Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Chris Biscoe was born on February 5, 1947, in Pensford, Somerset, England and in 1963 taught himself to play alto saxophone and then started playing tenor, soprano, baritone, and also comparatively rare alto clarinet. Before he became a notable presence on the UK Jazz scene, he was a computer programmer.
From 1970 to 1973 Biscoe played with National Youth Jazz Orchestra in London, doing gigs with various other London-based bands of that period, including Redbrass. He worked with several notable jazz musicians during the Seventies such as Harry Beckett, Ken Hyder, Didier Levallet, Chris McGregor, Andy Sheppard, Graham Collier, Danilo Terenzi, Pete Hurt, Tommy Chase, Pete Saberton, Barry Guy, Dave Holdsworth, and Pete Jacobsen.
In 1979, Chris had a long-term association with Mike Westbrook touring throughout Europe and playing international festivals in Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada and the USA. In the same year, he also formed a quartet featuring Peter Jacobsen, expanded to a quintet in 1980, a sextet in 1986, and reformed as a quartet in 1987. During the Eighties he also recorded two albums.
During the late 1980s and 1990s, Biscoe toured and recorded with George Russell, Andy Sheppard, Liam Noble, Gail Thompson’s Jazz Africa, Harry Beckett, and also played in France with Didier Levallet’s groups and the collective band called Zhivaro. In 1991, he released a second cassette, Modern Alarms, and also recorded in the Dedication Orchestra in the Spirits Rejoice project.
Between 1997 and 2000, he became the first English musician to join the Orchestre National de Jazz. Multi-instrumentalist Chris Biscoe plays the alto, soprano, tenor and baritone saxophone, the alto clarinet, piccolo, and flute and continues to play and record.
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Requisites
You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce! is a studio album by bassist Curtis Counce recorded on October 8 & 15, 1956, April 27, May 13 and September 3, 1957, at Contemporary Studios in Los Angeles, California and subsequently released on the Contemporary Records label. The music falls somewhere between hard bop and cool jazz and Counce contributed two original compositions to the recording, Complete and Counceltation. The producer for the sessions was Lester Koenig.
Track Listing | 44:39 All compositions by Curtis Counce except as indicated
- Complete ~ 5:51
- How Deep Is the Ocean? (Irving Berlin) ~ 6:35
- Too Close for Comfort (Jerry Bock, Larry Holofcener, George David Weiss) ~ 5:36
- Mean to Me (Fred E. Ahlert, Roy Turk) ~ 4:31
- Stranger in Paradise (Alexander Borodin, George Forrest, Robert Wright) ~ 7:03
- Counceltation ~ 6:01
- Big Foot (Charlie Parker) ~ 9:02
- Curtis Counce ~ bass
- Jack Sheldon ~ trumpet
- Harold Land ~ tenor saxophone
- Carl Perkins ~ piano
- Frank Butler ~ drums
You Get More Bounce With Curtis Counce | by Eddie Carter
Simply stated, this is a superb album by bassist Curtis Counce and his quintet. Counce’s group was one of the better and more resilient bands on the West Coast during the late fifties. As a cohesive unit, the quintet’s interaction throughout the album delivers handsomely on the seven selections that make up this enjoyable set. The album opener is Counce’s Complete which begins with an impressive discussion between the rhythm section ahead of the melody. How Deep Is The Ocean? Is the ageless 1932 standard by Irving Berlin is a perfect vehicle for an affectionate performance by Land who adapts the song as easily as if it was originally created for jazz with a breathtakingly beautiful tenor sax reading of the melody and lead solo, anchored by Sheldon’s imaginative lyricism in support. Too Close For Comfort, the 1956 popular song by Jerry Bock, Larry Holofcener and George Weiss began life on Broadway in the musical production of Mr. Wonderful that year and has been recorded by an A-list of musicians and vocalists too numerous to mention. The 1929 popular song, Mean To Me by Fred Ahlert and Roy Turk has long been praised by critics as a “head of the class” standard for jazz musicians and vocalists to improvise.
Side Two opens with a bop-flavored midtempo rendition of Stranger In Paradise, the popular song from the 1953 musical, Kismet, written by Alexander Borodin, George Forrest, and Robert Wright. Counceltation, the second original by Counce and the title of the 1972 reissue of this album, due in part to the “original cheesecake cover” which enough people found offensive enough for Contemporary Records to replace it with a photo of the artist and his bass in an outdoor setting. The quintet returns to hard-bop on the album’s closer, Big Foot by Charlie Parker which gives everyone a chance to speak their piece on a lively joyride.
If you already own this album you know what to do. If you’re adding it to your collection, place the record on the turntable, drop the stylus, or slide the cd in the drive, crack open your favorite beverage, sit back and settle in to enjoy seven of the best sounding jazz cuts by The Curtis Counce Group that are spontaneous, soulful swinging at its best!
Source: Jazztracks by Eddie Carter | Excerpt: 1/2019 | atlantaaudioclub.org
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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.
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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.
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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.
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