Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phil Napoleon was born Filippo Napoli on September 2, 1901 in Boston, Massachusetts. He began with classical training and was performing publicly by age 5. In the 1910s, he was one of the first musicians in the northeastern United States to embrace the new jass style brought to that part of the country by musicians from New Orleans, Louisiana.
At 16 with pianist Frank Signorelli he formed the group The Original Memphis Five in 1917. He became one of the most sought after trumpeters of the 1920s and the group became one of the most prolific in New York City at the time. In 1922-1923 they made over a hundred recordings. Napoleon’s 1927 version of Clarinet Marmalade was a particular success. The group split up in 1928.
During the 1930s, Phil mainly worked as a session trumpeter, working in the RCA Radio Orchestra in the early 1930s, and in 1937 unsuccessfully tried to form his own orchestra. He recorded with the Cotton Pickers and the Charleston Chasers and also worked with blues singers Leona Williams and Alberta Hunter.
Napoleon joined Jimmy Dorsey’s then Los Angeles, California based group in the mid 1940s, and he appeared with the band in the film Four Jills in a Jeep. Parting with Dorsey in 1947, he moved back to New York City and worked as a studio musician at NBC until 1949-1950 when he reformed The Original Memphis Five. During the early 1950s the group became noted for their performances at Nick’s in New York City. He worked frequently with his nephew Marty Napoleon, a jazz pianist. In 1959, Napoleon and The Five performed at the Newport Jazz Festival, later released as an album.
In 1966 Phil opened up his own club named Napoleon’s Retreat in Miami, Florida and continued to perform Dixieland jazz in the club up until the 1980s. Trumpeter and bandleader Phil Napoleon passed away on October 1, 1990 in Miami.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Horst Konrad “Conny” Jackel was born on August 30, 1931 in Offenbach am Main, Germany. Initially working as a steel construction fitter, he attended the conservatory in 1951 and from 1952 played in the clubs of the US Army in France, the Netherlands and Germany.
In 1955 he became a member of the Helmut Brandt Combo, contributing to its success. In 1959 he went on to perform the equally demanding arrangements of the Media Band of Harald Banter in Cologne. 1961 saw Jackel moving to the Erwin Lehn Orchestra in Stuttgart, where he performed with Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie and Frank Sinatra.
From 1964 to 1969 he was a member of the Hessischer Rundfunk Jazz Ensemble led by Albert Mangelsdorff, then became first trumpet of the orchestra in 1967 under Willy Berking and the HR Big Band under Heinz Schönberger. He would go on to perform with Joki Freund, Rudi Sehring, Attila Zoller, Charly Antolini and the Sugar Foot Stompers among other traditional bands.
Suffering from cancer, he lost his lower jaw to amputation forcing him to give up the trumpet. Occasionally he was active as a drummer with The Bookreaders. After a long illness as a result of an operation, trumpeter and flugelhornist Conny Jackel, whose motto was “No beer – no music!”, passed away on April 28, 2008 in Bad Nauheim, Germany.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Louis “King” Garcia was born on August 25, 1905 in Juncos, Puerto Rico and played early in his life in the Municipal Band of San Juan, whose director was Juan Tizol’s uncle, Manuel Tizol. This led to some work with the Victor Recording Orchestra.
Moving to the United States in the early 1920s during the Jazz Age, he played with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band and the Emil Coleman Orchestra. The Thirties saw him increasingly working in the studios, including his most important association, Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, which he recorded with both together and separately. He also played with the Vic Berton Orchestra, Richard Himber, Nat Brandwyne, Amanda Randolph, Louis Prima, and vocalist Amanda Randolph.
In the 1940s he returned to play with Coleman again, and led his own Latin ensemble that decade. By the 1960s he had moved to California and faded from the scene, essentially retiring due to failing health.
