Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Holt was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada on May 9, 1954 and exhibited musical ability in early childhood, playing piano at the age of four. By the time he was a teenager, he was a regular on the Montreal club scene.
Self-taught until he entered McGill University, he received instruction from pianist Armas Maiste, whose bebop playing influenced him. Holt became a student of Kenny Barron, traveling regularly to New York City for private lessons. Graduating from McGill in 1981 with that university’s first Bachelor of Music major in Jazz Performance, he taught jazz improvisation there.
Steve’s 1983 debut album, The Lion’s Eyes was nominated for a Juno Award. He has worked with Larry Coryell, Eddie Henderson, and Archie Shepp. Moving to Toronto, Canada in 1987 he worked as an equity analyst and for a time he also continued playing clubs at night. He released three albums in the early Nineties ~ Christmas Light, Just Duet and Catwalk.
At the end of the decade Holt returned his concentration to music full-time and three years later his fifth album, The Dream, was released. He turned his attention to music production and stopped performing jazz live until 2014. A move to the countryside reignited his interest in jazz performance and in 2017 he opened a health food store in Warkworth, Ontario that operates as a jazz venue once a week.
Pianist Steve Hunt continues to play jazz while maintaining outside interests.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Denys Justin Wright was born on May 6, 1924 in Deptford, London, England and grew up in Brockley. His first instrument was the piano but was soon trying to play his brother’s guitar. Known professionally as Denny Wright, he began playing professionally before World War II while at school. He nearly always used his thumb on the top E string and could only play as fast as he could sing.
Wright spent the first part of World War II playing in jazz clubs in the West End of London, doing session work and performing in bands on radio shows. He worked with Stephane Grappelli for the first time in London around 1941. At school he served with the Auxiliary Fire Service in Brockley. Classified medically unfit to serve due to a childhood injury, he joined Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), entertaining the troops.
In 1945 he started the first bebop club in London where he played piano and guitar. The late 1940s saw him touring Italy and the Middle East with the Francisco Cavez Orchestra. Throughout the 1950s DEnny provided guitar accompaniments for Lonnie Donegan, Johnny Duncan, Humphrey Lyttelton, and Marie Bryant, as well as appearing on Guitar Club on the BBC. In 1952, he accompanied Tex Ritter for a season at the Texas Western Spectacle, and with Joel David on Old Bones and added a guitar solo on Be My Valentine Tonight.
Establishing the Denny Wright Trio with violinist Bob Clarke took skiffle and jazz to the Soviet Union in 1957 for the 6th World Festival of Youth and Students. For four decades from the Forties he worked as a session musician working with the likes of Mary Hopkin, Dusty Springfield and Tom Jones. In the 1960s, he went on to record under The Cooper-Wright Quintet, and during the late Seventies formed the band Velvet with Ike Isaacs, Len Skeat, and Digby Fairweather.
Never one to not be working he continued to put bands together as well as lecturing and giving private lessons. He arranged for and fixed sessions, and was a prolific jazz and orchestra composer. He worked with Latin American, Afro-Cuban and Jamaican bands. Denny was voted the 1980 BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year.
Guitarist, pianist, arranger and composer Denny Wright transitioned on February 8, 1992 in London after a nine-year battle with bladder cancer.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Denzil DaCosta Best was born April 27, 1917 in New York City, New York into a musical Caribbean family originally from Barbados. Trained on piano, trumpet, and bass, he concentrated on the drums starting in 1943. Between the years 1943 and 1946 he worked with Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Illinois Jacquet and Chubby Jackson.
Known to sit in at Minton’s Playhouse, he took part in a recording with George Shearing in 1948 and was a founding member of his Quartet, remaining there until 1952. In 1949, he stepped out to play on a recording session with Lennie Tristano for Capitol Records and recorded later with Lee Konitz.
In 1953 a car accident fractured both legs and Best was forced into temporary retirement until 1954. His comeback had him playing with Artie Shaw, and then in a trio with Erroll Garner (1955–57), including Garner’s live album Concert by the Sea. He went on to play with Phineas Newborn, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday and Tyree Glenn. 1962 saw him in the drummer’s seat on Shiela Jordan’s first album Portrait of Sheila.
Best composed several bebop tunes, including Move, Wee, Nothing But D. Best, and Dee Dee’s Dance. With Thelonious Monk he composed Bemsha Swing and his composition 45 Degree Angle was recorded by Herbie Nichols and Mary Lou Williams.
Suffering from paralysis after the Jordan recording session, drummer, percussionist and composer Denzil Best, who was a prominent bebop drummer in the 1950s and early 1960s, transitioned after falling down a staircase in a New York City subway station at the age of 48 on May 24, 1965.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Daniel LaPorta was born on April 13, 1920 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and started playing clarinet at the age of nine. He studied at the Mastbaum School in Philadelphia, alongside classmate Buddy DeFranco. As a teenager he played in local bands with Charlie Ventura and Bill Harris, and studied classically with Joseph Gigliotti of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Leon Russianoff at the Manhattan School of Music.
1942 saw him as a member of the Bob Chester big band for two years, then spent the following two years with the Woody Herman Orchestra. Beginning in 1947, he studied with Lennie Tristano, and with Teo Macero and Charles Mingus he was a member of the Jazz Composers Workshop, trying to combine jazz with classical music. Classically, he worked with Boston Pops, Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski, and Igor Stravinsky. In jazz he worked with Kenny Clarke, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich, and Lester Young.
In 1956, La Porta played the first jazz concert in Venezuela at Caracas National Theater, where a selection of the repertoire performed was released under the title South American Brothers by Fantasy Records, becoming the first jazz recording in Venezuela.
As an educator he taught at Parkway Music School, then at public schools on Long Island, followed by the Manhattan School of Music and the Berklee College of Music. With guitarist Jack Petersen, he pioneered the use of Greek modes for teaching chord-scales.
In the 1990s, he retired to Sarasota, Florida, where he performed at the Sarasota Jazz Club and as a guest with the Fred Williams Trio. His autobiography is titled Playing It by Ear. Clarinetist and composer John LaPorta transitioned from complications of a stroke on May 12, 2004 in Sarasota.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tommy Chase was born on March 22, 1947 in Manchester, England and was largely self taught. He turned professional in the mid 1960s and after working in night clubs and on cruise liners settled in London, England in 1973.
Through the 1980s and ’90s he led his own straight ahead hard driving bebop groups with some success in the clubs and at the first Soho Jazz Festival. He used young musicians, notably sax player Alan Barnes, guitarist Dave Cliff and bassiat Andy Cleyndert. He recorded as a leader and as a collaborator with Ray Warleigh. He worked with Art Themen and Harry Becket as well as accompanying visiting Americans including Al Haig, Jon Eardley and Joe Albany.
A forceful drummer very much in the hard hitting style of Art Blakey, many musicians commented on his skill and timing. Quitting the music scene early in 1999, he played his final gig at the Jazz Cafe in Camden.
Drummer and bandleader Tommy Chase, recorded seven albums as a leader, transitioned on December 2, 2018.
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