Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lenny Breau was born Leonard Harold Breau on August 5, 1941 in Auburn, Maine. His francophone parents were professional country and western musicians who started their son playing guitar at the age of eight. At twelve he started a small band with friends and by the age of fourteen he was the lead guitarist for his parents’ band, billed as Lone Pine Junior, playing Merle Travis and Chet Atkins instrumentals and occasionally singing. He made his first professional recordings in Westbrook, Maine at the age of 15 while working as a studio musician. Many of these recordings were released posthumously on Boy Wonder.
In 1957 the family moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba,, and their new touring band became the CKY Caravan. It was at one of these shows that he met sixteen year old Randy Bachman and they soon became friends, eventually Lenny began informally teaching the young guitarist. Two years later he left his parents after his father slapped him in the face for using jazz improvisations on stage. He then sought out local jazz musicians and met pianist Bob Erlendson, who began teaching him more of the foundations of jazz.
1962 saw Breau leaving for Toronto and soon created the jazz group Three with singer/actor Don Francks and bassist Eon Henstridge. They performed in Toronto, Ottawa, and New York City, their music was featured in the 1962 National Film Board documentary Toronto Jazz, recorded a live album at the Village Vanguard and appeared on the Jackie Gleason and Joey Bishop shows. Returning to Winnipeg he became a regular session guitarist recording for CBC Radio, CBC Television and contributed to CBC-TV’s Teenbeat, Music Hop, and his own Lenny Breau Show.
An ensuing friendship with Chet Atkins resulted in Lenny’s first two LP issues, Guitar Sounds from Lenny Breau and The Velvet Touch of Lenny Breau. Live! on RCA. Moving around over Canada and the United States he finally settled in Los Angeles, California in 1983. There he spent years performing, teaching, and writing for Guitar Player magazine. Unfortunately he had continual drug problems stemming from the mid-1960s, which he managed to get under control during the last years of his life. However, on August 12, 1984 his body was found in the swimming pool at his apartment complex in Los Angeles and the coroner reported that he had been strangled. Though his wife Jewel was the chief suspect but was never charged with murder and the case is still unsolved.
Several tributes were created in honor of his contributions to guitar playing and jazz. A documentary titled The Genius of Lenny Breau was produced in 1999 by his daughter Emily Hughes that included interviews with Chet Atkins, Ted Greene, Pat Metheny, George Benson, Leonard Cohen, and Bachman. In 2006 the book One Long Tune: The Life and Music of Lenny Breau written by Ron Forbes-Roberts was published by the University of North Texas Press. CBC Radio presented a documentary-soundscape on Lenny Breau entitled On the Trail of Lenny Breau in 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jeff Hamilton was born on August 4, 1953 in Richmond, Indiana. He attended Indiana University. Early in his career, he played with the Tommy Dorsey Ghost Band, after which he briefly played with Lionel Hampton. He spent two years as a member of the Monty Alexander Trio starting in 1975, and was with Woody Herman’s Orchestra from 1977 to 1978, following which he became a member of the L.A. Four, with whom he made six albums. After this, he started recording regularly as a sideman for the Concord label.
From 1983 to 1987, he played with Ella Fitzgerald, Rosemary Clooney, and the Count Basie Orchestra. In the 1990s, Hamilton played gigs with The Clayton Brothers, toured the world with Oscar Peterson and the Ray Brown Trio.
Hamilton toured extensively with Diana Krall and played on several of her albums and one of her DVDs. Leading his own band Hamilton also leads his own trio, with bassist Christoph Luty and pianist Tamir Hendelman, they have recorded for Lake Street, Mons and Azica labels.
Once a co-owner of Bosphorus Cymbals, USA, he has since started his own cymbal company, Crescent Cymbals, with Michael Vosbein, Bill Norman, and drummer Stanton Moore and attracted the attention of Sabian who bought out Crescent, redistributing them through their Hand-Hammered series.
As a sideman he has worked with the George Robert All-Star Quartet, the Mike Jones Trio, Adam Schroeder, Holly Hofmann, Lalo Schifrin and Bud Shank among others. Drummer Jeff Hamilton currently co-leads the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra with John and Jeff Clayton and continues to perform, record and tour with his trio.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Greg Osby was born August 3, 1960 in St. Louis, Missouri. He majored in Jazz Studies at Howard University, then attended Berklee College of Music, studying with Andy McGhee. He played on Jack DeJohnette’s Special Edition, and has recorded with Steve Coleman, Jim Hall and Andrew Hill, thus setting the stage for Hill and Hall’s later appearance on his recording of The Invisible Hand.
