Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Floyd George Smith was born on January 25, 1917 in St. Louis, Missouri and learned to play the ukulele as a child before taking up guitar. As a teenager he studied music theory and spent his early career in territory bands, playing in groups such as Eddie Johnson’s Crackerjacks, the Jeter-Pillars Orchestra, the Sunset Royal Orchestra, the Brown Skin Models, and Andy Kirk’s 12 Clouds Of Joy. His composition Floyd’s Guitar Blues, recorded with Andy Kirk’s orchestra in 1939, has been claimed as the first hit record to feature a blues solo on electric guitar.

Enlisting during World War II, Floyd was stationed in Britain as a sergeant and he had the fortune to meet and play with Django Reinhardt in Paris. Following the war, he rejoined Andy Kirk’s band before forming his own small ensembles. He went on to play with Wild Bill Davis in the 1950s, recorded occasionally with drummer Chris Columbo’s bands during the late 1950s and early 1960s. He would later settle in Indianapolis, Indiana and formed his own jazz trio.

The 1970s, had Smith moving into writing songs and record production, working with Dakar/Brunswick Records in Chicago, for which he recorded a few singles. He produced two albums with R&B star, Loleatta Holloway for Aware Records of Atlanta, as well as two unreleased with John Edwards, who later became the lead singer of the Detroit Spinners. He produced two Top 10 R&B hits on Aware with Edwards and Holloway.

In the late 1970s, he produced tracks on several albums with Loleatta Holloway for Gold Mine/Salsoul Records, managed and later married her. Guitarist Floyd Smith, sometimes credited as Floyd Guitar Smith passed away in Indianapolis, Indiana on March 29, 1982 at the age of 65.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joe Albany was born Joseph Albani on January 24, 1924 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Albany studied piano as a child and by 1943 he was working on the West Coast in Benny Carter’s orchestra. In 1946 he played with Charlie Parker and then 20-year-old Miles Davis.

Continuing to play, in 1957 recorded an album for Riverside with an unusual trio line-up with saxophonist Warne Marsh and Bob Whitlock on bass. omitting a drummer. Despite that, most of the 1950s and 1960s saw him battling a heroin addiction, or living in seclusion in Europe. He returned to jazz in the Seventies and played on more than ten albums. Modern and bebop pianist Joe Albany passed away of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest in New York City at the age of 63 on January 12, 1988.

was the focus of a 1980 documentary titled, Joe Albany… A Jazz Life. His daughter Amy-Jo wrote a memoir about her father called Low Down: Junk, Jazz, and Other Fairy Tales from Childhood. The book was adapted for the screen and released in 2014 as the biopic Low Down.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Michel Maurice Armand Warlop came into the world in Douai, France on January 23, 1911.  A child prodigy, he won every award and prize that existed for the violin in France before attaining the age of 18. he started his musical studies with his mother, a music professor, and entered the Conservatory of Douai, the second oldest in France, at age six.

There he studied with Victor Gallois who had won the Prize of Rome for composition in 1905. At age seven, he played his first public concert accompanied by his mother on the piano and by age eight in 1919 he played his first concert in Paris, to benefit victims of WW1. He transferred to the Conservatory of Lille around the age of 10 and started his studies on the university level at the Conservatory of Paris at age 13.

By mid-1939 Warlop began working permanently with the Raymond Legrand Orchestra, then got called up for military service in September 1939 and left Paris. Soon after hostilities started between Germany and France and he became a German prisoner of war but later released because of his tuberculosis. He returned to France late in February 1941.

Back in Paris, he took up his old chair in Legrand’s orchestra, recorded with the Jazz Dixit and his own string septet Septuor a Cordes from time to time. Both of these units were made up of other musicians in the Legrand organization. Warlop wrote and arranged almost all of the Septour’s music which was in a style that blended a classical string setting with Warlop’s jazz abilities. By 1942 he recorded his own Swing Concerto, however, Disques Swing did not issue it and it sat in the vaults until it was finally released on a CD in 1989.

After the war many French musicians, singers and film stars were accused of supporting the enemy for appearing on German-controlled radio, playing for German troops or touring in Germany. Many were banned from working for various periods of time. Warlop had to sit out for two months and Legrand for one year. He never played again in Paris or recorded after this incident in 1945.

His tuberculosis had finally caught up with him along with his heavy consumption of alcohol and cocaine and violinist Michel Warlop, who preferred to tour as a jazz soloist and in small groups in the south of France, passed away at 36 on March 6, 1947 in Bagnères-de-Luchon, France. His last engagement was with Jimmy Réna’s small group at the Grand Hotel Superbagnières above Luchon, France in the Pyrenees Mountains near the border with Spain.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eberhard Weber was born on January 22, 1940, in Stuttgart, Germany and began recording with several groups as a sideman in the early Sixties and released his first record under his own name The Colours of Chloë, in 1973.

From the early 1960s to the early 1970s, Weber’s closest musical association was with pianist Wolfgang Dauner. Their many mutual projects were diverse, from mainstream jazz to jazz-rock fusion to avant-garde sound experiments. During this period, Weber also played and recorded with pianists Hampton Hawes and Mal Waldron, guitarists Baden Powell de Aquino and Joe Pass, The Mike Gibbs Orchestra, violinist Stephane Grappelli, and many others.

Eberhard has released fourteen records under his own name, all under the ECM label. He has led collaborations with Gary Burton, Ralph Towner, Pat Metheny and Jan Garbarek. The mid-1970s saw Weber forming his own group, Colours, with Charlie Mariano, Rainer Brüninghaus and Jon Christensen. With John Marshall replacing Christensen they toured extensively and recorded two further records before disbanding.

Since the early 1980s, Weber has regularly collaborated with the British singer-songwriter Kate Bush, toured with Barbara Thompson’s jazz ensemble Paraphernalia, and by the Nineties touring slowed as did recording but he continued to perform until suffering a stroke in 2007, leaving him unable to play. Bassist Eberhard Weber was awarded the prestigious Albert Mangelsdorff-Preis in November 2009.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Francis Paudras was born on January 21, 1935 in Chilly-Mazarin, France. While in his early 20’s then an amateur pianist, Francis became a keen follower of jazz in Paris and in the early 1960s he befriended the ailing, alcoholic Bud Powell, one of the premier musicians of be-bop, who had gone to France with his wife, Altevia Edwards, and her son, Johnny. In 1963, with the help of the musician Johnny Griffin, he checked Powell into a hospital, but by then a custody battle emerged between him and his wife.

Powell was diagnosed with tuberculosis, and for the next year, Francis was his caretaker. When Powell was booked for a six-week engagement at Birdland in Manhattan, in December 1964, Mr. Paudras was his advance man, creating a wave of publicity. The run opened to stunning reviews but quickly worsened as Powell slid back into drinking. At the end of the engagement, Powell decided to remain in New York, where he died in 1966.

Paudras later became a friend and supporter of other musicians, including Bill Evans and Jacky Terrasson. Though his devotion to Powell eventually turned into a personal disappointment, he memorialized his friendship in his 1986 book, La Danse des Infideles that was ultimately adapted for the film Round Midnight that same year. He also co-author, with Chan Parker, of ‘To Bird With Love, a book of photographs published in 1981. He also issued recordings of Powell and others through the years, including some he made privately in the early Sixties.

Commercial artist, author, collector of jazz-related artifacts and patron of jazz musicians Francis Paudras passed away by committing suicide at his castle on November 26, 1997 in Antigny, France. He was 62.

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