Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Edward Smith was born June 8, 1904 in Thomaston, Connecticut and began collecting Hot Records from early jazz in the 1920s. He worked with William Russell, Eugene Williams, John Hammond, Hugues Panassié and Charles Delaunay in the Hot Record Society from 1937, from which the jazz label HRS Records was established. Along with Steve Smith, he was editor of the jazz magazine Hot Record Society Rag.
Smith was among the early representatives of jazz criticism in the 1930s, having published essays in journals such as the Symposium, The Daily Worker and Esquire. He published the book Jazzmen with Frederic Ramsey in 1939 and was one of America’s first jazz books along with Wild Hobson’s American Jazz Music.
He wrote articles on groups like the Austin High School Gang as well as interviews with early jazz musicians like Willie Cornish, Papa Jack Laine, Leon Roppolo and Nick LaRocca. With the 1942 The Jazz Record Book, an attempt was made to list a canon of important jazz records, which prompted future writers to produce further books such as Marshall Stearns’ The Story of Jazz, Joachim-Ernst Berendt & Günther Huesmann’s Jazz Book, Barry Kernfeld’s Encyclopedia of Jazz and Allen Lowes That Devilin’ Tune.
Charles also wrote for The New Republic, the magazine Jazz Information and a series of liner notes from folk music albums, folk blues and early jazz players such as Pee Wee Russell, Jelly Roll Morton as well as modern jazz musicians Al Cohn, Miles Davis/Milestones, Chico Hamilton/South Pacific in Hi-Fi and J.J. Johnson/Dial JJ 5. He also wrote the accompaniment text for the LP edition of John Hammond’s Concert Series, From Spirituals to Swing – Carnegie Hall Concerts, 1938/39 on the Vanguard label.
Author and critic Charles Edward Smith, who is considered one of the early serious jazz critics, passed away on December 16, 1970 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jon Georg Balke was born on June 7, 1955 at Furnes, Ringsaker, Norway and started playing classical piano, but switched to blues at 12, and eventually migrated into jazz. At the age of 18 he joined Arild Andersen’s quartet.
By the mid-1980s he was working on his own and has become one of Norway’s leading jazz composers. He was active in the groups of Radka Toneff, the Afrofusion group E´olén, Oslo 13 and Masqualero in the early 1980s. From 1989 he focused on his own projects, such as JøKleBa with Audun Kleive and Per Jørgensen, and the Magnetic North Orchestra.
Forming the percussion group Batagraf in 2002, he created a series of multimedia concerts at Vossajazz festival, labeled Ekstremjazz that included the extreme sports of parachuting, paragliding, hang-gliding, and bmx biking. In 2016 he launched the solo piano concept Warp, with a subtle use of live electronics accompanying the grand piano in live performances.
Pianist and composer Jon Balke has received numerous awards for his contributions to jazz, has been an artist in residence at Moldejazz and currently works with his Magnetic North Orchestra.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Melvin Lunceford was born on June 6, 1902 on a 53 acre farm in the Evergreen community, west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mississippi. They moved seven months after his birth to his other’s hometown of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and as a child he learned several instruments. By high school they were living in Denver, Colorado where he studied music under Wilberforce J. Whiteman, father of bandleader Paul Whiteman. He went on to continue his studies at Fisk University. By 1922, he was playing alto saxophone in a local band led by the violinist George Morrison which included Andy Kirk, another musician destined for fame as a bandleader.
In 1927 he organized a student band at Manassas High School in Memphis, Tennessee called the Chickasaw Syncopators, and later changed to the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra. Under the new name, the band started its professional career in 1929 and made its first recordings in 1930. He gained recognition as the first public high school band director in Memphis. After a period of touring, the band accepted a booking at the Harlem nightclub The Cotton Club in 1934 for their revue ‘Cotton Club Parade’ starring Adelaide Hall. His orchestra, with their tight musicianship and the often outrageous humor in their music and lyrics, made an ideal band for the club, and his reputation began to steadily grow.
