Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Theodore Straight was born on January 16, 1891 in Chicago, Illinois. He started his career in 1909 at 18 accompanying singer Gene Greene in Vaudeville. In 1916, he began working at the Imperial Piano Roll Company in Chicago, where he recorded dozens of piano rolls.
Becoming a popular bandleader around town during the Jazz Age, his band, the Charley Straight Orchestra, had a long term engagement at the Rendezvous Café from 1922 to 1925 and recorded for Paramount Records and Brunswick Records during the decade.
This period also saw Straight working with Roy Bargy on the latter’s eight Piano Syncopations. Besides working as a pianist or leading an orchestra, he also composed and arranged music, both ragtime and jazz.
Pianist, bandleader and composer Charley Straight transitioned on September 22, 1940 in Chicago after being struck by an automobile while working as a city sanitary inspector. He was emerging from a manhole in the street.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ojārs Raimonds Pauls was born January 12, 1936 in Iļģuciems, Riga, Latvia and is the second child of a glass blowing factory worker and a seamstress. His father played drums and his grandfather played the violin, and following in his grandfather’s footsteps he is enrolled into Riga’s institute of Music kindergarten branch. Being too young and his fingers unfit for playing violin, he started on the piano.
By 1943 he was studying at Riga’s 7th Elementary school while continuing piano lessons with professor Valerijs Zosts and teachers Emma Eglīte and Juta Daugule. 1946 saw Raimonds admitted to the Secondary Musical School of Emīls Dārziņš, combining his studies at the elementary school for three years.
When he turns 14, Pauls was playing piano at restaurants and clubs with a violin and saxophone virtuoso Gunārs Kušķis. Five years later he completed his studies at the Riga’s 7th Elementary school, however, during this time, he independently developed a liking for playing jazz by studying and imitating various jazz records.
He would go on to compose for musicals, ballets, theater performances, puppet shows, films, choirs, and instrumentals, He has received several honors from his home country, the USSR, Sweden, Japan and Armenia.
Composer, arranger and pianist Raimonds Pauls, who was the Minister of Culture of Latvia from 1988 to 1993, continues to record and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Elmer Schoebel was born in East St. Louis, Illinois on September 8, 1896. Early in his career he played along to silent films in Champaign, Illinois. After moving on to vaudeville late in the 1910s, he played with the 20th Century Jazz Band in Chicago, Illinois in 1920.
1922-23 saw him as a member of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, then led his own band, known variously as the Midway Gardens Orchestra, the Original Memphis Melody Boys and the Chicago Blues Dance Orchestra, before joining Isham Jones in 1925. After returning to Chicago, Elmer played with Louis Panico and Art Kassel, and arranged for the Melrose Publishing House.
By the 1930s, Schoebel was writing and arranging, working as the chief arranger for the Warner Brothers publishing division. From the 1940s onward he did some performing with Conrad Janis, Blue Steele’s Rhythm Rebels (1958), and with his own ensembles in St. Petersburg, Florida. He continued to play up until his death.
Schoebel wrote a number of standards, including Bugle Call Rag, Stomp Off- Let’s Go, Nobody’s Sweetheart Now, Farewell Blues, and Prince of Wails. While a member of the New Orleans Rhythm Kings he wrote I Never Knew What A Girl Could Do, Oriental, and Discontented Blues.
Pianist, composer and arranger Elmer Schoebel, who as a leader only recorded one of his own compositions in 1929 titled Prince of Wails, transitioned on December 14, 1970.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joki Freund was born Walter Jakob Freund on September 5, 1926 in Höchst, Frankfurt am Main, Germany. He began playing the accordion as a child, switching to tenor saxophone after World War II ended.
Early in the postwar era, he played with Joe Quitter, Carlo Bohlander, Gerry Weinkopf, Joe Klimm, and Jutta Hipp, before forming his own ensemble. He began performing with American musicians, including Donald Byrd, Art Taylor, and Doug Watkins during their European festival appearances.
He went on to play with and arranged for Albert Mangelsdorff in the jazz orchestra of Hessischer Rundfunk, and Erwin Lehn in the Süddeutscher Rundfunk orchestra. He played with the Frankfurt Jazz Ensemble on soprano saxophone in the 1970s, also performing as a leader around this time.
Saxophonist Joki Freund, who predominantly played in a quintet setting but also in orchestras or big bands, transitioned on February 15, 2012 in Schwalbach am Taunus, Germany.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Warren Covington was born on August 7, 1921 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and played with Isham Jones in 1939, then with Les Brown in 1945-46 and Gene Krupa in late 1946. Following this he became a staff musician for CBS radio.
By the end of the decade he was working with Ralph Flanagan and again in the mid Fifties. He played briefly with Tommy Dorsey but by 1956 he replaced Eddie Grady as leader of the Commanders, a Decca recording and touring band which lasted until the middle of 1957. Covington recorded two albums and one single with this band.
Post Tommy Dorsey’s sudden death in 1956, the band continued under the direction of Jimmy Dorsey. However, Tommy’s estate took back his arrangements and approached Warren to form a new Tommy Dorsey band, which he led, touring and recording for Decca, into 1961. Among his hits with the Dorsey band was Tea for Two Cha Cha, which sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc.
A player who also occasionally played, with a variety of the baritone horn, baritone and tenor saxophone, Covington participated in the big bands of Charles Mingus, Randy Weston, Bobby Hackett, and George Benson on recordings, and also a number of film soundtracks.
Big band trombonist Warren Covington, who was also an active session player, arranger and bandleder, transitioned on August 24, 1999 in New York.
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