Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Enoch Henry Light was born August 18, 1905, in Canton, Ohio and became a classically trained violinist. The leader of various dance bands that recorded as early as 1927 and continued to 1940. For a time in 1928 he also led a band in Paris and in the 1930s studied conducting in Paris with French conductor Maurice Frigara.
Throughout the 1930s, Light was steadily employed in the generally more upscale hotel restaurants and ballrooms in New York mixing current popular songs with jazz. At some point his band was tagged “The Light Brigade”, often broadcasting over radio live from the Hotel Taft in New York where they had a long residency.
The 1940s saw Enoch recording for Brunswick, ARC, Vocalion and Bluebird, going on to become A&R (Artists and Repertoire) chief and vice-president of Grand Award Records, and then founded his own label Command Records in 1959. His name was prominent on many albums both as musician and producer. He revolutionized the creation of high-quality recordings in the late 1950s and early 1960s, particularly stereo effects that bounced the sounds between the right and left channels, often described as ping-pong recording. This technique had huge influence on the whole concept of multi-track recording that would become commonplace in the ensuing years.
The first of the albums produced on his record label was Persuasive Percussion, that became one of the first big-hit LP discs based solely on retail sales with little or no radio airplay because AM radio was monaural and had very poor fidelity. He did however,record several successful big band albums with an ace-group of New York studio musicians of the Swing Era.
His album covers were generally designed with abstract, minimalist artwork that stood out boldly from other album covers. Light developed the “gatefold” sleeve to fit his lengthy descriptions of the sleeve, enabling it to fold like a book, thus popularizing the gatefold packaging format. The gatefold sleeve became extremely popular in later decades, and was used on albums produced by CTI.
He would go on to work with The Free Design, The Critters, Rain, Doc Severinsen, Tony Mottola, Dick Hyman, organist Virgil Fox and arranger, Lew Davies, was one of the label’s most important contributors.
Violinist, bandleader and recording engineer Enoch Light retired from music entirely in 1974 and passed away four years later on July 31, 1978 in Redding, Connecticut.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anna Mae Winburn was born Anna Mae Darden on August 13, 1913 to a musical family in Port Royal, Tennessee and along with her three sisters migrated to Kokomo, Indiana, at a young age. Her first known publicized performance was singing with the studio band of Radio WOWO, Fort Wayne, Indiana. She worked at various clubs in Indiana, at times appearing under the pseudonym Anita Door.
From there she moved to North Omaha, Nebraska where she sang and played guitar for a variety of territory bands, or groups whose touring activities and popularity were geographically limited to several adjoining states, that were led by Red Perkins. During that time Winburn was a collaborator of Lloyd Hunter, frequently singing with Lloyd Hunter’s “Serenaders”. She also led the Cotton Club Boys out of Omaha, a group that at one point included the amazing guitarist Charlie Christian.
When many of the musicians were lost to the World War II draft she left for Oklahoma City and led bands for a short while. It was there that she led Eddie Durham’s “All-Girl Orchestra”, which eventually earned her an invite to join the International Sweethearts of Rhythm. Durham had been the composer for the International Sweethearts of Rhythm for two years before leaving to join Count Basie’s band.] After being recommended by Jimmie Jewel, who owned North Omaha’s Dreamland Ballroom, Anna Mae became the leader of the band in 1941. She was reportedly hired for her attractive figure, with the intention of doing little actual composing or singing but was the leader of the band until it folded in late 1949.
Vocalist and bandleader Anna Mae Winburn, who flourished beginning in the mid-1930s and led the all-female big band International Sweethearts of Rhythm, that was perhaps one of the few and one of the most racially integrated dance-bands of the swing era, passed away in Hempstead, New York on September 30, 1999.
Uplift Someone’s World
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Roy Crimmins was born on August 2, 1929 in London, England of Irish and English descent. Originally self-taught, he was later mentored by the American bass trombonist Ray Premru of the Philharmonic Orchestra, and Ted Heath’s principal trombonist Don Lusher.
Crimmins turned professional in 1952 when he joined the Mick Mulligan band and over a career spanning 50 years he has played and collaborated with Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Archie Semple, Freddy Randall, Harry Gold and Lennie Hastings to name a few notables.
