Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Clyde Lee McCoy was born on December 29, 1903 in Louisville, Kentucky into one of the families in the Hatfield-McCoy feud. He begun mastering the trumpet when he was without formal instruction, after the family moved to Portsmouth, Ohio in 1912. This would lead to performing regularly at church, school affairs and on the Cincinnati riverboats five years later, becoming one of the youngest musicians on the river at age 14.
In 1920 he auditioned with an untried band for a gig at the Whittle Hotel and Spa in Knoxville, Kentucky. Approved by the owner and the patrons the two week job lasted two months and the Clyde McCoy Orchestra was officially launched. In Chicago, Illinois he performed his song Sugar Blues at the Drake Hotel in 1930 and his solo rendition of the song would garner him national radio exposure for the band and a recording contract with Columbia Records, selling in excess of fourteen million copies internationally by the time of Clyde’s retirement in 1985.
The Clyde McCoy Orchestra would have a long and successful run at various hotels, sign a five-year recording contract with Decca Records, recorded frequently for Associated Transcriptions during the Depression and the sessions were used for delayed radio broadcasts. Following the ASCAP recording ban in 1941 that halted recording of all songs composed by its members, Clyde recorded for LangWorth Transcriptions in New York as well as Mercury, Capitol, and Vocalion Records.
Trumpeter Clyde McCoy, who developed the signature “wah-wah” sound in the late 1920s by fluttering a Harmon mute in the bell of his trumpet and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6426 Hollywood Boulevard, passed away from complications of Alzheimer disease on June 11, 1990 at the age of 86 in Memphis, Tennessee.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ralph Marterie was born on December 24, 1914 in Acerra, near Naples, Italy and first played professionally at age 14 in Chicago, Illinois. In the 1940s, he played trumpet for various bands. His first job as a bandleader was courtesy of the US Navy during World War II, after which he was hired by the ABC Radio network. With his reputation built from these broadcasts, he secured a recording contract with Mercury Records.
In 1953 his big band recorded a version of Bill Haley’s Crazy, Man, Crazy, which reached #13 on the Billboard jockey chart and #11 on Cashbox in June, 1953. His recordings of Pretend and Caravan also made the Top 10 with the latter selling over a million copies and was awarded a gold disc. His biggest success on the U.S. charts was a cover of Skokiaan in 1954. In 1957, he had success with Tricky and Shish-Kebab.
Big band leader Ralph Marterie, who composed Dancing Trumpet, Dry Marterie, and Carla, passed away on October 10, 1978, in Dayton, Ohio.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lawrence Lucie was born in Emporia, Virginia on December 18, 1907 and when he was eight years old began learning mandolin, violin, and banjo. He moved to New York City in 1927, attended the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music to study banjo and studied guitar at Paramount Music Studios, making the later his primary instrument.
Lucie started his professional career as a temporary substitute for Fred Guy in the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1931. He spent the next two years playing guitar for Benny Carter, followed by Fletcher Henderson, the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, Lucky Millinder, Coleman Hawkins in 1940, and Louis Armstrong until 1944, recording with all of them except Ellington. He would go on to record with Red Allen, Putney Dandridge, Billie Holiday, Spike Hughes, Jelly Roll Morton, Bobby Watson, Roy Eldridge, Sidney Bechet, Big Joe Turner, and Teddy Wilson.
After serving in the Army, he became a member of small groups in contrast to his big band years, and worked often as a studio musician. Throughout his career he was a rhythm guitarist, seldom taking solos until the 1970s, when he founded Toy Records to issue music performed by him and his wife, Nora Lee King. In the 1980s and 1990s he played in concerts with Panama Francis.
As an educator he taught for thirty years at the Borough of Manhattan Community College until 2004. He played solo guitar in clubs until he was 99-years-old. Guitarist Lawrence Lucie, who had a seventy-five year career in jazz and was the last musician to record with Jelly Roll Morton, passed away on August 14, 2009 at the age of 101.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Purvis was born John Purvis on December 11, 1906 in Kokomo, Indiana to Sanford B. Purvis, a real estate agent and Nettie Purvis. His behavior became uncontrollable after his mother’s death in 1912 and as a result of many acts of petty larceny, he was sent to a reform school. While there, he discovered that he had an uncanny musical ability, and soon became proficient enough to play both the trombone and trumpet professionally. This also enabled him to leave the reformatory and continue his high school education, while he was playing paying gigs on the side.
After high school he worked in his home state for a time then went to Lexington, Kentucky where he played with the Original Kentucky Night Hawks. In 1926 he was with Bud Rice touring New England, then with Whitey Kaufman’s Original Pennsylvanians. For a short time he played trumpet with Arnold Johnson’s orchestra, and by July 1928 he traveled to France with George Carhart’s band. In 1929 he joined Hal Kemp’s band and recorded with Kemp, Smith Ballew, Ted Wallace, Rube Bloom, the California Ramblers, and Roy Wilson’s Georgia Crackers. In 1929 Purvis led his own recording groups using Hal Kemp’s rhythm section to produce Copyin’ Louis, and Mental Strain at Dawn.
By 1930, Purvis leading a couple of racially mixed recording sessions including the likes of J.C. Higginbotham, and Adrian Rollini. One of these sessions was organized by Adrian Rollini and OKeh A & R man, Bob Stephens. He went on to work with the Dorsey Brothers and played fourth trumpet with Fletcher Henderson in a rehearsal capacity.
The early Thirties saw him played with a few radio orchestras and worked with Fred Waring, toured the South with Charlie Barnet, worked with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra, moved to Los Angeles, California and was successful with radio broadcasting work. He worked for the George Stoll Orchestra, Warner Bros. Studios arranging, and composed Legends of Haiti for a one hundred and ten piece orchestra.
Living a checkered life he was in and out of jail, worked outside the musical environment working as a chef, a busker, an aviator in Florida, a carpenter, a radio repairman, a smuggler and a mercenary in South America. Trumpeter and trombonist Jack Purvis gassed himself to death in San Francisco, California on March 30, 1962.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pops Mohamed was born Ismail Mohamed-Jan on December 10, 1949 in Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa. His career in music was the logical outcome of an early exposure at Dorkay House to the likes of Abdullah Ibrahim and Kippie Moeketsi. He started his first band The Valiants at 14.
Known by fans as the Minister of Music, Pops plays a wide variety of instruments, African mouth bow, bird whistle, berimbau, didgeridoo, guitar, keyboard, kora, and the thumb piano. He is also known for his wide range of musical styles which include jazz, kwela, pop, and soul. He produced Finding One’s Self, the late Moses Taiwa Molelekwa’s award-winning album.
His recorded his debut album Kalamazoo in 1991 and has since recorded eleven more, his last to date being 205’s Mood Africa. He performs regularly with and sits on the board of the Johannesburg Youth Orchestra Company. Multi-instrumentalist, jazz musician and producer Pops Mohamed, who plays the African mouth bow, bird whistle, berimbau, didgeridoo, guitar, keyboard, kora, and the thumb piano, continues to pursue his career in music.
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