Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Theodore G. Brown was born into a musical family on December 1, 1927 in Rochester, New York. He learned banjo and violin from his father who also taught him to read music at six, and clarinet and tenor sax from his uncle. After playing in army bands from 1945 to 1947 and then in Hollywood, California for the following year, he moved to New York City.
He worked with Lennie Tristano and fellow pupils and associates Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh for two years beginning in 1955. During that time Ted recorded a session for Vanguard, worked with Ronnie Ball, and played a date in Hollywood with Warne Marsh.
>Returning to New York City he worked extensively in clubs. Brown recorded with Konitz in 1959, and again in 1976, while leading his own group in the late Seventies. He also worked and recorded with Art Pepper and Hod O’Brien.
Cool jazz tenor saxophonist Ted Brown, who recorded as a leader or co-leader thirteen albums and as a sideman was a part of five albums with Tristano, Marsh and Konitz, is 97 years old.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Henry Bauer was born in New York City on November 14, 1915 and as a child he played ukulele and banjo before switching to guitar. He played with the Jerry Wald band and recorded with Carl Hoff and His Orchestra in 1941, before joining Woody Herman in 1944 as a member of the First Herd. In 1946, he played with Benny Goodman and Jack Teagarden.
Working in small groups led by bassist Chubby Jackson and trombonist Bill Harris, Bauer established himself as a soloist in the bebop movement. In 1946, he began working with Lennie Tristano, enjoying a natural synergy in their style and approach. Their development of intuitive music led to the 1949 session Crosscurrents. He would go on to become a member of the NBC Tonight Show band in New York City and played in the Today Show band at the start of early television.
Continuing his pioneering guitar work in a partnership with Lee Konitz, whose avant-garde saxophone work was a perfect match for Billy’s guitar. The dialogue between the musicians crossed styles from bop and cool to the avant-garde. Their recordings have been described as “some of the most beautiful duet recordings in jazz. Duet For Saxophone and Guitar was an unusual instrument pairing which has been described as redefining the role of jazz guitar.
Bauer made one album under his own name, Plectrist, in 1956. Later, he arranged the song No One that appeared on the album Henry Golis Presents Good Music with Friends in 2007.
Guitarist Billy Bauer died of pneumonia in New York at the age of 89 on June 17, 2005.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Junior Mance was born Julian Clifford Mance, Jr. on October 10, 1928 in Evanston, Illinois. When he was five years old, he started playing piano on an upright where his father taught him to play stride piano and boogie-woogie. With his father’s permission, he had his first professional gig in Chicago, Illinois at the age of ten when his upstairs neighbor, a saxophone player, needed a replacement for a pianist who was ill.
At Roosevelt College in Chicago he signed up for music classes but discovered jazz was forbidden and left before the school year was finished. Mance first played and recorded with Gene Ammons in Chicago in 1947 while he was enrolled at Roosevelt. While on tour in Chicago, Lester Young saw him playing with Ammons and had him sit in. He ended up recording with Young for Savoy Records that year, and reunited with Ammons to record with Sonny Stitt for Prestige Records in 1950.
Drafted into the Army in 1951, two weeks before shipping out to Korea from basic training, Cannonball Adderley helped Mance score a position in the 36th Army Band at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he remained as the company clerk. Back in Chicago after being discharged two years later, Junior immediately started working at the Bee Hive Jazz Club in Chicago. He backed Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and Sonny Stitt among others.
Parker encouraged Mance to move to New York, and in 1954, he recorded with Dinah Washington, touring with her over the next two years and learning accompaniment technique from her arranger, Jimmy Jones. From a live session recorded in 1954 in Los Angeles, California that included him, Washington, Clifford Brown, Clark Terry, Maynard Ferguson, Herb Geller, Harold Land, Richie Powell, Keter Betts, George Morrow, and Max Roach, EmArcy released two LPs, Dinah Jams and Jam Session.
The Fifties saw Junior joining Cannonball Adderley’s first civilian band, making several recordings for EmArcy/Mercury and supported Dinah Washington on her In the Land of Hi-Fi album. He would go on torecord with Johnny Griffin, James Moody, and Wilbur Ware. Then he joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band. By the end of the decade he recorded his debut as a leader on the Verve label.
Over the course of his career he would record with Capitol and Atlantic, and Sackville record labels. He continued to record and perform during the next three decades. As an educator he taught at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music for 23 years, counting Brad Mehldau and Larry Goldings among his students before retiring in 2011.
From 1990 to 2009 Mance was part of the all-star group called “100 Gold Fingers” which frequently toured Japan. The rotating lineup included Toshiko Akiyoshi, Monty Alexander, Geri Allen, Lynne Arriale, Kenny Barron, Joanne Brackeen, Ray Bryant, Bill Charlap, Cyrus Chestnut, Gerald Clayton, Eric Reed, and twenty-two others with bassist Bob Cranshaw and either Alan Dawson or Grady Tate on drums.
Pianist and composer Junior Mance, who suffered from Alzheimer’s and a fall, died on January 17, 2021 from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 92 in New York.Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michel Gaudry was born on September 23, 1928 in Eu, France on 23 September 1928. He learned clarinet and piano as a child before switching to bass. Following studies at the Geneva Conservatory, he played with Michel Hausser, beginning his professional career in 1955. In the latter half of the 1950s he worked with Billie Holiday, Quentin Jackson, Carmen McRae, and Art Simmons.
In the early 1960s he was very active playing with Elek Bacsik, Kenny Clarke, Sonny Criss, Stephane Grappelli, Bud Powell, Stuff Smith, and Billy Strayhorn, as well as continuing a long time slot as a member of Jack Diéval’s group.
The Seventies he played with Gérard Badini’s group, Swing Machine, and was a regular performer at the Grande Parade du Jazz in Nice, France. In the 1980s he played with Jimmy Owens and Irvin Stokes.
In his later life, he dedicated himself to the history of World War II occupation of Normandy, France. Double bassist Michel Gaudry died on May 29, 2019 in Saint-Lô, France at the age of 90.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Fletcher Smith was born on September 22, 1913 in Lincoln, Nebraska and was orphaned by the age of eight. He and his siblings moved in with their grandfather who had a nine-room house. When the Lloyd Hunter Serenaders came through Lincoln and there was a guitar player there named Finney. He asked Finney to teah him to play if he could get his uncle to buy him a banjo. He wrote out a chart of chords and gave him lessons when he came back.
Smith played for Cootie Williams in 1943 and in the following years with Slim Gaillard, King Perry, Varetta Dillard, Jimmy Rushing, Big Maybelle, Linda Hopkins, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Stick McGhee, Mickey Baker, Percy Mayfield, and Geechie Smith. In the Fifties he performed with Earl Bostic, Percy Mayfield, Benny Carter, Billy Eckstine, Lionel Hampton, Les Hite, and the Ink Spots, among others.
Under his own name, Fletcher Smith’s Squares and Fletcher Smith’s band, he played in the 1950s and recorded several singles such as Mean Poor Gal, Ting Ting Boom Scat or Shout, Shout, Shout. He recorded extensively as a sideman and toured most of the United States with various organizations. During the early 1970s he was a popular artist in Paris, France performing with the Golden Gate Quartet. From 1981 to 1991 he was featured in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Upon his return to Los Angeles, he became one of the mainstays of the Southern California music scene, he continued playing and honing his book of tunes and arrangements until his death. Pianist and bandleader Fletcher Smith died on August 15, 1993 in Los Angeles, California.
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