DailyDose Of Jazz…
Leonard Ware was born in Richmond, Virginia on December 28, 1909. He went to college at the Tuskegee Institute and learned to play the oboe.
By 1938 Ware was playing electric guitar on recordings by Sidney Bechet. He then started working with Jimmy Shirley, who was one of the first groups to have two electric guitarists.
In December 1938, he played at Carnegie Hall with the Kansas City Six alongside Lester Young and Buck Clayton. 1939 saw him recording Umbrella Man with Benny Goodman. He performed in a trio during the 1940s and recorded as a leader in 1947. Leonard also recorded with Don Byas, Albinia Jones, Buddy Johnson, and Big Joe Turner.
Ware was the co-composer of Hold Tight, which he recorded with Bechet and I Dreamt I Dwelt in Harlem with Jerry Gray and Buddy Feyne, which was recorded by Glenn Miller and The Delta Rhythm Boys in 1941.
Dropping out of music a few years later, guitarist Leonard Ware, who was one of the first American jazz guitarists to play electric guitar, died at the age of 64 on March 30, 1974.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lowell Dwight Dickerson was born in Los Angeles, California on December 26, 1944 and grew up in the city where his influences were Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, and Bud Powell, among others. He became active on the local jazz scene in the 1960s.
In the early Sevenites he appeared on the Chicago, Illinois tenor titan Gene Ammons’ Free Again album on Prestige, and the latter part of the decade found him being featured on a few LPs by baritone saxophonist Nick Brignola. In the 1980s Dickerson started recording as a leader when he provided his debut album, Sooner or Later, for Discovery. In 1992,
Dickerson recorded Dwight’s Rights which features Red Holloway on tenor sax for the small Night Life label. He has played as a sideman in the 1990s with saxman Rickey Woodard, singer Michael Martin and Albert “Tootie” Heath. The early 2000s saw him featured on singer David Coss’ Simple Life album.
Pianist Dwight Dickerson, who occasionally sings and plays a variety of genres ranging from hard bop, funk and soul jazz, to modal post-bop, continues to perform and record at 80.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ronald Edward Cuber was born on December 25, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. In 1959 he was playing tenor saxophone when he joined Marshall Brown’s Newport Youth Band at eighteen, but switched to the baritone. His first notable work was with Slide Hampton in 1962 and then went with Maynard Ferguson the following year until 1965. George Benson recruited him for a year in ‘66 to 1967.
As a leader he was known for hard bop and Latin jazz, the latter with Eddie Palmieri, As a sideman he played outside the genre with B. B. King, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, J. Geils Band, and one of his most spirited performances is on Dr. Lonnie Smith’s 1970 Blue Note album Drives. He was also a member of the Saturday Night Live Band.
Ronnie played with Frank Zappa on the live album Zappa in New York, which was recorded in 1976. He went on to gain membership in the Lee Konitz nonet from 1977 to 1979.He was a member of the Mingus Big Band from its inception in the early 1990s until his death. He performed as an off-screen musician for the movie Across the Universe.
Baritone saxophonist Ronnie Cuber, who also played soprano and tenor saxophones, clarinet and flute, died at the age of 80 on October 7, 2022 in his New York’s Upper West Side studio from internal injuries sustained after a fall that could not be treated due to overwhelming Covid patients at the start of the pandemic.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Josephus Hicks Jr. was born December 21, 1941 in Atlanta, Georgia, the eldest of five children. As a child he moved around the United States as his father, Rev. John Hicks Sr, took up jobs with the Methodist church. His mother was his first piano teacher after he began playing at six or seven in Los Angeles, California. He took organ lessons, sang in choirs and tried the violin and trombone. Once he learned to read music around the age of 11, he started playing the piano in church.
His development accelerated once his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri when Hicks was 14 and he settled on the piano. Attending Sumner High School and played in schoolmate Lester Bowie’s band, the Continentals, which performed in a variety of musical styles. Hicks worked summer gigs in the southern United States with blues musicians Albert King and Little Milton with the latter providing his first professional work in 1958.
He studied music in 1958 at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he shared a room with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. He also studied for a short time at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts before moving to New York in 1963.
In New York, John first accompanied singer Della Reese, then went on to play with Joe Farrell, Al Grey, Billy Mitchell, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Witherspoon, Kenny Dorham and Joe Henderson before joining Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1964. From 1965 to 1967 he worked on and off with vocalist Betty Carter, then joined Woody Herman’s big band, where he stayed until 1970, playing as well as writing arrangements for the band.
From 1972 to 1973, Hicks taught jazz history and improvisation at Southern Illinois University. From the 1970s onward he had a prolific career as a leader recording his debut in England followed by fifty-three more albums and as a sideman he recorded 300.
Towards the end of his life, he taught at New York University and The New School in New York. In 2006 John played in a big band led by Charles Tolliver, recorded his final studio album On the Wings of an Eagle.
Pianist, composer and arranger John HIcks, whose collection of papers, compositions, video and audio recordings are held by Duke University, died from internal bleeding on May 10, 2006.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Judi Marie Canterino was born on December 18, 1942 in New York City, New York. She began her musical training at the age of seven with classical piano and performed at the Juilliard School of Music through her thirteenth year. Then she turned her studies to voice, training classically through high school.
At 19 she turned her attention to jazz singing and was introduced to Lennie Tristano, with whom she began studying. As part of my jazz training, she would listen to Lennie Tristano perform at the Half Note. Early in her career she sat-in at the club with Zoot Sims, Al Cohen, Wes Montgomery, Buddy Tate, Bud Johnson, Jimmy Rushing, Van Dickenson, Major Holly, Milt Hinten, Doc Cheatham, Roy Eldridge, Ross Thompkins, Bobby Hackett and others.
Her style came from mentorship of those previously mentioned and the influences of singers Jimmy Rushing, Billie Holiday, Maxine Sullivan, Rosemary Clooney, Anita O’Day and Frank Sinatra. She took time off from performing to raise a family but remained active in the jazz world, resuming her career with guitarist Joe Puma. She’s appeared around New York and New Jersey.
I have been working with jazz greats Warren Vache, Scott Hamilton, Norman Simmons, Chuck Folds, Clark Terry, Mark Shane, Rio Clemente, Joe Cocuzzo, Phil Bodner, Spanky Davis, Bucky Pizzarelli, Kenny Daverne, Kenny Asher and before their deaths, the great Doc Cheatham and Red Richards.
Her debut as a leader was titled Gee Baby and her sophomore project is Live At Maureen’s jazz Cellar. Vocalist Judi Marie Canterino, the Swing Jazz Singer, is still taking the stage to this day.
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