Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Richard Simon was born in Kansas City, Kansas on July 5, 1949 and left a comfortable position as a college English professor to take up the upright bass at age 30. He apprenticed with the elder elite of the Los Angeles, California jazz scene, including Red Callender and John Clayton, and soon began working with Buddy Collette, Teddy Edwards, Plas Johnson and Art Hillery, as well as LA Philharmonic’s Abe Luboff.

Richard has played traditional jazz with Pete Fountain, swing with Ken Peplowski, and be-bop with Richie Cole. He has recorded with Al Viola, Houston Person, Rebecca Kilgore, Gerald Wiggins and Chico Hamilton, toured Japan three times and performed twice with the King of Thailand. He worked frequently with vocalists Sue Raney, Maria Muldaur, Maxine Weldon, as well as the late vocalists Ernie Andrews, Lorez Alexandria and Keely Smith, and Rosemary Clooney.

Deeply involved in jazz education, Simonhe is the program director for JazzAmerica, a non-profit organization that provides tuition-free jazz instruction after school and in summer WorkChops.

Bassist Richard Simon continues to perform, record and educate.

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

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Seger Pillot Ellis was born on July 4, 1904 in Houston, Texas and began his career as pianist playing live for a local Houston radio station in the early 1920s. In 1925, he was added to the orchestra of Lloyd Finlay for a recording session for Victor Records, and was also allowed to cut two piano solos. This led to Ellis being invited to Victor’s regular recording studio in Camden, New Jersey, to cut a number of piano solos, all or most of them compositions of his own. These were among the earliest records Victor made using the new electric microphone and recording equipment.

After his first recording experiences, Ellis returned to Houston and radio work as well as playing in vaudeville theaters. During this period Seger began adding singing to his piano playingwhich led to an invitation to New York City to make vocal test recordings. His first issued vocal record was “Sunday” on the Columbia label, then a string of records for Okeh Records. 

Ellis selected many of the best jazz musicians of the time, including Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Joe Venuti, Eddie Lang, Andy Sannella and Louis Armstrong. His first recording career ended in 1931, however, in the late Thirties he returned to conducting and singing with his own big band, Choirs of Brass Orchestra. Later in his career, he focused more on songwriting, but recorded sporadically as well as playing the piano.

In 1939, Ellis reorganized and his new band featured the conventional four-man reed section. He disbanded in 1941, and was enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1942. After his discharge he moved back to Texas and began to be less active as a performer and more a songwriter and composer. His compositions were recorded by Harry James, Gene Krupa, Bing Crosby, Count Basie with a Mills Brothers vocal. 

Pianist and vocalist Seger Ellis, who made a few brief film appearances in collaboration with director Ida Lupino, died on September 29, 1995 in a Houston retirement home.

Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of a Houston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…

Seger Ellis: 1904~1995 | Piano, Vocal

More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,vocal

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ron Collier was born on July 3, 1930 in Coleman, Alberta, Canada and began his musical training in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He was a member of the Kitsilano Boys’ Band. He studied music privately in Toronto with Gordon Delamont and was the first jazz musician to receive a Canada Council grant that led him to study orchestration in New York in 1961 and 1962.

He formed the Ron Collier Jazz Quartet, which performed in the 1950s at the Stratford Festival and on CBC’s Tabloid with Portia White, and in 1963 with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Duke Ellington performed with the Ron Collier Orchestra on the 1969 album North of the Border in Canada. The album included his compositions and those by several Canadian composers. He also created orchestrations for a number of Ellington’s concerts and recordings.

He composed the scores to three films in the 1970s and began directing a student orchestra at Toronto’s Humber College. His band won the Big Band Open Class at the Canadian Stage Band Festival in 1982. He would go on to perform in and lead a number of jazz groups.

Trombonist, composer, and arranger Ron Collier, who was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, died on October 22, 2003 in Toronto, Canada at the age of 73.

More Posts: arranger,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone

Jazz Poems

COLTRANE, SYEEDA’S SONG FLUTE

For M & P.R.

When I came across it on the

piano it reminded me of her,

because it sounded like a

happy, child’s song.

COLTRANE

To Marilyn, to Peter,

playing , making things: the walls, the stairs,

the attics, bright nests in nests;

the slow, light, grave unstitching of lies,

opening, stinking, letting in air

you bear yourselves in, become your own mother

and father

your own child.

You lying closer.

You going along. Days.

The strobe-lit wheel stops dead

once, twice in a life: old-fashioned rays:

and then all the rest of the time pulls blur,

only you remember it more, playing.

Listening here in the late quiet you can think

great things of us all, I think we will all, Coltrane,

meet speechless and easy in Heaven, our names

known and forgotten, all dearest, all come

giant-stepping

out into some wide, light, merciful mind.

John

Coltrane, 40, gone

right through the floorboards,

up to the shins, up to the eyes,

closed over,

Syeeda’s happy, child’s song

left up here, playing.

from Jazz Poems ~ Selected and Edited by Kevin Young

More Posts: book,classic,collectible,history,jazz,library,poet

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mat Marucci was born Mathew Roger Marucci III  on July 2, 1945 in Rome, New York into a musical family with his sister Mena, a concert pianist and his brother Ed, a trumpeter. He was classically trained on the piano and switched to drums at the age of 19.

After graduating high school from St. Aloysius Academy in 1963, Marucci studied drums with Dick Howard in Auburn, New York for two years. Receiving a business management degree at Auburn Community College in 1965, he relocated to the west coast four years later. Attending Sacramento City College in California, he received his associate degree in music, in 1973.

In addition to recording and performing, Marucci has authored several books on drumming for both Ashley Publications and Mel Bay Publications. His recordings and books have garnered four and five star reviews in JazzTimes, Jazziz, Modern Drummer, DownBeat and DRUM! magazines. He also wrote articles for several magazines and jazz websites.

In his role as a jazz educator, Mat has been a professor at several California colleges in Sacramento and Berkeley and an applied drum set instructor at the Sacramento Traditional Jazz Society.

Drummer Mat Marucci, who has lived between New York City, Los Angeles and Sacramento and has recorded seventeen albums as a leader and eight as a sideman, continues to explore and perform.

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