Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Annie Whitehead was born on July 16, 1955 in Oldham, Lancashire, England and learned the trombone in high school and participated in rock and jazz bands. At 16, she left school and became a member of a female big band led by Ivy Benson, playing with the band for two years before moving to Jersey.

Unhappy with the life of a musician, she quit music for almost six years, only to return in 1979 and start a ska band. Taking an interest in jazz again after moving to London two years later, Whitehead began performing in pubs. During the 1980s she toured with Brotherhood of Breath, a big band led by South African pianist Chris McGregor.

Over the course of her career, Annie has worked with …And the Native Hipsters, Blur, Carla Bley, Charlie Watts Orchestra, Jah Wobble, Jamiroquai, John Stevens, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Smiley Culture, Spice Girls, and Working Week. She was a member of The Zappatistas, a Frank Zappa tribute band led by guitarist John Etheridge.

Trombonist Annie Whitehead, who has recorded five albums, her first, Mix Up in 1984 to The Gathering, her last in 2000, continues to compose and perform.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joseph Arthurlin Harriott was born in Kingston, Jamaica on July 15, 1928. Harriott was educated at Alpha Boys School, an orphanage in the city where he learned to play the clarinet, the instrument that was assigned to him shortly before his tenth birthday. He took up the baritone and tenor saxophone while performing with local dance bands before settling on the alto saxophone.

Moving to London, England as a working musician in the summer of 1951 at the age of 23 as a member of Ossie Da Costa’s band, he initially began as a bebopper, and also became a pioneer of free-form jazz. Harriott was part of a wave of Caribbean jazz musicians who arrived in Britain during the 1950s, including Dizzy Reece, Harold McNair, Harry Beckett and Wilton Gaynair.

Deeply influenced by Charlie Parker, he developed a style that fused Parker with his own Jamaican musical sensibility, most notably the mento and calypso music he grew up with. During the 1950s, he had two long spells with drummer Tony Kinsey’s band, punctuated by the membership of Ronnie Scott’s short-lived big band, occasional spells leading his own quartet and working in the quartets of drummers Phil Seamen and Allan Ganley.

Harriott began recording under his own name in 1954, releasing a handful of E.P. records for Columbia, Pye/Nixa and Melodisc throughout the 1950s. However, the majority of his 1950s recordings were as a sideman with the musicians previously mentioned, also backing a diverse array of performers, from mainstream vocalist Lita Roza to traditional trombonist George Chisholm to the West African sounds of Buddy Pipp’s Highlifers. Harriott also appeared alongside visiting American musicians during this period, including a “guest artist” slot on the Modern Jazz Quartet’s 1959 UK tour.

Forming his own quintet in 1958, Joe’s hard-swinging bebop was noticed in the United States, leading to the release of the Southern Horizons and Free Form albums on the Jazzland label. By now firmly established as a bebop soloist, in 1960 Harriott turned to what he termed “abstract” or “free-form” music. During the late 1960s he and violinist John Mayer developed Indo-Jazz Fusion – an early attempt at building on music from diverse traditions. His work in 1969 was to be the last substantial performance of his career.

While he continued to play around Britain wherever he was welcome, no further recording opportunities arose. He was virtually destitute in his last years and ravaged by illness. Alto saxophonist and composer Joe Harriott passed away from cancer on January 2, 1973.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

William Osborne Kyle was born on July 14, 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and began playing the piano in school. By the early 1930s, he was working with Lucky Millinder, Tiny Bradshaw, and later the Mills Blue Rhythm Band. In 1938, he joined John Kirby’s sextet but was drafted in 1942. After the war, he worked with Kirby’s band briefly and also worked with Sy Oliver. He then spent thirteen years as a member of Louis Armstrong’s All-Stars, performing in the 1956 musical High Society.

A fluent pianist with a light touch, Kyle never achieved much fame, but he always worked steadily. He had a few opportunities to record as a leader, seventeen songs in all, just some octet and septet sides in 1937, two songs with a quartet in 1939, and outings in 1946 with a trio and an octet.

He is credited as the co-author of the song Billy’s Bounce recorded by the Modern Jazz Quartet in 1992 with Bobby McFerrin on the album MJQ and Friends. He didn’t record during his Armstrong years, however, he recorded with Al Hibbler and Buck Clayton.

Pianist Billy Kyle, best known as an accompanist, passed away on February 23, 1966  in Youngstown, Ohio.

More Posts: bandleader,composer,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Charles Redland was born Carl Gustaf Mauritz Nilsson on July 7, 1911 in Södertälje, Sweden. The son of a musician, he learned several instruments when he was young.

In the 1930s he was a member of bands in which he played alto saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. During that decade he also worked as a leader.

On clarinet, he recorded with Benny Carter in Sweden in 1936. He composed and arranged jazz and popular music. He also composed for more than 80 films, as well as for radio and television programs. Alto saxophonist, Charles Redland passed away on August 18, 1994 in Stockholm, Sweden.

More Posts: bandleader,clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone,trombone,trumpet

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Hernán Oliva was born in Valparaíso, Chile on July 4, 1913 and began his violin studies at age 8 under a dominating mother. Around 1927 at the age of fourteen, he joined the Ernesto Davagnino Orchestra. Bohemian in character and dedicating himself to music over his father choice of law, his father disinherited and expelled from the home.

Around 1935 he crossed to Mendoza, Argentina and worked a few months on the LV10 radio in Cuyo, with his orchestra. Migrating to Buenos Aires, Argentina where Luis Davagnino, Ernesto’s brother, also a musician, lived, and after finding him whistling from corner to corner of Calle Alsina a tune that he knew Luis would recognize received him at his home after. Getting him a job as a companion to Betty Caruso and Fanny Loy on Radio Belgrano, then joined the René Cóspito Orchestra.

He played at the Boite La Chaumiere, with Enrique “Mono” Villegas on piano, David Washington on trumpet, and the English Phillips on sax. The following year Hernán joined the Oscar Alemán orchestra and by 1944 he began working with Ahmed Ratip’s Cotton Pickers, then with Tito Alberti and José Finkel they formed the Jazz Casino in 1951 with singer Lorna Warren.

His later years were spent hanging around the bars of San Telmo playing for whoever asked, sometimes for a glass of whiskey and for many who never appreciated his enormous talent. Violinist Hernán Oliva, who recorded six albums as a leader, passed away in the early morning of June 17, 1988 in Buenos Aires, Argentina lying on a sidewalk in the Palermo neighborhood, hugging his violin case.

More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,violin