Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Dee Bell was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on July 16, 1950 and grew up in a musical family and began playing music at home. She played clarinet in the Plainfield High School band and performed in an a cappella trio from age ten through her last year of high school. She went on to enroll and graduate from Indiana University in 1972, lived on the edge of the Hoosier National Forest in a two-room cabin with a wood stove for heat, and was co-founder and head chef of the Earth Kitchen vegetarian restaurant in Bloomington, Indiana.

The late 1970s saw Bell moving to California and working at a restaurant in Sausalito. While singing Happy Birthday to a customer, she was heard by jazz guitarist Eddie Duran who invited her to sing with his band. They made a demo tape which became her first album, Let There Be Love  on the Concord Jazz label, that included saxophonist Stan Getz. Their sophomore album for Concord Jazz brought in trumpeter Tom Harrell.

Bell recorded a third album, Sagacious Grace in 1990 with Houston Person and John Stowell, but was never released due to technical problems until 2011 when audio engineers fixed the problem. It reached No. 31 on the JazzWeek radio chart.

Bell left the music business and became a grade school music teacher in Mill Valley. After the death of her musical director, Al Plank, she met Marcos Silva backstage at a tribute to Merrilee Trost. This became a collaboration, merging her swing style with his Brazilian rhythms, resulting in the recording of three CDs by them.

With permission and copyrights Bell has written lyrics to Billy Strayhorn’s Isfahan, Jimmy Rowles The Peacocks, Don Sebesky’s You Can’t Go Home Again, and Ivan Lins’ Acaso (By Chance), Depois dos Temporais (After the Storm), and Choros das Aguas (Crying of the Waters).

Vocalist Dee Bell, who has released six albums and has been nominated for several awards by Down Beat, Billboard and BAM, continues to perform.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Barbara Montgomery ws born in San Francisco, California on June 30, 1948 and during her teen years lived in Vietnam in the early to mid Sixties because her father’s work as an electrical engineer took them there. In the late 1960s she moved to her adopted home of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and during this period is when she started singing.

In the early to mid-’70s, Montgomery’s day gig was The Mike Douglas Show, for which she performed a variety of duties including makeup artist, camera person, and stage manager. When the popular television program moved from Philadelphia to Los Angeles, California she chose to stay and ultimately went on tour with pop/folk singer Harry Chapin later in the decade, helping with lighting and doing some background vocals. Becoming a full time mother in 1979, she took a break from music for several years.

Since 1986, she has served as musical director for fitness expert Richard Simmons. Between the demands of working for Simmons and raising a child, Barbara had little time for jazz singing in the 1980s. But she returned to club gigs in 1992 and acquired a small following playing the Philadelphia jazz circuit, where she has been joined by such notables as guitarist Jimmy Bruno and pianists Sid Simmons, Barry Sames, and Dennis Fortune.

Montgomery recruited former Chick Corea drummer Dave Weckl and co-producer/guitarist Michael Sembello for her self-titled debut album in 1996. Two years later she released her sophomore LP, Ask Me Now and her third Dakini Land followed after three more years, in tribute to the work of Chick Corea. This release won her much praise and put her on the scene as a vocalist to follow. That reputation was helped by Little Sunflower, the following year’s record of standards.

Vocalist Barbara Montgomery, who was influenced by Chris Connor, Julie London, and June Christy, continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ken Hyder was born June 29, 1946 in Dundee, Scotland. He began playing jazz in his native Scotland before moving south to London, England where he studied under John Stevens and played at the Little Theatre Club at Garrick Yard, an avant garde haunt, run by Stevens.

Over the course of a 40 year career Hyder has worked with and recorded with Elton Dean, Chris Biscoe, Tim Hodgkinson, Paul Rogers, Maggie Nicols, Don Paterson and Frankie Armstrong, just to name a few in a long list.

He composes music and has produced more than three dozen albums of original material. In 1970, Hyder formed Talisker and during the decade began moving away from jazz and into collaborations with musicians from different musical backgrounds, including Irish, South African and South American players. This led him to explore spiritual aspects of music with spiritual practitioners like Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist monks, and Siberian shamans.

As an author he has published three e-books based on shamanism in Siberia, cyber crime and cyber terrorism, and a memoir. Jazz fusion drummer and percussionist Ken Hyder, best known for combining folk, ethnic and Celtic music with jazz, continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eddie Crocetti was born on June 25, 1943 in Baltimore, Maryland. His interest in music came when he heard a band perform in his father’s bar and he was drawn into the world of professional music. His father immediately purchased him his first set of drums and he began studying drums and piano. By the time he was 14 years old, he was playing professionally for the local musicians of the city. He went on to study the organ.

Eddie married at age 19 and began his family all while entertaining and delighting audiences with his own personal musical approach. For the past 25 years he has been playing alongside Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, Ira Sullivan, Nat Adderley, Joe Venuti, Allen Harris, Toni Bishop, and more. Beyond jazz he has worked with Robert Goulet, Carole Lawrence, The Smother’s Brothers, The Drifters, The Coasters, The Platters, Fats Domino, Lucy Arnaz, Bill Cosby, Donald O’Connor, Patti Page and Julio Iglesias among others.

In 2001, Crocetti found his soulmate and formed the jazz group Perfect Fusion, which includes his new bride. This led to his release of a jazz organ recording. His wife lent vocals to one of his original works.

Organist Eddie Crocetti currently performs in jazz venues across the United States.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Peter Naphtali Lemer was born June 14, 1942 in London, England and studied piano and composition at the Royal Academy of Music with Sven Weber and John Gardner, privately with Thomas Rajna, and then at workshops in London run by Jack Goldzweig. He then went to New York to study double bass with David Walter, attended workshops run by Bill Dixon, and studied piano with Jaki Byard and Paul Bley.

In 1965, Lemer formed a trio with John Stevens and Jeff Clyne, which opened the Little Theatre Club. In 1966, he formed the Peter Lemer Quintet, with drummer Jon Hiseman, tenor saxophonist George Khan, baritone saxophonist John Surman and bassist Tony Reeves. They successfully played a season at Ronnie Scott’s that helped to pave the way for the British free jazz movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

In 1969 Peter delved into experimental jazz with the group Spontaneous Music Ensemble,then joined Barbara Thompson that developed into Thompson forming Paraphernalia with husband Jon Hiseman. Paraphernalia became the most frequently performing jazz-oriented group in Europe. By 1974 he joined Gilgamesh, then became an in-demand session player and became a member of rock band Ken Elliot’s Seventh Wave.

The following year he joined Ginger Baker, Mr Snips, and The Gurvitz brothers in the Baker Gurvitz Army. His next move was with Jan Dukes de Grey briefly and then on to Mike Oldfield’s fifty-piece touring band as one of two keyboard players. Most recently Lemer has worked with the band In Cahoots, recording with them as well as with Paraphernalia.

Pianist and keyboardist Peter Lemer currently plays with the Spanish Harlow Orchestra and coaches piano, improvisation, and music technology. He is active in lobbying to end global hunger and poverty.

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