Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mario Bauzá was born on April 28, 1911 in Havana, Cuba and was classically trained. By age nine he was playing clarinet in the Havana Philharmonic Orchestra and would stay there for the next three years. In 1925 he ventured to New York to record with Maestro Antonio Maria Romeu’s band “Charanga Francesca”. He was fourteen. Five years later he returned to New York and reputedly learned to play trumpet in two weeks to become a part of the Don Azpiazu Orchestra.

Bauzá became lead trumpeter and musical director for Chick Webb’s Orchestra by 1933, and it was during his time with Webb that Bauzá both met fellow trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and discovered and brought into the band singer Ella Fitzgerald. 1938 saw Bauzá joining Cab Calloway’s band, later convincing Calloway to hire Dizzy as well, with whom Bauzá would continue to collaborate even several years after he left Calloway’s band in 1940. The fusion of Bauzá’s Cuban musical heritage and Gillespie’s advancements in bebop eventually culminated in the development of cubop, one of the first forms of what is commonly referred to as Latin jazz.

Bauzá became musical director of Machito and his Afro-Cubans in 1941, a band led by his brother-in-law, Frank Grillo, also known as Machito, and in 1942 he brought a young timbales player named Tito Puente into the fold. For the next 30 years Bauzá remained director of the band up until 1976 where he began working sparingly leading his own Afro-Cuban orchestra through the eighties and into the early 90s, where his last band made a guest appearance on The Cosby Show.

Mario Bauzá, who died in New York City on July 11, 1993, was one of the first musicians to introduce Latin music to the United States by bringing Cuban musical styles into the New York jazz scene. He was one of the most influential figures in the development of Afro-Cuban music, and his innovative work and musical contributions have many jazz historians to call him the “Founding Father of Latin Jazz”.

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From Broadway To 52nd Street

Very Warm For May opened at the Alvin Theatre on November 17, 1939. Vincente Minnelli directed the play and the music was scored by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein, producing such favorites at the time as “All In Fun” and “In The Heart Of The Dark” but it was “All The Things You Are” that went on to become a jazz standard. However, the musical that starred June Allyson, Eve Arden and Vera-Ellen ran on Broadway for only two months, received mixed reviews and closed after only 59 performances.

The Story: The plot that had Long Island society girl May Graham fleeing threatening gangsters and hiding out with an avant-garde summer stock troupe in Connecticut. The first version of the show, which opened out of town, received rave reviews and played to sold-out houses. However, producer Max Gordon had been away when the show opened out of town and when he saw it, he hated the gangster subplot and had it removed. This could have been a contributing factor to the mixed reviews and the audience enjoyment.

Broadway History: Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush destination of Manhattan by its indigenous Native American inhabitants.This trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island.

Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail soon became the main road through the island from Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David de Vries gives the first mention of the trail in his journal for the year 1642, “the Wickquasgeck Road over which the Indians passed daily”. Although current street signs are simply labeled as “Broadway”, in a 1776 map of New York City, Broadway is explicitly labeled “Broadway Street”.In the mid-eighteenth century, part of Broadway in what is now lower Manhattan was known as Great George Street.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Connie Kay, the drummer for the longstanding Modern Jazz Quartet was born Conrad Henry Kirnon on April 27, 1927, in Tuckahoe, New York.  The self-taught drummer played with Sir Charles Thompson in the 40s along with Miles Davis and Cat Anderson.

By the late forties to the mid-fifties he played off and on with Lester Young, Beryl Booker, Stan Getz, Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Parker and others. But it wasn’t until 1955 when replacing Kenny Clarke, that Kay found his home with the Modern Jazz Quartet, an association that would last nearly twenty years.

After the dissolution of the MJQ, Connie played with Chet Baker, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Heath, Jim Hall and Paul Desmond. In the 70s he worked with Tommy Flanagan, Soprano Summit, Benny Goodman and became the house drummer at Eddie Condon’s club.

In 1981 the MJQ reorganized to play festivals and later on a permanent six-months-per-year basis. When Kay’s health began to suffer, the drummer was replaced first by Mickey Roker and then by Albert “Tootie” Heath.

Kay was known for his subtle and quietly effortless playing with the MJQ, but beyond that memorable interaction he was an invaluable asset to everyone he came in contact with. He played with great discretion and restraint making his contribution to one of the great aggregations of all time.

