Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Grady Watts was born in Texarkana, Texas on June 30, 1908 and after attending the Allen Military Academy and the University of Oklahoma, he played in local jazz bands in Louisiana during the late 1920s. By 1931 he had joined the Casa Loma Orchestra, where he became a featured soloist and a composer.
Grady recorded copiously with the ensemble and remained with it until 1942. Among his compositions for the Orchestra was Rhythm Man, You Ain’t Been Livin’ Right, I Remember, and Touch and Go.
The mid-1940s saw Watts abandoning his full-time career as a performer and took jobs in artist & repertoire and as an executive in the chemical engineering industry. Trumpeter and composer Grady Watts passed away in Vero Beach, Florida in January 1986.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe “Fox” Smith was born Joseph Emory Smith on June 28, 1902 in Ripley, Ohio into a family of musicians. His father was a bandleader and his six brothers played trumpet or trombone.
Known throughout his childhood as “Toots”, he originally started as a drummer but was convinced by Ethel Waters that he was a far better trumpeter. By the time he reached New York in 1920, he had his own style, which achieved “the vocalized sound, the blues spirit, and the swing.
In 1921, Smith joined the Black Swan Jazz Masters in Chicago, Illinois directed at the time by Fletcher Henderson. He went on to work with the Jazz Hounds, the Broadway Syncopators, and finally with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers throughout the 1920s. He became famous from his work accompanying Bessie Smith, recording over 30 records. Some of the other artists he worked with include Billy Paige, Noble Sissle, Eubie Blake, and Allie Ross.
Trumpeter and cornetist Joe “Fox” Smith passed away from complications related to tuberculosis on December 2, 1937 in a Central Islip, New York asylum.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Uno Normann was born on June 27, 1916 in Borge, Østfold, Norway. An autodidact performer on the banjo, accordion and tenor saxophone, he would eventually make the guitar as his main instrument. He was one of the swing era’s most sought after guitar soloists in Norway and was also a pioneer of the electric guitar.
He began his musical career as a wandering street and backyard musician at age 12 and became a professional musician in 1937. As a part of the Oslo jazz scene, he performed in several swing jazz groups, Freddy Valier, String Swing, and Gunnar Due. He simultaneously led his own quartet. During this period he played tenor saxophone with the Pete Brown Big Band from 1945 and various random jazz groups such as Frank Ottersen, and Willy Andresen. He got several career offers from international artists, including from Benny Goodman and Barney Kessel, that he turned down.
He never listened to recordings by Django Reinhardt but got his inspiration from listening to Teddy Wilson and Leon Chu Berry, and various accordionists. From 1955, he was less active in the jazz context because of significant alcohol problems. As a studio musician, Robert participated in close to 1300 productions, composed music to multiple folk texts, film, theater, and small pieces of music inspired by jazz and traditional Norwegian folk music.
Normann retired as an active musician in 1982 and devoted his time to small scale farming and inventions. Guitarist and jazz guitar pioneer Robert Normann, who made his first electric guitar in 1939 by constructing a pickup of copper wire, magnets and pitch stolen from public phones, passed away at the age of 81 on May 20, 1998 in Kvastebyen, Sarpsborg, Østfold, Norway.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Mckinney was born Raymond Patterson McKinney on June 20, 1931 in Detroit, Michigan. He was the fourth of ten children artistically gifted, and most of the children took music lessons from their mother. Starting on the Ocarina, he soon graduated to the piano, then the cello which he took to the instrument immediately. His father and English teacher encouraged him to write poetry and he became quite proficient.
During his high school years that Ray was first exposed to jazz, hearing Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb in 1939, also Erskine Hawkins and Jay McShann when he had Charlie Parker with him. Music in the neighborhood, there were bands made up of youngsters who played homemade instruments, such as, pails, brushes, spoons and it was where Ray learned that he only needed himself to make music.
The band director at Northwestern High School forced him to switch from cello to bass. Academically gifted, he was determined to be heard above the Northwestern band, he developed his technique. His passion for music consumed his time and he quit school in 1947 at age sixteen. He was spending time with like-minded students and other aspiring musicians from his west-side neighborhood, Maurice Wash, Claire Rockamore, Barry Harris, and Frank Foster. It was where he developed stamina, playing twelve, eighteen hours at a time. McKinney and Harris worked local jobs backing a vocal group in which Harris’ wife Christine was a member. This group recorded at least twenty titles for the New Song label in 1950.
Ray became a force to be reckoned with on the competitive Detroit scene and he worked with several Detroit piano stars. Though he liked bassists Alvin Jackson, Clarence Sherrill and Major “Mule” Holley, his major influences were Ray Brown, Oscar Pettiford, Tommy Potter and Dillon “Curly” Russell. He befriended Paul Chambers and his cousin Doug Watkins, because their playing impressed him, especially Paul’s bowing.
In 1956 he moved to New York City with harpist Dorothy Ashby’s group, however, the gig didn’t last long when Ray was fired after punching Ashby’s husband in the face during an argument. He would go on to work with Guy Warren, Barry Harris, Ben Webster, Edmund Hall, Max Roach, Walter Benton, Booker Little, Julian Priester, Coleman Hawkins, Mal Waldron, Eric Dolphy, Red Garland, Yusef Lateef, Andy Bey and spent a year with comic Nipsey Russell’s back-up band.
For a short time he experimented with heroin but by 1973 McKinney was clean and living in Oberlin, Ohio and with a new love interest before settling in San Diego, California in 1974. With not much jazz happening he took up a series of day jobs for the next four years while continuing to create poetry.
His precarious health and his lack of insurance caused his friends concern and made his last years were unsteady. He received a special Lifetime Achievement award during Baker’s Keyboard Lounge 70th anniversary celebration in 2004. It was one of his final public appearances. Bassist Ray McKinney passed away on August 3, 2004, aged 73 in San Diego.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rudy Rutherford was born Elmer H. Rutherford on June 18, 1924 in Huachuca City, Arizona. He began performing in the early 1940s with Lionel Hampton and Count Basie. Initially taking Jack Washington’s place in Basie’s orchestra as a baritone saxophonist, once Washington returned from military service, he switched to alto saxophone.
1947 saw Rudy moving to Teddy Buckner’s band, though he continued working with Basie into the early 1950s. He worked with Wilbur De Paris late in the 1950s and appeared with Chuck Berry at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. He would record with Dicky Wells, Dinah Washington and Lurlean Hunter.
In the 1960s he worked with Buddy Tate and spent several years with Earl Hines in the mid-1970s. Saxophonist and clarinetist Rudy Rutherford, who worked with Illinois Jacquet in the 1980s and was active in performance until his death, passed away on March 31, 1995 in New York City.
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