Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jon Mayer was born September 7, 1938 in New York City and grew up in the fertile modern jazz evolution. Learning piano in childhood he confidently expresses strong emotions in his playing.
He also spent time in the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Band as well as on the road with Dionne Warwick, Sarah Vaughan, Anita O’Day and Manhattan Transfer. Mayer’s compositions have been recorded by Les McAnn, Barry White’s Love Unlimited Orchestra, Nancy Wilson, Gladys Knight, Ernie Watts and Jackie Ryan.
He has recorded eleven albums as a leader and two as a sideman, Strange Blues with Jackie McLean and Like Sonny with John Coltrane.
Pianist and composer Jon Mayer continues a career as a performer.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Willie Henry Ruff Jr. was born September 1, 1931 in Sheffield, Alabama. He attended the Yale School of Music earning his Bachelor and Masters of Music by 1954.
He first met Dwike Mitchell in 1947 when they were teenaged servicemen stationed at the former Lockbourne Air Force Base in Ohio. Mitchell recruited Ruff to play bass with his unit band for an Air Force radio program. The two of them went on to later play in Lionel Hampton’s band but left in 1955 to form their own group, the Mitchell-Ruff Duo. They played as a second act to artists such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.
From 1955 to 2011 the duo regularly performed and lectured throughout the United States, Asia, Africa, and Europe. The Mitchell-Ruff Duo was the first jazz band to play in the Soviet Union in 1959 and in China in 1981. Chosen by John Hammond to be the bass player for the recording sessions of Songs of Leonard Cohen, an album first released in 1967. During those sessions, he and Cohen laid down the bed tracks for most of the songs on the album.
He is one of the founders of the W. C. Handy Music Festival in Florence, Alabama, was a faculty member at the Yale School of Music from 1971 until his retirement in 2017, teaching music history, ethnomusicology, and arranging. Willie was a founding Director of the Duke Ellington Fellowship Program at Yale, held a visiting appointment at Duke University, where he oversaw the jazz program and directed the Duke Jazz Ensemble and was on the faculty at UCLA and Dartmouth.
Over the course of his career he recorded as a soloist, in a duo and as a sideman with Quincy Jones, Bobby Hutcherson, Gil Evans, Benny Golson, Milt Jackson, Lalo Schifrin, Sonny Stitt, Clifford Coulter, Miles Davis and Jimmy Smith.
French horn and double bassist Willie Ruff, who played in the Mitchell-Ruff Duo with pianist for over 50 years, was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, and has published his memoir A Call to Assembly: The Autobiography of a Musical Storyteller, is retired at 91.
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Three Wishes
Reggie Johnson was asked by Nica of his three wishes if granted and what he answered with these three:
- “The first one would be to have the bass that I want – that’s a full-sized bass.”
- “And, well, the next would be to have my own group, and…”
- “To play with Miles would be the third! That’s all I want.”
*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…
Peter John King was born on August 11, 1940 in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, England. He took up the clarinet and saxophone as a teenager, entirely self-taught. His first public appearances were in 1957, playing alto in a trad jazz group at the Swan Public House in a group organized by trumpeter Alan Rosewell. After the performance he chose to be a professional musician. He came under the strong musical influence of Charlie Parker developing a bebop style inspired by Parker.
In 1959, at the age of 19, he was booked by Ronnie Scott to perform at the opening of Scott’s club in Gerrard Street, London, England. In the same year, he received the Melody Maker New Star award. He worked with Johnny Dankworth’s orchestra from 1960 to 1961, and went on to work with the big bands of Maynard Ferguson, Tubby Hayes, Harry South, and Stan Tracey, the Brussels Big Band, and the Ray Charles band on a European tour.
He played in small groups with musicians such as Philly Joe Jones, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Red Rodney, Hampton Hawes, Nat Adderley, Al Haig, John Burch, Bill Watrous, and Dick Morrissey, Tony Kinsey, Bill Le Sage, Jimmy Witherspoon, Joe Williams, Jon Hendricks, and Anita O’Day. His musical curiosity led him to associate with freer idioms in John Stevens’ ‘Freebop’ group in the 1980s. He appeared on the soundtrack of the 1969 film The Italian Job. He was a member of the Charlie Watts Tentet.
From the early 1990s, his style matured and flourished as an improviser and a composer. He found ways to combine jazz and classical techniques without diluting either and he recorded the results on his albums Tamburello, Lush Life and Janus with the Lyric String Quartet.
He won the BBC ‘Musician of the Year’ award, appeared in the documentary film, No One But Me, discussing jazz vocalist Annie Ross and appeared in the movies Blue Ice and The Talented Mr. Ripley. His autobiography Flying High was widely praised for its candour and honesty about his musical career and personal life, his international associations in the jazz world, and the many years in which he battled addiction. Saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Peter King transitioned on August 23, 2020 in Putney, South London, England at 80.
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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