Daily Dose Of Jazz…

William E. Clark was born July 31, 1925 in Jonesboro, Arkansas. He worked professionally starting shortly after World War II, playing drums with Jimmy Jones, Dave Martin, Mundell Lowe, and George Duvivier. 

He was principally active in the 1950s, working with Lester Young, Mary Lou Williams, Lena Horne, Hazel Scott, Duke Ellington, Don Byas, Arnold Ross, Bernard Peiffer, George Shearing, Toots Thielemans, Ronnell Bright, Jackie Paris, and Rolf Kuhn. Later in his career Bill worked with Eddie Harris and Les McCann.

Drummer Bill Clark, known for his versatility playing Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde and fusion, passed away on July 30, 1986 in Atlanta, Georgia.Share a dose of a Jonesboro drummer to inspire inquisitive minds to learn about musicians whose legacy lends their genius to the jazz catalog…

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Roy Lee Porter was born on July 30, 1923 in Walsenburg, Colorado and when he was eight his family moved to Colorado Springs. He began playing drums in rhythm and blues bands while a teenager, then attended Wiley College in Texas briefly, where trumpeter Kenny Dorham was a fellow student.

Replacing Joe Marshall he joined Milt Larkin’s band in 1943. After military service, Roy settled in Los Angeles, California and soon was in demand by some of the pioneers of bebop. He worked with Teddy Bunn and Howard McGhee, making his first recordings with the latter. In 1946, he backed Charlie Parker on such Dial classics, A Night In Tunisia, Yardbird Suite, Ornithology and Lover Man.

Porter played on Los Angeles’ Central Avenue with such bebop players as Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray and Teddy Edwards, and in San Francisco, California with Hampton Hawes and Sonny Criss. He organized a big band and went on the road in 1949 that included Art Farmer, Jimmy Knepper and Eric Dolphy.

During the 1950s he was inactive as a jazz musician due to drug problems and returned to music only infrequently afterwards. Drummer Roy Porter passed away on January 24 or 25, 1998 in Los Angeles.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alan Warren Haig was born on July 19, 1922 in Newark, New Jersey and raised in nearby Nutley. At eighteen he majored in piano at Oberlin College and started playing with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker in 1945. He performed and recorded from 1945 to 1951 with Gillespie, Parker, Eddie Davis and His Beboppers with Fats Navarro, the Eddie Davis Quintet, and Stan Getz. The Gillespie quintet, which included Haig, recorded four 78 r.p.m. sides for Guild Records in May 1945 which are regarded as the first recordings to demonstrate all elements of the mature bebop style. He was part of the nonet on the first session of Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool.

For much of the 1950s and 1960s, Haig got by with semi-cocktail piano in New York bars. In 1969 he had a brush with the law having been accused and acquitted of the strangling murder charge of his thrid wife.

In 1974, Haig was invited to tour Europe by Tony Williams, owner of Spotlite Records in the United Kingdom. At the end of a very successful tour he recorded the Invitation album for Spotlite with Bibi Rovère on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums. This kick-started his re-emergence and, over the next eight years, he built a strong following in Europe and toured several times, recording in the UK and France, and appearing elsewhere. He also recorded for several Japanese labels.

Pianist Al Haig, best known as one of the pioneers of bebop, and who recorded twenty~three albums as a leader, passed away from a heart attack on November 16, 1982 in New York City.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Rodrigo Amado was born in Lisbon, Portugal on July 15, 1964 and began studying the sax at the age of 17, briefly at the Hot Club Music School of Lisbon and with mentors Carlos Martins, Pedro Madaleno, and Jorge Reis.

With diverse musical interests, he explored improvisation in other genres, including his work with his various ensembles like the Lisbon Improvisation Players and the Motion Trio with Miguel Mira and Gabriel Ferrandini. He is an in~demand studio player on numerous recorded projects.

He started his own label Clean Feed in 2001, with brothers Pedro and Carlos Costa, before leaving the imprint in 2005 to start a second label, European Echoes. Also an accomplished professional photographer, Amado continues to be a bright light on the Portuguese and international improvisational jazz scene.

Saxophonist Rodrigo Amado continues to specialize in free-form, composition-in-the-moment jazz, and his various projects and trios have given him an international following.

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Leonard Walter Bush was born in London, England on June 6, 1927 and contracted polio as a child which left him with a limp for the rest of his life. He studied and played violin before switching to bass at sixteen. By 17 he was playing professionally in a variety show called The Rolling Stones and Dawn. He played with Nat Gonella in the middle of the 1940s but turned to bebop later in the decade.

From 1950 onwards Lennie did a lot of freelance work and worked with Roy Fox in 1951. He was one of the founding members of London’s Club Eleven, the  first London jazz club to offer performers a paid gig. He played there from 1952-1956 in a band with Ronnie Scott, trumpeter Hank Shaw, pianist Tommy Pollard, and drummer Tony Crombie.

He studied with James Merrett at the Guildhall School of Music and participated in the European tours of Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Zoot Sims, and Roy Eldridge. Becoming a member of Jack Parnell’s ATV Orchestra in 1957, he recorded with Stephane Grappelli, Anita O’Day, and Eddie Vinson. He continued to play in the 1990s as part of the Ralph Sharon Trio with Jack Parnell. During that decade he also appeared with Don Lusher’s Ted Heath tribute band and played in the final Ted Heath concert in 2000.

Double bassist Lennie Bush continued to freelance into the 2000s until his death on June 15, 2004.

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