Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ziggy Elman was born Harry Aaron Finkelman on May 26, 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. but his family settled in Atlantic City, New Jersey when he was four. His father was a violinist who had hoped he would play violin and although he did learn to play violin, he preferred brass instruments. He began playing for Jewish weddings and nightclubs at age 15.
In 1932, made his first recording, playing the trombone. In 1936, he joined the Benny Goodman orchestra as a trumpeter, after playing briefly with a band led by Alex Bartha at Steel Pier in Atlantic City, where Goodman heard him. In 1938, while with Goodman, he got a contract with Bluebird, RCA’s cheaper label, to record 20 sides as Ziggy Elman and his Orchestra, although all the members were in Goodman’s band.
One original tune was Frailach in Swing, based on a 1918 recording of Der Shtiller Bulgar (The Quiet Bulgar) by Abe Schwartz. During the first half of 1939, Benny Goodman and His Orchestra was featured on the Camel Caravan radio show, with singer and songwriter Johnny Mercer as singer, writer of speciality numbers, and announcer. After leaving Goodman in 1940, Elman joined Tommy Dorsey and stayed until he was drafted in 1943. After he was discharged in 1946, he re-joined Dorsey for another year.
In 1956, he was asked to recreate a klezmer solo with the vocalist Martha Tilton for the movie, The Benny Goodman Story, but was unable to, his technique having since withered away. Elman appeared performing it in the film, but another trumpeter, Mannie Klein, played the solo on the soundtrack.
By the 1950s, the music had changed. Big bands had declined and for a time he switched to entertainment work. In this decade he appeared in films mostly as himself. In 1956 he had a heart attack, curtailing his music career. By the end of the 1950s he was financially ruined, and had to work for a car dealership. In 1961, it was revealed at an alimony hearing that he was virtually bankrupt. He later worked in a music store and gave trumpet lessons.
Trumpeter Ziggy Elman died of liver failure on June 26, 1968 at the age of 54 and was buried at Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Christof Lauer was born on May 25, 1953 in Melsungen, Germany. Most well known in Europe where he has performed and/or recorded with Palle Danielsson, Carla Bley, Anthony Cox, Michel Godard, Gary Husband, Vince Mendoza’s Jazzpaña, Michel Portal, Maria João, Alphonse Mouzon, and Peter Erskine.
Since 1979 he has been a member of the Jazzensemble des Hessischen Rundfunks led by Albert Mangelsdorff. In 1994 Lauer joined the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, replacing Charlie Mariano. and is also.
Tenor and soprano saxophonist Christof Lauer, who is a member of the Hamburg NDR Radio Orchestra, continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Horace Kirby Dowell, known professionally as Saxie, was born on May 24, 1904 in Raleigh, North Carolina. Attending the University of North Carolina he met Hal Kemp and joined Kemp’s orchestra as a tenor saxophonist, clarinetist, flutist and vocalist in the fall of 1925.
He composed I Don’t Care, which was recorded by Kemp for Brunswick in 1928. When the band’s style changed in the early 1930s to that of a dance band, Dowell became the group’s comedic vocalist for novelty songs. After Three Little Fishies became a hit in 1939, Dowell was involved in a legal dispute with lyricists Josephine Carringer and Bernice Idins. In 1940 he wrote the song Playmates.
Dowell left Kemp and started a big band in 1940. Drafted during World War II he served as a bandleader aboard an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Franklin. He went on to record for Brunswick, Sonora, and Victor. Around 1946 he led a naval air station band with 14-year-old Keely Smith as a singer.
>After the war he reunited his orchestra, performing mostly in Chicago, Illinois. In 1949 he became a disc jockey for WGN radio in Chicago, and retired in the late 1950s. He moved to Scottsdale, Arizona and worked as a disc jockey part-time for KTAR in Phoenix during his retirement.
Saxophonist and vocalist Saxie Dowell died on July 22, 1974 in Scottsdale.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frederick L. Guy was born in Burkeville, Virginia on May 23, 1897 and was raised in New York City. He played guitar and banjo with Joseph C. Smith’s Orchestra.
In the early 1920s, Guy joined Duke Ellington’s Washingtonians, switching from banjo to guitar in the early Thirties. He remained with Ellington’s orchestra until 1949.
Retiring from music he moved to Chicago, Illinois and for twenty years ran a ballroom. On December 22, 1971 he committed suicide. He was 74 years old.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jimmy Henderson was born on May 20, 1921 in Wichita Falls, Texas and began studying piano at age six, picking up the trombone a few years later. By the time he was thirteen he had joined a musicians’ union and was first chair at the Wichita Falls Symphony Orchestra.
Winning several trombone competitions by age fourteen, Jimmy started his own orchestra while still in his teens, in addition to studying at the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. Henderson toured with the big bands of Hal McIntyre, Jimmy Dorsey, and Tommy Dorsey.
In 1954, he moved to Los Angeles, California where he steadily worked as a session musician for some 20 years. Among his credits in the studios was the soundtrack for Bonanza. From 1957 to 1960, he was also a member of Lawrence Welk’s orchestra in which he appeared weekly on the Maestro’s television show.
He led his own orchestra for fifteen years, and was the musical director for the Emmy Awards, Television Academy Honors, and Directors Guild of America Awards In the 1970s, he led the Glenn Miller Orchestra ghost band before retiring in 1980.
Trombonist and bandleader Jimmy Henderson died at the age of 77 on June 10, 1998 in New York City, New York.
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