Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Hank Jones was born Henry Jones on July 31, 1918 in Vicksburg, Mississippi but grew up in Pontiac, Michigan.  Raised in a musical family, his mother sang, his two older sisters studied piano and his two younger brothers— Thad played trumpet and Elvin, drums. He studied piano at an early age and came under the influence of Earl Hines, Fats Waller, Teddy Wilson and Art Tatum.

By age 13 Jones was performing locally in Michigan and Ohio and while playing with territory bands in Grand Rapids and Lansing in 1944 he met Lucky Thompson who invited Jones to work in New York City at the Onyx Club with Hot Lips Page.

In New York he mastered the bop style and worked with John Kirby, Howard McGhee, Coleman Hawkins, Andy Kirk, and Billy Eckstine. In 1947 he began touring with Jazz at the Philharmonic and from 1948 to 1953 he was accompanist for Ella Fitzgerald.  During this period he made several historically important recordings with Charlie Parker that included “The Song Is You”, from the Now’s the Time album.

This led to engagements with Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Cannonball Adderley and Wes Montgomery. In addition to being the “house pianist” at one time on the Savoy label, Hank was the staff pianist for CBS studios from 1959 through 1975 backing such artists as Frank Sinatra, and for Marilyn Monroe when she sang her famous Happy Birthday for President Kennedy, and pianist and conductor for the Broadway musical Ain’t Misbehavin’.

During the late 1970s and the 1980s, Jones continued to record prolifically with John Lewis, Tommy Flanagan, Ron Carter, Tony Williams, Buster Williams, Eddie Gomez, Al Foster, Jimmy Cobb, Art Farmer, Benny Golson and Nancy Wilson to name a few as his list of jazz collaborators is extensive.

Jones has racked up an impressive catalogue of recordings numbering over sixty as a leader and more as a sideman, worked with Roberta Gambarini at the Monterey Jazz Festival, with Diana Krall on the compilation “We All Love Ella”, was nominated for five Grammys and was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award, was inducted into the society of NEA Jazz Masters, and was awarded the National Medal of Arts among other accolades. Pianist Hank Jones passed away at a hospice in Manhattan, New York, on May 16, 2010.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Milt Hinton was born Milton John Hinton on June 23, 1910 in Vicksburg, Mississippi but grew up in Chicago, Illinois from age eleven. He attended Wendell Phillips High School and Crane Junior College and learned to first play violin followed by bass horn, tuba, cello and the double bass.

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he worked as a freelance musician in Chicago playing with Jabbo Smith, Eddie South, and Art Tatum. In 1936, he joined Cab Calloway’s band playing alongside Chu Berry, Cozy Cole, Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Jonah Jones, Ike Quebec, Ben Webster, and Danny Barker, where he was equally adept at bowing, pizzicato, and “slapping” a technique for which he became famous while playing in the big band from 1936 to 1951.

 Milt later became a television staff musician, working regularly on shows by Jackie Gleason and Dick Cavett, recorded eleven albums as a leader and worked as a sideman on numerous albums with Lionel Hampton, Milt Jackson, Elvin Jones, Charles Mingus, Ike Quebec, Ralph Sutton, Ruby Braff, Clark Terry and Branford Marsalis.

He has twice received awards from the National Endowment For The Arts for his work as a jazz educator and a fellow and is a 1993 NEA Jazz Master. Bassist Milt Hinton, who photographically documented many of the jazz greats, was nicknamed “The Judge”, was heralded as the “the dean of jazz bass players”, passed away on December 19, 2000 in New York City at age 90.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Nat Hentoff was born Nathan Irving Hentoff on June 10, 1925 in Boston, Massachusetts. He graduated from the Boston Latin School, matriculated through Northeastern University with honors, did graduate work at Harvard University and was a Fulbright fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris.

He became an American historian, novelist, jazz and country music critic and a syndicated columnist having written for Down Beat, Jazz Times as well as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, The New Yorker amongst others.

Hentoff joined Down Beat Magazine as a columnist in 1952 and from 1953 through 1957 was an associate editor. In 1958 he co-founded The Jazz Review, a magazine that he co-edited with Martin Williams until 1961. His broadcast career began with a notable radio show called “JazzAlbum”, that would continue into the 50s. During this period he would also host radio shows “Evolution of Jazz” and “The Scope of Jazz”.

In June 1955, Hentoff co-authored with Nat Shapiro “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz by the Men Who Made It”. The book features interviews with some of the best-known names in jazz, including Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington and Paul Whiteman. He went on to author numerous other books on jazz.

Hentoff is a Guggenheim Fellow, NEA Jazz Master, and has been honored y Northeastern University, National Press Foundation, Human Life Foundation and the American Bar Association. He has written twenty non-fiction books and nine novels, of which eight are dedicated to jazz. Writer, author and record producer Nat Hentoff passed away of natural causes at his Manhattan apartment on January 7, 2017.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bill Watrous was born William Russell Watrous III on June 8, 1939 in Middletown, Connecticut. Introduced to the jazz trombone at an early age by his trombonist father, it was while serving in the Navy that he studied with jazz pianist and composer Herbie Nichols. His first professional performances were in Billy Butterfield’s band.

Bill’s career blossomed in the 1960s, playing and recording with many Maynard Ferguson, Woody Herman, Quincy Jones, Johnny Richards and fellow trombonist Kai Winding. From 1965 – 68 he was a member of the house band on the Merv Griffin Show.

In the Seventies he played with the jazz-fusion group Ten Wheel Drive, formed his own band – The Manhattan Wildlife Refugee Big Band, recorded two albums for Columbia, and relocated to southern California.

He worked actively since the 1980s as a bandleader, studio musician, and performing at various jazz clubs. He is most known for his rendition of Johnny Mandel’s “A Time For Love”. Bill Watrous continued to perform and record as a solo artist, bandleader and in various small ensembles for a number of different labels until his passing on July 2, 2018 at age 79. He published an instructional manual Trombonisms and was on the faculty of the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Grant Green was born on June 6, 1931 in St. Louis, Missouri. He first performed as a guitarist in a professional setting at the age of 12, first playing boogie-woogie before moving to jazz. His influences were Charlie Christian, Charlie Parker, Ike Quebec, Lester Young, Jimmy Raney, Jimmy Smith and Miles Davis.

Grant first recorded in St. Louis with tenor saxophonist Jimmy Forrest on the Delmark label alongside Elvin Jones. But it was Lou Donaldson who discovered the young talent and after touring together, by 1959 Green had moved to New York. An impressive introduction to Alfred Lion led to his bypassing the sideman audition and recording as a bandleader, a relationship that lasted throughout the Sixties.

Grant’s first issued album as a leader was in 1961 with Grant’s First Stand, followed by Green Street, Grantstand and being named Down Beat critics’ poll best new star in 1962. He would often play the sideman for Hank Mobley, Ike Quebec, Stanley Turrentine, Harold Vick and Larry Young among others at the label.

Though he had an impressive catalogue of recordings many were not released during his lifetime though Grant always carried off his more commercial dates with artistic success during this period. Towards the late 60s he left Blue Note for Verve Records and other labels into the Seventies but was relatively inactive due to personal problems and heroin addiction.

The guitarist spent much of 1978 in the hospital, but against doctors’ advice, went back on the road to earn some money and collapsed in his car of a heart attack in New York City on January 31, 1979 at age 47.

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