Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bobby Carcassés was born on August 29, 1938 in Kingston Jamaica where his Cuban grandfather worked as a diplomat. Upon moving to Villa Clara, Cuba at the age of four he grew up surrounded by Cuban rhythms, listening to Benny Moré, Conjunto Casino & Roberto Faz. He acquired a love for an eclectic spectrum of music from the opera star Enrico Carusso and Mexico’s Jorge Negrete to jazz royalty Sarah Vaughan, Buddy Rich and Stan Getz.
By the 1950’s he was involved with some of the best vocal quartets in Cuba and while playing for many years at The Tropicana the center of Cuban Jazz, he began to experiment with bebop and scat vocals. During the Sixties he traveled to Europe, spending a year in Paris where he played with Kenny Clarke and Bud Powell.
Returning to Cuba he worked in the Teatro Musical where he met three of the future founders of Irakere: Chucho Valdes, Carlos Emilio Morales and Paquito D’ Rivera. Over the next ten years he played in the best night clubs in Havana, Cuba as well as acting in Cuban cinema, Tv and essentially starting to form his own Jazz group.
In 1980 he organized the first Jazz Plaza Festival in Havana, inviting Dizzy Gillespie, Ronnie Scott, Charlie Haden, Airto Moreira, Tania Maria, Steve Coleman and many others. After his own group played these festivals. he traveled to Canada, England, France and the USA where he performed with Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Patato Valdés and many others on the Latin Jazz scene.
Trumpeter Bobby Carcassés, who also plays piano, bass, percussion, and flugelhorn, as well as writing his own pieces, continues to perform, record and create art that has been exhibited globally.
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Jazz Poems
FEBRUARY IN SYDNEYDexter Gordon’s tenor sax
plays “April in Paris”
inside my head all the way back
on the bus from Double Bay
Round Midnight, the ‘50s,
cool cobblestone streets
resound footsteps of Bebop
musicians with whiskey-laced voices
from a boundless dream in French.
Bud, Prez, Webster, & The Hawk,
their names run together riffs.
Painful gods jive talk through
bloodstained reeds & shiny brass
where music is an anesthetic.
Unreadable faces from the human void
float like torn pages across the bus
windows. An old anger drips into my throat,
& I try thinking something good,
letting the precious bad
settle to the salty bottom.
Another scene keeps repeating itself:
I emerge from the dark theatre,
passing a woman who grabs her red purse
& hugs it to her like a heart attack.
Tremolo. Dexter comes back to rest
behind my eyelids. A loneliness
lingers like a silver needle
under my black skin,
as I try to feel how it is
to scream for help through a horn.
YUSEF KOMUNYAKAA
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
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Jazz Poems
THE JOURNEY
Miles was waiting on the dock,his trumpet in a paper bag.
Lady was cold—
wind lashed the gardenias
I stole for her hair.
We were shabby, the three of us.
No one was coming so I started to row.
It was hard going—
stagnant, meandering…
The city moaned and smoldered.
Tin cans on the banks like shackles…
To be discovered, in the open…
But Miles took out his horn
and played.
Lady sang. A slow traditional blues. The current caught us— horn, voice, oar stroking water… I don’t know how long we floated— our craft so full of music, the night so full of stars. When I awoke we were entering an ocean, sun low on water warm as a throat, gold as a trumpet. We wept. Then soared in a spiritual. Never have I been so happy. LAWSON FUSAO INADA
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Daily Dose Of Jazz
Siegfried “Sigi” Schwab was born in Ludwigshafen, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany on August 5, 1940. He played in a wide variety of styles, including baroque and jazz. He played in German groups like Et Cetera with pianist Wolfgang Dauner, bassist Eberhard Weber, and drummers Fred Braceful and Roland Wittig.
With Embryo he was joined by drummer and percussionist Christian Burchard, Mal Waldron on piano, and bassist Dave King, and with percussionist Ramesh Shotham. He played with the Diabelli Trio, Peter Horton, Freddie Santiago, Guillermo Marchena, and Andreas Keller.
In 1980 he played with flutist Chris Hinze at the 5th North Sea Jazz Festival. In addition, Schwab has also published several books about various guitar playing styles. He was a teacher, and performed on more than 15,000 recordings for film, television, and as an accompanist to various artists.
Sigi Schwab, who recorded twenty-eight albums as a leader and died after a long illness on January 11, 2024 at the age of 83 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
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Jazz Poems
PREZ IN PARIS, 1959
By 1959 he’d moved to ParisPrez wouldn’t eat. Sweet alcohol harassedhis system. Cooled, the jazz “To Be or Not to Be” –withdrawn, a whisper–seemed a jot.
Once there’s been ways to get bak at the world;Ex-G.I. Prez had tried and tired. He hurledhimself now–hearsay, smoky horn–down-stage.“Well, Lady Gay Paree, it’s been a dog’s age.”
he might’ve said. Or “Ivy Divey! Wrong!The way that channel swims–toocold. “This song–the lyric’s weak. We’ll drown. No eyes, my man.No, let’s don’t take it from no top. The band
can skip it.” Prez. Monsieur le Président, who played us what can work, and what just won’t.
Al Young | May 31, 1939 – April 17, 2021
Poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and professor. He was named Poet Laureate of California by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger from 2005 to 2008.
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