Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richie Powell was born on September 5, 1931 in New York City, the older brother of bebop-icon Bud Powell. He studied piano at City College of New York and played in the bands of Paul Williams, Johnny Hodges and for two years was a member of the group led by Clifford Brown and Max Roach.
Pianist McCoy Tyner, who grew up next door to Richie and brother Bud in Philadelphia, purportedly got some of his inspiration to develop his pentatonic chord voicings because he heard the Richie voice left-hand chords in fourths.
In 1956, after an informal gig at a Philadelphia store called Music City, Powell and Brown were being driven overnight by Powell’s wife Nancy to an engagement in Chicago. During the dark rainy night Nancy lost control of the vehicle on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, heading for Cleveland, and in the early hours of June 26, 1956 all three occupants were killed.
Although sometimes considered less gifted than his brother, he was a respected musician and was beginning to achieve recognition at the time of his death. He left behind a small discography, playing on albums with Dinah Washington, Sonny Rollins but mainly with Max Roach and Clifford Brown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Onaje Allan Gumbs was born Allan Bentley Gumbs on September 3, 1949 in Harlem, New York but grew up in St. Albans, Queens. Starting to play piano at age 7, Henry Mancini was one of his earliest and greatest influences, hearing Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky themes on television. He later studied at the Music and Art High School in Manhattan and was mentored by Erskine Tate Alum Leroy Kirkland.
During this time, he was playing in a Latin band, a big band, playing piano duets and listening to records made by Motown and Blue Note, developing an interest in R&B in conjunction with the straight-ahead jazz of Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Lalo Schifrin, Gil Evans, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane. He went on to study classical piano, composition, arranging and graduated with a degree in Education at the State University of New York at Fredonia in upstate New York.
In 1971, Leroy Kirkland introduced Onaje to guitarist Kenny Burrell and a subsequent gig led him to play with Larry Ridley and the Thad Jones/Mel Lewis Orchestra. He would join jazz ensemble Natural Essence that included Thelonious Monk Jr. In 1972he went to work with Norman Connors as an arranger on the Dark of Light album and contributed keyboards on the albums Love From the Sun, Saturday Night Special, You Are My Starship, Invitation and Mr. C.
Toward the late 1970s, Onaje spent two years working in Woody Shaw’s band as pianist, arranger, and occasional composer, in which the group won the Down Beat Reader’s Poll for Best Jazz Group and for Best Jazz Album in 1978 for Rosewood. His first solo piano project was simply titled Onaje and was followed by venturing into R&B and subsequently ending up on the smooth jazz charts and rotations for nearly 20 years with his composition “Quiet Passion”.
In 2003, Onaje return to straight-ahead with his release of the live album Return to Form, and garnering critical acclaim the next year with a project on his own label, Ejano, titled Remember Their Innocence. These were followed with Sack Full of Dreams before his stroke in 2010 but by year end had recorded and release Just Like Yesterday in Japan, with all signs of a stroke vanished. His sideman work has included stints with Buster Williams, Cecil McBee, and Betty Carter and most recently with Avery Sharpe on the 2012 album Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I A Woman.
He has received the Min-on-Art Award, has his song Dare To Dream chosen by Panasonic as the theme for their 10th anniversary celebration of Kid Witness News, composed, arranged and performed the original score for the Showtime film, Override and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
Suffering a stroke in 2010 he was able to return to music two weeks later. In 2015 he was hospitalized again for two weeks but made a full recovery and returned to composing and performance. Pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Onaje Allen Gumbs passed away at 70 on April 6, 2020.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Malachi Favors was born August 22, 1927 in Lexington, Mississippi. He began playing double bass at age fifteen and began performing professionally upon graduating high school. His early performances included work with Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard. But by 1965, he was a founding member of the AACM – Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band.
Malachi was a protégé of Chicago bassist Wilbur Ware. His first known recording was a 1953 session with tenor saxophonist Paul Bascomb and four years later recorded with pianist Andrew Hill. He began working with Roscoe Mitchell in 1966 and this group eventually became the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for which he is most prominently known. Favors also worked outside the group, with artists including Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp and Dewey Redman.
