Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jeffrey Ovid Clyne was born on January 29, 1937 in London, England and taught himself double bass from the age of 17. He played in the 3rd Hussars military band during his national service from 1955 to 1957, and on demobilisation found himself at the cutting edge of the British modern-jazz and bebop movement.
Clyne worked with Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott in their group the Jazz Couriers for a year from 1958, and was part of the group of musicians who opened Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in November 1959. He was a regular member of Hayes’ groups from 1961. He accompanied Blossom Dearie, Stan Tracey on his Jazz Suite Inspired by Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood album, Ian Carr, and Gordon Beck on Experiments With Pops, with John McLaughlin.
Jeff would go on to perform with Dudley Moore, Zoot Sims, Norma Winstone, John Burch and Marion Montgomery. He was a member of Nucleus, Isotope, Gilgamesh, Giles Farnaby’s Dream Band and Turning Point during the 1970s. He often worked with drummer Trevor Tomkins.
Bass guitar and double bassist Jeff Clyne died on November 16, 2009 from a heart attack at the age of 72.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richie Crabtree was born January 23, 1934 in Sidney, Montana. A student of legendary piano virtuoso Freddie Saatman, the pianist first popped up on the jazz scene in the company of the Montgomery Brothers. His short recording career seems to have taken place between the late ’50s and early ’60s, largely as a member of a quartet called the Mastersounds. This group, which duplicated the Modern Jazz Quartet’s popular instrumentation of piano, vibes, bass, and drums, but not its style, was an even mix of Montgomery siblings and others. Monk played the bass, with Buddy on the vibraphone, and Crabtree took rhythmic cues from drummer Benny Barth.
While Wes sat in at times, it was Buddy and Monk that were continually looking for a way of making the intricate inventions of bebop more appealing to easy listening and pop listeners. In 1957 the group was gigging in San Francisco and landed a contract with the World Pacific label. They recorded two albums before label honcho Dick Bock went to Indianapolis to check out Wes that they had been bragging about. The resulting recordings were also the debut on vinyl for a 19-year-old Freddie Hubbard.
A serious devotee of the founding fathers of bebop, Richie was not about to slouch on the harmonic contribution. However, little seems to have been written about him since 1961, a point where discographers place his last recording session. The Mastersounds group was at the height of its popularity in 1960, so naturally this was also the year the group decided to break up.
Pianist Richie Crabtree faded into obscurity and to date nothing has surfaced about his whereabouts or whether he is living or dead.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tony Crombie was born Anthony John Kronenberg on August 27, 1925 in London, England’s East End Jewish community. A self-taught musician, he began playing the drums at the age of fourteen. He was one of a group of young men from the East End of London who ultimately formed the co-operative Club Eleven bringing modern jazz to Britain. He went to New York with his friend Ronnie Scott in 1947, witnessing the playing of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, he and like-minded musicians such as Johnny Dankworth, and Scott and Denis Rose, brought be-bop to the UK. This group of musicians were the ones called upon if and when modern jazz gigs were available.
In 1948, Crombie toured Britain and Europe with Duke Ellington, who had been unable to bring his own musicians with him, except for Ray Nance and Kay Davis. Picking up a rhythm section in London, he chose Crombie on the recommendation of Lena Horne, with whom Crombie had worked when she appeared at the Palladium.
By 1956 Tony temporarily left jazz to set up a rock and roll band he called The Rockets, modeling themselves after Bill Haley’s Comets and Freddie Bell & the Bellboys. They released several singles for Decca and Columbia. He is credited with introducing rock and roll music to Iceland, performing there in 1957.
The next year the Rockets had become a jazz group with Scott and Tubby Hayes. During the following year, Crombie started Jazz Inc. with pianist Stan Tracey. During the Sixties he scored for television and film and established a residency at a hotel in Monte Carlo. He toured the UK with Conway Twitty, Freddy Cannon, Johnny Preston, and Wee Willie Harris.
In the early 1960s, Crombie’s friend, Victor Feldman, passed one of his compositions to Miles Davis, who recorded the piece on his album Seven Steps to Heaven. The song, “So Near, So Far”, has been recorded by players including Joe Henderson, who named a tribute album to Miles Davis using the title.
Over the next thirty years, Crombie worked with many American jazz musicians, including Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet, Joe Pass, Mark Murphy and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.
After breaking his arm in a fall in the mid-1990s he stopped playing the drums, but continued composing until his death. Drummer, pianist, vibraphonist, bandleader and composer Tony Crombie, was regarded as one of the finest English jazz drummers and bandleaders, transitioned on October 18, 1999, aged 74.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leonard Gaskin was born August 25, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He played on the early bebop scene at Minton’s and Monroe’s in New York in the early 1940s. In 1944 he took over Oscar Pettiford’s spot in Dizzy Gillespie’s band,and followed it with stints in bands led by Cootie Williams, Charlie Parker, Don Byas, Eddie South, Charlie Shavers, and Erroll Garner.
In the 1950s, he played with Eddie Condon’s Dixieland band, and played with Ruby Braff, Bud Freeman, Rex Stewart, Cootie Williams, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, and Miles Davis. In the 1960s he became a studio musician, playing on numerous gospel and pop records. In the 1970s and 1980s he returned to jazz, playing with Sy Oliver, Panama Francis, and The International Art of Jazz.
Gaskin became involved in educating young people later in his life. He toured and performed at New York City schools, sharing his knowledge with elementary students with the Good Groove Band and the International Art of Jazz groups. For more than a decade, he and drummer Oliver Jackson teamed to play the European jazz festival circuit. He also regularly collaborated with Sy Oliver’s Rainbow Room Orchestra.
Capping off his career in 1994, Leonard performed at the White House’s Congressional Ball at the behest of President Bill Clinton. Although his touring schedule slowed dramatically in the decade to follow, he wrote a privately published autobiography and donated his personal jazz collection to the American Music Archives at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.
Bassist Leonard Gaskin transitioned from natural causes at a nursing home in Queens, New York on January 24, 2009. He was 88.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Morrow was born on August 15, 1925 in Pasadena, California. After leaving the military he played with Charlie Parker, Sonny Criss, Teddy Edwards, Hampton Hawes and other musicians who were in Los Anegles, California. He then spent five years from 1948 to 1953 in San Francisco, California often appearing at the Bop City jazz club and working with Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Billie Holiday and Sonny Clark, among others.
During the mid~1950s he recorded five albums with Sonny Rollins and at the end of the decade two with Sonny Stitt. He had been free-lancing around San Francisco clubs when Max Roach and Clifford Brown hired him to play with them after having rejected two other bassists. He appeared on all of the studio albums made by the Clifford Brown-Max Roach Quintet.
After the band dissolved due to the deaths of Brown and Richie Powell in a car accident, Morrow continued recording with Max Roach’s band. He also worked with Anita O’Day in the 1970s before joining the Disney World house band in 1976.
Bassist George Morrow, who never led his own recording date, transitioned on May 26, 1992 in Orlando, Florida.
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