Three Wishes

Three wishes were requested of Walter Perkins and he replied to Pannonica with: 

1. 1. “Happiness for my brothers. All of them.”

   2. “To get a sound out of those drums that has never been heard before. ”

   3. “More cooperation between our brothers.”

*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…

Chuck Hedges was born in Chicago, Illinois on July 21, 1932 and began playing clarinet while attending a military school. He received formal training under Claude Bordy and learned to play jazz on his own.

After studying at Northwestern University, Chuck joined George Brunis’s ensemble in 1953, remaining with Brunis through the end of the decade. He was active on the Dixieland revival scene in the 1960s, playing regularly at clubs in Chicago and Milwaukee, Wisconsin into the 1990s.

Working with Wild Bill Davison for most of the 1980s, he also worked with Alan Vaché and Johnny Varro. He with Ray Leatherwood, Gene Estes, Eddie Higgins, Bob Haggart, Duane Thamm, John Bany, Dave Baney, Charles Braugham, Howard Elkins, Jack Wyatt, Jim Vaughn, John Sheridan, Henry “Bucky” Buckwalter, Gary Meisner, Dave Sullivan, Mike Britz, and Andy LoDuca.

Clarinetist Chuck Hedges released several albums as a leader in the 1990s and 2000s before passing away on June 24, 2010.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mthutuzeli Dudu Pukwana was born on July 18, 1938 in Walmer Township, Port Elizabeth, South Africa. He grew up studying piano in his family, but in 1956 he switched to alto saxophone after meeting tenor saxophone player Nikele Miyake In 1962, Pukwana won first prize at the Johannesburg Jazz Festival with Moyake’s Jazz Giants. In his early days, he also played with Kippie Moeketsi. Chris McGregor then invited him to join the pioneering Blue Notes, a sextet, where he was the principal composer and played along with Mongezi Feza, Nikele Moyake, Johnny Dyani and Louis Moholo.

As mixed-race groups were illegal under apartheid, the Blue Notes, increasingly harassed by authorities, emigrated to Europe in 1964, playing in France and Zürich, Switzerland before settling in London, England. After they split in the late 1960s, Pukwana joined McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath Big Band, which featured his soloing and composing. He wrote Mra, one of the best-loved tunes by the Brotherhood.

1967 saw Dudu receiving his first mention of success with the Bob Stuckey Trio in America’s DownBeat magazine, which later expanded to a quartet when Phil Lee joined on guitar. He went on to form two groups with Feza and Moholo. One was the afro rock band Assagai, the other Spear, with whom he recorded the seminal afro-jazz album In The Townships in 1973 for Virgin Records at The Manor Studio.

His fiery voice was heard in many diverse settings including recordings of Mike Heron, Centipede and Toots and the Maytals. In 1978, Pukwana founded Jika Records and formed his own band, Zila, featuring South Africans Lucky Ranku on guitar and powerful vocalist Miss Pinise Saul. In duo with John Stevens, he recorded the free session They Shoot To Kill in 1987, dedicated to Johnny Dyani. In 1990, Pukwana took part in the Nelson Mandela Tribute held at Wembley Stadium.

Alto saxophonist, pianist, and composer Dudu Pukwana, who was not known for his piano playing, passed away in London, England of liver failure on June 30, 1990, not long after the death of his longtime friend and colleague McGregor.

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Daily Dose of Jazz…

George Warren Barnes was born on July 17, 1921 in South Chicago Heights, Illinois. His father being a guitarist taught him to play the acoustic guitar at the age of nine. A year later, in 1931, Barnes’s brother made a pickup and amplifier for him. Barnes said he was the first person to play electric guitar.

From 1935~1937 he led a band that performed in the Midwest, 1938 he recorded the songs Sweetheart Land and It’s a Lowdown Dirty Shame with blues guitarist Big Bill Broonzy.

In doing so, it has been claimed that he became the first person to make a record on electric guitar, fifteen days before Eddie Durham recorded on electric guitar with the Kansas City Five, though the claim has been contested. In 1938, when he was seventeen, Barnes was hired as a staff guitarist for the NBC Orchestra, staff guitarist and arranger for Decca and recorded with Blind John Davis, Jazz Gillum, Merline Johnson, Curtis Jones, and Washboard Sam.

