Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lionel Leo Hampton was born on April 20, 1908 in Louisville, Kentucky and was raised by his grandmother. The multi-instrumentalist spent his early childhood first in Birmingham, Alabama and then in Kenosha, Wisconsin before his family settled in Chicago by the time he was ten. During his teen years he took up the xylophone, fife and drums. It was drums that kicked started his career in music playing with the Chicago Defender Newsboy’s Band.
Towards the end of the Roaring Twenties Hampton moved to California playing with the Dixieland Blues-Blowers, the Les Hite band and recording with The Quality Serenaders. But it was in 1930 when Louis Armstrong invited Hampton to play vibes during one of his California dates that his career as a vibraphonist and the popularity of the instrument began. But it was later that his star would shine when Johnny Hammond brought Benny Goodman to see Hampton play and invited him to join his group.
Over the course of his lifetime Lionel Hampton led his own orchestras, played with Bing Crosby, Billie Holiday, Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Wes Montgomery, Illinois Jacquet, Dinah Washington Arnett Cobb, Charlie Parker, Quincy Jones, Buddy Rich, Slam Stewart and the list of jazz luminaries is to numerous.
Hampton, a vibraphonist, pianist, percussionist, bandleader and actor was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1992, received the Papal Medal from Pope Paul VI, has toured and performed around the world, had his vibraphone of 15 years placed in the National Museum of American History and the University of Idaho renamed their music school for Hampton, becoming the first university to do so for a jazz musician.
One of the first jazz pioneers of the vibes and a giant whose career spanned over six decades, Lionel Hampton passed away of heart failure at the age of 94 on August 31, 2002.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leo Parker was born on April 18, 1925 in Washington, DC. He studied alto saxophone in high school and by 1944 had recorded with Coleman Hawkins. Switching to baritone the same year, he joined Billy Eckstine’s bebop band for the next two years.
In 1945 he became a member of the “Unholy Four” of saxophonists joining Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt, Gene Ammons. Possessed of a big, beefy sound tone and a fluent technique that spoke to R & B and advanced harmonies of bebop, Leo played with Dizzy Gillespie, Illinois Jacquet, Fats Navarro, J.J. Johnson, Teddy Edwards, Wardell Gray and Sir Charles Thompson, the later which he had a hit with “Mad Lad”.
During the ‘50s Leo experienced problems with drug abuse that interfered with his recording obligations. Although he made two comebacks recordings for Blue Note in 1961, the following year Leo Parker died of a heart attack at age 36 in New York City on February 11, 1962.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bennie Green was born on April 16, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois. After playing locally around Chicago, at nineteen he teamed up with the Earl Hines Orchestra alongside Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker from 1942-1948, gained some fame for his work with Charlie Ventura, played with Gene Ammons-Sonny Stitt, Charlie Ventura then joined Earl Hines’ small group in the early Fifties.
Following this last tenure with Hines, Bennie led his own groups for the rest of the decade. In the Sixties he played with sidemen Charlie Rouse, Paul Chambers, Louis Hayes, Sonny Clark, Jimmy Forrest and many others. He recorded as a leader for Decca, Blue Note, Bethlehem, Jazzland, Vee-Jay and Prestige during this same period.
By the end of the 60s, Green worked with Duke Ellington but then moved to Las Vegas where he spent his final years playing in hotel bands emerging only to play the Newport Jazz Festival and New York jam sessions. He was one of the few trombonists of the 1950s who played in a style not influenced by J.J. Johnson. He possessed a witty sound and full tone that was reminiscent of the swing era phrasing with an influence of R&B.
It has been speculated that Green was the first trombonist to consort with beboppers and whose ear enabled him to adopt aspects of their harmonic approach. On March 23, 1977 swing and bop trombonist Bennie Green passed away in San Diego, California at age 53.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Claude Bolling was born April 10, 1930 in Cannes, France. He studied at the Nice Conservatory in Paris. A child prodigy whose primary influence was Duke Ellington, he was playing jazz piano professionally at age 14 with Lionel Hampton, Roy Eldridge and Kenny Clarke. Drawing inspiration from the New Orleans sound of Jelly Roll Morton, King Oliver, Louis Armstrong and Sidney Bechet and blending it with the music of Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard and Cootie Williams created an interesting voice for the small band Bolling assembled in 1945. This combination put Claude in the midst of the trad jazz scene in Europe that evolved during the fifties.
He worked with Paul Gonsalves, Roy Eldridge, Lionel Hampton, Cat Anderson and Rex Stewart and by 1955 was leading his own orchestra. Stepping aside from his jazz recording and performance duties in the 60’s, Bolling ventured into creating, managing and producing a female pop group Les Parisiennes, composed for film and television (amassing over a hundred scores), expanded his interpretive range to include the early American modern jazz pianists like Erroll Garner, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Fats Waller and Horace Silver.
His European fans followed his decades of playing ragtime, blues, New Orleans jazz, boogie woogie and swing, however, his American devotees gained access to his suites written and arranged for classical flute, guitar, trumpet, violin and cello soloists and a mainstream jazz piano trio beginning with his collaboration with flautist Jean-Pierre Rampal, a mixture of baroque elegance and modern swing that stayed at the top of the hit parade for two years and in the Billboard “Top 40” for 530 weeks, roughly ten years.
He became friends, worked with and paid tribute in his later years to Oscar Peterson, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Stephane Grappelli and Lionel Hampton. Claude Bolling, at 89, a renowned jazz pianist, composer, arrange and occasional actor is still active.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Rouse was born on April 6, 1924 in Washington, DC. He played tenor saxophone and flute, developing a distinctive nasal tone complimenting a bop-oriented style. Rouse moved very little, looked straight-ahead and wore a solemn expression when he played. He became highly influential by association with Thelonious Monk from 1959 to 1970. He would later become a founding member of Sphere, a band that paid tribute to Monk’s music.
Throughout the forties Rouse worked with Billy Eckstine, Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, made his recording debut with Tadd Dameron, and as the 50’s opened he was a part of Count Basie’s octet, and worked with Clifford Brown and Oscar Pettiford. He co-led the Jazz Modes with Julius Watkins and would go on to work with Mal Waldron. He would record, as a leader gaining some recognition by the eighties; with Carmen McRae on her classic Carmen Sings Monk project, and his last recording would be a Monk tribute concert.
The hard bop tenor and flautist died of lung cancer at the age of 64 in Seattle, Washington on November 30, 1988. Coincidently, Monk’s patroness NIca de Koenigswarter died the same day in New York City.
