Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph S. Romano was born in Rochester, New York on April 17, 1932 and learned to play clarinet, alto and tenor saxophone as a child. Enlisting in the United States Air Force in the 1950s, then joined the band of Woody Herman in 1956, playing intermittently with Herman into the 1970s, including at major jazz festivals and on several worldwide tours.
In the 1960s, he played with Chuck Mangione, Sam Noto, and Art Pepper and was a recurring sideman on Buddy Rich’s albums between 1968 and 1974. During the Seventies he played with Les Brown, Louie Bellson, Chuck Israels, Sam Noto again, and with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra.
A move to California led him to session work in the 1980s. In addition, he worked with Frank Capp and Nat Pierce. He would later return to his hometown.
Saxophonist Joe Romano transitioned in Rochester on November 26, 2008, from lung cancer, at the age of 76.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gérard Badini was born April 16, 1931 in Paris, France to an opera singing father. He began playing professionally in the early 1950s, playing clarinet in New Orleans jazz-style ensembles with Michel Attenoux, Jimmy Archey, Lil Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bill Coleman, and Peanuts Holland.
In 1955, he joined Claude Bolling’s ensemble and then joined him on a worldwide tour as members of Jack Diéval’s orchestra. He switched principally to tenor sax beginning in 1958, continuing to work with Roger Guérin and Geo Daly in the late 1950s. In the 1960s he worked with Alice Babs, Duke Ellington, Jean-Claude Naude, Cat Anderson, Paul Gonsalves, Jef Gilson, and François Guin.
He founded his own group, Swing Machine, in 1973, working in this group with Bobby Durham, Raymond Fol, Michel Gaudry, Helen Humes, Sonny Payne, and Sam Woodyard. From 1977 to 1979, Badini lived in New York City, performing with Roy Eldridge, Major Holley, Oliver Jackson, Dick Katz, Clark Terry, Gerald Wiggins, and Reggie Workman.
In 1984, he formed a new big-band ensemble, Super Swing Machine, which he led and played piano in through the late 1990s. Known as Mr. Swing, bandleader, composer, reedist, and pianist Gérard Badini continues to .
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Manfred Schoof was born April 6, 1936 in Magdeburg, Germany and studied music in Kassel and Cologne, Germany where one of his teachers was the big band leader Kurt Edelhagen.
Schoof performed on Edelhagen’s radio program and toured with Gunter Hampel In the 1960s he started a free jazz band with Alexander von Schlippenbach and Gerd Dudek which became the basis for Manfred Schoof Orchestra. From 1969 to 1971 he was a member of the George Russell Orchestra.He has also worked with Jasper Van’t Hof and the Globe Unity Orchestra.
He composed classical music for the Berlin Philharmonic. His group has participated in performances of Die Soldaten, an operatic work by the contemporary composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann. He was featured in a profile on composer Graham Collier in the 1985 Channel 4 documentary Hoarded Dreams.
Since 2007 he has been chairman of the Union Deutscher Jazzmusiker. Trumpeter and composer Manfred Schoof has been a professor in Cologne since 1990.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jake Hanna was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts on April 4, 1931 and first performed in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the house drummer at Storyville nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts for a number of years in the 1950s and 1960s. Through the decades beginning in the late Fifties he played with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Maynard Ferguson, Marian McPartland, and Woody Herman’s Orchestra.
He appeared with the Mort Lindsey Orchestra on Judy Garland’s multi Grammy Award-winning 1961 live album, Judy at Carnegie Hall. He did extensive work as a studio musician both in and out of jazz, including an eleven year period from 1964 to 1975 as the drummer for the big band of the Merv Griffin Show. Jake recorded several albums with Carl Fontana for Concord Jazz in the mid-1970s and also played in Supersax. Later in his career he did much work as a sideman for Concord.
Drummer Jake Hanna transitioned from complications from blood disease on February 12, 2010 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 78.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alan Haven was born Alan Halpern on April 1, 1935 in Prestwich, Lancashire, United Kingdom. His early work was performed on a Lowrey organ. He collaborated with John Barry on two Bond movies ~ From Russia With Love and Dr. No, and Barry wrote an extended jazz organ solo for his Oscar-winning theme from The Lion in Winter and recorded it as a single.
He released several albums in the 1960s and 1970s, initially on Fontana Records, CBS Records including a recording of a live set at Ronnie Scott’s in London, England. He released Live at Annie’s Room and Mastersound, remastered and re-released three of Alan’s previous albums Organ Show, Images and Collector’s Item.
Local musicians, including Eric Delaney, organized a big band night featuring Alan. With his wife Karen they produced four albums which were Two, Day By Day, Libra and By The Seaside, which was released in 1992.
Organist Alan Haven transitioned on January 7, 2016.
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