In 1940, Barnes released his first solo recording, I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles and I Can’t Believe That You’re in Love with Me on Okeh Records. Drafted in 1942 and serving in the Pentagon, after his discharge in 1946, he formed the George Barnes Octet and was given a fifteen-minute radio program on the ABC network.

In 1951, he was signed to Decca by Milt Gabler and moved from Chicago to New York City. In 1953, he joined the television orchestra on the show Your Hit Parade that was conducted by Raymond Scott and featured Barnes as a featured soloist. Working as a studio musician in New York City, playing on hundreds of albums and jingles from the early 1950s through the late 1960s. He played guitar on Patsy Cline’s New York sessions in April 1957.

In the Sixties, he recorded three albums for Mercury: Movin’ Easy (1960) with his Jazz Renaissance Quintet, Guitar Galaxies (1960), and Guitars Galore (1961). The latter two contained his orchestrations for ten guitars, known as his guitar choir, which used guitars in place of a horn section. The two albums employed a recording technique known as Perfect Presence Sound.

Barnes received the most attention as a jazz guitarist when he recorded as a duo with Carl Kress from 1961–1965. In 1969 Barnes formed a duo with jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli that lasted until 1972. In 1973, he and cornetist Ruby Braff formed the Ruby Braff–George Barnes Quartet and recorded several albums.

He recorded seventeen albums as a leader and as a sideman, Barnes recorded another thirty-nine not limited to Louis Armstrong, Steve Allen, Tony Bennett, Jackie Cooper, Bob Dylan, Bud Freeman, Johnny Guarnieri, Dick Hyman, Betty Madigan, Wingy Manone, Carmen McRae, Jimmy McPartland, Sy Oliver, Don Redman, Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Jimmy Scott, Cootie Williams, and Joe Venuti.

As a studio musician, he also participated in hundreds of pop, rock, and R&B recording sessions. He played on many hit songs by the Coasters, on This Magic Moment by the Drifters, and on Jackie Wilson’s Lonely Teardrops. His electric guitar can be heard in the movie A Face in the Crowd.

He left New York City after his last European tour in 1975 to live and work in the San Francisco Bay area. Guitarist George Barnes, who was primarily a swing guitarist, passed away from a heart attack in Concord, California on September 5, 1977 at the age of 56.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joseph Arthurlin Harriott was born in Kingston, Jamaica on July 15, 1928. Harriott was educated at Alpha Boys School, an orphanage in the city where he learned to play the clarinet, the instrument that was assigned to him shortly before his tenth birthday. He took up the baritone and tenor saxophone while performing with local dance bands before settling on the alto saxophone.

Moving to London, England as a working musician in the summer of 1951 at the age of 23 as a member of Ossie Da Costa’s band, he initially began as a bebopper, and also became a pioneer of free-form jazz. Harriott was part of a wave of Caribbean jazz musicians who arrived in Britain during the 1950s, including Dizzy Reece, Harold McNair, Harry Beckett and Wilton Gaynair.

Deeply influenced by Charlie Parker, he developed a style that fused Parker with his own Jamaican musical sensibility, most notably the mento and calypso music he grew up with. During the 1950s, he had two long spells with drummer Tony Kinsey’s band, punctuated by the membership of Ronnie Scott’s short-lived big band, occasional spells leading his own quartet and working in the quartets of drummers Phil Seamen and Allan Ganley.

Harriott began recording under his own name in 1954, releasing a handful of E.P. records for Columbia, Pye/Nixa and Melodisc throughout the 1950s. However, the majority of his 1950s recordings were as a sideman with the musicians previously mentioned, also backing a diverse array of performers, from mainstream vocalist Lita Roza to traditional trombonist George Chisholm to the West African sounds of Buddy Pipp’s Highlifers. Harriott also appeared alongside visiting American musicians during this period, including a “guest artist” slot on the Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1959 UK tour.

Forming his own quintet in 1958, Joe’s hard-swinging bebop was noticed in the United States, leading to the release of the Southern Horizons and Free Form albums on the Jazzland label. By now firmly established as a bebop soloist, in 1960 Harriott turned to what he termed “abstract” or “free-form” music. During the late 1960s he and violinist John Mayer developed Indo-Jazz Fusion – an early attempt at building on music from diverse traditions. His work in 1969 was to be the last substantial performance of his career.

While he continued to play around Britain wherever he was welcome, no further recording opportunities arose. He was virtually destitute in his last years and ravaged by illness. Alto saxophonist and composer Joe Harriott passed away from cancer on January 2, 1973.

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