Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alfredo Remus was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 9, 1938. In 1964 he participated as the double bassist on the historic album La Misa Criolla by Ariel Ramírez.
He has accompanied important musicians and groups such as Paul Gonsalves, Vinícius de Moraes, Maria Bethânia, Enrique “Mono” Villegas, Gato Barbieri, Mercedes Sosa, Tony Bennett, Ariel Ramírez, Víctor Heredia, Alberto Cortez, Trio Los Panchos, Raphael, Zupay Quartet, Dyango, Leonardo Favio, Sandro, Susana Rinaldi, and Antonio Carlos Jobim , among others.
He was a regular participant in a series of informal folklore improvisation and experimentation meetings at Eduardo Lagos’s house, humorously baptized by Hugo Díaz as folkloréishons, which in the style of jazz jam sessions, used to bring together Lagos, Astor Piazzolla and Díaz.
With other musicians, Remus played with Oscar Cardozo Ocampo, Domingo Cura and Oscar López Ruiz among others. He recorded nine albums as a leader with his debut album Trauma released in 1968 and his final recording Tribute To Bill Evans in 2006.
Double bassist Alfredo Remus, who performed various genres of American popular music, that included but not limited to tango, jazz, Argentine folklore, bossa nova and post-bop, died in Buenos Aires on September 28, 2022.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fionna Duncan was born on November 5, 1939 in a temperance hotel in Garelochhead, Scotland a few weeks into the Second World War. The doctor had refused to come to the family home in Portincaple, on the shores of Loch Long, because a blackout was in operation. The youngest of three, she initially preferred to sing, although she later began to accompany herself on guitar and ukulele.
When she was six, the family moved to Rutherglen and it was there, thanks to Rutherglen Academy’s ballads and blues club, that she added folk and skiffle songs to the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas she sang at the local music society. By sixteen, while still at school, she was singing in talent competitions and with local jazz bands. One competition win resulted in an audition for television and the chance to make a recording.
A family trip to the United States had her singing on radio and television, and Riverside Records offered Fionna a recording contract. Not wanting to live in the States, a stipulation of the deal, she turned it down along with the chance to become label-mates with pianists Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans, and saxophonists Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane. Back in Glasgow, Scotland appearances on the weekly TV show Skiffle Club with the Joe Gordon Folk Four, singing with the Steadfast Jazz Band, and another talent competition win and auditions, she met clarinettist Forrie Cairns.
With her mother’s blessing Fionna joined Cairns’ All-Stars whom she would go on to work into the 2000s. In 1959 she and Forrie were invited to join the Clyde Valley Stompers, a traditional jazz band and recorded the album, Have Tartan Will Trad.
She won the JazzBeat Award for Top Singer in 1960 met Louis Armstrong at his own insistence when they shared a bill, and also met Lena Horne and the Beatles. She continued touring until 1964, then took up residence in London, where she hosted the Georgian Nightclub in the West End, singing with Kenny Ball and Humphrey Lyttelton, among other prominent musicians of the time. Suffering five slipped discs and being hospitalized for a year, Fionna changed careers and trained as a hairdresser. However, the lure of the microphone and telling stories in song pulled her back to performing.
In 1985 she put together her own group with her partner, bassist Ronnie Rae, Ronnie’s son John on drums and Brian Kellock on piano. Together they became the house trio for Fionna’s Vocal Jazz Workshops, where she became a supportive mentor. if also quite a tough critic to a veritable legion of budding jazz singers as her workshops developed into a regular feature at Glasgow Jazz Festival. The festival’s late-night club also benefited from Fionna’s ‘strict but fair’ hosting skills for several years.
Vocalist Fionna Duncan continued to sing and teach into her seventies, was voted Best Jazz Vocalist and received a Lifetime Achievement award at the Scottish Jazz Awards, died at 83 on December 6, 2022.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Barry was born John Barry Prendergast in York, England on November 3, 1933 the youngest of four children, his mother, a classical pianist, his father a projectionist. Raised in and around cinemas, this childhood background influenced his musical tastes and interests. He was educated at St. Peter’s School, York, and received composition lessons from Francis Jackson, Organist of York Minster.
