Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Specs Wright was born Charles Wright on September 8, 1927 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He played drums in an Army band until his discharge in 1947. Following this he played in a group with Jimmy Heath and Howard McGhee. By 1949 he had joined Dizzy Gillespie‘s band alongside John Coltrane, remaining until it disbanded in mid-1950.
Wright would rejoin Dizzy late in the decade as a member of his sextet with Coltrane, Jimmy Heath, Percy Heath, and Milt Jackson. He would go on to play with Earl Bostic, Kenny Drew, Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, and Carmen McRae as well as a member of the Hank Mobley sextet with Billy Root, Curtis Fuller, Ray Bryant, Tommy Bryant, and Lee Morgan.
Not one to be idle, though never a leader, he was a sought after sideman playing with Sonny Rollins, Betty Carter, Red Garland, Coleman Hawkins, and Lambert, Hendricks and Ross in the early Sixties. Drummer Specs Wright passed away on February 6, 1963. He was 36 years old.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Malachi was born on September 6, 1919 in Red Springs, North Carolina and was the pianist for the epochal Billy Eckstine Bebop Orchestra in 1944-45 and again in 1947. He worked with Illinois Jacquet in 1948, Louis Jordan in 1951, and a series of singers including Pearl Bailey, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Al Hibbler, and Joe Williams.
Malachi is credited with creating the nickname “Sassy” for Sarah Vaughan, working with her both in the Eckstine Orchestra and later during her solo career. He was also fond of categorizing jazz pianists into “acrobats” and “poets,” classifying himself among the latter.
John opted out of the traveling life of the touring jazz musician in the 1960s, living roughly the last decade and a half of his life in Washington, D.C. freelancing, playing with touring bands and artists when they stopped through, and leading music workshops at clubs like Jimmy MacPhail’s Gold Room and Bill Harris’s Pig’s Foot.
Always the educator, Malachi’s generosity towards younger musicians was legendary. One of the musicians he helped influence recalls that younger players referred to his workshops as “The University of John Malachi”. On February 11, 1987 jazz pianist John Malachi passed away in Washington, D.C.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richie Powell was born on September 5, 1931 in New York City, the older brother of bebop-icon Bud Powell. He studied piano at City College of New York and played in the bands of Paul Williams, Johnny Hodges and for two years was a member of the group led by Clifford Brown and Max Roach
Pianist McCoy Tyner, who grew up next door to Richie and brother Bud in Philadelphia, purportedly got some of his inspiration to develop his pentatonic chord voicings because he heard the Richie voice left-hand chords in fourths.
In 1956, after an informal gig at a Philadelphia store called Music City, Powell and Brown were being driven overnight by Powell’s wife Nancy to an engagement in Chicago. During the dark rainy night Nancy lost control of the vehicle on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, heading for Cleveland, and in the early hours of June 26, 1956 all three occupants were killed.
Although sometimes considered less gifted than his brother, he was a respected musician and was beginning to achieve recognition at the time of his death. He left behind a small discography, playing on albums with Dinah Washington, and Sonny Rollins but mainly with Max Roach and Clifford Brown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Onaje Allan Gumbs was born Allan Bentley Gumbs on September 3, 1949 in Harlem, New York but grew up in St. Albans, Queens. Starting to play piano at age 7, Henry Manciniwas one of his earliest and greatest influences, hearing Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky themes on television. He later studied at the Music and Art High School in Manhattan and was mentored by Erskine Tate Alum Leroy Kirkland.
During this time, he was playing in a Latin band, a big band, playing piano duets and listening to records made by Motown and Blue Note, developing an interest in R&B in conjunction with the straight-ahead jazz of Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Lalo Schifrin, Gil Evans, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane. He went on to study classical piano, composition, arranging and graduated with a degree in Education at the State University of New York at Fredonia in upstate New York.
In 1971, Leroy Kirkland introduced Onaje to guitarist Kenny Burrell and a subsequent gig led him to play with Larry Ridley and The Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Orchestra. He would join jazz ensemble Natural Essence that included Thelonious Monk Jr. In 1972he went to work with Norman Connors as an arranger on the Dark of Light album and contributed keyboards on the albums Love From the Sun, Saturday Night Special, You Are My Starship, Invitation and Mr. C.
Toward the late 1970s, Onaje spent two years working in Woody Shaw‘s band as pianist, arranger, and occasional composer, in which the group won the Down Beat Reader’s Poll for Best Jazz Group and for Best Jazz Album in 1978 for Rosewood. His first solo piano project was simply titled Onaje and was followed by venturing into R&B and subsequently ending up on the smooth jazz charts and rotations for nearly 20 years with his composition “Quiet Passion”.
In 2003, Onaje return to straight-ahead with his release of the live album Return to Form, and garnering critical acclaim the next year with a project on his own label, Ejano, titled Remember Their Innocence. These were followed with Grady Tate‘s Sack Full of Dreams before his stroke in 2010 but by year end had recorded and release Just Like Yesterday in Japan, with all signs of a stroke vanished. His sideman work has included stints with Buster Williams, Cecil McBee, and Betty Carter and most recently with Avery Sharpe on the 2012 album Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I A Woman.
He has received the Min-on-Art Award, has his song Dare To Dream chosen by Panasonic as the theme for their 10th anniversary celebration of Kid Witness News, composed, arranged and performed the original score for the Showtime film, Override and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
Suffering a stroke in 2010 he was able to return to music two weeks later. In 2015 he was hospitalized again for two weeks but made a full recovery and returned to composing and performance. Pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Onaje Allen Gumbs passed away at 70 on April 6, 2020.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Malachi Favors was born August 22, 1927 in Lexington, Mississippi. He began playing double bass at age fifteen and began performing professionally upon graduating high school. His early performances included work with Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard. But by 1965, he was a founding member of the AACM – Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band.
Malachi was a protégé of Chicago bassist Wilbur Ware. His first known recording was a 1953 session with tenor saxophonist Paul Bascomb and four years later recorded with pianist Andrew Hill. He began working with Roscoe Mitchell in 1966 and this group eventually became the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for which he is most prominently known. Favors also worked outside the group, with artists including Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp and Dewey Redman.
Favors’ most notable records include “Natural and the Spiritual”, “Sightsong” andthe 1994 Roman Bunka collaboration and recording at the Berlin Jazz Fest of the German Critics Poll Winner album “Color Me Cairo”.
At some point in his career Malachi added the word “Maghostut” to his name and because of this he is commonly listed on recordings as Malachi Favors Maghostut.
Most associated musically with bebop, hard bop and particularly free jazz, Favors not only plays the double bass but electric bass, guitar, banjo, zither, gong and other instruments. Malachi Favors died of pancreatic cancer in Chicago, Illinois on January 30, 2004 at the age of 76.