Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jiggs Whigham was born Oliver Haydn Whigham III on August 20, 1943 in Cleveland, Ohio and began his professional career at the age of 17, joining the Glenn Miller/Ray McKinley orchestra in 1961. He left that band for Stan Kenton, where he played in the touring mellophonium band in 1963 before settling in New York City to play commercially.
Finding commercial playing frustrating, Whigham migrated to Germany where he still lives. He played for many years in the big band of Kurt Edelhagen, was a featured soloist in the Bert Kaempfert orchestra, and was also a member of the Peter Herbolzheimer band.
He has produced an extensive discography as a leader, including work with Bill Holman, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Carl Fontana, and many others.
Recent years have seen Jiggs as musical director of the RIAS Big Band in Berlin, Germany. He is formerly conductor of the BBC Big Band in Great Britain and currently co-director of the Berlin Jazz Orchestra with singer Marc Secara.
As an educator he has taught at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin, been a visiting tutor and artist at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, England and the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester and KUG in Graz, Austria
He is featured on the Berlin Jazz Orchestra albums Update, You’re Everything, Songs of Berlin and music DVD Strangers In Night – The Music Of Bert Kaempfert. He is artist-in-residence for the Conn-Selmer company, maker of the King Jiggs Whigham model trombone.
Trombonist Jiggs Whigham is the musical director for the Bundesjazzorchester working with the top student jazz musicians in Germany. He continues to tour worldwide as soloist, conductor, and educator.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Albert Stinson was born on August 2, 1944 in Cleveland, Ohio and learned to play piano, trombone, and tuba before settling on bass at age 14. After graduating from John Muir High School in Pasadena, California in 1962, he began playing professionally in the early 1960s in Los Angeles, California. There he worked with Terry Gibbs, Frank Rosolino, Chico Hamilton, and Charles Lloyd in 1965.
Later in the decade around 1967 he worked with Larry Coryell, John Handy, Miles Davis, Bobby Hutcherson, and Gerald Wilson’s Los Angeles-based big band.
Never recording as a leader, Stinson appeared on Hamilton’s Impulse! albums, Hutcherson’s Blue Note album Oblique, Handy’s Koch Records album New View! and Clare Fischer’s album Surging Ahead. He recorded thirteen albums with the above as well as with Coryell, Lloyd and Joe Pass
Double-bassist Albert Stinson, whose ebullient personality, bright tone, and aggressive attack contributed to his being nicknamed Sparky, transitioned from a drug overdose while on tour on June 2, 1969 at the age of 24.
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Three Wishes
Jothan Callins was in good company with Baroness Pannonica and during their conversation she tossed the question of three wishes to him and he said:
- “I wish everyone would live together in peace and harmony.”
- “I wish I had met Clifford Brown in Person.”
- “I wish I could play and write more and more beautiful music.”
*Excerpt from Three Wishes: An Intimate Look at Jazz Greats ~ Compiled and Photographed by Pannonica de Koenigswarter
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Khan Jamal was born Warren Robert Cheeseboro in Jacksonville, Florida on July 23, 1946. His father worked as an entrepreneur, his mother a stride pianist. Raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began playing the vibraphone during the later part of his teenage years in the mid Sixties. He went on to attend the Granoff School of Music and the Combs College of Music.
Jamal first played for a group called Cosmic Forces during the later part of the 1960s. He played with the Sun Ra Arkestra. After leaving the group, he teamed up with several of its former members to play with Sunny Murray’s group Untouchable Factor.
He later co-founded Sounds of Liberation with Byard Lancaster in 1970. The band released its only album titled New Horizons, two years later on its own record label Dogtown. However, it gained little impact outside Philadelphia at the time. In addition to leading his own groups, Jamal performed with Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society in the 1980s, Joe Bonner, Billy Bang, Charles Tyler and others. His first solo album was Drum Dance to the Motherland, a live recording that was held in a small café in his hometown and first released in 1973.
His style connected the two contrasting forms of free jazz and jazz fusion. He was also known for his skill of shifting modes and moods. Vibraphone and marimba player Khan Jamal suffered from kidney failure prior to his transition on January 10, 2022, at the Chestnut Hill Hospital in Philadelphia. He was 75.
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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