Daily Dose O fJazz…
Ronald Shannon Jackson was born on January 12, 1940 in Fort Worth, Texas and as a child he was immersed in music. His father monopolized the local jukebox business and established the only African American-owned record store in the metropolitan area. His mother played piano and organ at their local church. Beginning at age five until nine he took piano lessons and in the third grade he studied music with John Carter. He graduated from I.M. Terrell High School, where he played with the marching band and learned about symphonic percussion. By the age of 15, he was playing professionally. His first paid gig was with tenor saxophonist James Clay.
Attending Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri gave him access to St. Louis, Missouri and the musicians touring the Midwest. His roommate was pianist John Hicks and his bandmates also included Lester Bowie and Julius Hemphill. Transferring first to Texas Southern University, then to Prairie View A & M before landing at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut studying history and sociology. In 1966, through trumpeter Kenny Dorham he attended New York University on a full music scholarship.
Once in New York City he performed with many jazz musicians, including Charles Mingus, Betty Carter, Jackie McLean, Joe Henderson, Kenny Dorham, McCoy Tyner, Stanley Turrentine, Charles Tyler and Albert Ayler. By 1975 he joined Ornette Coleman’s electric free funk band, Prime Time, where he learned composition and harmolodics. He would go on to play Paris, France, record four albums with Cecil Taylor, and formed his band, The Decoding Society, in 1979. In addition to leading Decoding Society lineups, guitarist James Blood Ulmer recruited Ron for another group.
Continuing to push the envelope over the next few years he formed several groups including Last Exit, SXL, Mooko, and Power Tools. Jackson joined trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet, then played with the Punk Funk All Stars, and toured Europe with The Last Poets. In 2011 he formed a power trio called Encryption.
Drummer Ron Jackson who recorded nineteen albums as a leader, six with Last Exit and as a sideman fifteen with Albert Ayler, James Blood Ulmer, Cecil Taylor, SXL, Music Revelation Ensemble, and Ornette Coleman, died of leukemia on October 19, 2013, aged 73.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frankie Randall was born Franklin Joseph Lisbona on January 11, 1938 in Passaic, New Jersey. In 1964, he kicked off his acting career starring in Wild on the Beach and appeared in The Day of the Wolves in 1971. He appeared numerous times on the Dean Martin TV show, and hosted the summer version of the show when Martin was not available.
He released dozens of RCA singles and albums from the 1960s onwards. After starting out in pop music, Randall, a piano player, began performing material from The Great American Songbook. His version of the song “I Can See for Miles” by The Who is included in Rhino Records’ album Golden Throats: The Great Celebrity Sing Off.
In 2001, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, California, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. Frankie was inducted into the Las Vegas Casino Legends Hall of Fame the following year. He was presented the Amadeus Award by the Desert Symphony on January 11, 2013.
On December 28, 2014, pianist and vocalist Frankie Randall died of lung cancer in Indio, California at the age of 76.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Haider was born January 3, 1936 in Darmstadt, Germany and performed as an amateur musician in the region Stuttgart, Germany between 1954 and 1959. He studied at Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich, Germany from 1960 to 1965. During this period he also played in the Fritz Münzer Quintet and recorded Live in HR 1962 and Jazz For Young People.
From 1965 to 1968, he worked as a pianist and led a trio in jazz club Domicile in Munich. During his residency Joe performed with many European and American jazz musician such as Benny Bailey, Duško Gojković, Nathan Davis, Booker Ervin, Klaus Doldinger, Hans Koller, Leo Wright, Attila Zoller, George Mraz, Peter Trunk, Philly Joe Jones, Joe Nay, Kurt Bong, Klaus Weiss and Pierre Favre.
After leading the Radio Jazz Ensemble of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, he worked from 1970 with the quartet Four for Jazz with alto saxophonist Heinz Bigler, bassist Isla Eckinger and Peter Giger on percussion. He founded his own trio with Eckinger and Favre and put together a combo with Duško Gojković and led a big band together with Slide Hampton, in which Dexter Gordon also performed.