Favors’ most notable records include “Natural and the Spiritual”, “Sightsong” andthe 1994 Roman Bunka collaboration and recording at the Berlin Jazz Fest of the German Critics Poll Winner album “Color Me Cairo”.
At some point in his career Malachi added the word “Maghostut” to his name and because of this he is commonly listed on recordings as Malachi Favors Maghostut.
Most associated musically with bebop, hard bop and particularly free jazz, Favors not only plays the double bass but electric bass, guitar, banjo, zither, gong and other instruments. Malachi Favors died of pancreatic cancer in Chicago, Illinois on January 30, 2004 at the age of 76.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Thurman Green was born on August 12, 1940 in Texas. A jazz trombonist, who primary performed in the bebop orientation, spent time playing in Los Angeles with swinging big bands, such as, the Clayton-Hamilton Jazz Orchestra. He an occasional member of the Horace Tapscott Quintet, one of many groups headed by the late pianist that no one bothered to record. Thurman was open-eared enough to play quite credibly in free settings now and then.
Thurman recorded as a sideman with Willie Bobo, Donald Byrd and Bobby Hutcherson on the Blue Note label. In 1962, Green and baritone saxophonist Hamiet Bluiett were jamming buddies at the Navy School of Music in Washington D.C. They soon went their separate ways but hoped to team up again some day.
It was thirty-two years later, in 1994, that Bluiett was able to give his old friend his first opportunity to lead his own record date with Dance of the Night Creatures that had pianist John Hicks, bassist Walter Booker or Steve Novosel and drummer Steve Williams. It is a shame that it took over four years for the music to finally come out because Green suddenly died at age 57 on June 19, 1997.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Benny Carter was born Bennett Lester Carter on August 8, 1907 in New York City. He received his first piano lessons from his mother but was largely self-taught. Growing up in Harlem under the influence of trumpeter Bubber Miley and was inspired to buy his own. Unable to play like Miley, he switched to saxophone.
By age fifteen he was sitting in at Harlem night spots and from 1924 to 1928, Carter gained valuable professional experience as a sideman in some of New York’s top bands. For the next two years he played with such jazz greats as cornetist Rex Stewart, Sidney Bechet, Earl Hines, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Fats Waller, James P. Johnson, Duke Ellington and others.
His first recordings of a prolific catalogue were made in 1928 with the Charlie Johnson’s Orchestra and he formed his first big band the following year. In the early 30s he played with Fletcher Henderson, led the McKinney’s Cotton Pickers in Detroit, then returned to New York to once again lead his own band. He would work with Sid Catlett, Chu Berry, Teddy Wilson and Dicky Wells.
Benny’s name first appeared on records with a 1932 Crown label, then on Columbia, Okeh and Vocalion. In 1935 he moved to Europe to play trumpet with Willie Lewis’s orchestra, became staff arranger for the BBC dance orchestra, made several records, returned home in 1938, formed another orchestra and spent much of 1939 and 1940 at Harlem’s Savoy Ballroom. He relocated to Los Angeles in 1943, moved increasingly into studio work and arrange for dozens of feature films and television productions, influencing and mentoring Quincy Jones, as well as arranging for Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Billy Eckstine, Pearl Bailey, Ray Charles, Peggy Lee, Lou Rawls, Louis Armstrong and Mel Torme among others over the course of his career.
Carter has been honored as a jazz master by the National Endowment for the Arts, received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton, was a Kennedy Center honoree, was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, won six Grammy Awards, has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and was inducted into the Downbeat Jazz Hall of Fame.
Alto saxophonist, clarinetist, trumpeter, composer, arranger and bandleader Benny Carter, who was a major figure known as “King” in the jazz community and the only musician to record in eight different decades, passed away on July 12, 2003 in Los Angeles, California at age 95.
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