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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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jack Six was born on July 26, 1930 in Danville, Illinois. He studied trumpet between 1945-1947 and worked in Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City where he spent a year studying composition at the Juilliard School in 1955.
As a bassist he played in the Tommy Dorsey Ghost Band led by Warren Covington, then in the big bands of Claude Thornhill and Woody Herman while he continued his studies. He spent several years in groups led by Herbie Mann and also Don Elliott . From 1968 to 1974 he was a part of the Dave Brubeck Trio with drummer Alan Dawson and this tenure Jack followed with Jim Hall.
After a few years in television shows and the musical director of a hotel band from 1989-1998, Six returned to work with Brubeck on tour. Over the course of a forty year career he recorded some 77 jazz sessions with Maxwell Davis,Tal Farlow, Jack Reilly, Dave Pike, Marlene Verplanck, Gerry Mulligan, Susannah McCorkle, Dick Meldonian, Johnny Rae’s Afro-Jazz Septet, Marco Di Marco and Marty Grosz among numerous others.
Bassist Jack Six, a consummate sideman who never led his own recording session, passed away on February 24, 2015.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ernest Brooks Wilkins Jr. was born on July 20, 1922 in St. Louis, Missouri. In his early career he played in a military band, before joining Earl Hines’s last big band. By 1951 he began working with Count Basie but after four years, in 1955 he began freelancing as a jazz arranger and writer of songs and was much in demand at that time.
By the Sixties Ernie’s success declined but revived after working with Clark Terry. This led to his touring Europe and his eventual settling in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he would live for the rest of his life. There he formed the Almost Big Band so he could write for a band of his own. The idea was partly inspired by his wife Jenny as the city had a thriving jazz scene with several promising jazz musicians as well as an established community of expatriate American jazz musicians that formed in the 1950s and included Kenny Drew and Ed Thigpen who joined the band along with Danish saxophonist Jesper Thilo.
The band released four albums, but after 1991 he became too ill to do much with it. He was responsible for orchestral arrangements on 1972’s self-titled album by Alice Clark, on Mainstream Records, that is a highly sought-after collectible today. He has a street named after him in southern Copenhagen, Ernie Wilkins Vej.
Tenor saxophonist, arranger and songwriter Ernie Wilkins, who wrote for Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Dizzy Gillespie, in addition to being the musical director for albums by Cannonball Adderley, Dinah Washington, Oscar Peterson, and Buddy Rich, passed away on June 5, 1999 of a stroke in Copenhagen.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Farley was born on July 16, 1904 in Newark, New Jersey. He received his trumpet education at Sacred Heart and St. Benedict Prep School in Newark. After graduating he played in dance orchestras led by Bert Lown and his Hotel Biltmore Orchestra, an outfit he began playing with in the late ’20s for several years and with drummer Will Osborne in the early Thirties. By 1935 he organized his own orchestra with Mike Riley for his NBC radio program and his career was doing quite well around New York City in addition to touring the country.
He is best known for the mid ’30s hit The Music Goes ‘Round and Round”, and was the high point in the songwriting and bandleading partnership of Farley and Mike Riley. However the thrill of working together only lasted until 1936 and after firing their own respective combo cannonballs Eddie had success with it, adding his own pleasant vocals to the mix and holding down stints at ritzy venues such as the Midnight Club and Meadowbrooks.
Joining ASCAP in 1941, his chief musical collaborator was Mike Riley, and his other popular-song compositions include I’m Gonna Clap My Hands, There’s Something In the Wind and Looking for Love. The ’50s saw his group featured at the Ivanhoe Club in Irvington, New Jersey, Farley making his home within a short drive from the gig in Essex, New Jersey where the trumpeter, composer, vocalist, conductor, author and songwriter passed away in 1983.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Will Bradley was born Wilbur Schwichtenberg on July 12, 1912 in Newton, New Jersey. He became one of the premier trombonists on the New York swing scene, and he often participated in jam sessions broadcast on The CBS Saturday Night Swing Club. In 1939 he and drummer Ray McKinley formed a big band with pianist Freddie Slack that became well known for boogie-woogie, with hit records Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar and Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat and Down the Road a Piece. The latter song was recorded with Bradley, Ray McKinley, Doc Goldberg, Freddie Slack, with guest vocals by songwriter Don Raye.
He was one of the first band-leaders in the 1940s to appear in Soundies, three-minute musical films made for coin-operated movie jukeboxes. Their wide distribution gave the band valuable exposure with drummer Ray McKinley doing most of the vocals. After McKinley left to form his own band, Bradley joined the United States Air Force, where he played in the Glenn Miller Air Force Band and he disbanded his group due to the problems of wartime. He would go on to record with Ruth Brown and Charlie Parker and he became a studio musician, playing for many years in the The Tonight Show Band during the Johnny Carson era.
He was the band-leader for the Summer Silver Theater on CBS radio in 1941, with Ed Sullivan as the show’s host. Trombonist and bandleader Will Bradley, known for swing, sweet dance music and boogie-woogie songs, passed away on July 15, 1989, three days after his 77th birthday.
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