1979 saw Haider establishing his own label EGO in order to release his own records and those of his German colleagues. He recorded with his orchestra and Mel Lewis, toured with Woody Shaw, and various soloists such as Andy Scherrer, Roman Schwaller, Sandy Patton or Don Menza. From 1984 to 1995, he was the director of the Swiss Jazz School in Bern, Switzerland. In 1994, the Canton of Bern’s government awarded him the Great Cultural Prize for his contribution in the field of music.
The turn of the century had him working for the next eleven years with Brigitte Dietrich and a double quartet with bowed string instruments. In 2016, he published the album Keep It Dark. Pianist Joe Haider, at 87, is not very active in music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Donald Arthur Albert Weller was born on December 19, 1940 in Thornton Heath, Croydon, England. He began learning clarinet at the age of 14, and was classically educated for four or five years. He played the solo part in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto at Croydon Town Hall aged 15, and began performing in Dixieland bands around the Croydon area, before switching to tenor saxophone and playing in Kathy Stobart’s rehearsal band.
During the 1970s he formed a jazz-rock group called Major Surgery that played a regular weekly gig at a local pub, the Dog & Bull. They played Weller’s compositions on the album released as The First Cut. This was followed by a quartet with drummer Bryan Spring and at the same time Don worked regularly with pianist Stan Tracey, and also with Harry Beckett and in a quintet with Art Themen. Renowned for his versatility, he has played with artists such as Alan Price, Tina May and Charlie Hearnshaw.
Weller played saxophone for rock records, working with the likes of David Bowie. He was the lead saxophonist with Tower of Power on the instrumental track Nascimento on Cat Stevens’ Back To Earth and also played on the Alex Harvey album The Mafia Stole My Guitar.
In the Eighties he stood in for Michael Brecker when the Gil Evans Orchestra played at the Bracknell Jazz Festival. This gig subsequently led to him touring the UK and recording with one of the band’s trumpeters, Hannibal Marvin Peterson, added on to the Weller–Spring Quartet. He went on to play and record with Evans’ British Orchestra, becoming a regular member of Rocket 88, as well as a first choice for TV and film soundtracks.
He contributed to several films composed for jazz big bands and was commissioned for his Electric Jazz Octet. Tenor saxophonist, and composer Don Weller had a triple bypass in 2012 and eight years later transitioned on May 30, 2020 in Croydon at the age of 79.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Borah Bergman was born on December 13, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. He took piano lessons as a child, changed to clarinet, then returned to piano after being discharged from the army. Determining right away that he wanted to develop an individual voice, the right-handed player worked for years in strengthening his left hand. He practiced playing left-handed almost exclusively and eventually as a pianist he became ambidextrous.
Early in his career comparisons arose and though he cited Tristano, Monk, and Powell as influences, his ability as an improvising pianist was so singular. Bergman had the most comprehensive technique of any jazz musician on any instrument. His facility is nonpareil with both hands. He improvised spontaneous free counterpoint at unfathomable speeds and with remarkable precision and no pianist in the history of jazz ever developed more speed and agility in his left hand.
Borah began recording late and his first four albums were solo efforts. His debut album Discovery was released in 1975 on the Chiaroscuro label. Three more would follow through 1984, and in 1992, he began a series of successful duo collaborations with free-bop altoist Thomas Chapin, drummer Andrew Cyrille, and soprano saxophonist Evan Parker. He would go on to record duo/trio albums with saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell and vocalist Thomas Buckner, saxophonists Peter Brotzman and Thomas Borgmann. At the end of the century his recorded output continued to rise substantially, as well as his profile as one of the music’s major contributors.
Pianist Borah Bergman, who performed in the free jazz idiom and recorded thirty albums as a leader or co-leader, transitioned on October 18, 2012 in New York City.
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