s broadcasts for Nabisco in 1935. He studied under a New York Philharmonic clarinetist, however turned down a classical career to play jazz in New York City nightclubs.
After three years in the Army during World War II, Yaged played clarinet professionally and continuously for over 70 years, with Phil Napoleon, Coleman Hawkins, Red Allen, and Jack Teagarden among others. In the 1960s, he began working primarily as an ensemble leader in City. In the Nineties he worked in Felix Endico’s swing band, and served as a consultant on Benny Goodman’s musical style for the 1956 film, The Benny Goodman Story.
For two years in the mid-1990s he worked under the musical direction of bandleader Jack Vartan at the Stony Hill Inn in Bergen County, New Jersey. He recorded four albums as a leader and six as a sideman. Clarinetist Sol Yaged, who was strongly influenced by Benny Goodman passed away on May 11, 2019.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Francis Dunlop was born on December 6, 1928 in Buffalo, New York and began playing guitar at age nine and drums at ten. He was playing professionally by age 16 and received some classical education in percussion. He toured with Big Jay McNeely and recorded with Moe Koffman in 1950 before serving in the Army during the Korean War.
After his discharge, Frankie played with Sonny Stitt, Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, Maynard Ferguson, Lena Horne, Duke Ellington, and Thelonious Monk. It is his recordings with the latter two that he is principally remembered. Later in his life, he recorded with Lionel Hampton, Earl Hines, Ray Crawford, and Joe Zawinul.
In 1984, he retired, having recorded on over 100 albums with Wilbur Ware, Randy Weston, Melba Liston, Martin Mull, Dodo Greene, Herman Foster, Bill Barron, Richard Davis, Mose Allison and Leo Wright among many others. Drummer Frankie Dunlop passed away on July 7, 2014.
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