Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Anne Phillips was born on February 17, 1935 in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania. Studyinged piano growing up in suburbia, she didn’t hear jazz until she was a senior in high school. She studied at Oberlin College where she joined a jazz club and sang with the school’s big band and had a radio show.

By the time she turned nineteen she was in New York City playing piano and clubs six nights a week. Phillips started working in demo recordings for songwriters in the 1950s, and was a member of the Ray Charles Singers on the Perry Como Show. In 1959, she recorded her first jazz album, Born to Be Blue, for Roulette Records.

She went on to work as a singer, music arranger, conductor, writer, and producer for national commercials including Pepsi, Revlon, and Sheraton. Her Pepsi campaign included The Turtles, The Four Tops, The Hondells, and the Trade Masters. Anne has worked with Carole King, Burt Bacharach, and Neil Diamond

Composing and arranging then became more of her musical life.  She went on to write the Christmas album Noel Noel for 25 singers a cappella. She followed this by writing The Great Grey Ghost of Old Spook Lane, a children’s musical, then an environmental piece What Are We Doing To Our World?, and a full musical, Damn Everything But The Circus. for which I wrote both music and lyrics with book writer Stephanie Braxton, has had several readings and is close to production.

Founding Kindred Spirits, a not-for-profit organization founded with her husband, Bob Kindred, the organization sponsors a yearly performance of Bending Towards the Light – A Jazz Nativity, which she composed. They also have an educational program for inner-city children called The Kindred Spirits Children’s Jazz Choirs which teaches jazz music.

Vocalist, composer, arranger, producer Anne Phillips is celebrating her 90th birthday.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Gerald “Jerry” Segal was born on February 16, 1931 and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He majored in music at Mastbaum High before graduating and working with Bennie Green and Pete Rugolo in local clubs.

In the late 1950s he played with Johnny Smith, Terry Gibbs, Teddy Charles, Stan Getz, Charles Mingus, Herbie Mann, Lennie Tristano, Bob Dorough, Teo Macero, Curtis Fuller, Hampton Hawes, Dick Cary, Mal Waldron, Addison Farmer, the Australian Jazz Quintet, and Mose Allison.

From 1958 to 1960 he played with Bernard Peiffer and with the composer Edgar Varese in the 1950s. The 1960s saw him with Dave McKenna.

Raising his children he primarily became the big act show drummer for the honeymoon resort, the Mount Airy Lodge in the Poconos through the 60’s.

Drummer Jerry Segal, who never recorded as a leader, eventually disappeared from the jazz scene and died in August 1974. He was 43 years old.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Frank Assunto was born on January 29, 1932 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a musical family where the trumpeter had two sisters who played piano and woodwinds, and a trombonist brother. They all grew up studying with their father, banjoist Jacob “Papa Jac” Assunto.

He and his brother founded the group Dukes of Dixieland in 1949 and eventually became an institution in the city. Producer and bandleader Horace Heidt took them on tour, and when the group returned to New Orleans they practically took over the Famous Door club.

Dixieland revival peaking in popularity in the 1950s took the Assunto brothers group to national popularity. They toured clubs, released a string of albums and performed on television variety shows. Their first stereo jazz album, recorded in 1958, had one brother on the left channel, the other on the right.

His style was heavily influenced by Louis Armstrong, Bunny Berigan and Bobby Hackett. He also performed vocal duties with the group. Trumpeter Frank Assunto died on February 25, 1974.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Hector Rivera was born on January 26, 1933 in New York, New York. He had been playing for over a decade, beginning in the early 1950s when he joined the band of Elmo Garcia as a teenager. Making his recorded debut as a bandleader in 1957 when Garcia didn’t have enough material prepared, Mercury Records asked if he had any music. Wanting to record a solo album Mercury offered to record him as a solo artist, issuing his debut, Let’s Cha Cha Cha.

Over the next few years, Rivera would be known mostly as a sideman to bandleaders Joe Cuba, Pacheco, and vocalist Vincento Valdez. He made his biggest splash as a bandleader with the 1966 album At the Party, with a large band featuring several trumpet players and percussionists, as well as bassist Cachao.

Dividing his approach between instrumentals and vocals, he employed several singers, including David Coleman who is most heard on the At the Party album. The success of the title cut enabled Hector to cut several more albums, along with continuing to write and arrange. He would go on to participate in projects for Ray Barretto, Machito, and Tito Puente among others.

Pianist, arranger, composer, bandleader and producer Hector Rivera who was one of the more renowned performers of the Latin soul genre, died on January 8, 2006 in his hometown.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alan Lee da Silva was born on January 22, 1939, in Bermuda, British Empire to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as Ruby. Emigrating to the United States at the age of five with his mother, he was raised in Harlem, New York City. Here he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass. He eventually acquired U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19 and in his twentieshe adopted the stage name of Alan Silva.

As one of the most inventive bass players in jazz, Silva has performed with avant-garde jazz musicians Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, and Archie Shepp. He performed in 1964’s October Revolution in Jazz as a pioneer in the free jazz movement, and for the 1967 live album Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village.

Since the early 1970s, Alan has lived mainly in Paris, France where he formed the Celestrial Communication Orchestra, dedicated to the performance of free jazz with various instrumental combinations. In the 1980s, Silva opened a music school, Institute for Art, Culture and Perception (I.A.C.P.) in Central Paris, together with François Cotinaud and Denis Colin.

In the 1990s he picked up the electronic keyboard, the electric violin and electric sarangi on his recordings. Since around 2000, he has continmued to perform more frequently as a bassist and bandleader, notably at New York City’s annual Vision Festivals.

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