Daily Dose of Jazz…
Malachi Richard Thompson was born on August 21, 1949 in Princeton, Kentucky and moved to Chicago as a child. He credited his interest in the trumpet to hearing Count Basie’s band at the Regal Theatre when he was 11 years old. Malachi worked in the rhythm and blues scene on Chicago’s South Side as a teen and in 1968 he joined the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), spending some time in the AACM big band. Thompson graduated from Governor’s State University in 1974 with a degree in music composition.
He performed and toured with the Operation Breadbasket Big Band, which was affiliated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He has worked with saxophonists Joe Henderson, Jackie McLean, Frank Foster and Archie Shepp among other musicians while living in New York City. He formed his “Freebop” band in 1978, eventually relocating to Washington, D.C., working with Lester Bowie’s Hot Trumpets Repertory Company and formed Africa Brass, inspired by traditional New Orleans brass bands.
With a goal of preserving the Sutherland Theater on Chicago’s South Side, Thompson founded the Sutherland Community Arts Initiative in 1991, a non-profit corporation, and wrote incidental music for a play about the theater. Diagnosed in 1989 with T-cell lymphoma and learning he had one year to live, Thompson claimed he was healed by radiation and reading about jazz. He died in Chicago from a relapse of his cancer on July 16, 2006.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joya Sherrill was born on August 20, 1924 in Bayonne, New Jersey and originally aspired to be a writer. While still in high school her father arranged for an introduction with Duke Ellington in 1942, aged 17. Six months later she joined the orchestra fronting the band as his vocalist. Leaving briefly to attend Wilberforce University, she returned to the group from 1944 to 1946. She had a hit with Ellington’s tune “I’m Beginning to See the Light”.
Subsequently, she worked as a soloist, performing with Rex Stewart, Ray Nance and others into the 1960s. She returned to Ellington for 1959’s A Drum Is A Woman. She toured the U.S. in 1959 and then took a role in the Broadway show “The Long Dream”. She toured with Benny Goodman in the USSR in 1962 and then returned to sing with Ellington in 1963.
One of the first Blacks to host a television program, from 1970 to 1982 she had a children’s television show, “Time for Joya”, later called “Joya’s Fun School. Although she only taped a few years worth of original episodes, the show would be seen in reruns for twelve years. Late in the 1980s she hosted a children’s show in the Middle East.
Joya Sherrill, jazz vocalist, died of complications from leukemia on June 28, 2010 in Great Neck, New York at the age of 85.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmy Rowles was born James G. Rowles on August 19, 1918 in Spokane, Washington and studied at Gonzaga College. After moving to Los Angeles in 1942, he joined Lester Young’s group and also worked with Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, Les Brown, Tommy Dorsey, Tony Bennett and as a studio musician.
In the 1950s and 1960s, he frequently played behind Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee and in 1973, Rowles settled in New York City, where he performed and/or recorded with Zoot Sims and Stan Getz among others. He joined Ella Fitzgerald for nearly three years in 1981 succeeding Paul Smith as her accompanist first performing with her at the Mocambo nightclub in L.A.’s Hollywood district in late 1956. Jimmy appeared on several recording sessions with her in the 1960s and played on Fitzgerald’s final collaboration with Nelson Riddle, The Best Is Yet To Come in 1982.
In 1983, Jimmy worked with Diana Krall in Los Angeles, developing her playing abilities and encouraged her to add singing to her repertoire. He composed several jazz pieces, the best known being “The Peacocks”; accompanied jazz singer Jeri Brown in 1994 on the only album containing only his own compositions, A Timeless Place.
Pianist Jimmy Rowles, who released a number of albums under his own name and explored various idioms including swing and cool jazz, died from cardiovascular disease in Burbank, Los Angeles County, California, at the age of 78 on May 28, 1996.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Lamond was born on August 18, 1920 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and attended the Peabody Conservatory in Philadelphia in the early ‘40s. He played with Sonny Durham and Boyd Raeburn at the outset of his career, and then took over Dave Tough’s spot in Woody Herman’s big band “First Herd” in 1945, remaining until the group disbanded at the end of 1946.
By 1947 he briefly freelanced with musicians including Charlie Parker, and then returned to duty under Herman in his Second Herd, where he remained until its 1949 dissolution. In the 1950s and 1960s Don found work as a session musician, recording in a wide variety of styles.
He performed and recorded with such jazz luminaries as Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Johnny Smith, Benny Goodman, Ruby Braff, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Sonny Stitt, Johnny Guarnieri, Jack Teagarden, Quincy Jones, George Russell and Bob Crosby among others.
Lamond recorded as a bandleader in 1962 with a tentet that included Doc Severinsen, played with George Wein’s Newport Festival band in the late ‘60s, and worked with Red Norvo, Maxine Sullivan and Bucky Pizzarelli in the Seventies. He put together his own swing group that recorded in 1977 and 1982, and recorded a quartet album with his wife Terry singing in 1981. Don Lamond, drummer, bandleader and sideman died on December 23, 2003 in Orlando, Florida at age 83.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
South Pacific hit the stage of the Majestic Theatre on April 7, 1949 in the first of a 1,925 performance run. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein composed the music from the compositions “Happy Talk”, “Some Enchanted Evening” and “A Wonderful Guy” became jazz standards. The musical starred Enzio Pinza, Mary Martin, Juanita Hall, William Tabbert, Betta St. John and Myron Mccormick.
The Story: An American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II falls in love with a middle-aged French expatriate plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of the social consequences should he marry his Asian sweetheart. The issue of racial prejudice is candidly explored throughout the musical, most controversially in the lieutenant’s song, “You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught”. Supporting characters, including a comic petty officer and the Tonkinese girl’s mother, help to tie the stories together. However, Hammerstein’s lack of military knowledge hampered his writing that part of the script, so the director of the original production, Logan, assisted him, receiving credit as co-writer of the book.
Broadway History: The production won an unprecedented 10 Tony Awards including Best Musical, Best Score and Best Libretto. It is the only musical production to win Tony Awards in all four acting categories. Its original cast album was the bestselling record of the 1940s. Due to it’s 1,925 it was ushered into the blockbuster hall of fame surpassing it’s predecessors by more than 800 performance.
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