Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Godfrey Wettling was born on November 28, 1907 in Topeka, Kansas. He was one of the young Chicagoans who fell in love with jazz after hearing King Oliver’s band with Louis Armstrong on second cornet at Lincoln Gardens in the early 1920s. Oliver’s drummer, Baby Dodds, made a particular and lasting impression on him.
Wettling went on to work with the big bands of Artie Shaw, Bunny Berigan, Red Norvo, Paul Whiteman, and Harpo Marx, but he was at his best with bands led by Eddie Condon, Muggsy Spanier, and himself. In these small settings he demonstrated the arts of dynamics and responding to a particular soloist that he had learned from Dodds.
A member of some of Condon’s bands, George was in the company of Wild Bill Davison, Billy Butterfield, Edmond Hall, Peanuts Hucko, Pee Wee Russell, Cutty Cutshall, Gene Schroeder, Ralph Sutton, and Walter Page. By 1957 he was touring England with a Condon band that included Davison, Cutshall, and Schroeder.
Toward the end of his life, he, like his friend clarinetist Pee Wee Russell, took up painting and was influenced by the American cubist Stuart Davis. Jazz, swing and Dixieland drummer George Wettling, active from the 1920s to the 1950s, passed away on June 6, 1968 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rebecca Coupe Franks was born on November 27, 1961 in San Jose, California. It was natural that she started playing trumpet when she was ten, as her brother, mother, grandfather, and great uncle all were trumpeters.
A professional by the time she was 15, Rebecca moved to New York City saw her attending New York University from 1990 to 1991 and practicing on the roof of the music building overlooking Lower Manhattan.
In the early 1990’s, she made a strong impression with her two albums for the Justice label. Her 1992 release Suit of Armor included appearances by saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Kenny Barron and bassist Buster Williams. During the 2000s she self-released several records, including Exhibition: Tribute to Joe Henderson.
Trumpeter Rebecca Coupe Franks continues to compose, record, perform and tour with her Groovemobile, which is a five piece band playing a mix of r&b, jazz and soul.
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Requisites
Ghetto Music is the 1968 debut album recorded by trumpeter Eddie Gale and released on the Blue Note label. The album seamlessly blends the new jazz of the ’60s with gospel, soul, and the blues. It was very much representative of the upheaval and turbulence in America at that time, being recorded just five months after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
The Allmusic Guide awarded the album 5 stars and stated “The aesthetic and cultural merits of Eddie Gale’s Ghetto Music cannot be overstated. This is some of the most spiritually engaged, forward-thinking, and finely wrought music of 1968”.
Recorded at Rudy Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey on September 20, 1968. All five compositions are Gale originals: The Rain, Fulton Street, A Understanding, A Walk With Thee and The Coming of Gwilu.
The Band: Eddie Gale – trumpet, thumb piano, steel drum, bird whistle, Russell Lyle – tenor saxophone, flute, Jo Ann Gale Stevens – guitar, vocals, James “Tokio” Reid, Judah Samuel – bass, Richard Hackett, Thomas Holman – drums, Elaine Beener – lead vocals, Sylvia Bibbs, Barbara Dove, Evelyn Goodwin, Art Jenkins, Fulumi Prince, Edward Walrond, Sondra Walston, Mildred Weston, and Norman Wright – vocals.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Henry Levine was born on November 26, 1907 in London, England but his family emigrated to the United States in 1908. In 1917, he heard Nick LaRocca with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and decided to become a musician and learn trumpet.
From 1925 he worked as a professional musician with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, and from the mid-1920s in various studio bands with Nat Shilkret and Vincent Lopez. From 1927 he performed with the British bandleader Bert Ambrose, and also made recordings with Fred Elizalde in London.
Returning to the States he played with Cass Hagan and Rudy Vallee before working again as a studio musician. He was head of the NBC Chamber Music Society of Lower Basin Street Jazz Group, recording several sessions with them. After the end of the Second World War Levine worked as a director of radio, television and hotel orchestras.
In 1961 he went moved to Las Vegas, Nevada and retired in 1982. He has been lauded by Allmusic as an excellent lead trumpeter and effective soloist. Under his own name, he recorded a single with jazz standards such as Rockin ‘Chair and I’ve Found a New Baby for RCA Victor. British-American trumpeter Henry “Hot Lips” Levine passed away in May 1989.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Will Goble was born on November 25, 1983 in Durham, NC and became interested in Jazz and related art forms growing up within the creative music scene thriving around his city. Leaving home for Florida State University in Tallahassee in the early 2000s, he quickly flourished under the tutelage of bassist Rodney Jordan and famed pianist Marcus Roberts. His relationship with Roberts extended onto the bandstand as Marcus invited Will to perform with his trio on a number of performances through the years.
Through Roberts, Will met drummer and vibraphonist Jason Marsalis and eventually joined hiss quartet in 2008. He went on to record with Marsalis on Music Update, In a World of Mallets and The 21st Century Trad Band. Relocating to Atlanta, Georgia he set about documenting his work as a bandleader. His debut album, Some Stories Tells No Lies, features his trio with drummer Dave Potter and pianist Austin Johnson, joined by trumpeter Marcus Printup and saxophonist Chad Eby. His sophomore project, Consider The Blues was released in 2016 on OA2 Records with Potter, pianist Louis Heriveaux and saxophonist Gregory Tardy.
Goble returned home to Durham, continuing to tour with Marsalis and perform frequently as a sideman and bandleader. has performed with Marcus and Joan Belgrave, Wessell Anderson, Vincent Gardner, Eric Reed, Warren Wolf, Martin Bejerano, Nick Finzer, Eric Rasmussen, George Colligan, Lew Soloff, Etienne Charles, Michael Kocour, Fred Wesley and many others.
An active educator, he spent several years on the faculty at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, as the coordinator of the College Prep Program at the Phoenix Conservatory of Music where he taught jazz ensembles and music theory, and as a community teaching artist at The Nash, the performance and education home of Jazz In Arizona. Will Goble is steadily carving out a unique space for himself as a bassist, composer, bandleader, and educator.
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