Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Wessell “Warmdaddy” Anderson was born on November 27, 1966 in Brooklyn, New York and grew up in the tough Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights neighborhoods. By 14 he was deeply immersed in jazz at the urging of his father, who was a drummer. He played alto saxophone in local clubs from his early teenage years, and studied at the Jazzmobile workshops with Frank Wess, Charles Davis and Frank Foster. He met Branford Marsalis who convinced him to study with clarinetist Alvin Batiste at Southern University in Louisiana.
Anderson began touring with the Wynton Marsalis Septet, collaborating with Marsalis through the middle of the 1990s helping to make some of the most defining music. He continued to sit in the first alto chair with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra. In 1994, he signed and released his debut album, “Warmdaddy In The Garden of Swing” with Atlantic Records followed by his sophomore release “The Ways of Warmdaddy” and then “Live at the Village Vanguard”.
Over the years he develop his sound combining New Orleans jazz with the sweeping blues style of Cannonball Adderley. He has played with contemporaries Eric Reed, Irvin Mayfield, Steve Kirby, Xavier Davis, Jaz Sawyer and Ben Wolfe among others while maintaining an East Lansing, Michigan restaurant called “Gumbo & Jazz”.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nesuhi Ertegun was born November 26, 1917 in Istanbul, Turkey, moving to Washington, DC when his father was appointed Ambassador to the United States in 1935. From an early age, Nesuhi’s primary musical interest was jazz, having attended concerts in Europe. While at the Turkish Embassy he also promoted jazz concerts during 1941-44.
After his father’s death in 1944, Ertegun stayed in the U.S., moved to California, got married and established the Crescent record label. He purchased Jazz Man Records and issued traditional jazz recordings producing classic Kid Ory revival recordings plus sessions with Pete Daily and Turk Murphy. He went on to work with Contemporary Records and Imperial Records developing their jazz catalog for the later.
In 1955, he was preparing to work for Imperial Records to develop their jazz record line and develop a catalog of LPs. However, his younger brother Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler persuaded him to become a partner in Atlantic Records over the jazz and LP department.
As a producer he worked with John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ray Charles, Chris Connor, the Drifters, Bobby Darin, Roberta Flack and numerous others while being first recruiting songwriters and producers Leiber and Stoller. He went on to establish WEA International venturing into Latin-American rockers and other world music groups and remained at the helm until his retirement in 1987.
Nesuhi Ertegun, writer, editor, producer, educator, art collector and soccer promoter died on July 15, 1989, at the age of 71, due to complications following cancer surgery. He was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, awarded the Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement, the National Soccer Hall of Fame and had the Nesuhi Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame at Jazz at Lincoln Center dedicated to him.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Nathaniel Adderley was born on November 25, 1931 in Tampa, Florida but grew up in Tallahassee when both his parents were hired to teach at Florida A&M University. While living in Tallahassee in the early 40s, he and his brother Julian played with Ray Charles, in the ‘50s he worked with his brother’s original group, and with Lionel Hampton and J. J. Johnson.
In 1959 joined his brother’s new quintet and stayed with it until Cannonball’s death in 1975. It was during this tenure that Nat composed “Work Song,” “Jive Samba,” and “The Old Country” for this group that have since become jazz standards.
After his brother’s death he led his own groups and recorded extensively working with Ron Carter, Sonny fortune, Johnny Griffin, Antonio Hart and Vincent Herring, among others. Adderley moved to Harlem in the 1960s, Teaneck, New Jersey in the 1970s, before moving to Lakeland, Florida where he was instrumental in the founding and development of the annual Child of the Sun Jazz Festival, held annually at Florida Southern College.
Nat Adderley, cornetists and trumpeter in the hard bop and soul jazz genres, lived with diabetes throughout his career, an illness that resulted in his death from complications on January 2, 2000. He left the jazz world a body of work that has been memorialized by a host of jazz musicians.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Teddy Wilson was born Theodore Shaw Wilson in Austin, Texas on November 24, 1912. By his teenage years he was enamored with the music of Bix Beiderbecke and King Oliver and decided to make a living playing jazz. He studied piano and violin at Tuskegee Institute where his father was head of the English Department and his mother was chief librarian. A year later he joined Speed Webb’s band as one of seven arrangers, re-orchestrating in close harmony the songs of Beiderbecke and Hodges. He went on to join Louis Armstrong, understudying Earl Hines in his Grand Terrace Café Orchestra, and Benny Carter’s Chocolate Dandies.
By 1935 Teddy joined Benny Goodman trio with Gene Krupa becoming the first black musician to perform in public with a previously all-white jazz group. With the help of jazz producer John Hammond, Wilson got a contract with Brunswick Records in 1935 and started recording hot swing arrangements of popular songs of the day with the growing jukebox trade in mind. He recorded fifty hit records with various singers including Lena Horne, Helen Ward and Ella Fitzgerald while also participating in sessions with Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Charlie Shavers, Red Norvo, Buck Clayton and Ben Webster.
Wilson formed his own short-lived big band in 1939 and then led a sextet at Café Society from 1940 to 1944. In the 1950s he taught at the Julliard School, appeared as himself in the motion picture The Benny Goodman Story, and during the next two decades lived quietly in suburban New Jersey. Pianist and arranger Teddy Wilson passed away on July 31, 1986 in New Britain, Connecticut at age 73.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
West Side Story opened at the Winter Garden Theatre on September 26, 1957. Stephen Sondheim and Leonard Bernstein composed and wrote the score for the musical that ran 732 performances. Larry Kert, Carol Lawrence, Chita Rivera, Mickey Cain and Ken Leroy were the stars of the show that gave the jazz world such classics as Somewhere, I Feel Pretty, Tonight, Maria and Cool.
The Story: On the streets of West Side Manhattan in the late summer of 1957, there is mounting racial tension between rival white American and Puerto Rican gangs to maintain control of the neighborhood – the Jets and the Sharks. An interracial relationship blossoms between Tony and Maria who see past their ethnic differences. However, Maria’s brother Bernardo and leader of the Sharks does not want this love-match to succeed. Destined to be short-lived, a rumble between the two gangs ensues, Maria begs Tony to stop it, the fight escalates from lists to knives and Tony ultimately kills Bernardo.
When Bernardo’s girlfriend Anita learns of his death she is overcome with emotion and seeking out Maria, who already knows, discovers Tony is with her. Tony leaves for refuge at Doc’s drugstore after which they learn that Chino was seeking revenge for Bernardo by shooting Tony. Maria begs Anita to go tell Tony but after a mock rape at the hands of the Jets, Anita delivers a different message – that Maria is dead. In shock Tony runs out screaming for Chino to come kill him. On the playground Tony and Maria see each other but before they can embrace Chino shoots and kills Tony.
Broadway History: The Off-Off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as a reaction to Off-Broadway, and a “complete rejection of commercial theatre”.[2] Among the first venues for what would soon be called “Off-Off-Broadway” were coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, particularly the Caffe Cino at 31 Cornelia Street, operated by the eccentric Joe Cino, who early on took a liking to actors and playwrights and agreed to let them stage plays there without bothering to read the plays first, or to even find out much about the content. Also integral to the rise of Off-Off-Broadway were Ella Stewart at La MaMa and Al Carmines at the Judson Poets’ Theater, located at Judson Memorial Church, Playbox Studio, New York Theatre Ensemble, The Old Reliable, The Dove Company and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.
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