Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick Wilson, born November 11, 1911 in Mount Vernon, Illinois was raised in Seattle, Washington, but attended high school in Los Angeles, California. He started on piano and learned saxophone in Seattle from saxophonist Joe Darensbourg. He became a member of Darensbourg’s band in 1930.
In 1936, he joined Andy Kirk’s Clouds of Joy, where he spent the next five years. With Mary Lou Williams and Pha Terrell, Wilson was one of the most striking musical personalities in the band. He cultivated a style that has been compared to Lester Young’s because of similar characteristics in their solos.
Tenor saxophone Dick Wilson, best known for his work with the Andy Kirk big band, passed away from tuberculosis on November 24, 1941 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Henry Windhurst came into this world on November 5, 1926 in New York City, New York and was a self taught trumpeter. At the age of 15 he played his first public performance at Nick’s, and made his professional debut during the spring of 1944 at one of Eddie Condon’s concerts at the Town Hall, both venues in New York City. By eighteen he replaced Bunk Johnson in Sidney Bechet’s band for a Savoy Cafe gig in Boston, Massachusett, which launched his career as a trumpeter.
Going on to play with Art Hodes and James P. Johnson at the Jazz at Town Hall concert in 1946, Johnny then moved to the midwest and after a brief stint in the Chicago, Illinois jazz scene he returned to the Savoy Cafe as a member of Edmond Hall’s band. Eventually he moved west to experience the west coast jazz scene in California. However, his inability to read music forced him to decline gigs with Benny Goodman and Woody Herman, emphasizing his preference for informal jamming.
Over the years, he played with Louis Armstrong, Nappy Lamare, Eddie Condon. Ruby Braff,George Wettling, Jack Teagarden and Barbara Lea. He also led his own band, Riverboat Five, through Columbus, Ohio and Boston for several years, opting to play colleges and small venues instead of the most popular east coast venues and nightclubs.He also did some off-Broadway work with Conrad Janis in the musical Joy Ride.
Windhurst only made one recording with his swing quartet called Jazz at Columbus Avenue, for the Transition label in 1956. On the record label Jazzology, George Buck released The Imaginative Johnny Windhurst which showcased his unique trumpet style. The LP was recorded at a showcase in Massachusetts, where the decision to record it was made on the spot just as the show began. The spontaneous set flaunts his innovative playing on timeless numbers such as Back In Your Own Backyard, Strut Miss Lizzie and Lover Come Back to Me.
He eventually moved upstate to Poughkeepsie, New York with his mother, where he finished his career in a dixieland band at Frivolous Sal’s Last Chance Saloon. Trumpeter Johnny Windhurst passed away from a heart attack at the age of 54 on October 2, 1981 in Dutchess County, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Sullivan was born Michael Joseph O’Sullivan on November 4, 1906 in Chicago, Illinois. The ninth child of Irish immigrant parents, he studied classical piano for 12 years and by age 17, he began to play popular music in silent-movie theaters, on radio stations, and then with the dance orchestras, where he was exposed to jazz. Graduating from the Chicago Conservatory he was an important contributor to the Chicago jazz scene of the 1920s.
Sullivan’s recording career began towards the end of 1927, when he joined McKenzie and Condon’s Chicagoans. Other musicians in his circle included Jimmy McPartland, Frank Teschemacher, Bud Freeman, Jim Lanigan and Gene Krupa. In 1933, he joined Bing Crosby as his accompanist, recording and making many radio broadcasts.
Contracting tuberculosis in 1936, while convalescing at a sanitarium in Monrovia, California in 1937, Crosby organized and appeared in a five-hour benefit for him at the Pan-Pacific Auditorium in Los Angeles, California on May 23, 1937 in front of an audience of six thousand. The show was broadcast over two different radio stations, with fourteen bands attending and raised approximately $3,000 for Sullivan.
After suffering for two years with tuberculosis, Joe briefly re-joined Bing Crosby in 1938 and the Bob Crosby Orchestra in 1939. In 1940, when leading Joe Sullivan’s Cafe Society Orchestra, he had a minor hit with I’ve Got A Crush On You. By the 1950s, he was largely forgotten, playing solo in San Francisco, California, and marital difficulties and excessive drinking caused him to become increasingly unreliable and unable to keep a steady job.
In 1963, he met up with old colleagues Jack and Charlie Teagarden plus Pee Wee Russell when they performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Pianist Joe Sullivan passed away on October 13, 1971 in San Francisco at the age of 64.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rudy Powell was born in New York City on October 28, 1907 and learned piano and violin while young before taking on the clarinet and saxophone. In the late 1920s, he played with June Clark, Gene Rodgers’s Revellers, and Cliff Jackson’s Krazy Kats.
Rudy worked extensively as a sideman throughout his career. Among his credits in the 1930s are Elmer Snowden, Dave Nelson, Sam Wooding, Kaiser Marshall, Rex Stewart, Fats Waller, Edgar Hayes, and Claude Hopkins. The Forties saw him playing with Teddy Wilson, Andy Kirk, Fletcher Henderson, Eddie South, Don Redman, Chris Columbus, Cab Calloway, Lucky Millinder and Hopkins again.
By the 1950s and through the Sixties Powell was with Jimmy Rushing, Buddy Tate, Benton Heath, Ray Charles, and Buddy Johnson. Never recording as a leader, he did record with Cat Anderson, Al Casey, Duke Ellington, Cliff Jackson, Jo Jones, Lucky Millinder, Jimmy Rushing, and Saints & Sinners. He continued playing intermittently into the 1970s and was a part of the photo A Great Day In Harlem.
Clarinetist and saxophonist Rudy Powell, who later changed his name to Musheed Karweem when he joined the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, passed away at age 69 on October 30, 1976.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Boyd Albert Raeburn was born in Faith, South Dakota on October 27, 1913 and attended the University of Chicago, where he led a campus band. Gaining his earliest experience as a commercial bandleader at 1933~1934 Chicago’s World Fair, for the rest of the decade, he worked in and often led dance bands.
In the Forties the group passed through swing before becoming identified with the bop school. He went on to start a big band, which was active from 1944 to 1947, performing arrangements comprable to those used by Woody Herman and the progressive jazz of Stan Kenton during the same period. The compositions arranged by George Handy were the most contemporary, and after Handy’s departure Johnny Richards joined in 1947 and for the next year he wrote 50 compositions.
He composed Rip Van Winkle for his second wife, singer Ginny Powell, who sang with her husband’s group, as well as with Harry James and Gene Krupa. Boyd left music in the mid-1950s and they moved to Nassau, Bahamas where his wife transitioned.
Settling in New Orleans, Louisiana for a time, he ran a furniture store. Bass saxophonist and bandleader Boyd Raeburn passed away of a heart attack at age 52 on August 2, 1966 in Lafayette, Indiana.
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