Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dave Barbour was born May 28, 1912 in Long Island, New York and started off as a banjoist with Adrian Rollini in 1933 and then Wingy Manone in 1934. He switched to guitar in the middle of the decade and began playing with Red Norvo in 1935-1936.
Through the rest of the decade and the Forties he found a sizable amount of work as a studio musician and played in ensembles with Teddy Wilson and Billie Holiday, Artie Shaw, Lennie Hayton, Charlie Barnet, Raymond Scott, Glenn Miller, Lou Holden, Woody Herman, André Previn and Benny Goodman.
While performing with Goodman’s ensemble, he fell in love with lead singer Peggy Lee, and they quit the group to marry and moved to Los Angeles, California where Johnny Mercer put them to work as a songwriting team, writing a number of Lee’s hits, such as Mañana (Is Soon Enough for Me) and It’s a Good Day. Unfortunately Dave’s alcoholic and domestic troubles with Lee eventually split apart their marriage.
His orchestra had the best-selling US version of the peppy song Mambo Jambo and though his remaining career was far less successful thanhis ex-wife’s, his songwriting royalties sustained him, as the tunes he co-wrote with Lee were covered by many hitmakers of the 1950s. He acted in the films The Secret Fury and Mr. Music, and occasionally performed, including with Benny Carter in 1962. Guitarist Dave Barbour passed away on December 11, 1965 of a hemorrhaged ulcer in Malibu Beach, California, aged 53.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Foster was born May 25, 1936 in Leavenworth, Kansas and started on the clarinet at age 13. His first personal musical inspiration was Olin Parker, his Jr. High School music director and private teacher who introduced him to Woody Herman, Count Basie and many other types of music. He listened closely to the Woody Herman orchestra recording of “Four Brothers” from the late 1940s which featured jazz saxophonists Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Serge Chaloff and for him, Getz stood out on the tenor saxophone because of his tone. but Lester Young and Charlie Parker were also major influences.
His earliest professional experience was at age of 15 playing Leavenworth VFW Hall dances with bassist Harold Stanford. After high school Gary studied at Central College in Fayette, Missouri, he then transferred to the University of Kansas studying classical clarinet, music education, musicology and conducting. While there he met and played with Kansas City jazz trumpet great Carmell Jones.
In 1961 at age 26 Foster moved to Los Angeles, California to join the West Coast jazz scene, teaching privately and studying the flute but finding little work for a saxophonist to make a living only playing jazz he turned to studio work as a woodwind doubler to support his family. His initial associations and friendships with Clare Fischer and Warne Marsh were vital to Foster’s artistic approach to music and jazz improvisation.
He joined at its inception in 1973 he was a member of the Grammy Award winning Toshiko Akiyoshi – Lew Tabackin Big Band, worked with the big bands of Clare Fischer, Louis Bellson, Mike Barone, Ed Shaughnessy, and the Marty Paich Dek-tette, as well as with Cal Tjader, Poncho Sanchez, Sammy Nestico, Shelly Manne, and Rosemary Clooney and numerous others.
For over 45 years he has made his studio work has included television, movies, recordings, media and soundtracks such as Monsters, Inc., Ice Age, Elf, Meet The Fokkers, and Haunted Mansion to name a few. Foster has been in the Academy Awards Television Orchestra for 30 different broadcasts of the show, performed regularly with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra.
Saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist Gary has taught at Pasadena City College, University of Missouri, University of California, Los Angeles and California State University and founded Nova Music Studios. He has co-authored educational materials and conducts clinics at colleges and performs and lectures at professional music symposiums.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Horace Heidt was born on May 21, 1901 in Alameda, California, He went on to attend the University of California Berkeley as a guard on the football team. But a broken back dashed those dreams and he turned his attention to music, forming The Californians with some classmates.
From 1932 to 1953, he became one of the more popular radio bandleaders beginning on NBC’s Blue Network with Shell Oil’s Ship of Joy and Answers by the Dancers and Horace Heidt’s Alemite Brigadiers. He broadcasted from CBS from 1937-1939.
Horace would employ singer Matt Dennis and singing comedian Art Carney. His recordings were highly successful with Gone With The Wind and Ti-Pi-Tin going to No. 1 and The Man With The Mandolin hitting No. 2 on the charts. His 1941 song, The Hut-Sut Song is heard in the movie A Christmas Story.
He returned to NBC to perform on Pot o’ Gold radio show from 1939-194, portraying himself in the film of the same name starring James Stewart and Paulette Goddard. From 1940 to 1944 he did Tums Treasure Chest, followed by 1943–45 shows on the Blue Network. Lucky Strike sponsored The American Way on CBS in 1953.
