Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lynn Baker was born on November 9, 1955 and spent the early years of his life in Salem, Oregon. At seven he started piano lessons and by fifth grade was in band class playing clarinet. While in sixth grade he received his first tenor saxophone and enrolled in summer band program at Morningside Elementary. By seventh grade he was first chair in the junior and high school bands.
During his training he learned many Dixieland tunes that started him on the road to jazz. He would go on to play with McNary High School band and swing choir, and after graduation enrolled at Oregon College of Education (OCE) with the intent of playing and teaching music. He would later transfer to the University of Oregon, return to OCE and eventually enter Mt. Hood Community College’s music program.
After graduation he joined a top 40 band, bought an old Rickenbacker bass and learned some rudimentary bass lines. Post band and teaching privately Baker moved to Los Angeles, California but ended up in Washington teaching in Upward Bound. A Move to Eugene, Oregon put him in the Experimental Jazz Ensemble. He then joined a rock/Latin band and then found his niche as a college educator.
Throughout most of Lynn’s professional career he would teach saxophone, start and direct college bands, form big bands, become director of Jazz Studies, build music programs, playing with several jazz orchestras, an improvising trio culminating in his forming the Lynn Baker Quartet and Quintet. He has performed on several jazz, big band and classical recordings, but finally released his debut album as a leader titled “Azure Intention in 2010. He continues to compose, perform, tour and educate.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carmen Lundy was born November 1, 1954 in Miami, Florida and at the age of six began to study the piano. After joining her church junior choir, she decided to become a singer when she was 12 years old. While an opera major at the University of Miami she sang with a jazz band and her decision to sing vocal jazz was cemented.
Moving to New York in 1978 Carmen was hired by the Mel Lewis/Thad Jones Big Band and performed her first engagement at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Two years later she formed her own trio, performing with pianists John Hicks and Onaje Allan Gumbs. She has also performed with Walter Bishop Jr., Don Pullen, Mulgrew Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Courtney Pine, Bill O’Connell, Steve Berrios, Marian McPartland, Kenny Kirkland and numerous others.
Lundy recorded her first album of original compositions Good Morning Kiss in 1985 followed by her sophomore project Night and Day the next year featuring musicians Kenny Kirkland, Alex Blake, her brother Curtis Lundy, Victor Lewis, Rodney Jones and Ricky Ford.
Carmen played the lead role in the European tour of Duke Ellington’s Broadway musical, Sophisticated Ladies. Off-Broadway she portrayed Billie Holiday in Lawrence Holder’s They Were All Gardenias. She made her television debut in 1990 as the star of the CBS pilot-special Shangri-La Plaza in the role of Geneva.
A composer, arranger, producer, actress, painter, and sophisticated vocalist well known for her progressive bop and post-bop styling’s, Lundy has composed and published forty songs with favorites such as Quiet Times, Forgive Me, The Out Crowd, and Never Gonna Let You Go that have been recorded by Kenny Barron, Ernie Watts and Straight Ahead. With thirteen albums to her credit Carmen Lundy continues to focus on original material as she moves her three-decade career forward.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Milton Nascimento was born October 26, 1942 in Rio de Janiero, Brazil and as a baby was adopted by his mother’s former employers after her death when he was just 18 months. Growing up in Três Pontas, Minas Gerais he would soon become an occasional deejay on a radio station that his father once ran.
In the early stages of his career, Nascimento played in two samba groups: Evolussamba and Sambacana. By 1963, he moved to Belo Horizonte, struck a friendship with Lô Borges led to the Clube de Esquina (“corner club”) movement that included Beto Guedes, Toninho Horta, Wagner Tiso, and Flávio Venturini, with whom he shared compositions and melodies. One composition was “Canção do Sal”, which was first interpreted by Elis Regina in 1966 and led to a television appearance with Nascimento. A subsequent collective released Clube da Esquina in 1972 with several hit singles.
