Three Wishes

The Baroness asked Donald Byrd what his three wishes would be and he replied: 

1. 1. “Health.”

   2. “Education.”

   3. “Long life.”

*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…

Gil Coggins was born Alvin Gilbert Coggins on August 23, 1928 in New York City to parents of West Indian heritage. His mother was a pianist and had her son start on the piano from an early age. Attending school in both New York City and Barbados, he went to the High School of Music & Art in Harlem.

In 1946, Gil met Miles Davis while stationed at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri. After his discharge he began playing piano professionally, working with Davis on several of his Blue Note and Prestige releases. He went on to record with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Ray Draper, and Jackie McLean.

Coggins retired from playing jazz professionally in 1954 and took up a career in real estate, only playing music occasionally. He did not record as a leader until 1990, when Interplay Records released Gil’s Mood. He continued performing through the 1990s and the early years of the 2000s.

On February 15, 2004 pianist Gil Coggins, whose second album as a leader Better Late Than Never was released posthumously, passed away from complications sustained in a car crash eight months earlier in Forest Hills, New York.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lou Colombo was born in Brockton, Massachusetts on August 22, 1927 and started playing the trumpet when he was twelve. At seventeen he turned his attention to professional baseball and was signed with the Brooklyn Dodgers for seven years until a knee injury ended his career at 24.

Turning his attention to music Lou dove in full-time, mostly as an ensemble player and studio musician, playing and recording in the big bands of Dizzy Gillespie, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Buddy Morrow, and Pérez Prado. He also worked sessions with Meredith D’Ambrosio on the 1989 recording South to a Warmer Place, George Masso on That Old Gang of Mine, 1996) and Jerry Jerome’s Something Borrowed, Something Blue.

Under his own name, Colombo recorded some albums one, including 1,990 at Concord Records, a tribute album for Bobby Hackett, one with Dave McKenna and Keith Copeland. Active on the Cape Cod jazz scene for five decades, trumpeter Lou Colombo passed away due to a traffic accident on March 3, 2012 at the age of 84.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Perry Morris Robinson was born on September 17, 1938, the son of composer Earl Robinson. He grew up in New York City and attended the Lenox School of Jazz in Massachusetts in the summer of 1959. After serving in a U.S. military band in the early 1960s, his first record, Funk Dumpling with Kenny Barron, Henry Grimes, and Paul Motian was recorded by Savoy in 1962.

He would go on to record with Grimes on The Call in 1965, in which two of the album’s six songs are credited to Robinson, including the title track. From 1973, he worked with Jeanne Lee and Gunter Hampel’s Galaxie Dream Band. He contributed to Dave Brubeck’ s Two Generations of Brubeck and played with Burton Greene’ s Dutch klezmer band Klezmokum. He was the featured clarinetist on Archie Shepp’s LP Mama Too Tight on the Impulse! label.

Perry led his own groups in performances and on record, with albums on the Chiaroscuro, WestWind, and Timescraper labels. More recently, he worked with William Parker and Walter Perkins on Bob’s Pink Cadillac and several other discs on the CIMP label.

From 1975 until 1977, Robinson was a member of the Clarinet Contrast group, then recorded with Lou Grassi, Wayne Lopes, and Luke Faust in The Jug Jam, an improvisational jug band. He regularly plays and records in a free jazz and world music trio; played with Darius Brubeck and Muruga Booker in the MBR jazz trio, and played an integral part in the formation of the improvisational Cosmic Legends. In 2005 he was featured on his cousin Jeffrey Lewis’ album City and Eastern Songs on Rough Trade Records, A later release was OrthoFunkOlogy in 2008 with the band Free Funk. Clarinetist and composer Perry Robinson, whose autobiography, Perry Robinson: The Traveler was published in 2002, passed away on December 2, 2008.

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DAily Dose Of Jazz…

Dennis Moss MBE, known as Danny in the professional world, was born on August 16, 1927 in Redhill, Surrey, England. The son of a toolmaker, his childhood was spent on the south coast, in the Brighton-Worthing area, where he attended Steyning Grammar School. At the age of thirteen, he saw a jazz band appear briefly in a Bowery Boys film, and was so inspired by the clarinet playing that he swapped his most valued possession, his ice skates, for a second-hand instrument of his own. He was self-taught on both this and the tenor saxophone, which he took up at school,

A spell of National Service at the age of eighteen saw Moss performing for three years in a Royal Air Force regional band. After leaving the forces he joined the Vic Lewis Orchestra, then moved around various bands, especially ones with the potential for a soloist. In 1952, he joined Ted Heath’s band, soon discovering novelty numbers and musical reproductions were limiting his skills as an improviser, and he left after three years.

In 1957 Moss joined John Dankworth’s orchestra. Here, with the band’s encouragement, he began to develop his characteristic saxophone sound. He left Dankworth’s band in 1962, and from here, he joined Humphrey Lyttelton’s group, continuing to hone his style for another two years. He formed his own quartet, playing a mix of club gigs, festival appearances and radio broadcasts for the BBC and continued to tour with this quartet throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He also playing and recording with high-profile singers like Tony Bennett, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby, Sarah Vaughan, and Rosemary Clooney, and appearing with Buck Clayton in the mid-’60s and Louis Armstrong on his last British tour.

Diagnosed in 2005 with pleural mesothelioma, a rare form of lung cancer caused by exposure to asbestos. Saxophonist Danny Moss passed away on May 28, 2008, aged 80.

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