Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jyrki Sakari Kukko was born July 8, 1953 in Kajaani, Finlan and started his career in the early 1960s as a singer participating in several singing contests and performing in radio stations, TV programs and other venues. At the age of 7, he began taking piano lessons and soon after started playing guitar and flute, then saxophone. The mid-1960s saw him forming bands, constructing a school band, playing mainly rock and roll, before forming a group of local dance bands.
He embarked his career at sixteen playing with the Kajaani Big Band, Kisu & Uniset, Markku Suominen’s Monopol, Tapiola Big Band, Oulunkylä Big Band, Maarit & Afrikan Tähti, Kalevala, SIMO Big Band, Jukka Tolonen’s band, Heikki Sarmanto’s band, Sensation Band of Addis Ababa, Mahmoud Ahmed’s Ibex Band, Etoile de Dakar, and Espoo Big Band through the Seventies. He founded the group Piirpauke in 1974.
He has performed with Youssou Ndour, John McLaughlin, Pat Metheny, Bob Mose, Lester Bowie, Charlie Mariano, Thad Jones, Paquito d’Rivera, Ted Curson, Walter Bishop Jr., Herbie Hanckock’s HeadHunters, Richie Cole, Juan Carlos Romero, and numerous Finnish musicians.
Working as a studio-musician Kukko performed as a freelancer with the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the Finnish National Opera. He has composed music for his own bands, EBB, Koiton Laulu and several films and theaters.
Pianist, flutist, guitarist, saxophonist, vocalist and composer Sakari Kukko continues to perform with over forty countries around the globe.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Antonio Underwood was born on July 7, 1960 in Charlottesville, Virginia. He matriculated through the Yale School of Music as a Classical Tuba Major, where he was awarded several honors. Graduating in 1987 he has since been a member of the two-time Grammy Award winning McCoy Tyner Big Band.
He began his career playing in NYC clubs at the age of nineteen and has performed alongside Max Roach, Jerry Gonzalez, Julius Preister, Delfeayo Marsalis, Bob Belden, Christian McBride, Cecil Taylor, Cecil Bridgewater, Vincent Herring, Joshua Redman, Javon Jackson, Lester Bowie, John Faddis, Charlie Haden, Eddie Henderson, Billy Harper, and the list goes on.
He has been a cast member of Broadway musicals Juan Darien, Jelly’s Last Jam, One Mo’ Time and Further Mo. Tony’s composition and orchestration credits include recordings by Be Be Winans, Terry Dexter, John Purcell, The World Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Montgomery, among others. Owner of his own published material (380), brass quartets published by TAP Music (Iowa), and Jazz compositions published by ENJA Music, Germany.
Underwood has scored films Rumbling of the Earth and Shadows of the Dead. He has produced tracks for Lisa Fischer, Katreese Barnes, Steve Jordan, and Anthony Jackson. He is the first Black person to be a George Lucas scholar to the Scoring for Motion Pictures and Television program at USC and is a Fulbright Scholar Lecturer in Serbia.
Tubist, composer and lecturer Tony Underwood continues to perform, compose and lecture.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Karl Kiffe, born July 6, 1925 in Los Angeles, California first attracted attention as winner of the annual Gene Krupa Contest in 1943. Succeeding Chuck Falkner as leader of the Hollywood Canteen Kids he was featured in novelty numbers in several feature films before working as a single in Ken Murray’s Blackouts.
1945 saaw him hired by Jimmy Dorsey, with whom he worked for about a year, and then again from 1950 through 1953. Over the next decade, Kiffe worked with Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Charlie Shavers, Red Norvo and Woody Herman, as well as singers Andy Williams, June Christy, and Ella Fitzgerald.
Speaking in 1946, when asked which drummer he most admired, Kiffe cited the solos of Buddy Rich, while praising the big band work of Don Lamond and Jo Jones.
Drummer Karl Kiffe, who was great friends with saxophonist Warne Marsh, died on May 10, 2004 at the age of 76 in Las Vegas, Nevada
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bruce Adams was born on July 3, 1951 in Glasgow, Scotland and was brought up in a musical family. His father Bob was a guitarist whose career extended back to the British dance bands of the 1930s and his mother was a dancer. His first real musical interest was the music of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli at the age of seven. His first instrument was the guitar but switched to trumpet on his eleventh birthday. Within five months he played his first gig on trumpet.
By twelve, Bruce was working three to four nights a week in the Glasgow area playing in small dance band residencies and performing in a cabaret act with his father. When he was fourteen he was sponsored on Hughie Green’s Opportunity Knocks by British trumpet legend Nat Gonella. The following year he left school and went on the road with his father playing theatres. They continued until 1973 when his father’s health led to disbanding the act.
From 1973 onwards Adams immersed himself in the Glasgow jazz scene by forming a jazz quintet with alto saxophonist Bill Fanning. Together they formed a big band. During this period he also played the Mecca Ballrooms, with Benny Daniels in the Plaza and Bill Patrick in Tiffany’s.
In the mid-eighties, Bruce worked with Harry Sweets Edison, Warren Vache, and Spanky Davis. Buddy Tate, Al Cohn, Benny Waters, Danny Moss, Bruce Turner, John Barnes, Bob Wilbur. Dan Barrett, Roy Williams, George Chisholm, Bill Allred. Dave McKenna, Ray Bryant, Dick Hyman, Art Hodes, Johnny Parker, and Stan Greig.Milt Hinton, Ronnie Rae, Len Skeat, and Dave Green. Jake Hanna and Gus Johnson.
Adams played with Pete Long’s Echoes of Ellington, the BBC Big Band, and freelanced with Lennie Niehaus, Gerald Wilson, Patti Austin, and the Cuban Fire Concert with Horatio el Negra Hernandez and Giovanni Hidalgo.
He is a multiple British Jazz Awards Winner, with among his more than twenty nominations has received awards for Best Trumpet, Oustanding Soloist, and Trumpet Soloist. Trumpeter Bruce Adams continues to ply his trade encompassing jazz styles ranging from Louis Armstrong to the modern-day.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William “Billy” Usselton was born on July 2, 1926 in New Castle, Pennsylvania. He began playing professionally in high school with Bubbles Becker. Although his parents wanted him to attend college in Pennsylvania, he wanted to play for a living.
Usselton went on to play with Sonny Dunham in the 1940s before joining Ray Anthony in 1948–1949 and again in 1951–1952. Between those two gigs he joined Tommy Dorsey’s band and recommended Mel Lewis after Buddy Rich was fired. After his second stint with Anthony, he played with Bill Harris in Florida.
1954 saw Usselton joining Les Brown’s band, and played with him for decades. He played on nearly all of Brown’s records released on Coral Records and Capitol Records, and toured with him worldwide as part of Bob Hope’s United Service Organizations Tours.
His only album as a leader was the 1957 release His First Album, issued on Kapp Records. He married, moved to Chicago, Illinois where he was a jazz clinician for the Conn Corporation.
Reedist Billy Usselton, who played saxophone, clarinet and oboe, moved to Phoenix, Arizona and died on September 5, 1994 in Phoenix.
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