On December 7, 1947, NBC launched The Horace Heidt Youth Opportunity Program and accordionist Dick Cortino the first winner of the $5,000 prize, soon had his own show. Heidt’s talent search catapulted a number of performers such as Carney, Frankie Carle, the King Sisters, Alvino Rey, Gordon McRae, Frank DeVol, Johnny Standley and Al Hirt. When the program expanded from radio to television in 1950, it was one of the first talent shows.
Pianist and bandleader Horace Heidt passed away on December 1, 1986 in Los Angeles, California. For his contribution to radio and television he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bonnie Wetzel was born Bonnie Jean Addleman on May 15, 1926 in Vancouver, Washington. She learned violin as a child and was an autodidact on bass.
She played with Ada Leonard in an all-female ensemble and soon after worked in a trio with Marian Grange. Bonnie married trumpeter Ray Wetzel in 1949 and the pair worked in the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1951.
Wetzel played in the Beryl Booker Trio with Elaine Leighton in 1953. They toured Europe in 1953-54 and recorded for Discovery Records. She also played with Herb Ellis, Charlie Shavers, Roy Eldridge and Don Byas. During the 1950s she freelanced in New York City. Double-bassist Bonnie Wetzel, who never led a recording session in her short career, passed away on February 12, 1965, at the age of 38.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gil Evans came into this world on May 13, 1912 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada as Ian Ernest Gilmore Green. His name was changed to his stepfather’s Evans early in his life. His family moved to Stockton, California where he spent most of his youth.
Between 1941 and 1948, Evans worked as an arranger for the Claude Thornhill Orchestra. His basement apartment behind a New York City Chinese laundry became a meeting place for musicians looking to develop new musical styles outside of the dominant bebop style of the day that included the leading bebop performer Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan and John Carisi.
In 1948, Gil collaborated with Miles Davis, Mulligan and others to create a nonet utilizing French horns and tubas keeping the big sound with less cost. The Davis-led group was booked for a week at the Royal Roost as an intermission group on the bill with the Count Basie Orchestra. Subsequently, Capitol Records recorded 12 numbers at three sessions in 1949 and 1950 that were reissued on the 1957 Miles Davis LP titled Birth Of The Cool. He was also instrumental in contributing behind the scenes to Davis’ classic quintet albums of the 1960s.
From 1957 onwards Evans recorded albums under his own name. He brought tubist Bill Barber, trumpeter Louis Mucci along with im and featured soloists Lee Konitz, Jimmy Cleveland, Steve Lacy, Johnny Coles and Cannonball Adderley. By 1965 he was arranging the big band tracks on Kenny Burrell’s Guitar Forms album.
Evans’ influence by Latin, Brazilian and Spanish composers Manuel de Falla and Joaquin Rodrigo as well as German expat Kurt Weill led him to create arrangements that included two basses, using Richard Davis, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, Ben Tucker and Milt Hinton on many of his recordings. He was prolific in his recording until he became discouraged by the commercial direction Verve Records was taking with his arrangements for Astrud Gilberto’s Look To The Rainbow, causing him to take a hiatus from music.
During this period he began listening to Jimi Hendrix at the suggestion of his wife. He became interested in scoring the music of the rock guitarist, put together another orchestra in the Seventies and began working with in the free jazz and jazz rock idioms. He eventually released an album of arrangements of Hendrix’s music with John Abercrombie and RyoKawasaki and his ensembles featured electric guitars and basses, like that of Jaco Pastorious, from that date forward.
He would go on to release Where Flamingos Fly in 1981 with Coles, Harry Lookofsky, Richard Davis and Jimmy Knepper, Howard Johnson, Don Preston and Billy Harper. He created his Monday Night Orchestra in 1983 that became a staple for five years at Sweet Basil Jazz Club in Greenwich Village. Members of the band were Lew Soloff, Hiram Bullock, David Sanborn, Mark Eagan and Tom “Bones” Malone and Gil Goldstein among others. He recorded a big band album of The Police songs with Sting collaborating with apprentice arranger Maria Schneider.
Gil won two Grammy awards, has four films to his credit and was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame in 1986. He ha a catalogue of eighteen studio albums, 16 live albums, arranged fifteen albums for Miles Davis, Hal McKusick, Helen Merrill, Johnny Mathis, Macy Lutes, Don Elliott, Astrud Gilberto and Kenny Burrell.
Pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Gil Evans, who played an important part in the development of cool, modal, free and fusion styles of jazz, passed away of peritonitis in Cuernavaca, Mexico at the age of 75 on March 20, 1988.
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