Collaborating with Alex Welsh in 1954, they started their own band and recorded with clarinettist Pee Wee Russell and Wild Bill Davison. The band was active for the following decade until Roy moved to Germany in 1965 where he kept a consistent lineup and a regular group. From 1970 until 1977 he lived in Switzerland again putting together a group using the pseudonym of Roy King and recorded three albums.
During this period he toured Europe extensively, had his own television show in Vienna for five years, and In the late 1970s, Crimmins went back to England and worked once again with Welsh until his death in 1982.
By the mid 1980s, Crimmins was approached by Bob Wilber to join his Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington orchestras, interpreting the original Lawrence Brown, Tricky Sam Nanton and Juan Tizol trombone solos, performing at the Nice and North Sea Jazz Festivals.
He was integral in establishing what is now known as the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Israel, moved to Tel Aviv, started the Israel Jazz Ensemble, and composed a commissioned concerto for Musica Nova that premiered at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art to great acclaim. His music is still broadcasted regularly.
Trombonist, composer and arranger Roy Crimmins, who composed some two dozen original compositions, passed away at the age of 85 on August 27, 2014 in London, England.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Helga Plankensteiner was born on August 1, 1968 in San Candido, Italy and studied classical saxophone at the Conservatory in Innsbruck under Florian Brambock, then jazz at the Conservatory of Trento. She would go on to study in various jazz workshops with Dick Oatts, Steve Slagle, Bobby Watson, Bob Bonisolo, Heinrich von Kalnein and Sandro Gibellini.
Helga expanded her talents to include vocals in her theater experience of the Threepenny Opera in addition to performing as a saxophonist for several other plays. She has been chosen by Musica Jazz in 2009 as one of the top ten rising talents, won the AMJ Big Band competition, and performed with the Orchestra Laboratorio of Trento with Matthias Ruegg, Bruno Tommaso, Maria Schneider, John Surman and Carla Bley.
She plays with the all-female saxophone quintet Girltalk, the Helga Plankensteiner Walter Civettini Quintet and the Unit Eleven Jazz Orchestra and. She is a permanent member of the Carla Bley Big Band, The Torino Jazz Orchestra and solos with Tom Harrell, Dusko Goykovich, Valery Ponomarev, Francesco Cafiso, Uri Caine, the Dani Felber Big Band and the Italian Sax Ensemble.
In addition, she conducts the ensemble Sweet Alps featuring soloists Gianluigi Trovesi, Florian Brambock, Michel Godard, Gianluca Petrella and Matthias Schriefl. Alto saxophonist Helga Plankensteiner continues to compose, record and perform at festivals worldwide.
Uplift Someone’s World
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Barbara Gracey Thompson was born on July 27, 1944 in Oxford, United Kingdom. She studied clarinet, flute, piano and classical composition at the Royal College of Music, but it was the music of Duke Ellington and John Coltrane that caused her to shift her interests to jazz and saxophone.
Around 1970, Thompson she joined Neil Ardley’s New Jazz Orchestra and appeared on albums by Colosseum. Starting in 1975, she was a founding member of three bands, the first being the United Jazz and Rock Ensemble, with bandleaders Wolfgang Dauner, Volker Kriegel, Albert Mangelsdorff, Eberhard Weber, Ian Carr, Charlie Mariano, Ack van Rooyen and Jon Hiseman. The second was Barbara Thompson’s Jubiaba, a 9 piece Latin/rock band with Peter Lemer, Roy Babbington, Henry Lowther, Ian Hamer, Derek Wadsworth, Trevor Tomkins, Bill Le Sage and Glyn Thomas. The third, Barbara Thompson’s Paraphernalia, is her current working band with pianist Peter Lemer, vocalist Billy Thompson, bassist Dave Ball and Jon Hiseman on drums.
She was awarded the MBE in 1996 for services to music but due to her being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1997, she retired as an active saxophonist in 2001 with a farewell tour. Barbara went on to work exclusively as a composer exclusively, but returned to the stage in 2003 replacing the unwell Dick Heckstall-Smith during Colosseum’s “Tomorrow’s Blues” tour becoming a permanent member, and in 2005 she performed live with Paraphernalia in their “Never Say Goodbye” tour.
Thompson has worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber on musicals such as Cats, Starlight Express and Requiem. She has written several classical compositions, music for film and television, a musical of her own and has composed songs for her big band Moving Parts.
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