Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Maurice James Simon was born March 26, 1929 in Houston, Texas. Studying the saxophone in high school he was a classmate of Eric Dolphy during the 1945-46 school year. He appeared on an early 1945 Los Angeles, California recording led by Russell Jacquet along with Teddy Edwards, Charles Mingus, Bill Davis and Chico Hamilton.
1948 saw him again with Jacquet as leader, in an all-star band recording in Detroit, Michigan along with Sonny Stitt, Leo Parker, Sir Charles Thompson, Al Lucas and Shadow Wilson.
He went on to join the Gerald Wilson Orchestra that also had Snooky Young, Red Kelly and Melba Liston as members. In 1950 he recorded for Savoy Records backing Helen Humes in a big band with Dexter Gordon, Ernie Freeman, Red Callender and J.C. Heard.
He also played with Fats Domino, Papa John Creach, Big Maybelle, Faye Adams, Bumble Bee Slim, Percy Mayfield and B. B. King. In the 1970s he worked with the Duke Ellington orchestra. Baritone and tenor saxophonist Maurice Simon passed away on August 6, 2019.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Albert Aarons was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on March 23, 1932 and graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He began to gain attention as a trumpeter by 1956 and started working with saxophonist Yusef Lateef and pianist Barry Harris in the latter part of that decade in Detroit.
After a period playing with jazz organist Wild Bill Davis, he played trumpet in the Count Basie Orchestra from 1961 to 1969. The 1970s saw Aarons working as a sideman for singers Sarah Vaughan and Ella Fitzgerald, and saxophonist Gene Ammons.
Contributing to jazz fusion, playing on School Days with Stanley Clarke, he appeared with Snooky Young on the classic 1976 album Bobby Bland and B. B. King Together Again…Live. Trumpeter Al Aarons passed away on November 17, 2015 at age 83 in Laguna Woods, California.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hank D’Amico was born on March 21, 1915 in Rochester, NY and was raised in Buffalo, New York. He began playing professionally with Paul Specht’s band in 1936. That same year, he joined Red Norvo.
1938 saw Hank begin his radio broadcasts with his own octet before returning briefly to Norvo’s group in 1939. He played with Bob Crosby’s orchestra in 1940 and 1941, then had his own big band for about a year. He had short stints in the bands of Les Brown, Benny Goodman and Norvo again before working for CBS in New York.
D’Amico found time to play with Miff Mole and Tommy Dorsey, and spent ten years as a staff musician for ABC, before playing with Jack Teagarden in 1954. From that point he mostly worked with small groups, infrequently forming his own band. He played at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York with The Morey Feld trio.
Clarinetist Hank D’Amico passed away on December 2, 1965.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lavere “Buster” Harding was born on March 19, 1917 to Benjamin and Ada Harding in North Buxton, Ontario, Canada. Raised in Cleveland, Ohio as a teenager he started on his own band.
In 1939 Buster went to work for the Teddy Wilson big band, and then in the early 1940s joined the Coleman Hawkins band. This was followed by his playing with Cab Calloway. He became a freelance arranger and worked with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie, and Count Basie, among others.
In 1949 he became the musical director for Billie Holiday recording sessions. In the early 1960s Harding played with Jonah Jones, though he was known primarily as an arranger and composer.
Pianist, composer and arranger Buster Harding, who never recorded as a leader, passed away on November 14, 1965, in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ernest “Bass” Hill was born on March 14, 1900, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He played from 1924 with Claude Hopkins, and remained with him on a tour of Europe with Josephine Baker the following year. He collaborated with Hopkins numerous times over the next few years and again in the 1940s. In 1928 he played with Leroy Smith & His Orchestra and Bill Brown & His Brownies, and the following year worked in the Eugene Kennedy Orchestra.
The 1930s saw Bass playing with Willie Bryant, Bobby Martin’s Cotton Club Serenaders, Benny Carter, Chick Webb, and Rex Stewart. He was in Europe late in the decade when World War II broke out and he fled to Switzerland. There he played with Mac Strittmacher before returning to the United States in 1940.
In that year, he recorded with violinist Eddie South and trumpeter Hot Lips Page. Following this, he played with Maurice Hubbard, Hopkins again, Zutty Singleton, Louis Armstrong, Cliff Jackson, Herbie Cowens, and Minto Kato throughout the decade. In 1949 he returned to Europe, where he played in Switzerland and Italy with Bill Coleman and then in Germany with Big Boy Goudie until 1952.
Upon his return to the States he worked in New York City with Happy Caldwell, Henry Morrison, and Wesley Fagan. Double bassist Ernest “Bass” Hill, who worked in the musicians’ union in the last decade of his life, passed away on September 16, 1964 in New York City.
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