Trumpeter and bandleader King Garcia, who spent most of his career in the United States, passed away in Los Angeles, California on September 4, 1983.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William James “Count” Basie was born on August 21, 1904 in Red Bank, New Jersey. His father played the mellophone, his mother played the piano and gave him his first piano lessons. Taking in laundry and baking cakes for sale for a living, she paid 25 cents a lesson for his piano instruction. The best student in school, he inished junior high school and spent much of his time at Red Bank’s Palace Theater, where he quickly learned to improvise music appropriate to the acts and the silent movies.
A natural pianist but preferring drums he was discouraged by the obvious talents of Sonny Greer, who also lived in Red Bank and became Duke Ellington’s drummer in 1919, He let the idea of drumming go and concentrated on the piano exclusively at age 15. He and Greer played together in venues until Greer set out on his professional career. By then, Basie was playing with pick-up groups for dances, resorts, and amateur shows, and Harry Richardson’s Kings of Syncopation.
By 1920 Basie was in Harlem where he bumped nto Greer and started meeting the musicians making the scene like Willie “The Lion” Smith and James P. Johnson. Before he was 20 years old, he toured extensively on the Keith and TOBA vaudeville circuits as a solo pianist, accompanist, and music director for blues singers, dancers, and comedians. This provided an early training that was to prove significant in his later career.
Back in Harlem in 1925, he met Fats Waller, who taught him how to play that instrument. As he did with Duke Ellington, Willie “the Lion” Smith helped Basie out during the lean times by arranging gigs at house-rent parties, introducing him to other leading musicians, and teaching him some piano technique.
In 1928, Basie joined Walter Page and his Famous Blue Devils. It was at this time that he picked up the moniker of Count. The next year saw him in Kansas City holding down the piano chair with Bennie Moten. After a couple of re-organizations of the band, Basie formed his own nine-piece band, Barons of Rhythm who played regularly at the Reno Club and on the radio. Moving to Chicago, Illinois the band eventually became the Count Basie Orchestra where they did their first recordings for Vocalion under the name Jones-Smith, as Basie had already signed with Decca.
Over the course of the fifty years he led the band he was instrumental in creating innovations like the use of two “split” tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, which any other bands copied. He also brought to prominence such players as Lester Young, Herschel Evans, Freddie Green, Buck Clayton, Harry “Sweets” Edison, Al Grey, Jimmy Rushing, Helen Humes, Thelma Carpenter, and Joe Williams.
Pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer Count Basie, who recorded close to two hundred albums and in 1958 became the first Black man to win a Grammy Award, passed away on April 26, 1984.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Teagarden was born Weldon Leo Teagarden on August 20, 1905 in Vernon, Texas into a musical family, two brothers, a sister and father all musicians. His father started him on baritone horn but by age seven he had switched to trombone. His first public performances were in movie theaters, where he accompanied his mother, a pianist.
By 1920, Teagarden was playing professionally in San Antonio, Texas with the band of pianist Peck Kelley. In the mid-1920s he started traveling widely around the United States in a quick succession of different bands. 1927 saw him in New York City where he worked with several bands and by 1928 he was playing with the Ben Pollack band.
In the late 1920s, he recorded with such bandleaders and sidemen as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Bix Beiderbecke, Red Nichols, Jimmy McPartland, Mezz Mezzrow, Glenn Miller, and Eddie Condon. Miller and Teagarden collaborated to provide lyrics and a verse to Spencer Williams’ “Basin Street Blues”, which in that amended form became one of the numbers that Teagarden played until the end of his days.
Seeking financial security during the Great Depression, Jack signed an exclusive contract to play for the Paul Whiteman Orchestra from 1933 through 1938. In 1946, he joined his lifelong friend Louis Armstrong and his All Stars. In late 1951, he left to again lead his own band.
Suffering from pneumonia, trombonist and singer Jack Teagarden, considered the most innovative jazz trombone stylist of the pre-bebop era, passed away in New Orleans at the age of 58 on January 15, 1964.
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