Requisites
A DAY IN THE LIFE | WES MONTGOMERY
One of my favorite jazz albums that I first heard during my freshman year in college was the 1967 album A Day In The Life by Wes Montgomery. It was recorded on June 6 & 26, 1967 at the Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey and released on the A&M/CTI label later that year in September.
The 34:21 minute album is filled with covers of rock and pop songs selected by the guitarist who opens Side One with the title track, A Day In The Life by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, originally released on their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It’s a great opener that builds from a quiet start into a cavalcade of strings by its end. Watch What Happens is from the 1964 musical romantic drama film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg written and directed by Jacques Demy, with music by Michel Legrand.
The Calvin Lewis and Andrew Wright #1 tune When a Man Loves a Woman is the third addition to the side and first recorded by Percy Sledge in 1966. California Nights is a song written by Marvin Hamlisch and Howard Liebling and recorded by Lesley Gore in 1967. The final song is Angel and is the only composition contributed by Montgomery.
Side Two is opened by another Lennon/McCartney song, Eleanor Rigby. One premise is that the inspiration for the title is the actress Eleanor Bron who starred in the Beatles movie Help!. Rigby came from the name of a store in Bristol, Rigby & Evens Ltd. Next up is Willow Weep For Me, that once again accounts the inspiration for the song is that Ann Ronnell, while at Radcliffe College, had been struck by the loveliness of the willow trees on campus, and this observation became the subject of an intricate song.
Windy, another No. 1 tune recorded by The Association, and was composed by Ruthann Friedman. Trust In Me was composed by Milton Ager, Jean Shwartz and Ned Wever and was made popular in 1937 by Mildred Bailey. Closing out the session is The Joker, a song by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, and is taken from the 1964 musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd. It’s a lament of a person, seen by the outside world as a jester and a comedian especially when they fail.
The recording session was produced by Creed Taylor, was arranged and conducted by Don Sebesky, the engineer was Rudy Van Gelder and the principal photography was performed by Pete Turner.
The guitarist did little more than play the melody using his distinctive octaves. A Day in the Life is a collaboration of guitar and strings. For these ears it was a pleasurable listening experience.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Neil Richard Ardley was born in Wallington, Surrey, England on May 26, 1937. He attended Wallington County Grammar School and at the age of thirteen started learning the piano and later the saxophone. He studied chemistry at Bristol University, also playing both piano and saxophone in jazz groups, graduating in 1959 with a BSc.
Moving to London, England the next year he studied arranging and composing with Ray Premru and Bill Russo. He joined the John Williams Big Band as pianist, arranger and composer, and from 1964 to 1970 was the director of the New Jazz Orchestra. The band employed some of the best young musicians in London, including Ian Carr, Jon Hiseman, Barbara Thompson, Dave Gelly, Mike Gibbs, Don Rendell, and Trevor Tomkins.
The late 1960s saw Ardley begin composing, combining classical and jazz methods. The New Jazz Orchestra 1969 album Le Déjeuner sur l’Herbe is considered a classic of British jazz. It includes arrangements of Nardis by Miles Davis and Naima by John Coltrane, and compositions by young writers associated with the orchestra – including Ardley, Michael Garrick, Mike Gibbs, Howard Riley and Mike Taylor.
His rich orchestrations were augmented in the 1970s by the addition of synthesisers. He began work on an all-electronic album in 1980 which fell through when his recording contract was suddenly terminated, but continued to play and compose, especially with Zyklus, the electronic jazz group he formed with composer John L. Walters, Warren Greveson and Ian Carr.
Neil went on to sing in local choirs in the later 1990s led him to start composing choral music, and to gig and record again with a slimmed down Zyklus consisting of himself, Warren Greaveson, and Nick Robinson
Composer and pianist Neil Ardley, who was an author of popular books on music, died in Bakewell, Derbyshire, England on February 23, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edgar Avenir was born on May 25, 1950 in Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines. As a child he grew up in the University of the Philippines and lived in Area One of the campus. As a young guitarist, Avenir played with the renowned jazz pianist and composer Bong Peñera, and the Sangkatutak Band, whose members included Cariño, Ivy Violan and Richard Merk. His neighbors included Ed “Sarge” Cariño and John Lesaca, both of whom would later play with Avenir in various bands.
While he sessioned for pop acts like the Apo Hiking Society, his associations with fellow jazz musicians allowed him to explore the more eclectic side of his music. His move to jazz had him rubbing shoulders and exchanging notes with Pinoy jazzmen like Sandra Lim Viray, Jun Viray, Romy Posadas and Roger Herrera.