Famous for his falsetto and tonal range, Nascimento is regarded for his highly acclaimed songs such as “Maria, Maria”, “Canção da América” (“Song from America”/”Unencounter”), “Travessia”, “Bailes da Vida” and “Coração de Estudante” (“Student’s Heart”). The lyrics often social and political in nature have become hymns for both campaigns and funerals.
Milton’s international breakthrough came with his appearance on jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter’s 1974 album “Native Dancer” that led to widespread acclaim. Collaborations with stars such as Paul Simon, Cat Stevens, George Duke, Quincy Jones and Earth, Wind and Fire would follow. Angelus, released in 1994 features appearances by Pat Metheny, Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Jack DeJohnette, Nana Vasconcelos, Jon Anderson, James Taylor, Peter Gabriel and Duran Duran.
Nascimento contributed the song “Dancing” to the AIDS-Benefit Album “Red Hot + Rio”, worked with the Brazilian Heavy Metal band Angra, and collaborated with Jason Mraz on the latter’s album. The singer/songwriter and guitarist has recorded over two-dozen albums and continues to record, perform and tour.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anthony Cox was born October 24, 1954 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He matriculated through the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire studying and honing his craft of playing bass. After graduating from college he spent time in New York before returning to the Twin Cities.
Cox plays mainly in the post-bop, avant-garde and traditional styles, though versatile enough to work in any style effectively. His bass sound is full of beauty and warmth and his ability to accompany and still add very creative ideas into whatever music he is playing is remarkable.
Equally proficient on the upright acoustic bass, electric guitar and the Spanish style acoustic bass guitar, Anthony is also an adept composer open to all kinds of music from around the world and can be heard as a leader or as a sideman on over a hundred recording sessions with such artists as Geri Allen, Dewey Redman, Dave Douglas, John Scofield, Pat Metheny, Billy Higgins, Uri Caine, Gary Thomas, Marty Ehrlich, Ed Blackwell, Joe Lovano and Dave King.
Bassist Anthony Cox currently resides and performs in his hometown and is attracting a young audience with his full, warm sound and creative ideas.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ernie Watts was born Ernest James Watts on October 23, 1945 in Norfolk, Virginia. He began playing saxophone at thirteen, attended West Chester University and later matriculated through Berklee College of Music on a Downbeat scholarship. He toured with Buddy Rich in the mid-1960s, occupying one of the alto saxophone chairs along with Lou Marini.
Watts visited Africa on a US State Department tour with Oliver Nelson’s group, played tenor saxophone with the Tonight Show Band under Doc Severinsen for twenty years and was a featured soloist on many of Marvin Gaye’s original Motown albums during the 1970s. A first-call musician he has sat in on many other pop and R&B sessions during 25 years in the studios in Los Angeles.
By the mid-1980s Ernie decided to rededicate himself to jazz, recording and touring with German guitarist and composer Torsten de Winkel, drummer Steve Smith and keyboardist Tom Coster. He would join bassist Charlie Haden’s Quartet West, play saxophone on the Grease soundtrack, clarinet on The Color Purple and sax on the opening theme song of the popular 80s sitcom Night Court.
Watts has won two Grammy Awards as an instrumentalist, toured with the Rolling Stones, appeared in the 1982 film Let’s Spend The Night Together, was featured on Kurt Elling’s 2010 Grammy-winning album Dedicated To You, formed his own label Flying Dutchman Records, and tours Europe with his quartet.
With flute added to his instrument list, saxophonist Ernie Watts has released eighteen albums as a leader and nearly three dozen as a sideman working with Billy and Bobby Alessi, Paul Anka, Wilie Bobo, Brass Fever, Kenny Burrell, Donald Byrd, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, Randy Crawford, Dizzy Gillespie, Bobby Hutcherson, Milt Jackson, Carol King, John Mayall, Blue Mitchell, New Stories, Lalo Schifrin and Gabor Szabo among others. He continues to perform record and tour.
