Three Wishes
Ramsey Lewis was questioned about his three wishes one night by Pannonica and his response was a simple one:
- “Later for that!”
*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…
Corky Hale was born Merrilyn Hecht on July 3, 1936 in Freeport, Illinois. She learned piano, harp, flute, and cello by the time she was in her teens. She went on to study at the Chicago Music Conservatory and then at Interlochen Center for the Arts in Michigan.
By age 16 she had enrolled in Stephens College, a school for young ladies, for her last year of high school. After graduation she decided to move to Hollywood, California to be a musician but her father had other plans, sending her to nearby University of Wisconsin–Madison. After a year she dropped out, intent on moving to Hollywood but again a compromise with her parents led her to UCLA.
During the 1950s, she became a studio musician in Hollywood, playing harp on albums by Chet Baker, June Christy, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O’Day, and Frank Sinatra. She worked as a vocalist with Freddy Martin at the Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, California. Jerry Gray invited her to perform with his band in Las Vegas, Nevada where she played piano for Billie Holiday and accompanied her on tour.
As a solo act, she recorded the album Corky Hale Plays George Gershwin and Vernon Duke with Buddy Collette, Howard Roberts, and Chico Hamilton. The late Sixties saw her accompany Tony Bennett on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and sang a song by herself.
She has worked with Liberace, Barbra Streisand, Elkie Brooks, Harry James, Peggy Lee, James Brown, Spike Jones, George Michael, Roberta Flack, Les McCann, Herbie Mann, Nina Simone and Björk, to name a few. Hale has also produced plays, including Give ‘Em Hell, Harry, starring Jason Alexander and Lullaby of Broadway, a profile of the lyricist Al Dubin. She has appeared at Vibrato, Catalina Bar & Grill, The White House, and the Kennedy Center.
At the University of Wisconsin, Hale was one of the few white students to join the NAACP. She was a birth control teacher at Planned Parenthood in New York and is on the National Advisory Board of NARAL and on the board of WRRAP. She is an American Film Institute associate and is the founder of Angel Harvest, an organization which redistributes unused food from restaurants, hotels, and events to hungry and needy people in Los Angeles.
Harpist, pianist, flutist, and vocalist Corky Hale, who recorded four albums as a leader and has been a theater producer, political activist, restaurateur, and is the owner of the Corky Hale Women’s Clothing Store in Los Angeles.
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Three Wishes
Baroness Pannonica asked Ben Riley if granted what would be his three wishes and this is what he responded:
- “Just one wish, and I can do the rest. I want to do something I like to do. Not anything with money, like everyone else is doing. I would really like to feel good and not have to pay for it.”
*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…
Eugen Cicero was born Eugen Ciceu on June 27, 1940 in Vad, Romania, to Teodor and Livia Ciceu, an Orthodox priest and professional singer respectively. He began to play the piano at the age of four and by age six performed a Mozart piano concerto with the symphony orchestra of Cluj. Although he graduated from the National Conservatory in Bucharest, Romania he abandoned a career as a conventional concert pianist. He established his style merging classical and jazz piano, introducing swing harmonies into baroque, classical and romantic compositions, often as spontaneous improvisations.
In 1962, while touring East Berlin, Germany he fled to West Berlin. This allowed him to spend the next two years in Switzerland where he joined the Kindli orchestra of Joe Schmid. After returning to Germany, Cicero produced more than 70 recordings, some of them with the Berlin and Munich Philharmonic orchestras. He appeared on German TV several times and enjoyed much success while touring Japan.
In 1976 he was awarded the Deutscher Schallplattenpreis for his interpretations of Franz Schubert. Returning to Switzerland in 1982, pianist Eugen Cicero, nicknamed Mister Golden Hands, transitioned in Zürich on December 5, 1997 from a cerebral apoplexy at the age of 57.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dennis Matthew Budimir was born on June 20, 1938 in Los Angeles, California. He learned to play piano and guitar in his youth and first played professionally when he was fourteen years old. In mid Fifties Los Angeles he played in a quartet with La Monte Young, Billy Higgins, and Don Cherry and by the late 1950s he was working in the bands of Ken Hanna, Keith Williams, Harry James, and Chico Hamilton.
From 1960–1961 he worked with Bud Shank and accompanied Peggy Lee prior to entering military service. After his discharge in 1963 he toured Japan with Bobby Troup and returned to the Los Angeles area, where he came off the road and became a studio musician for the next several decades. He recorded in this capacity with Lalo Schifrin, Marty Paich, Don Ellis, Gil Melle, Ella Fitzgerald, Milt Jackson, Stan Getz, Julie London, Jimmy Smith, Ray Brown, Johnny Mandel and the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut.
This opportunity also led him to record with Joni Mitchell, The Carpenters, Brian Wilson, Barbra Streisand, Ravi Shankar, Frank Zappa, Linda Ronstadt, Dusty Springfield, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones, David Axelrod, Tom Waits, Harry Nilsson, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Johnny Mathis, Cher, and Doris Day. He recorded more than 900 movie soundtracks from the early 1960s until the 2000s.
Guitarist Dennis Budimir, considered to be a member of The Wrecking Crew, transitioned on January 10, 2023 at the age of 84.
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