Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roland Alexander was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 25, 1935 and grew up with his parents and sister, Gloria, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He earned a bachelor’s degree in music composition from the Boston Conservatory in 1958.

A prolific composer and arranger, Alexander wrote and played for many of the better known bands in Boston during the 1950s, associating himself with Sabby Lewis, Preston ‘Sandy’ Sandiford, Richie Lowery, Jaki Byard and many more. He co-led a group called the Boston All Stars that featured trumpeter Joe Gordon, and after Joe Gordon left to play with Dizzy Gillespie’s band, he was replaced by Wajid Lateef (Crazy Wilbur Lucaw), and Gordon Wooly.

In 1956 he recorded High Step as a sideman with bassist Paul Chambers before moving to New York City the year he graduated from the conservatory. In addition to a 1961 and 1978 release as a leader, he played and recorded with John Coltrane, Howard McGhee, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Roy Haynes, Philly Joe Jones, Blue Mitchell, Sam Rivers, Archie Shepp, and Mal Waldron.

Post bop saxophonist Roland Alexander, who in addition to playing tenor and soprano saxophone was also a pianist, transitioned on June 14, 2006.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Sunny Murray was born James Marcellus Arthur Murray on September 21, 1936 in Idabel, Oklahoma and was raised by an uncle who later died after being refused treatment at a hospital because of his race. He began playing drums at the age of nine, however, during his teen years he lived in a rough part of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and spent two years in a reformatory.

By 1956, he was in New York City working in a car wash and as a building superintendent. During this time, he played with among others, trumpeters Red Allen and Ted Curson, pianist Willie “The Lion” Smith, and saxophonists Rocky Boyd and Jackie McLean. 1959 saw him playing for the first time with pianist Cecil Taylor and subsequently turned his direction towards experimenting with creative new ideas. In 1961, Murray made a recording with Taylor’s group that was released under the auspices of Gil Evans as one side of Into the Hot.

In 1962 Sunny went to Europe for the first time with Taylor and saxophonist Jimmy Lyons. During that time, the group made a stylistic breakthrough while in Sweden and started playing free. While in Denmark later that year, the trio recorded the influential concerts released as Nefertiti the Beautiful One Has Come.

That same year Taylor and Murray met saxophonist Albert Ayler, with whom the group recorded together for Danish television as the Cecil Taylor Unit. Upon their return to the United States, the group performed at the Take Three club in Greenwich Village and at Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln Center in New York City on New Year’s Eve 1963 as the Cecil Taylor Jazz Unit, with a healthy Grimes on bass.

Continuing to play with Ayler, Sunny went on to join Ayler’s trio with bassist Gary Peacock. He recorded a number of albums with Ayler, and his unchained approach to percussion gave Ayler the freedom to travel his own road that had hitherto been lacking. In 1964 he played with John Coltrane, however, declined the offer to join the band.

He recorded his debut album as a leader in 1965 with Sonny’s Time Now, which was released on Leroi Jones’s Jihad label. This was followed by twenty more leader albums on various labels until 2011 with the recording of Boom Boom Cat. Over the course of his career he would record as a sideman for a host of musicians, but his final recording session as a sideman was Corona, once again teamed with Cecil Taylor, released posthumously in 2018. Drummer Sunny Murray, who had a documentary made in 2008 titled Sunny’s Time Now: A Portrait of Jazz Drummer Sunny Murray, transitioned on December 7, 2017 from multiple organ failure at the age of 81.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Steve Marcus was born September 18, 1939 in The Bronx, New York, and studied at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts between 1959 and 1961. He gained experience playing in the bands of Stan Kenton, Herbie Mann and Larry Coryell from 1963 to 1973.

His debut album as a leader included an arrangement of the Beatles’ song, Tomorrow Never Knows, which also was the album’s title. He worked with jazz drummer Buddy Rich for the last twelve years of the drummer’s life. After Rich died, Marcus led the band and renamed it Buddy’s Buddies.

Saxophonist Steve Marcus transitioned on September 25, 2005 in New Hope, Pennsylvania. He was 66.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joseph Jarman was born on September 14, 1937 in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and grew up in Chicago, Illinois. At DuSable High School, he studied drums with Walter Dyett, switching to saxophone and clarinet when he joined the United States Army after graduation. During his time there, he was part of the 11th Airborne Division Band for a year.

After his discharge in 1958, Jarman attended Wilson Junior College, where he met bassist Malachi Favors Maghostut and saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, and Anthony Braxton. These men would often perform long jam sessions at the suggestion of their professor, Richard Wang. Mitchell introduced Jarman to pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, and Jarman, Mitchell, and Maghostut joined Abrams’ Experimental Band, a private, non-performing ensemble, when that group was founded in 1961. The same group of musicians along with Fred Anderson and Phil Cohran went on to found the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) in 1965,.

His solo recording career began at this time, putting together a sextet, however, Jarman disbanded the group in 1969 after the passing of two members. He had joined Mitchell, Maghostut and Lester Bowie in the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble which would eventually become known as the Art Ensemble of Chicago. The group was known for being costumed on stage for different reasons.

The group moved to Paris in 1969, and lived there for many years in a commune that included Steve McCall, the drummer who went on to form the jazz trio Air. Moving back to Chicago in the 1970s, Joseph  lived in a musicians’ building in Hyde Park, with Malachi Favors as his roommate. In 1983, he moved to Brooklyn, New York.

Jarman left the Ensemble until 1993 to focus on his spiritual practice, and didn’t return to music until 1996, releasing two albums and then joining a trio with Myra Melford in Chicago, which would eventually be called Equal Interest.

Along with the saxophone and clarinet, Jarman also played (and recorded on) nearly every member of the woodwind family, as well as a wide variety of percussion instruments. Aside from his work with relatively traditional jazz line-ups, he also composed for larger orchestras and created multimedia pieces for musicians and dancers.

Saxophonist, composer, and poet Joseph Jarman transitioned from respiratory failure at the Lillian Booth Actors Home in Englewood, New Jersey on January 9, 2019. He was 81.

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Three Wishes

Nica’s curiosity never got the best of her mission to discover the wishes of her guests and when she asked Albert “Tootie” Heath of his three wishes he responded with:

1. “Being in more than one place at once.”
2. “Being able to do anything I want to do on my instrument.”
3. “Happiness.”

*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter

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