Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David William Sanborn was born July 30, 1945 in Tampa, Florida where his father was stationed in the US Air Force, and grew up in Kirkwood, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri. Contracting polio at the age of three and confined to an iron lung for a year, the polio left him with impaired respiration and his left arm shorter than the right.
While confined to bed he was inspired by the saxophone breaks in songs he heard on the radio by Fats Domino’s Ain’t That a Shame and Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti. At the age of eleven David changed to saxophone from piano lessons when doctors recommended that he take up a wind instrument to improve his breathing and strengthen his chest muscles. By 14 he was good enough to play with blues Albert King and Little Milton in local clubs. Alto saxophonist Hank Crawford was an early and lasting influence.
Sanborn studied free jazz in his youth with saxophonists Roscoe Mitchell and Julius Hemphill. He continued his education at Northwestern University and transferred to the University of Iowa, where he played and studied with saxophonist J.R. Monterose. In 1967 he took a Greyhound bus to San Francisco, California to join the Summer of Love, and was invited to sit in on a session with The Paul Butterfield Blues Band and stayed with the band for five years. He went on to play with the Brecker Brothers, Al Jarreau, and Tim Berne.
Finding life on the road increasingly difficult he continued to tour, was active as a session musician, and played on numerous albums by artists including Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, Sting, the Eagles, Rickie Lee Jones, James Brown, George Benson, Carly Simon, Elton John, Bryan Ferry and the Rolling Stones.
As a leader he recorded twenty-five albums and his discography as composer and sideman is extensive and includes videos, television and film. Sanborn won six Grammy Awards and had eight gold albums and one platinum album and was inducted into the St. Louis Walk of Fame.
Alto saxophonist David Sanborn, who was known primarily as a smooth jazz musician, died of complications from prostate cancer in Tarrytown, New York on May 12, 2024.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Denman Maroney was born on July 25, 1949 in Durfort-et-Saint-Martin-de-Sossenac, Occitanie, France. He went on to receive his Bachelor of Arts from William College and his Masters of Fine Arts in composition and piano from the California Instute of the Arts.
He plays what he calls hyperpiano involves stopping, sliding, bowing, plucking, striking and strumming the strings with copper bars, aluminum bowls, rubber blocks, plastic boxes and other household objects. This is sometimes done with one hand while the other hand is used to play the keys.
He received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for his work and worked on a new soundtrack to go with German horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. As an educator he held a position of adjunct professor at Ramapo College of New Jersey in 2010 and is currently at Fairleigh Dickinson University.
Pianist and composer Denman Maroney continues to explore and create music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Yve Evans was born in El Paso, Texas on July 20, 1950 into an Army family and was around music while growing up as her mother was a gospel singer. When she was three years old she made her first recording of The Lord’s Prayer acapella. In addition to the church music, she began singing and memorizing songs from the radio including all the cartoon favorites like the Mickey Mouse Club.
She learned to play the piano at the age of nine while rehabilitating from injuries she sustained after being struck by a car. The family followed her dad to Germany at age 12 and she began taking lessons from piano virtuoso Frau Anna Benkel, who introduced her to her love of classical piano. In 1964 Yve was hit by a truck and told she would never walk again or have children. The doctors were wrong and while bedridden at home she would still sit up to practive her piano lessons, take a correspondence course in behavioral psychology plus her regular homework.
Yve eventually walked again and began producing in addition to performing and pursuing the art of storytelling while living in Germany. She spent her summers from age13 to 16 playing in a big band, light opera productions and touring Germany with choral groups. At 16 after moving back to America a teacher attempted to discourage her to not rely on a career in music. She continued in the high school and University choral, mentored and encouraged by Carmen Dragon and Jester Harriston.
Evans cites Sarah Vaughn, Ernie Andrews, Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, June Christie, Della Reese, Bobby Darin and Rosemary Clooney as her main influences. As a pianist, she has leaned over the shoulders of, swapped chord changes with and stolen licks from Dorothy Donegan, Bill Evans, Erroll Garner, George Gafney, Carmen McCrae and Shirley Horn.
Vocalist and pianist Yve Evans, who has seven live recordings and is a Grammy nominated artist, continues to tell stories through her music, sing on the local jazz scene and perform around the world at festivals.
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Jazz Poems
C.T.’S VARIATION
some springs the mississippi rose up so high
that sound of jazz from back
boarded shanties by railroad tracks
visionary women letting pigeons loose
on unsettled skies
was drowned by the quiet ballad of natural disaster
some springs song was sweeter even so
sudden cracks split in the sky / for only a second
lighting us in a kind of laughter
as we rolled around quilted histories
extended our arms and cries to the rain
that kept us soft together
some springs the mississippi rose up so high
it drowned the sound of singing and escape
church sisters prayed and rinsed
the brown dinge tinting linens
thanked the trees for breeze
and the greenness sticking to the windows
the sound of jazz from back
boarded shanties by railroad tracks
visionary women letting pigeons loose
on unsettled skies
some springs song was sweeter even so
THULANI DAVIS
from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Omar Ruben Rada Silva was born July 16, 1943 in Montevideo, Uruguay. Little is known about his early life but his sound comes from his exposure to the music of his country, a chorus of tamboriles and Uruguayan barrel drums.
In 1965, he and Eduardo Mateo formed the band El Kinto Conjunto. This was the first group in Uruguay to create the beat genre in Spanish and to fuse rock with Latin American musical styles. In 1969 the success of his Candombe song Las Manzanas (The Apples) led to his first solo album and participation in the Festival of Popular Music in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A year later he formed the band Tótem.
In 1977, he traveled to the United States after an invitation by the Fattoruso Brothers to play with the group OPA. Over the next year, he performed with Tom Scott, Ray Barretto, Hermeto Pascoal, and Flora Purim.
Settling in Mexico for three years beginning in 1991, Rubén worked as a composer and arranger for local musicians such as Mijares, Eugenia León, Stephanie Salas, and Tania Libertad. In 1994 he shared the spotlight with Sting and UB40 at the Palacio de Deportes in Mexico City.
Rada’s renown led him to record on international labels and his songs have been played worldwide and have been recorded by Milton Nascimento, Herb Alpert, and Lani Hall. He was invited by Jon Anderson and Joan Manuel Serrat to appear on their albums Deseo and Utopía, respectively.
He has voiced the part of Lucius Best/Frozone in the 2004 Argentinian dubbing of The Incredibles. Ruben has directed radio and TV shows, and has starred in the television sitcom La Oveja Negra (The Black Sheep).In 2010, the third round of the series LifeLines in Berlin paid tribute to Rubén Rada. That same year he recorded a show in the Argentine program Encuentro en El Estudio, which is run by that country’s Ministry of Education.
Percussionist, composer, singer and television personality Ruben Rada, who has recorded more than thirty albums, continues to perform, compose and record.
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