Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ronald Wayne Laws was born on October 3, 1950 and raised in Houston, Texas. He is the fifth of eight children and started playing the saxophone at the age of 11. He went on to attend Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, for two years.

In 1971 he journeyed to Los Angeles, California to embark upon a musical career. He started performing with trumpeter Hugh Masekela and the following year joined Earth, Wind & Fire, where he played saxophone and flute on their album Last Days and Time. Eighteen months later he decided to become a solo artist. Laws released his debut album Pressure Sensitive on Blue Note Records in 1975.

His first two albums charted on Billboard and by his third album, Friends and Strangers in 1977 was certified gold. Ronnie produced and sang on his sister Debra’s 1981 album Very Special. He would go on to play saxophone through the Eighties on albums by Ramsey Lewis, Sister Sledge, Deniece Williams, Jeff Lorber, Alphonse Mouzon, and Howard Hewett. In the 1990s he recorded with Norman Brown and again with Earth, Wind & Fire.

Saxophonist, flutist and vocalist Ronnie Laws, who has also worked with Guru, Brian Culbertson, and the Crusaders, also influenced  Boney James and Norman Brown, and continues to explore the boundaries of his talent.

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Jazz Poems

ART PEPPER

It’s the broken phrases, the fury inside him.

Squiggling alto saxophone playing out rickets

And jaundice, a mother who tried to kill him

In her womb with a coat hanger, a faltering

God-like father. The past is a bruised cloud

Floating over the houses like a prophecy,

The terrible foghorns off the shore at San Pedro.

Lightning without thunder. Years without playing.

Years of blowing out smoke and inhaling fire,

Junk and cold turkey, smacking up, the habit

Of cooking powder in spoons, the eyedroppers,

The spikes. Tracks on both arms. Tattoos.

The hospital cells at Fort Worth, the wire cages

In the L.A. County, the hole at San Quentin.

And always the blunt instrument of sex, the pain

Bubbling up inside him like a wound, the small

Deaths. The wind piercing the sheer skin

Of a dark lake at dawn. The streets at 5 a.m.

After a cool rain. The smoky blue clubs.

The chords of Parker, of Young, of Coltrane.

Playing solo means going on alone, improvising,

Hitting the notes, ringing the changes,

It’s clipped phrasing and dry ice in summer,

Straining against the rhythms, speeding it up,

Loping forward and looping back, finding the curl

In the wave, the mood in the air. It’s

Splintered tones and furious double timing.

It’s leaving the other instruments on stage

And blowing freedom into the night, into the faces

Of emptiness that peer along the bar, ghosts

Shallow hulls of nothingness, Hatred of God.

Hatred of white skin that never turns black.

Hatred of Patti, of Dianne, of Christine.

A daughter who grew up without him, a stranger.

Years of being strung out, years without speaking.

Pauses and intervals, silence. A fog rolling

Across the ocean, foghorns in the distance.

A lighthouse rising from the underworld.

A moon swelling in the clouds, an informer,

A twisted white mouth of light. Scars carved

And criscrossed on his chest. The memory

Of nodding out, the dazed drop-off into sleep.

And then the curious joy of surviving, joy

Of waking up in a dusky room to a gush

Of fresh notes, a tremoring sheet of sound.

Jamming again. Careening through the scales

For the creatures who haunt the night.

Bopping through the streets in a half-light

With Laurie on his arm, a witness, a believer.

The night is going to burst inside him.

The wind is going to break loose forever

From his lungs. It’s the fury of improvising,

Of going on alone. It’s the fierce clarity

Of each note coming to an end, distinct,

Glistening. The alto’s full-bodied laughter

The white grief-stricken wail.

EDWARD HIRSCH

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bronisław Suchanek was born August 30, 1948 in Bielsko-Biała, Poland. During his studies at the Secondary Music School he was a member of the Andrzej Zubek Quartet and from 1967 to 1971 he studied at the Academy of Music. In 1969, while still a student, he began collaborating with Tomasz Stańko’s quintet and recorded two albums and were among the first musicians to inaugurate the first Music Workshop in Chodzież, Poland.

He made his debut on the music scene playing in the Silesian Jazz Quartet, which he co-founded with pianist Andrzej Zubek, trumpeter Bogusław Skawina, Jerzy Jarosik on flute and saxophone, and drummer Kazimierz Jonkisz.

