Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Barbara Donald was born February 9, 1942 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. At 9 she was playing the cornet, listening to Dixieland, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman and showed physical abilities unusual for a woman. She soon switched to the trumpet, receiving a good musical education on various reed instruments and vocals.

In 1955 her parents moved to California where she was denied access to the high school big band, so she formed her own groups. By age 19, she was sharing bandstands with Dexter Gordon, Stanley Cowell and Bert Wilson, a daringly unusual position for a white woman. Ironically, she faced the same denial with jazz big bands refusing to audition women. Therefore she paid her dues to rhythm & blues, rock and roll and dance bands.

A brief stay in New York City strengthened her determination and upon her return to Los Angeles, Barbara started hanging out with jazz musicians and studying the art of playing bebop with “Little” Benny Harris, who co-wrote “Ornithology” with Charlie Parker. Settling in San Diego in 1964 she met mentor Sonny Simmons and taught her structure with hard keys and hard chords. Simmons’ own innovation stressed playing the melody and staying on top of the beat.

From 1964 to 1972, Barbara and Sonny lived, performed and struggled together. Their career, if too often chaotic with irregular engagements and recordings, remained underground, producing brilliant and singular music. However, Barbara’s presence balanced her husband’s revolutionary moods at a time when Sonny was prone to radical sojourns between tradition and modernity.

Her voluble and powerful, somehowunadorned playing, indicating a perfect control of the bop idiom, characteristic of the immediate post-Trane free expression, was the perfect supporting structure of Simmons’ angular themes and improvisations.

Barbara Donald parted from Sonny, moved to Washington in the early 80’s, formed Unity and began to expose and refine her own concept. In 1984, Barbara presented Unity at the Kool Jazz Festival with then rising star Charnett Moffett on bass. By 1992, Barbara Donald’s health was failing and one of the top female jazz trumpeters, after experiencing a series of strokes that rendered her unable to actively play live, Donald had been living in an assisted care facility in Olympia, Washington, from 1998 until her death on March 23, 2013.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bill Mays was born William Allen Mays on February 5, 1944 in Sacramento, California. Coming from a musical family he learned to play piano and at sixteen he became interested in jazz after attending an Earl Hines concert.

From 1969 to the early 1980s Bill worked Frank Sinatra, Al Jarreau, Dionne Warwick, Anita O’Day, Mark Murphy and accompanied other vocalists in Los Angeles with Sarah Vaughan, while also working sessions with such luminary musicians as Art Pepper, Shelly Manne, Bud Shank, Red Mitchell, and Bobby Shew to name a few from an esteemed list of luminaries.

In 1984, Mays moved to New York and became best known as a sideman or accompanist, but starting in the 1990s he began to do more work as a bandleader, composer, and arranger. As far back as the 70’s on, he recorded over two-dozen albums under his own name, in different configurations, and has been heard as a sideman on many more. He continues to perform, record and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Stubblefield was born on February 4, 1945 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He first studied the piano and then moved to saxophone as a teen absorbing the music of the itinerant blues and gospel performers moving in and out of his strictly segregated Black neighborhood.

At 17 Stubblefield made his recording debut with local R&B combo York Wilburn & the Thrillers, spent a year on the road with soul legend Solomon Burke, then studied music at A&M College in Pine Bluff while concurrently leading his own modern jazz quintet. In 1967 after graduation he settled in Chicago and signed on with the pioneering avant-garde jazz collective the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. During this period he studied under Muhal Richard Abrams and appeared on Joseph Jarman’s landmark 1968 set As If It Were The Seasons.

Relocating to New York, John joined the Collective Black Artists playing with Mary Lou Williams, Tito Puente, and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. By 1972 he joined Charles Mingus adding alto saxophone, oboe, flute, and bass clarinet to his arsenal. Suffering a falling-out with Mingus that effectively left Stubblefield blacklisted throughout much of the New York jazz community, he finally landed with Nat Adderley’s quintet. He briefly played behind Miles Davis in 1973 and during the mid-’70s served as an instructor with the famed Jazzmobile program.

He cut his first album Midnight Sun in 1976 followed by a few more projects in the eighties for the Enja and Soulmate labels. After the death Of Charles Mingus, his widow Sue formed the Mingus Big Band in 1992 and Stubblefield held the lead tenor chair and was an occasional director. Diagnosed with cancer in 2004 he remained a guiding force conducting much of the I Am Three album from his wheelchair.

Tenor saxophonist John Stubblefield collaborated with a who’s who list of modern jazz and avant-garde giants includes Charles Mingus, passed away on July 4, 2005. His contribution ranks him among the most powerful and innovative soloists of the post-Coltrane generation.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bobby Hutcherson was born January 27, 1941 in Los Angeles, California and studied piano with his aunt as a child. Not enjoying the formality of the training he tinkered with it on his own, especially since he was already connected to jazz through a brother’s high school friendship with Dexter Gordon and a singing sister who later dated Eric Dolphy. But it was hearing Milt Jackson that made everything clicked for Hutcherson during his teen years, working until he saved up enough money to buy his own set of vibes.

He began studying with Dave Pike and playing local dances in a group led by his friend, bassist Herbie Lewis. Parlaying his local reputation into gigs with Curtis Amy and Charles Lloyd in 1960. And joined an ensemble led by Al Grey and Billy Mitchell. A year later he’s in New York at Birdland and ends up staying on the east coast as his reputation of his inventive four mallet playing spread.

Attracted foremost to more experimental free jazz and post-bop, he made early recordings in this style for Blue Note with Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Granchan Moncur, but ironically his debut recording for the label in 1963, The Kicker, not released until 1999, demonstrated his background in hard bop and the blues.

His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodic nature, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern. Easily one of jazz’s greatest vibraphonists, Bobby Hutcherson helped modernize the vibes by redefining what could be done with it — sonically, technically, melodically, and emotionally. In the process, he became one of the defining voices in the “new thing” portion of Blue Note’s glorious ’60s roster.

Throughout his career Hutcherson has performed or recorded with a who’s who list of avant-garde, free improvisation, modernist post-bop, straight-ahead, mainstream, fusion and bop jazz players on the scene, staying ever current in his message.  As a leader he has recorded nearly four-dozen albums for Blue Note, Landmark, Columbia, Cadet, Timeless, Evidence, Atlantic and Verve. Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson maintained his reputation as one of the most advanced masters of his instrument until he passed away on August 15, 2016 in Montara, California.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Drummer Aldo Romano was born in Belluno, Italy on January 16, 1941. As a child his family moved to France and was influenced by Philly Joe Jones, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins. By the 50’s he was playing guitar and drums professionally in Paris. It wasn’t until 1963 that his career took off when he started working with cornetist Don Cherry. He recorded with Steve lacy and go to tour with Dexter Gordon among others. In the 70’s his playing evolved into rock-influenced jazz-fusion and in 1978 he formed his own group.

During the 1980s Aldo returned to his earlier style of playing for several albums. Although he has lived most of his life in France, he retained affection for Italy and has set up a quartet of Italian jazz musicians. Romano also played a role in starting the career of the late Italian-French pianist Michel Petrucciani. In 2004 he won the Jazzpar Prize, in Copenhagen from among five nominees of internationally recognized performers of jazz. Considered to be the Nobel Prize of jazz, it was at the awards concert that he wowed the audience with his vocal rendition of Estate.

Over the course of his career Aldo Romano has performed or recorded with Joe Lovano, Baptiste Trotignon, Philip Catherine, Keith Jarrett, Johnny Griffin, Jackie McLean, Chet Baker, Steve Kuhn and Steve Swallow, just to name a few. He continues to pursue his life in jazz.

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