Connie Kay died in New York City on 30 November 1994. He was sixty-seven years old.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Teddy Edwards was born Theodore Marcus Edwards in Jackson, Mississippi on April 26, 1924. Learning to play at a very early age he began on alto, then clarinet, finally settling on the tenor. His first professional gig was with the Royal Mississippians prior to his uncle sending for him in Detroit where he lived for a short time. Although presented with the chance for greater opportunities family illness took him back to Jackson.

Venturing to Louisiana he met Ernie Fields who persuaded him to join his band and touring through Tampa, Washington, DC thwarted his dream of New York and Edwards ended up in Los Angeles, which would become his permanent residence in 1945. It was during this period in his career when he started playing with Howard McGhee’s band that Teddy switched to the tenor saxophone.

Teddy played with such notables as Charlie Parker, Roy Milton, Wynonie Harris, Vince Guaraldi, Joe Castro, Ernie Andrews among others and recording “The Duel” with Dexter Gordon in 1947 set Edwards up as a dueling legend. As a leader, throughout the 50s and 60s he worked with Max Roach, Clifford Brown, Benny Carter, Benny Goodman, Milt Jackson Sarah Vaughan, Tom Waits and Jimmy Smith, recording on Onyx, Pacific Jazz, Contemporary, Prestige and other labels, writing his best known composition Sunset Eyes.

Teddy Edwards, who became one of the most influential tenor saxophonists  passed away on April 20, 2003. His sound exemplified an affinity for the blues and tone-quality that accompanies within a fluent post-bop vocabulary.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Ella Jane Fitzgerald was born on April 25, 1917 in Newport News, Virginia, the child of common law parents who separated shortly after her birth. Her mother moved her to Yonkers, New York and as a child she wanted to be a dancer but loved listening to the jazz of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby and The Boswell Sisters.

However, losing her mother to a heart attack in 1932 and the subsequent trauma caused her grades to drop, skip school, become a bordello lookout, and become involved with a Mafia affiliated numbers runner. This trouble led to reform school, ultimate escape, homelessness, and apprehension and sent to the Colored Orphan Asylum in the Bronx.

Ella made her singing debut at age 17 on November 21, 1934 at the Apollo Theatre. Pulling in a weekly audience won her the opportunity to compete in the Amateur Nights where she won first prize. Her winning spirit led her to perform with the Tiny Bradshaw band at the Harlem Opera House in 1935, and then to meet Chick Webb who offered her an opportunity to test with the band at a Yale University dance. This led to a regular gig with Webb at the Savoy Ballroom and in 1938 her rendition of the nursery rhyme A-Tisket, A-Tasket that she co-wrote, brought her wide public acclaim. When Webb died in 1939, Ella became the bandleader renaming it Ella Fitzgerald and Her Famous Orchestra, and went on to record nearly 150 songs during this tenure.

Pursuing a solo career she left the band, signed with Decca Records, began working with Norman Granz’s Jazz At The Philharmonic, and saw the demise of swing and the big touring bands. With Granz as her manager creating Verve Records around her and the advent of bebop, Fitzgerald changed her style of singing evident in her work with Dizzy Gillespie. She included scat in her repertoire and her rendition of Flying Home became one of the most influential vocal jazz records. Other songs like Oh, Lady Be Good would enhance her reputation as an important jazz vocalist.

Over the course of a career spanning nearly 60 years she recorded her now famous songbooks, recorded for a host of labels, performed all over the world. Fitzgerald appeared on film in Pete Kelly’s Blues, St. Louis Blues, and Let No Man Write My Epitaph. On television her most famous commercial was with Memorex in which her singing of a note and the subsequent playback shatters a glass – “Is it live or is it Memorex?”

Ella Fitzgerald, the three-octave vocalist noted for her purity of tone, impeccable diction, phrasing, intonation and horn-like improvisation ability is considered one of the supreme interpreters of the Great American Songbook. She has been photographed by Annie Liebovitz, won 14 Grammy awards, received the National Medal of Art by President Ronald Reagan and the Presidential Medal Of Freedom from George H.W. Bush.

After a long battle with diabetes Ella Fitzgerald passed away on June 15, 1996 at the age of 79 in Beverly Hills, California. So important was her contribution to the genre that her career history and archival material are housed at the Archives Center at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History; her personal music arrangements are at The Library of Congress; her extensive cookbook collection was donated to the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University; and her published sheet music collection is at the Schoenberg Library at UCLA.

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