Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rahn Burton was born February 10, 1934 in Louisville, Kentucky. He began taking piano lessons at age 13, and worked locally in Louisville before playing his first gigs with Roland Kirk. He toured with Kirk from 1953 to 1959 and recorded with him into the early 1960s, contributing the composition Jack the Ripper to the 1960 release Introducing Roland Kirk.
Moving on to play local gigs in New York City and Syracuse, New York for a short time in the early 1960s, he returned to local playing in Louisville. During 1964-65 he played organ in George Adams’s touring ensemble, and played briefly with Sirone around the same time.
1967 saw Burton re-joining Roland Kirk’s group, playing with him at the 1968 Newport Jazz Festival and on several recordings through 1973. He also founded his own ensemble, African American Connection, which included Roland Alexander, Bob Cunningham, Ricky Ford, and Hannibal Marvin Peterson.
He recorded extensively as a sideman in the 1970s and 1980s with George Adams and Hannibal Peterson, Carlos Garnett, Beaver Harris, Jemeel Moondoc, Charlie Rouse, Leon Thomas and Stanley Turrentine. His associations in the 1990s included work in Austria with Nicholas Simion and a trio recording in 1992 with Walter Booker and Jimmy Cobb.
Pianist Rahn Burton, who was also known as Ron Burton or William Burton, transitioned on January 25, 2013 in Manhattan, New York.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward “Bruno” Carr was born on February 9, 1928 in The Bronx, New York. Growing up he lived around many different ethnic groups, including neighborhoods with German and Italian residents. Listening to the radio as a youth, he heard different styles of music while developing his ear and his memory. By the time he started playing professionally he had anarsenal of songs that he surprised band leaders he already knew and had no need for charts when they handed them to him.
As a timbale player in Latin bands, one can hear the inflection in the way he plays his small tom-toms at times. Though not a household name, his playing with a lot of fire and conviction made him a sought after drummer among the jazz elite. Kenny Burrell, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Michael Franks, Aretha Franklin, Monte Alexander, Stanley Turrentine, Roy Ayers, King Curtis and Harry “Sweets” Edison have all had him on their bandstand.
Here recorded several single albums, each with Aretha, Curtis Amy, Walter Davis Jr., Lou Donaldson, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, however, his largest body of work was with Herbie Mann, recording eighteen albums with the flutist from 1964 to 1970.
Drummer Bruno Carr, who was a frequent collaborator with Ray Charles, transitioned from lung cancer on October 25, 1993 in Denver Colorado at the age of 65.
More Posts: drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sam Allen was born in Middleport, Ohio on January 30, 1909 and beginning at the age of seven started playing the piano. By 10 he accompanied silent films on piano in movie theaters, allowing him to sit and extemporize as the action unfolded on screen. Over the next few years he absorbed plenty of slapstick hi-jinx and derring-do from the Hollywood sagas he accompanied.
1928 saw the 19 year old Sam moving to New York City where he joined Herbert Cowans’s band at the Rockland Palace. It wasn’t too long after the move before he moved back to Ohio, where he played with saxophonist Alex Jackson through 1930.
He joined James P. Johnson’s orchestra as a second pianist absorbing the intense chords in the scores that required two pianos. For amuch of the ’30s, he played with the dance band of Teddy Hill including a European tour. In the 1940s he had one of his most musically satisfying collaborations as piano man in the sometimes rowdy combo of violinist Stuff Smith. Playing in the hyper-drive bebop of Dizzy Gillespie, and then the shenanigans as pianist for the madcap jive jazz duo Slim Gaillard & Slam Stewart.
As the Fifties approached he relocated to Washington, shifting gears from touring sideman to stay-at-home featured soloist. He then headed for California where he settled into the Oakland jazz scene, often accompanying the fine singer Billie Heywood. Pianist Sam Allen transitioned at the age of 63 in April 1963.
More Posts: history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Handy, born George Joseph Hendleman on January 17, 1920 in New York City, where his musical beginnings were fostered under the tutelage of composer Aaron Copland.
He first worked professionally as a swing pianist for Michael Loring in 1938. Soon afterward George was drafted into the United States Army in 1940. Post WWII, from 1944 to 1946 he became a member of the Boyd Raeburn Orchestra, composing and performing on piano. This was during a time when many big bands were transforming their musical tendencies toward bebop. Leaving the orchestra briefly to work for Paramount Studios, he returned to Raeburn quickly. During this period he entered one of his most creative periods, doing arrangements of older standards with a distinctly bebop quality.
A rift between him and Raeburn, just as he was entering his prime, forced him to depart the group. Handy continued to arrange for other musicians in his later career.
Pianist, arranger and composer George Handy, best remembered in retrospect for his bebop arrangements, transitioned in Harris, New York, on January 8, 1997 at the age of 76, from heart disease.
More Posts: arranger,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Willie Dennis wsa born William DeBerardinis on January 10, 1926 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After working with Elliot Lawrence, Claude Thornhill, and Sam Donahue, he went to work with Charles Mingus, appearing on two of Mingus’s albums in 1959, Blues & Roots and Mingus Ah Um. In 1953, due to his relationship with Mingus he recorded Four Trombones (on the bassist’s Debut Records label and was released in 1957. The other three trombones were J. J. Johnson, Kai Winding and Bennie Green.
In 1951, Dennis began studying with Lennie Tristano. To make ends meet, he worked as an attendant at the Museum of Modern Art. The fullest recorded example of Dennis’s solo work is on a little-known 1956 Savoy disc by English pianist Ronnie Ball, who was also a Tristano student. The album was titled All About Ronnie, and included Ted Brown and Kenny Clarke.
He toured with Mingus in 1956, published an essay, The History of the Trombone, in Metronome. By the late 1950s Willie had returned to his big band roots and joined Buddy Rich in 1959 after stints with Benny Goodman and Woody Herman. During the 1960s, he often performed with Gerry Mulligan.
He had an extremely fast articulation on the trombone, which he obtained by means of varying the natural harmonics of the instrument with minimal recourse to the slide, a technique known as crossing the grain. He recorded with Cannonball Adderley, Manny Albam, Al Cohn, Mundell Lowe, Gary McFarland, Gerry Mulligan, Oliver Nelson, Anita O’Day, Shirley Scott, Zoot Sims and Phil Woods.
Known for his big band musicianship but who could also execute as an excellent bebop soloist, trombonist Willie Dennis, who was married to Morgana King in 1961, transitioned due to an automobile accident in Central Park on July 8, 1965 in New York City.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone