Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Shake Keane was born Ellsworth McGranahan Keane on May 30, 1927 in Kingstown, St. Vincent, West Indies into a family that loved music and books. He attended Kingstown Methodist School and St. Vincent Grammar School. He was taught to play the trumpet by his father Charles and gave his first public recital at the age of six. When he was 14 years old, Keane led a musical band made up of his brothers. In the 1940s, with his mother Dorcas working to raise six children, the teenager joined one of the island’s leading bands, Ted Lawrence and His Silvertone Orchestra.

During his early adulthood in St. Vincent, his principal interest was literature, rather than the music for which he would become better known. Dubbed “Shakespeare” by his school friends, on account of his love of prose and poetry. This nickname was subsequently shortened to “Shake”, which name he came to use throughout his adult life. He published two books of poetry in the early Fifties L’Oubili and Ixion, while still in St. Vincent.

Emigrating to Great Britain in 1952 he worked on BBC Radio’s Caribbean Voices,  reading poetry and interviewing fellow writers and musicians. He also began playing the trumpet in London nightclubs, working in a number of styles including cabaret, highlife, soca, mento, calypso, and jazz. From 1959 he committed more fully to jazz, spending six years as a member of pioneering alto saxophonist Joe Harriott’s band. The group was the first in Europe and one of the first worldwide, to play free jazz, and Keane contributed mightily to the band’s artistic success, thanks to his fleet and powerful improvisatory skills on trumpet and flugelhorn.

He also made a small handful of records under his own name, but these were usually light jazz. In 1966 he left Britain to settle in Germany and became a featured soloist with the Kurt Edelhagen Radio Orchestra, and also joined the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band.

Setting aside his musical career, he returned to St. Vincent in 1972 taking up a government position as director of culture, where he remained in the post until 1975. He then became an educator as his main profession, while continuing to write poetry. In the early 1980s, Shake moved to New York City, settling the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn which became his base but found a second home in Norway.

He returned full-time to music in 1989 when he rejoined Michael Garrick and his old bandmates Coleridge Goode and Bobby Orr for a tour in honor of Joe Harriott. In 1991 Keane appeared in a BBC Arena documentary with the Jamaican poet Linton Kwesi Johnson.

In the 1990s, he remained based in Brooklyn, but found a second home in Norway, where he worked most extensively. He contributed music to Norwegian television and stage productions for the next few years, also touring the country playing jazz. It was while preparing for one such tour that he became ill, and subsequently, trumpeter and poet Shake Keane passed away from stomach cancer on November 11, 1997 in Oslo, Norway.

More Posts: bandleader,flugelhorn,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trumpet

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Dick Twardzik was born Richard Henryk Twardzik on April 30, 1931 in Danvers, Massachusetts. He trained in classical piano as a child and made his professional debut at the age of fourteen. He was taught by Margaret Chaloff, the mother of baritone saxophone player Serge Chaloff.

Twardzik recorded with Serge Chaloff and with Charlie Mariano. He worked with Charlie Parker on several occasions toward the end of Parker’s life. He played with Chet Baker and Lionel Hampton and recorded with Baker and Chaloff in 1954 and 1955.

It was during his teen years, that he became addicted to heroin. Bebop pianist Dick Twardzik who worked in Boston for most of his short career passed away from a heroin overdose while on tour with Chet Baker in Europe on October 21, 1955 in Paris, France. He was 24.

More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Krzysztof Komeda was born Krzysztof Trzciński on April 27, 1931 in Poznań, Poland and grew up in Częstochowa and Ostrów Wielkopolski. He took music lessons from early childhood and became a member of the Poznań conservatorium at the age of eight, but World War II thwarted his plans. He explored the theory of music, and learned to play piano during this period.

While attending the Liceum for Boys, where he graduated from in 1950, he participated in the Music and Poetry Club. After high school he entered the Medical Academy in Poznań to study medicine. He finished his six-year-long studies and obtained a medical doctor diploma in 1956. He chose to specialize as a head and neck surgeon.

Komeda was interested in light and dance music and met Witold Kujawski, a graduate of the same school and already a well-known swinging bass player. He introduced him to jazz and took him to Kraków where the romantic period of Polish jazz, called the catacombs, was in the spotlight. Jam sessions with famous musicians as Matuszkiewicz, Borowiec, Walasek, and Kujawski took place in Witold’s legendary small apartment in Kraków.

Fascinated with be-bop performed by Andrzej Trzaskowski, his fascination with jazz and the friendship with famous musicians strengthened his connections with the music. He worked for some time with the first, postwar, pioneer Polish jazz band called Melomani. Later, he played with various pop groups, a Dixieland band before turning his attention to modern jazz and the creation of the Komeda Sextet.

Trzciński used the stage name ‘Komeda’ for the first time to protect his medical profession from the scutiny of those of Polish society  who regarded jazz as a cheap suspicious music of night clubs. The sextet became the first Polish jazz group playing modern jazz, and its pioneering performances opened the way for jazz in Poland. He played jazz that related to European traditions and which was the synthesis of the two most popular groups at that time: The Modern Jazz Quartet and the Gerry Mulligan Quartet.

He would go on to tour Moscow, Grenoble,  Paris, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Prague, Blend, Koenigsberg, Bulgaria and both West and East Germany. He was a part of a show called Jazz and Poetry, began scoring films and overall, Komeda composed more than 70 soundtracks. While staying in Los Angeles, California in 1968 he composed the film music for Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Kulik’s The Riot.

In 1968, in Los Angeles, while having a friendly rough-and-tumble with writer Marek Hłasko he was pushed over an escarpment and suffered a haematoma of the brain. Medical treatment in the US hospital did not save his life. After being transported home to Poland in a coma and in a terminal state. Pianst  Krzysztof Komeda, who is credited with creating an original style, often described as the Polish school of jazz, hung on until passing away on April 23, 1969 at the age of 37.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Sy Johnson was born on April 15, 1930 in New Haven, Connecticut and learned to play the piano in his youth. He first performed in New York City with Charles Mingus at the jazz club Showplace, with Booker Ervin on tenor, Ted Curson on trumpet, Dannie Richmond on drums, and Mingus on bass. and on his first night with Mingus, Eric Dolphy performed on alto, bass clarinet, and flute.

In 1971, eleven years later, Mingus gave Johnson Let My Children Hear Music to arrange, which featured two Mingus pieces, Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife (Are Some Jiveass Slippers) and Don’t Be Afraid, the Clowns Afraid Too. The album’s emergence was heralded with a live concert, Mingus And Friends At Philharmonic Hall, also arranged by Johnson and released as an album.

Performing We Did It on Soul Train in 1973 and continued to work with Mingus until his death from Lou Gehrig’s disease in 1979. Mingus recorded two of Johnson’s compositions, Wee and For Harry Carney, and nominated Johnson for a Guggenheim award following his own in Jazz Composition.

Johnson continues to work with Sue Mingus arranging charts for all the Mingus repertory ensembles—the Mingus Big Band, the Mingus Orchestra and the Mingus Dynasty. He would go on to collaborate with arrangements for Joe Williams, Frank Sinatra, Wes Montgomery, Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Quincy Jones, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Mel Torme, Terry Gibbs, Lee Konitz and Sarah Vaughan, among others.

He has also worked on Broadway and in films such as the1984 movie The Cotton Club. Arranger Sy Johnson is also a jazz photographer, writer, pianist, singer, and teacher.

More Posts: arranger,history,instrumental,jazz,music,photographer,pianist,singer,teacher,writer

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

David Burns was born on March 24, 1924 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey and began playing trumpet when he was nine years old.  As a teenager, he heard bebop performances at Minton’s Playhouse, among others Dizzy Gillespie. His first ensemble was in Al Cooper’s Savoy Sultans, with whom he played from 1941 to 1943, prior to joining the Army Air Force. There he led a band from 1943 to 1945 that included James Moody as a sideman.

He joined Gillespie’s band in 1946 and appeared with Gillespie in Jivin’ in Bebop in 1947. After leaving Gillespie’s band in 1949, he worked with Duke Ellington from 1950 to 1952 and then with James Moody until 1957.

The late 1950s saw Dave playing shows in New York City and in the Sixties recorded for Vanguard Records. He worked with Billy Mitchell, Al Grey, Willie Bobo, Art Taylor, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Leo Parker, and Milt Jackson. From the 1970s through the end of his career he increased his work as an educator. Trumpeter, flugelhornist, arranger, composer, and teacher Dave Burns passed away on April 5, 2009 in Freeport, New York.

More Posts: arranger,composer,educator,flugelhorn,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trumpet