Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Drummond was born on November 23, 1946 in Brookline, Massachusetts to an Army colonel and through his childhood attended 14 schools around the world. He played trumpet and French horn from the age of eight, then a high-school music teacher encouraged him to switch to the bass.
Briefly settling in northern California he matriculated through Claremont Men’s College and went on to Stanford Business School where he got his Masters in business administration. During those San Francisco years he played with Bobby Hutcherson, Michael White, Ed Kelly, Tom Harrell and Lester Young’s niece, Martha Young.
Moving to New York in 1977, Drummond worked as a session bass player for Betty Carter, the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis, Woody Shaw, Hank Jones, Jon Faddis, Milt Jackson, Johnny Griffin, Kenny Barron, Pharoah Sanders and George Coleman.
In addition to working as a sideman and leading his own bands, Ray is an educator and has taught at the Monterey Peninsula College of Music and the California State University and has conducted master classes at Berklee College of Music, Purdue University, the University of Massachusetts and the Sibelius Academy of Music in Helsinki, Finland.
Bassist Ray Drummond continues to co-lead The Drummonds with Renee Rosnes while recording as a sideman and can be heard on more than three hundred albums with the likes of Kevin Mahogany, Toots Thielemans, David Murray and Benny Golson to name a few.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
Three Coins in the Fountain is a popular song, music written by Jule Styne and lyrics by Sammy Cahn for the 1954 romantic comedy film of the same name. Starring Clifton Webb, Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters Louis Jordan, Rossano Brazzi and Maggie McNamara, the title song was sung by an un-credited Frank Sinatra and went on to become an enduring standard with perpetual encores by jazz musicians. It won an Oscar for Best Original Song at the 27th Academy Awards in 1955.
The Story: Three American women working in Rome dream of finding romance in the Eternal City. That dream is fueled by their belief in the magic of throwing coins into the Trevi Fountain and making a wish.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hannibal Lokumbe was born Marvin Peterson in Smithville, Texas on November 11, 1948. As a child he was inspired by the spirituals and hymns of his grandparents but by 13 was given a trumpet and a year later his band The Soul Masters was backing icons such as Jackie Wilson, Otis Redding, Etta James, Lightning Hopkins and T-Bone Walker.
He attended North Texas State University from 1967 to 1969, and then moved to New York in 1970. Lokumbe spent the next twenty-five years in New York City playing trumpet and recording with some of his jazz heroes including Gil Evans, Pharaoh Sanders, Roy Haynes, Elvin Jones, and McCoy Tyner among many others. In 1974 he formed the Sunrise Orchestra and for more than fifteen years toured the world playing in every major music festival from Istanbul to China.
The recipient of numerous awards including the Bessie’s, the NEA, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Hannibal has composed works for The Kronos String Quartet, the Philadelphia, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit and Houston Symphonies. His groundbreaking opera African Portraits was performed and recorded by The Chicago Symphony under the direction of Daniel Barenboim and has been performed nearly two hundred times since its November 11, 1990 Carnegie Hall debut.
His works range from string quartets to full orchestral and choral compositions; he has written two books of poems, wrote and starred in an autobiographical play entitled Diary of an African American, and has lectured extensively at The University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard University. He currently has a catalogue of 14 recordings as a leader and twenty-two as a sideman having worked with Richard Davis, Grachan Moncur, Elvin Jones, Pharoah Sanders and numerous others. Trumpeter Hannibal Lokumbe steadfastly composes works for choir, jazz and vocal soloist; mentors and teaches children in history, music composition, teaching choral music to his community choir and he also gardens.
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
It Might As Well Be Spring has been a classic jazz favorite for many years but it didn’t start out that way. It was a song taken from the 1945 film State Fair with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and was part of the only original film score.
Jeanne Crain, who played Margy Frake, sang the song in the film, but was dubbed by Louanne Hogan. Dick Haymes, who portrayed the original Wayne Frake, made the first hit recording of the song, followed by Frank Sinatra, Sammy Kaye, Paul Weston, Margaret Whiting, Shirley Bassey, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Blossom Dearie, Nina Simone, Brad Mehldau and Jane Monheit.
The Story: Love, romance and competition take center stage as the Frake family sets off for the state fair. Margy is melancholy and looks forward to the break in routine. Father Abel is excited about entering his prize pig Blue By for the ribbon and bets his neighbor. Mother is entering the cooking competition with her pickles and mincemeat recipes. Brothe Wayne is left forlorn by his girlfriend’s inability to go with him.
At the fair all the romances take a different turn of occurrences and lucky beaus end up with new ladies, Blue Boy wins in all his categories thanks to his lady love Esmeralda, and it’s a happily ever after story ending.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
René Marie was born René Marie Stevens on November 7, 1955 in Warrenton, Virginia. With the encouragement of her children, the jazz vocalist and songwriter started her professional musical career in 1997 at the age of 42.
Performing at Washington D.C.’s Blues Alley in 1999, René signed with the MaxJazz label out of St. Louis and released four albums to critical acclaim and her sophomore project “Vertigo” received a coronet ranking by the “Penguin Guide to Jazz”, a distinction given to less than 85 other recordings in jazz history.
Her work often combines contrasting songs such as “Dixie” and the anti-lynching “Strange Fruit” on Vertigo or Ravel’s Bolero with Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne” on Live at Jazz Standard.
Attracting controversy and national attention in 2008, René substituted the lyrics of “The Star-Spangled Banner” with “Lift Every Voice and Sing” when invited to sing the national anthem at a civic event in Denver. This arrangement of the national anthem forms part of the titular suite of Marie’s 2011 CD, “The Voice of My Beautiful Country” on the Motema Music label.
René Marie specializes in writing her own music, and she comments on the fact that this is not the norm in jazz in one of her songs, “This for Joe,” after a club manager who got mad at her for singing originals. Her 8th release, Black Lace Freudian Slip, maintains the tradition.
She followed that project by steering away from tradition with a rare tribute album to Eartha Kitt, her latest titled “I Want To Be Evil”. Vocalist Rene Marie continues to record, perform and tour worldwide.
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