The band’s style of playing was based its ensemble work and for using a two-beat rhythm, called the Lunceford two-beat, as opposed to the standard four-beat rhythm, a distinction made possible by the imaginative arrangements by trumpeter Sy Oliver. Comedy and vaudeville also played a distinct part in Jimmie’s presentation incorporating costumes, skits and jabs at mainstream white bands.
Over the next decade the orchestra recorded on the Decca and Vocalion labels, toured Europe extensively, lost arranger Oliver to the Dorsey band and appeared in the movie Blues In The Night. Unfortunately, most of Lunceford’s sidemen were underpaid and left for better paying bands, leading to the band’s decline.
On July 12, 1947 while signing autographs at a local record store in Seaside, Oregon, saxophonist, flautist and bandleader Jimmie Lunceford collapsed and passed away on the way to the hospital. Accounts from other bandmates who also got sick within hours of the meal, substantiate the claims that they were poisoned by a disgruntled restaurant owner unhappy with having to serve Negroes. However the official autopsy has his caused of death as coronary occlusion.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Koby Hayon was born June 5, 1972 in Jerusalem, Israel and studied guitar at the Rimon School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in Tel Aviv. While there he gained experience as a guitarist with the DGK Trio, Hulon Big Band, and many other notable groups.
Moving to the United States in 2001, he earned his BFA in Jazz Performance at SUNY Purchase, was a recipient of the Ullendorff Memorial Foundation Scholarship, and studied with John Abercrombie, Hal Galper, Todd Coolman, and Jon Faddis. In 2009, Hayon formed the Koby Hayon Jazz Trio. With bandmates Kermit Driscoll and Jerome Morris, he fuses his heritage with his vast musical training by performing classic Israeli songs in a jazz setting, as well as his own compositions. In addition he is part of Trio Shalva with pianist Assaf Gleizner and percussionist Nadav Snir-Zelniker.
As a sideman, Hayon has performed and toured throughout Western New York and Canada, playing and recording with countless bands, from Dixie/Swing Band, led by the legendary Sol Yaged, to playing alongside bassist Bill Crow and with various bands playing traditional Israeli music.
In addition to playing live music where he can be heard regularly at the 55bar, Cornelia St. Cafe, Watercolor Cafe, Birdland and other reputable New York clubs. Hayon is the musical director of “Nigunim – A Festival of New Improvised Jewish Music” and through his efforts, the festival became a recipient of the Arts Project Grant from Westchester Arts Council.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ted Daniel was born June 4, 1943 in Ossining, New York and studied trumpet in elementary school. He began his professional career playing local gigs with his childhood friend, guitarist Sonny Sharrock. He briefly attended Berklee School of Music and Southern Illinois University, before a tour of duty with U.S. Army Bands. After his discharge from the Army, Daniel attended Central State College in Ohio, on a full music scholarship, where he met and studied with Dr. Makanda Ken McIntyre. After a year, Daniel returned to New York City and eventually received a bachelor of music degree in theory and composition from the City College of New York.
Beginning his recording career while studying in Ohio he returned briefly to New York to record Sonny Sharrock’s first album Black Woman. His second recording was with the band Brute Force that he co-led with his brother, Richard. The recording was titled Brute Force on the Embryo label and was produced by Herbie Mann. Since then, Daniel has participated in more than 30 published recordings with such artists as: Archie Shepp, Dewey Redman, Andrew Cyrille, Sam Rivers, Billy Bang, Tatsuya Nakamura and Henry Threadgill.
Daniel has produced three albums under his own name: The Ted Daniel Sextet on Ujamaa Records, Tapestry on Sun Records, and In The Beginning on Altura recordings. This recording features a twelve-piece ensemble including such artist as Oliver Lake, Arthur Blythe, Charles Tyler and David Murray. Eventually this ensemble evolved into a larger group called “Energy”.
As an educator Ted has held workshops at Amherst College, Bennington College, Williams College and the University of Hosei in Tokyo, Japan. He has also conducted a seminar in Madrid, Spain, as well as work in his community conducting summer music workshops for high and college age students.
Daniel has received a NEA compositional grant, was awarded Talent Deserving Wider Recognition from Downbeat Magazine. Presently, trumpeter Ted Daniel is writing and performing with his new group, the International Brass and Membrane Corporation (IBMC).
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