He began recording under his own name in the Eighties on JMT Records, but his most celebrated work has been his run of records for the Blue Note label. Greg has followed in the footstep of many great bandleaders, discovering fresh talent and allowing players the opportunity to grow within his own band. He was responsible for giving exposure to the young pianist Jason Moran, who appeared on most of Osby’s 1990s albums including the live album Banned in New York and an experiment with adding a string quartet to the band, Symbols of Light.
Osby has contributed to the homages to Miles Davis’s 1970s electric jazz performed by Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith’s Yo Miles group and their double album Upriver. Not limiting himself to a strict jazz diet, in 2003 Osby toured North America with The Dead, a reincarnation of The Grateful Dead, and contributed in various lineups with Phil Lesh and Friends.
He has been featured in a series of magazine ads in Down Beat, JazzTimes and Saxophone Journal, and was named Playboy Magazine’s “Jazz Artist of the Year” in 2009. As an educator Greg is currently on faculty in the Ensemble Department at Berklee College of Music.
Since 1987 he has recorded nineteen albums as a leader and seven as a sideman working with Uri Caine, Steve Coleman, Robin Eubanks, Gary Thomas, CL Smooth, Joe Lovano, Stefon Harris, Jason Moran, Mark Shim, Gary Thomas, Andrew Hill, Jim Hall, Scott Colley and Teri Lynne Carrington.
Alto and soprano saxophonist Greg Osby continues to compose, record and perform mainly in the free jazz, free funk and M-Base idioms.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Blieden Wolff was born July 31, 1952 in Victorville, California and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. At age nine, his family moved to Berkeley, California where he continued his study of classical piano that began at age eight, before playing drums at age 12. While attending Berkeley High School he began playing piano with the University of California Jazz Ensembles. After graduating from high school, Wolff attended the University of California, Berkeley before enrolling at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Leaving college in 1972 Michael started his music career by joining Cal Tjader’s band, followed by Cannonball Adderley’s band three years later. By 1977, he formed the band Answering Service with saxophonist Alex Foster.
Wolff has worked with among others Warren Zevon, The Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Orchestra, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Jean-Luc Ponty, Children On The Corner and Terri Lyne Carrington. He has composed and played original music, and served as host for the Riverside Shakespeare Company production of The Mandrake in New York City. In 1978, singer Nancy Wilson chose Michael as her musical director, and in 1989, after being Wilson’s opening act, when Arsenio Hall was given his own talk show, he was chosen to serve as its bandleader and musical director.
In 1995, he released Jumpstart featuring Christian McBride and Tony Williams and in 1997 the trio released 2AM. Wolff was the leader of the jazz band Impure Thoughts which features Indian tabla player Badal Roy, drummer Mike Clark, percussionist Frank Colón and electric bassist John B. Williams.
He has written music for the films Who’s The Man?, The Tic Code and Made Up, as well as writing for and performing in other films. Michael has co-starred in The Naked Brothers Band on Nickelodeon, and was the co-executive producer and music supervisor, along with his wife, Polly Draper.
As an educator he is on the faculty at The New School For Jazz And Contemporary Music. He has been honored as a Steinway Artist and obtained a Broadcast Music, Inc. award. In between his teaching duties pianist, composer, producer Michael Wolff continues to compose, record and perform with his jazz-funk band Wolff & Clark Expedition, consisting of Wolff and Clark as band leaders, Steve Wilson and Lenny Pickett as saxophonists, and James Genus as the bassist.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jan Jankeje was born January Jankeje on July 30, 1950 in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia and studied and played the bass since childhood. He emigrated to Germany in 1968 and has since lived in the Stuttgart area.
He has worked with Ella Fitzgerald, Benny Goodman, Eugen Cicero, Al Casey, Benny Waters, Attila Zoller, George Wein, Joe Pass, Tal Farlow, Horst Jankowski, Oscar Klein and Jaco Pastorius among others. He has toured with Dieter Bihlmaier and with Hans-Jürgen Bock Ragtime Specht Groove.
He founded his own record company Jazz Point Records with his wife Gerti Jankejova and has recorded as a leader as well as Biréli Lagrènes , with whom he worked eight years from 1979. He also worked as a studio musician recording live recordings with Jaco Pastorius.
With Bernd Marquart he founded in 1988 the Jazz Jokers, debuting the same year with a CD, international touring and festivals. He also played gypsy jazz with Wedeli Köhler, Diz Dizley and Manno Guttenberger. He wrote the song First Tango for Jeanne Moreau in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s last film Querelle. Bassist, composer, producer and bandleader Jan Jankeje continues to perform, record and tour.
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