Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jon Faddis was born July 24, 1953 in Oakland, California and studied music and trumpet as a child. At 18, he joined Lionel Hampton’s big band followed with tenure in the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra as lead trumpet. After playing with Charles Mingus, he became a noted studio musician in New York, appearing on many pop recordings in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The mid-Eighties saw Jon leaving the studios to pursue his solo career, which resulted in albums like Legacy, Into The Faddisphere and Hornucopia. Becoming the director and main trumpet soloist of the Dizzy Gillespie 70th Birthday Big Band and Dizzy’s United Nation Orchestra, in 1992 he began leading the Carnegie Hall Jazz Band at Carnegie Hall, conducting over 40 concerts in ten years.

Faddis has led the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars and the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni All-Stars Big Band, was appointed artistic director of the Chicago Jazz Ensemble, heads the Jon Faddis Jazz Orchestra of New York. As an educator he teaches at The Conservatory of Music at Purchase College-SUNY and is a guest lecturer at Columbia College Chicago.

A jazz trumpeter, conductor, composer, and educator renowned for both his highly virtuosic command of the instrument and for his expertise in the field of music education, trumpeter Jon Faddis also leads master classes, clinics and workshops around the world often bringing promising students along to his gigs to sit in, and has produced a number of CDs for up-and-coming musicians.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Don Patterson was born July 22, 1936 in Columbus, Ohio. He started studying piano as a child, heavily influenced by Erroll Garner but by 1956 switched to organ after hearing Jimmy Smith play. Making his debut on organ in 1959 he played with various groups into the early Sixties that saw him start performing regularly with Sonny Stitt, where he made a name for himself. This led to numerous recording sessions as a leader with Prestige and later Muse Records beginning in 1964 with sidemen guitarist Pat Martino and drummer Billy James.

During the Sixties, Don recorded as a sideman with Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and Eric Kloss but his most commercially successful album was his 1964 “Holiday Soul” reaching #85 on the Billboard 200 three years later. However, with his troubles with drug addiction hobbling his career in the 70s, while residing in Gary, Indiana he would occasionally record for Muse Records.

By the 1980s organist Don Patterson had moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and made a small comeback, but his health continued to deteriorate over the course of the decade, forcing him to frequent dialysis until he passed away on February 10, 1988. He left a catalogue of twenty-one albums as a leader and thirteen as a sideman.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Lynn Seaton was born on July 18, 1957 in Tulsa, Oklahoma and began studying classical guitar vey young but by age nine switched to the bass. By the late 70s he was performing around the state and in 19080 he moved to Ohio with the Steve Schmidt Trio and later became the house bassist at the Blue Wisp Jazz Club in Cincinnati. This gig gave him the opportunity to accompany a host of big name jazz guest soloists every week.

Seaton joined Woody Herman in 1984 followed by the Count Basie Orchestra in ’85 and after two years began touring extensively with Tony Bennett and George Shearing. He went on to spend time touring with Monty Alexander and with the Jeff Hamilton Trio. Since the early ‘90s the bebop and swing bassist has free-lanced with the likes of Toshiko Akiyoshi, Ernestine Anderson, Buck Clayton, Al Cohn, Kenny Drew Jr., Scott Hamilton, Ken Peplowski, Wynard Harper, Frank Foster, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Mark Murphy, Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson, Mel Torme, Frank Wess and Blossom Dearie, just to name a few.

Rarely a leader, Lynn has recorded under his name as in 1991with “Bassman’s Basement” followed by “Solo Flights” and “Puttin’ On The Ritz” and as a sideman on over 100 recordings including Grammy-winning “Dianne Schuur and the Count Basie Orchestra”. He lived in New York from 1986 to 1998 and has performed at festivals worldwide such as Newport, North Sea, Kyoto and others. He currently teaches at the University of North Texas, home to one of the world’s largest jazz program.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joseph Rudolph Jones was born on July 15, 1923 in Philadelphia Pennsylvania. The name “Philly Joe” was used to avoid confusion with Jo Jones, the drummer from the Count Basie Orchestra, who became known as “Papa Jo Jones”. In 1947 he became the house drummer at New York’s Café Society, playing with the leading bebop players of the day. His most important influence among them was Tadd Dameron.

Jones toured and recorded with Miles Davis Quintet from 1955 to 1958 — a band that became known as “The Quintet”. Miles also acknowledged that Jones was his favorite drummer (in fact, in his autobiography, Davis admitted to asking other drummers to play that “Philly Joe lick”, with mixed results). He organized the Davis Quintet in 1955 so that he and Davis would not have difficulties finding competent local musicians to play with them.

From 1958 onwards he worked as a leader, but continued to work as a sideman with other musicians, including Bill Evans and Hank Mobley. Evans also openly admitted that Philly Joe was his all-time favorite drummer. For two years (1967-69) he taught at a specially organized school in Hampstead, London but was prevented from otherwise working in the UK by the Musicians’ Union. From 1981 he helped to found the group Dameronia, dedicated to the music of the composer Tadd Dameron, and led it until his death on August 30, 1985.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Major Holley was born on July 10, 1924 in Detroit, Michigan and started his music lessons playing violin and tuba at a young age. He started playing bass while serving in the Navy. In the latter half of the 1940s he played with Dexter Gordon, Charlie Parker, and Ella Fitzgerald. In 1950 he and Oscar Peterson recorded duets, and he also played with Peterson and Charlie Smith in a trio setting.

In the mid-1950s Major moved to England, working at the BBC. Upon returning to America he toured with Woody Herman in 1958 and with Al Cohn/Zoot Sims in 1959-60. A prolific studio musician, he played with Duke Ellington in 1964 and with the Kenny Burrell Trio, Coleman Hawkins, Lee Konitz, Roy Eldridge, Michel Legrand, Milt Buckner, Jay McShane and Quincy Jones during the Sixties and Seventies.

He was also noted for singing along with his arco (bowed) bass solos, a technique Slam Stewart also used. Holley and Stewart recorded together on two albums during the 1970s.

Never one far from the educational process, informal or formal, Holley was a professor and taught at the Berklee College of Music from 1967 to 1970. Upright jazz bassist Major Holley passed away on October 25, 1990 in Maplewood, New Jersey.

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