At the end of 1972, Bronisław went with the Klan Band to Finland where he took part in a concert as part of the Helsinki Festival and presented the premiere of free-jazz and rock. In 2016, GAD Records released an album titled Live Finland 1972 with a recording of this concert. In the 1970s he was a member of the Polish Radio Jazz Studio Orchestra.

He has performed and recorded both in Poland and abroad with American jazz musicians such as Don Cherry and Rick Stepton. In the second half of the decade he emigrated to Sweden, where he played in the Swedish Jazz Radio Group. He operated in Scandinavia for over a dozen years, collaborating with the bands Sound of Flowers and Birka.

The 1980s saw him giving concerts and recording albums in Germany and Austria with different formations. In 1995 Suchanek moved to the United States where he taught at the Maine School of Music and played in the Woody Herman Big Band and the Artie Shaw Orchestra.

He recorded an album titled Sketch in Blue in a duet with Dominik Wania. In 2010 he recorded an album titled Jerzy Wasowski Songbook together with Bogdan Hołownia, Jerry Veimola and Joe Hunt. He collaborated with the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra.

Double bassist Bronisław Suchanek, who was awarded the Silver Medal for Merit to Culture – Gloria Artis, continues to perform and record in the free jazz and straight-ahead mediums.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mike Metheny was born August 28, 1949 in Lee’s Summit, Missouri and studied music education at the University of Missouri School of Music and Northeast Missouri State University, then played trumpet in the U.S. Army Field Band, Washington D.C. from 1971 to 1974. After his discharge he went to Boston, Massachusetts and became an adjunct lecturer and assistant to the head of the trumpet department at the Berklee College of Music  for seven years beginning in 1976.

From 1978 to 1989 Metheny led his own quartet in Boston, and in 1988 he was named Outstanding Brass Player at the annual Boston Music Awards. His debut album was released in 1982 and followed that with eleven more and produced two records with major labels to mixed reviews. Since 2000, his albums have been produced on his own record label, 3 Valve Music.

Mike’s career in music journalism has seen him as editor for Kansas City’s Jazz Ambassador Magazine (JAM) from 1994 to 2003 and has contributed to KC Magazine, Jazziz, and The DaCapo Jazz & Blues Lover’s Guide to the U.S.

He continues to perform primarily in Kansas and Missouri, playing a trumpet synthesizern electronic valve instrument (EVI). With his brother Pat they set up the Metheny Music Foundation with Mike serving as the chairman.

Flugelhornist and trumpeter Mike Metheny, who published the anthology Old Friends Are the Best Friends: the Letters of John McKee and Mike Metheny, continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Tom Kennedy was born on August 21, 1960 in  St. Louis, Missouri and is the son of a professional trumpet player. He began playing acoustic bass at the age of nine on a double-bass brought home by his older brother, jazz pianist Ray Kennedy. It wasn’t long before he began to perform with such as Freddie Hubbard, James Moody, Nat Adderly, Sonny Stitt and Stan Kenton passing through the Midwest.

Specializing in acoustic jazz until he picked up the electric bass at the age of 17. Soon he was dividing his time between mainstream and progressive jazz fusion. Tom gained a reputation beyond St. Louis and he relocated to New York City, where he quickly found work with multiple groups. He recorded with guitarist Bill Connors and toured with Michael Brecker in the jazz-fusion group Steps Ahead. He went on to have tours and recordings with Tania Maria and Al DiMeola.

In 1998, Kennedy became an integral part of Dave Weckl’s band, a group he toured, composed and recorded with for over nine years. They have continued to perform and record together on various projects for other artists, including Mike Stern, Didier Lockwood, Dave Grusin and Lee Ritenour.

He has recorded six albums as a leader and another twenty as a sideman with Dave Weckl, Bill Connors, Don Grolnick, Ray Kennedy, Al DiMeola, Planet X, Derek Sherinian, and Mike Stern.

Tom has also performed and recorded with top contemporary players Simon Phillips, Steve Gadd, Frank Gambale, Steve Lukather, David Sanborn, Jeff Lorber, Ricky Lawson, Joe Sample, Renee Rosnes and George Garzone and fusion band Planet X.

Double-bass and electric bassist Tom Kennedy, who moved to New York City in 1984 and immersed himself in the hard bop, fusion and swing genres, continues to perform and record.

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