Spending his national service in the British Army playing the trumpet and working from a correspondence course with jazz composer Bill Russo, after his service he worked as an arranger for the orchestras of Jack Parnell and Ted Heath. Forming his own band, the John Barry Seven, in 1957, they recorded hit records on EMI’s Columbia label. By 1959 he gained commissions to arrange music for other acts, and his career breakthrough was the BBC television series Drumbeat, when he appeared with the John Barry Seven.
He was employed by EMI from 1959 until 1962 arranging orchestral accompaniments for the company’s singers. He began composing songs and scores for films and when Adam Faith made his first film, Beat Girl in 1960, Barry composed, arranged and conducted the film score, his first. His music was later released as the UK’s first soundtrack album. His composition and orchestration caught the attention of the Bond producers and he went on to have an accomplished career as a composer and arranger with the series.
In 2001, the University of York conferred an honorary degree on Barry, and in 2002 he was named an Honorary Freeman of the City of York. Fiancial issues in Britain forced him to emigrate to the United States where he lived for many years mainly in Oyster Bay, New York, in Centre Island on Long Island
He suffered a rupture of the esophagus in 1988, following a toxic reaction to a health tonic he had consumed. The incident rendered him unable to work for two years and left him vulnerable to pneumonia.
Composer, arranger and conductor John Barry, who won five Academy Awards and four Grammy Awards with scores for Born Free, The Lion in Winter, Midnight Cowboy and Somewhere in Time, died of a heart attack on January 30, 2011 at his Oyster Bay home, aged 77.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ivan Jullien was born on October 27, 1934 in Vincennes, France. He found work early on arranging for the Barclay label in the 1960s and later released many of his own big-band albums on Riviera, including his own 1971 fusion-infused take of George Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess.
Jullien played with Claude Bolling and Jacques Denjean early in his career, and was the bandleader for a year with the Paris Jazz All Stars in 1966. He recorded as a leader and also worked as a sideman for Lester Bowie, Maynard Ferguson, and Ben Webster. In the 1980s, he became an arranger for Studio Brussels’ CIM Big Band.
He was a member of several groups, such as 9 Plus, Alix Combelle Et Son Orchestre, Benny Bennet Et Son Orchestre De Musique Latine-Américaine, Big Jullien And His All Star, Grand Orchestre De L’Olympia, Ivan Jullien Big Band, Le Bobby Clark’s Noise, Ivan Jullien Et Son Orchestre, Jacques Denjean Et Son Orchestre, Joey And The Showmen, Les Baroques, Los Cangaceiros, and Synthesis.
Primarily a behind-the-scenes presence, Jullien arranged, played and/or conducted recordings by Charles Aznavour, Henri Salvador, Elton John, Nicoletta, Baden Powell, Didier Lockwood, and many more.
In his later years, the jazz-oriented trumpeter continued to be active, arranging and performing with his big band. His over-50-year career spanned various genres from jazz to pop, and included numerous scores for film and television.
Trumpeter, arranger, composer, conductor and bandleader Ivan Jullien, known as Big Jullien, died of respiratory failure at 80 years old on January 3, 2015.
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Jazz Poems
HERE WHERE COLTRANE IS
Soul and race
are private dominions
memories and modal
songs, a tenor blossoming,
which would paint suffering
a clear color, but is not in
this Victorian house
without oil in zero degree
weather and a forty-mile-an-hour wind;
it is all a well-knit family:
a love supreme.
Oak leaves pile up on walkway
and steps, catholic as apples
in a special mist of clear white
children who love my children.
I play”Alabama”
on a warped record player
skipping the scratches
on your faces over the fibrous
conical hairs of plastic
under the wooden floors.
Dreaming on a train from New York
to Philly, your hand out six
notes which become an anthem
to our memories of you:
oak, birch, maple,
apple, cocoa, rubber.
For this reason Martin is dead;
for this reason Malcolm is dead;
for this reason Coltrane is dead;
in the eyes of my first son are the browns
of these men and their music.
MICHAEL S. HARPER | 1938 ~ 2016
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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