Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Kynard was born in St. Louis, Missouri on February 20, 1933 and first played piano then switched to organ and led a trio in Kansas City. The trio included Tex Johnson on flute and saxophone, and Leroy Anderson on drums.
In 1963, he settled in Los Angeles, California and his band featured guitarists Cal Green and Ray Crawford, drummer Johnny Kirkwood. Between 1963 to 1973 Charles recorded ten albums as a leader, and ten albums as a sideman with Johnny Almond, Paul Jeffrey, Les McCann, Blue Mitchell, Howard Roberts, Clifford Scott, Sonny Stitt, and Tom Waits.
Organist Charles Kynard died on July 8, 1979.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roberto Magris was born June 19, 1959 in Trieste, Italy. By the 1980s he was leading the jazz trio Gruppo Jazz Marca with whom he recorded three albums, Comunicazione Sonora, Aria di Città and Mitteleuropa. In 1987 he put together an Italian quartet that stayed together for nearly 20 years, touring Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America and recording two albums, Life in Israel and Maliblues.
In the 1990s he founded the acid-jazz groups DMA Urban Jazz Funk and Alfabeats Nu Jazz, performing in Europe and in America. In 1998 Magris formed the Europlane Orchestra that included several jazz musicians from various European countries. With the Europlane Orchestra he recorded three albums Live At Zooest, Plays Kurt Weill, and Current Views.
2005 saw Magris partnering with Hungarian saxophonist Tony Lakatos on the album Check-In in 2005 he went on to collaborate with bassist Art Davis and drummer Jimmy “Junebug” Jackson on the album Kansas City Outbound issued by JMood. That same year, he hooked up with alto saxophonist Herb Geller on the album Il Bello del Jazz and some years later, JMood released another album with Herb Geller titled An Evening with Herb Geller & The Roberto Magris Trio – Live in Europe 2009.
During his time in the United States, Magris has become the musical director of JMood and has also recorded two albums in tribute to the trumpeter Lee Morgan, two trio albums with Elisa Pruett and Albert “Tootie” Heath devoted to the music of pianist Elmo Hope, and another to the legacy of alto saxophonist Julian “Cannonball” Adderley.
While in Los Angeles, California he recorded with Idris Muhammad and saxmen Paul Carr and Michael O’Neill, one album with Sam Reed, a double CD set in tribute to the bebop era, three albums with his trio from Kansas City and performed with his sextet that included trumpeter Brian Lynch at the WDNA Jazz Gallery in Miami, Florida. In Chicago, Illinois he recorded with a group including trumpeter Eric Jacobson and tenor saxophonist Mark Colby.
His influences have been Wynton Kelly, Tommy Flanagan, Bill Evans, Kenny Drew, Jaki Byard, Randy Weston, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, Paul Bley, Don Pullen, and Steve Kuhn. He has recorded nearly three dozen albums as a leader or as a member of groups he has founded. Pianist, composer and arranger Roberto Magris continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ronny Jordan was born Robert Lawrence Albert Simpson on November 29, 1962 in London, England. His debut release in 1992 The Antidote gained critical acclaim but he truly came to prominence after being featured on Guru’s Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1, released in 1993. Following this release his recordings were all featured on the Billboard charts.
He was also one of the artists whose recordings are featured on the 1994 compilation album Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool to benefit the Red Hot Organization. Jordan’s song The Jackal from his 1993 album The Quiet Revolution gained wide notoriety when actress Allison Janney in the role of C. J. Cregg lip-synched it in The West Wing episode “Six Meetings Before Lunch” and also on the Arsenio Hall Show in 2013.
Ronny recorded nine albums as a leader and contributed to four more as a sideman, was the recipient of the MOBO Best Jazz Act Award, the Gibson Guitar Best Jazz Guitarist Award, and his 2000 release, A Brighter Day, was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Jazz Album.
Guitarist Ronny Jordan passed away on January 13, 2014. He was known for blending jazz with hip-hop and R&B in his playing and composing and by the end of the twentieth century he was an integral part of the acid jazz movement.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Hunter was born on May 23, 1967 in Rhode Island but by age four his mom packed him and his younger sister in an old yellow school bus and headed west. After several years living on a commune in Mendocino County they settled in Berkeley, California and graduating from Berkeley High School and taking lessons from guitar teacher Joe Satriani. At eighteen he moved to Paris, becoming a professional busker, working 8 to 12 hours a day to make ends meet.
Returning to the Bay area, he played a seven-string guitar and organ in Michael Franit’s political rap group, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy. Since the 1993 debut of his self-titled Charlie Hunter Trio with John Ellis on sax and Jay Lane on drums, he has recorded seventeen albums. He co-founded Garage A Trois, a jazz fusion band with Stanton Moore and Sherik, has collaborated with Bobby Previte on the ongoing project Groundtruther, and has recorded and toured with Previte’s The Coalition of the Willing.
Charlie has recorded with Christian McBride, has played in the band T.J. Kirk, that merged the music of Thelonious Monk, James Brown and Rahsaan Roland Kirk. He is an inaugural member of the Independent Music Awards judging panel to support independent artists, and over the years has performed and recorded with Erik Deutch, Tony Mason, Eric Kalb, Ben Goldberg, Ron Miles, Scott Amendola, and Curtis Fowlkes, continuing to perform, compose and tour.
Give The Gift Of Knowledge
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lonnie Liston Smith, Jr. was born into a musical family on December 28, 1940 in Richmond, Virginia. With his father a member of Richmond Gospel music group The Harmonizing Four, as a child he was privy to groups such as the Swan Silvertones and the Soul Stirrers with a young Sam Cooke at his house. He learned piano, tuba and trumpet in high school and college, graduating from Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland with a degree in music education.
Influenced by Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Miles Davis, while still a teenager at college, Smith became well known locally as a backing vocalist and pianist. He played the Baltimore area with Gary Bartz, Grachan Moncur, Mickey Bass, backed Betty Carter and Ethel Ennis and played in the house band at the Royal Theatre.
1963 saw him moving to New York, once again with Carter for a year followed by Rahsaan Roland Kirk and recording Here Comes The Whistleman. After this stint with Kirk he joined Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers sharing the piano seat with Mike Nock and Keith Jarrett and then with Max Roach. He would go on to play with Pharoah Sanders improvising and pushing the creative boundaries of free jazz. It is at this point that Smith began experimenting with electric keyboards:
In 1969 Lonnie also backed Sanders vocalist Leon Thomas on his first album Spirits Known and Unknown, played with Gato Barbieri on The Third World, and with Miles Davis for On The Corner. He formed the Cosmic Echoes in 1973 with Cecil McBee, George Barron, Joe Beck, David Lee, James Mtume, Sonny Morgan, Badal Roy and Geeta Vashi. The group blended fusion, soul and funk on several recordings for Flying Dutchman Records over the next twelve years.
After the crossover success of the 1970s, he moved into the smooth jazz format, however, public interest slowly waned. By the mid-Eighties he returned to his acoustic roots with McBee and Al Foster recording a session of standards for Bob Thiele’s Startrak label. But dealing with the labels bottom line he returned to smooth jazz working with Phyllis Hyman and Stanley Turrentine. He also delved into hip-hop working with rapper Guru on his groundbreaking Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1. Pianist and keyboardist Lonnie Liston Smith established his own label Loveland, gathered greater recognition with Sony International distributing his Cosmic Echoes years, and has since continued to compose, record and tour to festivals worldwide.
Take A Dose On The Road
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