Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Åke Persson was born on February 25, 1932 in Hässleholm, Sweden and started his music career by playing valve trumper in school. Known as The Comet, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden in 1951, where he played in Simon Brehm’s quintet until 1954. During the Fifties he led several sessions for labels such as Metronome, Philips, and EmArcy.
Following this Persson worked through the Sixties and into the 1970s with Arne Domnérus, Hacke Björksten, Harry Arnold’s Radio Band, Quincy Jones, Lars Gullin, the RIAS Berlin Band, and the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band.
Persson played with many American musicians, including George Wallington, Roy Haynes, Benny Bailey, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.
He drowned in the Djurgården canal as a result of him driving his car into the canal either accidentally or deliberately. A biography was written, Trombonist Åke Persson, authored by Bo Carlsson.
Trombonist Åke Persson, who flourished in the bebop and big band tradition, transitioned on February 5, 1975.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Graham Collier OBE was born on February 21, 1937 in Tynemouth, Northumberland, England. After leaving school he joined the British Army as a musician, spending three years in Hong Kong, China. He subsequently won a Down Beat magazine scholarship to the Berklee School of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts studying with Herb Pomeroy.
After graduating in 1963 he returned to Britain and founded the first version of an ensemble devoted to his own compositions, Graham Collier Music, which included Kenny Wheeler, Harry Beckett and John Surman. Later configurations included Karl Jenkins, Mike Gibbs, Art Themen and many other notable musicians.
As the first recipient of an Arts Council bursary for jazz, Graham was commissioned by festivals, groups and broadcasters across Europe, North America, Australia and the Far East. He recorded nineteen albums, worked on stage plays, musicals, documentary and fiction film, and radio drama productions.
Collier was an author and educator, writing seven books on jazz, giving lectures and workshops around the world. He launched the jazz degree course at London’s Royal Academy of Music and was its artistic director until he resigned in 1999, so he could concentrate on his own music.
Bassist, composer and bandleader Graham Collier, who along with a group of jazz educators formed the International Association of Schools of Jazz, transitioned from heart failure on September 9, 2011.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Buddy Deppenschmidt was born William Henry Deppenschmidt on February 16, 1936 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was a saxophonist and bandleader under the name Buddy Williams, but his mother moved him to Richmond, Virginia when he was four.
Self-taught, he started playing drums professionally while in his teens and then went on the road in the western U.S. with the territory band Ronnie Bartley Orchestra. Returning home, he played with local bands and became the drummer for the Newton Thomas Trio through the mid to late Fifties, which was also the touring rhythm section for the Billy Butterfield Quintet. When the Newton Thomas Trio played the Virginia Beach Jazz Festival, it received rave reviews on a bill that included the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Charlie Byrd Trio. Two nights later, Charlie Byrd came into the Jolly Roger jazz club where Buddy was playing, and offered him the job as drummer with his trio. He played with the trio at the Showboat Lounge in Washington, D.C. from 1959–62.
In February 1961, while on a goodwill tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department, the Charlie Byrd Trio with Byrd on guitar, Keter Betts on bass, and Buddy on drums, they visited 18 countries throughout South and Central Americas, and Mexico. While in Brazil, he spent his free time with local musicians, teaching them jazz and learning bossa nova. It was his idea to record an album combining jazz and bossa nova with Stan Getz.
After Byrd, Deppenschmidt joined the Tee Carson Trio in the early Sixties, then moved to Pennsylvania and formed the Jazz Renaissance, was also the drummer with the John Coates Trio, toured the midwest and west coast with the Bernard Peiffer Trio and studied with drummer Joe Morello.
He’s worked on A Thousand Clowns, Wall Street, Bossa Nova, The Lake House, and Whatever Works movie soundtracks. He’s played with a who’s who list of jazz musicians from Mose Allison and Chet Baker to Coleman Hawkins and Shirley Horn, Phil Woods and more.
Drummer Buddy Deppenschmidt, biographies are in The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, transitioned on March 20, 2021 in Pennsylvania from complications of COVID-19. He was 85 years old.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rahn Burton was born February 10, 1934 in Louisville, Kentucky. He began taking piano lessons at age 13, and worked locally in Louisville before playing his first gigs with Roland Kirk. He toured with Kirk from 1953 to 1959 and recorded with him into the early 1960s, contributing the composition Jack the Ripper to the 1960 release Introducing Roland Kirk.
Moving on to play local gigs in New York City and Syracuse, New York for a short time in the early 1960s, he returned to local playing in Louisville. During 1964-65 he played organ in George Adams’s touring ensemble, and played briefly with Sirone around the same time.
1967 saw Burton re-joining Roland Kirk’s group, playing with him at the 1968 Newport Jazz Festival and on several recordings through 1973. He also founded his own ensemble, African American Connection, which included Roland Alexander, Bob Cunningham, Ricky Ford, and Hannibal Marvin Peterson.
He recorded extensively as a sideman in the 1970s and 1980s with George Adams and Hannibal Peterson, Carlos Garnett, Beaver Harris, Jemeel Moondoc, Charlie Rouse, Leon Thomas and Stanley Turrentine. His associations in the 1990s included work in Austria with Nicholas Simion and a trio recording in 1992 with Walter Booker and Jimmy Cobb.
Pianist Rahn Burton, who was also known as Ron Burton or William Burton, transitioned on January 25, 2013 in Manhattan, New York.
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Three Wishes
When the Baroness inquired of Spanky De Brest what, if granted, his three wishes would be he answered her with:
- “I want my whole salary from Birdland!”
- “To be situated in New York, happily with my family.”
- “Play my bass as well as God can allow me to.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
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