Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jean-Charles Capon was born on July 29, 1936 in Vichy, France. A virtuoso on the cello, he began playing professionally at the beginning of the 60s before creating the Baroque Jazz Trio. His name was rapidly linked to different cult groups for whom he became the guest star for Confluence, Perception, and Speed Limit, but also with many more or less well-known free jazz musicians including David S. Ware with whom he recorded the impeccable duo From Silence To Music, as well as Philippe Maté, Michel Roques, André Jaume or Joe McPhee with Po Music.
Jef Gilson helped get his career under way (they recorded together as far back as 1968) before Pierre Barouh, owner of Saravah Records with whom Jean-Charles played alongside Brigitte Fontaine and Areski. He offered him the opportunity to record his first album: L’Univers-solitude.
Capon admired Duke Ellington, John Lewis and Gabriel Fauré, as can be heard on his later highly personal versions of Mood Indigo, Django and Après un rêve. As for Pierre Favre, he is not there just to make up the numbers: his timbral research and combinations of complex rhythms offer the French cellist wonderful interaction throughout this remarkable album which had finally been given a dignified rerelease.
The fluidity of the phrasing, timbral research, complex rhythmic combinations and rare sense of improvisation make this one of the best modern jazz recordings on the Saravah label in the 1970s.
Cellist Jean~Charles Capon transitioned on August 22, 2011 in the 10th Arrondissement, Paris, France.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Günter Lenz was born July 25, 1938 in Frankfurt am Main. He first taught himself guitar and studied with Carlo Bohländer, playing jazz in the clubs of the U.S. Army from 1954 onwards. During national service in 1959/1960 he switched to the bass.
In 1961 Albert Mangelsdorff picked him up as a member of the Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet. Since then Lenz has also become a member of the hr-jazz ensemble, for which he arranged and composed. 1965 saw him working in the Krzysztof Komeda Quintet, recording the album Astigmatic. Three years later he was playing with Joachim Kühn and Aldo Romano in a band led by Barney Wilen at the Berlin Jazz Days. With The German All Stars he toured internationally in 1969 and 1971.
He played with the George Russell Sextet, and with a band led by Leon Thomas. This allowed him to collect big band experience. During the 1970s he was a member of the Kurt Edelhagen Big Band and with Peter Herbolzheimer Rhythm Combination & Brass. He would go on to be engaged for their concert tours and record productions by Chet Baker, Coleman Hawkins, Oliver Nelson and Benny Bailey, as well as German musicians such as Eugen Cicero, Horst Jankowski and Volker Kriegel.
Dipping into the blues field in 1972 Günter played with Lightning Hopkins. The mid-1970s saw Lenz joining drummer Peter Giger in Clarinet Contrast, an avant garde band around the clarinetists Perry Robinson, Theo Jörgensmann, Bernd Konrad and Michel Pilz. As a member of the Manfred Schoof Quintet he recorded for ECM/Japo.
In the late 1970s Günter founded his combo, Günter Lenz Springtime, an international jazz-fusion band with members as Bob Degen, Claus Stötter, Frank St. Peter, Johannes Faber, Leszek Zadlo and Joe Nay. He recorded as part of the Berlin Contemporary Jazz Orchestra. In 1991 he recorded “Life at the Montreux Music Festival” in trio-formation with Uli Lenz and Allen Blairman
Lenz created orchestral arrangements for Plácido Domingo, and from 2001 to 2006 as a professor he taught bass at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. During that period of education he received the Hesse state Jazz prize awarded by the State Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts Udo Corts.
Bassist Günter Lenz continues to perform, compose, arrange and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anthony John Archer was born July 14, 1938 in Dulwich, London, England and studied cello as a schoolboy before settling on upright bass.
He joined Don Rendell’s group in 1961, then went with Roy Budd and Eddie Thompson before beginning work with Tony Lee. He collaborated with Lee for many years as part of Lee’s trio, particularly at The Bull’s Head and Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club.
He later played with Brian Lemon, Sandy Brown, Harold McNair, John Dankworth, and in the Best of British Jazz group with Kenny Baker and Don Lusher.
Double-bassist Tony Archer, who continued to work with Lee nearly until Lee’s death in 2004, is still active in the music scene at 85 years old.
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Three Wishes
The Baroness was having a conversation with Archie Shepp when she brought up the topic of three wishes and asked him what his would be. He responded by telling her:
- “To be free of poverty.”
- “I don’t know the next.”
- “To be free.”
*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…
Ron Rubin was born in Liverpool, London, England on July 8, 1933, to David and Louise Rubin. Music was important to the family and he learned piano from an early age. Becoming interested in jazz in his early teens while attending Liverpool College school, he was suspended for playing jazz on the school piano. Not being put off, he studied law under his uncle but it wasn’t for him and he signed up for the Royal Army Service Corps for a two year stint.
In the army he played piano with the Rhine River Jazz and Germany Rhine bands in Germany where he was stationed. After his service, in 1953 he picked up some gigs around Merseyside, London where he was playing guitar and clarinet at this time. Ron practiced hard on the piano and found solo work at clubs in London’s Soho. Taking up the double bass in 1955 and within a few weeks he was playing gigs with Ralph “Bags” Watmough and Tony Davis’s Gin Mill Four. In 1957 he played opening night at the Cavern Club with the Merseysippi and Watmough bands.
Moving to London in the 60s Ron played with a wide variety of bands on piano and double bass with Glyn Morgan, Dick Williams, Brian Leake, the Fairweather-Brown band, Mike Taylor, Group Sounds Five, the Ronnie Selby Trio, Fat John Cox and Bruce Turner. He accompanied visiting musicians Bill Coleman, Henry “Red” Allen and Ray Nance and with groups like those of Long John Baldry and the Hoochie-Coochie Men, and Manfred Mann.
Through the 1970s Rubin toured with the Lennie Best Quartet, Sandy Brown, Keith Ingham, Alex Welsh, Colin Purbrook, and accompanied Billy Eckstine. He had his own band at the Roundhouse Bar and was with the John Picard Band for three years and recorded regularly. The Eighties saw him touring with Wild Bill Davison and playing with Fatty George, Geoff Simkins, Keith Smith and Oscar Klein, George Howden, Brian Leake and Earl Okin.
By the end of the decade he was playing bass with the Bruce Turner Quartet before joining George Melly and John Chilton’s Feetwarmers. The following decades he played with Campbell Burnap’s band, then joined George Melly and John Chilton again and continued playing and touring. After surviving cancer in 2001 he slowed down to playing occasionally. In his later years Ron spent many happy hours writing his Jottings From A Jazzman’s Journal, a record of his life as a musician.
Pianist, bassist and poet Ron Rubin, who for many years was at the centre of the British jazz scene, transitioned on April 14, 2020 at the age of 86.