Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bobby Jones, born October 30, 1928 in Louisville, Kentucky and played drums as a child, started on clarinet at age 8, and his father encouraged him to explore jazz. He studied with Simeon Bellison, Joe Allard, Charlie Parker, and George Russell.

He played with Ray McKinley from 1949 into the mid-1950s, and then with Hal McIntyre before rejoining McKinley later in the decade. During a stint in the Army he met Nat and Cannonball Adderley as well as Junior Mance. After his discharge he played country music and rock & roll as a studio musician, and did time with Boots Randolph. He worked with Glenn Miller in 1950 before returning to McKinley from 1959 to 1963.

He spent a brief time with Woody Herman and Jack Teagarden in 1963, and after the latter’s death he retired to Louisville and started a local jazz council there in addition to teaching at Kentucky State College. In 1969 he moved to New York City and played with Charles Mingus from 1970 to 1972, touring Europe and Japan with him. He also recorded sessions under his own name in 1972 and 1974.

Late in his life he moved to Germany, where he ceased performing due to emphysema. Saxophonist Bobby Jones passed away on March 6, 1980 in Munich, Germany.

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The Quarantined Jazz Voyager

For Musicians Only is an album by Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz and Sonny Stitt incorporating bebop influences. Produced by Norman Granz, it was recorded on October 16, 1956 at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California. It wasn’t released until 1958 on the Verve label. It has been described as the real thing, no pretense.

The story behind this session from Stan Levy’s point of view is that everything was done in one take, no 2nd takes, no overdubbing. It was virtually a live, real bebop session, nothing worked out, just play by the seat of your pants or get off the bandstand. Like it or not, that was the way it was with Bird and those cats, the real thing, no pretense.

The album is known for the front line’s winding, intricate solos. This has led to praise for the back line, particularly bassist Ray Brown, for keeping some semblance of the original tune going behind the solos.

1. Bebop (Gillespie) ~ 12:48
2. Dark Eyes (Traditional) ~ 12:10
3. Wee (Allen’s Alley) (Denzil Best, Gillespie) – 8:28
4. Lover Come Back to Me (Sigmund Romberg, Oscar Hammerstein II) ~ 9:33

• Dizzy Gillespie ~ trumpet
• Sonny Stitt ~ alto saxophone
• Stan Getz ~ tenor saxophone
• John Lewis ~ piano
• Herb Ellis ~ guitar
• Ray Brown ~ bass
• Stan Levey ~ drums

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lenny Hambro was born on October 16, 1923 in the Bronx, New York, the younger of two children. As a teenager, his brother-in-law introduced the 15 year old to woodwinds, giving him a soprano saxophone and introductory music lessons and taking every music class in which he could enroll. While in high school he took private lessons from Bill Sheiner, one of the leading music teachers and session musicians in New York City. During his later high-school years, Hambro played alto sax, tenor sax, clarinet, and flute in an assortment of teen dance bands, including a summer in the Catskills.

During the Second World War, at just 18, Hambro auditioned and got the empty seat in Gene Krupa’s band in 1942. However, he left the band in December of that year for the Army, there joining Ivan Mogul, Shorty Rogers and approximately 40 other musicians from the Bronx who had agreed to man the 379th Army Service Forces Band in Newport News, Virginia, where he stayed for three years. Post war he worked and recorded with Billy Butterfield and Bobby Byrne, before rejoining Gene Krupa as lead alto sax and featured jazz soloist through 1950.

He would go on to play and /or record with the Latin jazz ensembles of Vincent Lopez, Pupi Campo, Machito and his Afro-Cuban Orchestra, Ray McKinley Band. the Chico O’Farrill Orchestra, tour with The Gene Krupa Orchestra, Charlie Ventura’s Orchestra and Joe Loco’s band. He did studio work, worked as a music copyist, and taught private lessons.

In 1954 he formed the Lenny Hambro Quintet, and in 1955 he again played in and managed the Ray McKinley Band, and toured the United States routinely during this period as well as England, Poland, Iron Curtain Europe, and North Africa in 1957 and 1958. He was a booking agent, opened up an advertising company, then returned to music. He recorded his final tracks at the Clinton Recording Studio at 653 10th Avenue in New York City in February, 1995 for Chico O’Farrill’s album, Pure Emotion for Milestone Records.

Lenny Hambro, who played alto, baritone and tenor saxophone, flute, and clarinet, passed away of a blood clot following open heart surgery on September 26, 1995, at Shore Memorial Hospital, Somers Point, New Jersey, a month shy of his 72nd birthday.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Hidehiko “Sleepy” Matsumoto (松本英彦) was born on October 12, 1926 in Okayama, Japan. He attended Fuchu High School where he learned the saxophone followed by matriculation through the University of Electro-Communications.

In the late 1940s he played bebop in Japan with the group CB Nine, then joined The Six Josés and The Big Four, a group which included George Kawaguchi, Hachidai Nakamura, and Mitsuru Ono.

In 1959 he became a member of Hideo Shiraki’s small ensemble, and played with Gerald Wilson at the 1963 Monterey Jazz Festival and Toshiko Akiyoshi in 1964. Starting in 1964 Hidehiko led his own ensembles, which included sidemen Takeshi Inomata, Akira Miyazawa, George Otsuka, and Isao Suzuki.

On July 22 and 24, 1966, he played with the John Coltrane quintet in Tokyo, Japan while the group toured Japan. Tenor saxophonist and bandleader Hidehiko “Sleepy” Matsumoto passed away on February 29, 2000 in Tokyo, Japan.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roy Kral was born on October 10, 1921 in Cicero, Illinois. His sister was the renowned vocalist Irene Kral. Urged by his mother, he took classical piano lessons as a young boy but by the 1930s abandoned them to teach himself to play jazz piano by mimicking what he heard while listening to the radio under his blanket after bedtime.

During World War II, Kral served in the Army as an arranger for the Army band. After service he moved to Chicago, Illinois and joined the George Davis Quartet. As a pianist and singer for Charlie Ventura’s band, Bop for the People, in 1948 ç Kral agreed to write a new arrangement of the 1919 pop song I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles. He added a bebop sensibility and scat singing to a rather insipid pop standard, transforming it into a cool, jazzy tune and their first hit.

Meeting Jackie Cain at eighteen and just out of high school and his initial impression was not her singing until he heard her. Their voices were an octave apart and their partnership was cemented when they married in 1949 and became the duo Jackie and Roy, recording nearly 40 albums in 56 years. Coming to prominence during the bebop era they combined bebop singing with cabaret creating a very polished sound of pop, jazz and Latin music, all inflected with a jazz sensibility. The duo produced hits like Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most, You Inspire Me, and It’s A Lovely Day Today.

Pianist and vocalist Roy Kral, one half of one of the most important vocal groups in jazz, passed away at 80 of congestive heart failure on August 2, 2002 in Montclair, New Jersey. 

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