Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Spike Wells was born Michael Wells in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Wells on the 16th of January 1946 and was a chorister at Canterbury Cathedral Choir School. He became interested in jazz after coming across a recording by Dizzy Gillespie, which he found very exciting. He took up playing drums in his early teens and later had lessons from former Miles Davis drummer Philly Joe Jones, who lived in London from 1967 to 1969 He was also very influenced by another of Davis’s drummers, Tony Williams. At Oxford University, Wells put together a quartet with tenor player Pat Crumly and pianist Brian Priestley that played with visitors including saxophonists Bobby Wellins, Tony Coe and Joe Harriott, and blues singer Jimmy Witherspoon.

In 1968 Wells began a Ph.D. course in philosophy at London University, living in a house that was also home to bass player Ron Mathewson, alto sax player Ray Warleigh, trombonist Chris Pyne and pianist Mick Pyne. Mathewson was then playing in the quartet of tenor player Tubby Hayes and asked Wells if he would be interested in joining the group. He arranged an audition with Hayes and guitarist Louis Stewart, at which time Tubby asked if they wanted the job. Wells abandoned his Ph.D. and became a professional musician.

As well as playing with Hayes, in both his quartet and his big band, until the saxophonist’s death in 1973, he spent a year in Humphrey Lyttelton’s band, and also worked with many visiting soloists at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, including Stan Getz, Roland Kirk, Art Farmer, Johnny Griffin and James Moody.

Qualifying as a solicitor, Wells then practiced law for 22 years, eventually working as an in-house legal adviser for Lloyds Bank. He became a deacon in the Church of England at 49, took early retirement from the bank, and took a stipend to curate at St Peter’s Church, Brighton. With music as well as ministry important to him, he went on to decline the stipend and now works as both a priest and a drummer. A selected discography has him recording fifteen albums with one as a leader titled Reverence in 2006.

More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Barry Altschul was born on January 6, 1943 in New York City and having initially taught himself to play drums, studied with Charlie Persip during the 1960s. The free jazz and hard bop drummer first came to notice in the late 1960s when he performed with pianists Paul Bley and then he joined Chick Corea in 1969 with Dave Holland and Anthony Braxton to form the group Circle. At the time, he made use of a high-pitched Gretsch kit with add-on drums and percussion instruments.

By the 1970s, Altschul worked extensively with Anthony Braxton’s quartet featuring Kenny Wheeler, Dave Holland, and George Lewis. Braxton, signed to Arista Records, was able to secure a large enough budget to tour with a collection of dozens of percussion instruments, strings, and winds. In addition to his participation in ensembles featuring avant-garde musicians, Altschul performed with Lee Konitz, Art Pepper and other straight-ahead jazz performers.

Barry recorded thirteen albums from 1967 to 2015  but by the mid-Eighties, he spent most of his time in Europe, not becoming visible until 2000, performing with Billy Bang and Joe Fonda billing themselves as The FAB Trio. He also performed with the Jon Irabagon Trio, Adam Lane, Roswell Rudd, Dave Liebman, Barre Phillips, Denis Levaillant, Andrew Hill, Sonny Criss, Hampton Hawes, Annette Peacock, Sam Rivers, Julius Hemphill, Lee Konitz and numerous others in both the avant-garde and straight-ahead genres. The free jazz and hard bop drummer continues to perform and record.

More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Carol Stearns Sudhalter was born on January 5, 1943 in Newton, Massachusetts and grew up in a musical family. Her father Albert played the alto saxophone in the New England area, a brother played baritone saxophone and one brother who played trumpet, cornet and wrote award-winning books on jazz.

In the early Sixties, Sudhalter began to play the flute while majoring in biology at Smith College. She continued to study flute with private teachers in Washington DC, New York, Boston, Israel, and Italy until 1978. She studied theory and Third Stream music with Ran Blake and Phil Wilson at the New England Conservatory of Music. From the 1970s on she has been teaching piano, saxophone, and flute privately, at Mannes College, and for the New York Pops Salute to Music Program.

1975 saw Carol deciding to take up the saxophone, and by 1978 relocated from Boston to New York City to join the first all-women Latin band, Latin Fever, produced by Larry Harlow. In 1986 she founded the Astoria Big Band, and she has performed with Sarah McLawler, Etta Jones, Chico Freeman, Jimmy McGriff, Duffy Jackson, and others around the New York jazz clubs, as well as domestic, Italian and British jazz festivals.

She initiated the Jazz Monday concerts at Athens Square Park between 1989 and 2001, along with several other local festivals in Queens where she resides.

A member of the Jazz Journalists Association, Sudhalter also has a chapter in Leslie Gourse’s Madame Jazz and in W. Royal Stokes’ Growing Up With Jazz. In 2012 she was nominated for the 2012 International Down Beat Readers’ Jazz Poll, and was voted 9th place in the category “Best Jazz Flutist”. She has recorded eight albums as a leader, one as a sideman, and the tenor and baritone saxophonist, flutist and pianist Carol Sudhalter continues to perform and educate.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,flute,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,saxophone

Requisites

Abbey Is Blue is the fourth album by jazz vocalist Abbey Lincoln featuring tracks recorded in the Spring and Fall of 1959 in New York City for the Riverside label. The album was produced by Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews, the latter also writing the liner notes The album was mastered by Jack Matthews and the cover photograph was taken by Lawrence N. Shustak. The design of the cover was created by Harris Lewine, Ken Braren and Paul Bacon. 

Abbey Lincoln had mastered Billie Holiday’s skill at inhabiting the lyrics of a song and projecting its emotional content outward, and these songs, all of which deal with sorrow, are stark and harrowing accounts of loss and injustice.

• Afro Blue (Mongo Santamaría) – 3:20
• Lonely House (Langston Hughes, Kurt Weill) – 3:40
• Let Up (Abbey Lincoln) – 5:32
• Thursday’s Child (Elisse Boyd, Murray Grand) – 3:31
• Brother, Where Are You? (Oscar Brown) – 3:10
• Laugh, Clown, Laugh (Ted Fio Rito, Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young) – 5:24
• Come Sunday (Duke Ellington) – 5:13
• Softly, as in a Morning Sunrise (Oscar Hammerstein II, Sigmund Romberg) – 2:46
• Lost in the Stars (Maxwell Anderson, Kurt Weill) – 4:11
• Long as You’re Living” (Oscar Brown, Julian Priester, Tommy Turrentine) – 2:33

• Abbey Lincoln – vocals
• Kenny Dorham (tracks 2, 4 & 7-9), Tommy Turrentine (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10) – trumpet
• Julian Priester – trombone (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10)
• Stanley Turrentine – tenor saxophone (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10)
• Les Spann – guitar (tracks 2, 4 & 7-9), flute (track 5)
• Wynton Kelly (tracks 2, 4, 5), Cedar Walton (tracks 3 & 6), Phil Wright (tracks 7-9) – piano
• Bobby Boswell (tracks 1, 3, 6 & 10), Sam Jones (tracks 2, 4, 5 & 7-9) – bass
• Philly Joe Jones (tracks: 2, 4, 5 & 7-9), Max Roach (tracks: 1, 3, 6 & 10) – drums

More Posts: choice,classic,collectible,collector,history,instrumental,jazz,music,vocal

Requisites

East Coast Jazz No. 4 is a 1955 album by flautist Herbie Mann recorded and released on the Bethlehem record label.. The photograph and cover design was created by Burt Goldblatt. This relatively short recording was only 25 minutes and 12 seconds long but was considered long playing for the time period.

Tracks:
1. Chicken Little
2. Cuban Love Song (Dorothy Fields, Jimmy McHugh Herbert Stothart)he 3. 3. Things We Did Last Summer (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne)
4. Deep Night (Charles E. Henderson, Rudy Vallée)
5. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (Harold Arlen, Ted Koehler)
6. After Work
7. Moon Dreams (Chummy MacGregor, Johnny Mercer)

Personnel:
Herbie Mann – flute
Joe Puma (tracks 2, 4, 7), Benny Weeks (tracks 1, 3, 5, 6) – guitar
Keith Hodgson (tracks 1, 3, 5, 6), Whitey Mitchell (tracks 2, 4, 7) – bass
Lee Rockey (tracks 1, 3, 5, 6), Herb Wasserman (tracks 2, 4, 7) – drums

More Posts: choice,classic,collectible,collector,history,instrumental,jazz,music