An excellent musician who could play with anyone, Avenir regularly performed with singer Zenaida Celdran and De la Calzada at La Cuisine Francaise in Makati. Celdran took care of Avenir in the last few months of his life. He was always willing to help fellow artists who wanted to learn more about music.
Still playing until August even though he was ill, guitarist Edgar Avenir, affectionately known as Koyang, died on Saturday, September 17, 2017 of pneumonia arising from lung cancer. He was 61.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edo Castro was born on May 24, 1957 in San Francisco, California to mother Aida Saberi, the only child from her first marriage. He attended Grattan Elementary, Herbert Hoover Junior High and J. Eugene McAteer High School, all in the city by the bay. Growing up during the tumultuous 1960s, where from an early age he was exposed to a myriad of musical styles, listening not only to rock and roll, R&B, but classical music, folk and jazz.
The first jazz albums came to him via his uncle, a recording engineer pioneer Reice Hamel. From these, Edo was first exposed to and enthralled by the sounds of Vince Guaraldi, Hugh Masekela, Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans, Ramsey Lewis and Paul Desmond. He initially studied piano and violin, but when a friend suggested he try the electric bass, he knew he had found his instrument.
Castro attended Humboldt State University in northern California. Nearly three years later he bought an acoustic bass and auditioned for the music department at San Jose State University. So inspired by the musicians he met and their sound, he moved to Chicago, Illinois in 1982, and studied at DePaul University for a year, then completed his studies at the American Conservatory of Music, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1987 with a focus on jazz studies and electric bass.
Returning to the Bay Area in 1990, Edo has performed and recorded with among others David Amram, Roy Haynes, Fareed Haque, David Onderdonk, Ed Thigpen, Johnny Griffin, Joel Harrison, Deborah Winters, Jill Knight, Bethany Pickens, Armando Peraza, Caren Armstrong, Percy Howard, Mark Egan, Yves Carbonne, and David Friesen.
Bassist Edo Castro has performed across Europe, Asia and South America. He continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Artie Shaw was born Arthur Jacob Arshawsky on May 23, 1910 in New York City to Austrian and Russian Jewish parents Sarah and Harold Arshawsky, a dressmaker and photographer. He grew up in New Haven, Connecticut, where his natural introversion was deepened by local antisemitism. Buying a saxophone by working in a grocery store and began learning the saxophone at 13. At 16, he switched to the clarinet and left home to tour with a band.
From 1925 to 1936 Shaw performed with many bands and orchestras, working in Cleveland, Ohio and establishing a lasting reputation as music director and arranger for an orchestra led by violinist Austin Wylie. Exposed to symphonic music while playing with Irving Aaronson’s Commanders, which he later incorporated in his arrangements. In 1932 he joined the Roger Wolfe Kahn Orchestra and made several recordings. Three years later he gained attention with his “Interlude in B-flat” at a swing concert at the Imperial Theater in New York. During the swing era, his big bands had numerous popular hits with Begin the Beguine, Stardust and others.
In addition to hiring Buddy Rich, he signed Billie Holiday as his band’s vocalist in 1938, becoming the first white band leader to hire a full-time black female singer to tour the segregated South. However, after recording Any Old Time, Holiday left the band due to hostility from Southern audiences, as well as from music company executives who wanted a more mainstream singer.
He fashioned a smaller band within the orchestra in 1940, naming it Artie Shaw and the Gramercy Five after his home telephone exchange. Over time members of the band were pianist Johnny Guarnieri, electric guitarist Al Hendrickson, trumpeter Roy Eldridge succeeded Billy Butterfield, Oran “Hot Lips” Page, Max Kaminsky, Georgie Auld, Dave Tough, Jack Jenney, and Ray Conniff. In 1940, the original Gramercy Five cut eight sides, then Shaw dissolved the band in early 1941.
The long series of musical groups Shaw subsequently formed included Lena Horne, Helen Forrest, Mel Tormé, Buddy Rich, Dave Tough, Barney Kessel, Jimmy Raney, Tal Farlow, Dodo Marmarosa, and Ray Conniff.
Throughout his career, Shaw formed big bands for his radio broadcasts, made several musical shorts for Vitaphone and Paramount Pictures, and played with Navy personnel during World War II. Active until 1954, his music was used in several films, he had numerous talk show appearances, came out of retirement in 1983 and put together one last band.
Clarinetist Artie Shaw, who received a Lifetime Grammy Award in 2004, died on December 30, 2004, aged 94.
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