Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lloyd Trotman was born on May 25, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts. He began playing the club scene on 52nd Street in New York in 1945, playing with the likes of Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. One of his earliest recording sessions was on Duke Ellington’s 1950 album Great Times Piano Duets with Billy Strayhorn and Oscar Pettiford.
He worked with, traveled with, and recorded with many jazz artists including Johnny Hodges, Woody Herman, Bud Powell, Red Allen, Coleman Hawkins, Jimmy Scott, Billie Holiday, Lucky Millinder, Boyd Raeburn and Blanche Calloway. He was a member of the Apollo house band during the late 40’s and early 1950s.
During the 1950s Lloyd worked as a session musician at Atlantic, RCA Victor, Mercury, Okeh, Vik, Cadence, Brunswick and many other recording studios alongside producers and arrangers such as Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Leiber and Stoller, Jesse Stone, Sammy Lowe, Leroy Kirkland and Archie Bleyer. He played behind Sam “The Man” Taylor, King Curtis, Panama Francis, Mickey Baker, Ernie Hayes, Al Caiola among others and was a member of Alan Freed’s Rock & Roll Orchestra at the Brooklyn Paramount and Fox Theaters during the late 1950s.
He continued to play many weekend nightclub dates into the early 1980’s and after retiring from the music business, he became a loan officer at Islip National Bank. Jazz bassist Lloyd Trotman, who backed numerous jazz, Dixieland, R&B, and rock and roll artists in the 1940’s, 1950s and 1960s, passed away at the aged 84, on October 3, 2007 on Long Island, New York.
Take A Dose On The Road
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Helen O’Connell was born on May 23, 1920 in Lima, Ohio but grew up in Toledo, Ohio. By the time she was 15, she and her older sister, Alice, were singing duets in clubs and hotels and on hometown radio stations. She launched her career as a big-band singer with Larry Funk and his Band of a Thousand Melodies. She was singing with Funk’s band in Greenwich Village when Jimmy Dorsey’s manager discovered her. She joined the Dorsey band in 1939 and achieved her best selling records in the early 1940s with Green Eyes, Amapola, Tangerine and Yours.
By 1953, O’Connell and Bob Eberly were headlining TV’s Top Tunes with Ray Anthony and his orchestra. She became a featured singer on The Russ Morgan Show and had her own 15-minute program, The Helen O’Connell Show, twice a week on NBC.
She retired from show business upon her first marriage in 1943 but returned when her marriage ended in 1951, achieving some chart success and making regular appearances on television. At one point she was interviewing celebrities on her own NBC program Here’s Hollywood, hosted the pageants and sang duets with Bing Crosby, Johnny Mercer and Dean Martin.
She won the Down Beat Readers Poll as best female singer in 1940 and 1941, won the 1940 Metronome magazine poll for best female vocalist and was named as the darling of GIs during World War II.Her 1942 recording of Brazil with the Jimmy Orchestra was a 2009 addition to the Grammy Hall of Fame. On September 9, 1993 vocalist Helen O’Connell succumbed to her battle with Hepatitis C in San Diego, California.
Inspire A Young Mind
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Florence was born on May 20, 1932 in Los Angeles, California. He began taking piano lessons at five and initially intended to be a concert pianist. His direction changed when he was exposed to jazz while attending Los Angeles City College.
At the beginning of his career Bob worked as a pianist and arranger with Dave Pell. He went on to found his first band in the late 1950s, working with, amongst others, Herb Geller, Bud Shank, Frank Capp and Enevoldsen.
Florence later participated in big band projects in the Los Angeles area, working mainly with session musicians and as an accompanist to various singers. Throughout his career he worked as an arranger for Harry James, Louis Bellson, Stan Kenton, Buddy Rich, Count Basie and Doc Severinsen.
In 2000, Florence won a Grammy for Best Large Ensemble Performance. He died of pneumonia in Los Angeles, California on May 15, 2008 at the age of 75.
Put A Dose In Your Pocket
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dick McPartland was born in Chicago, Illinois on May 18, 1905, the older brother of Jimmy McPartland. His father was a music teacher and a baseball player butt family problems caused the siblings to be partly raised in orphanages. He was an early member of the Austin High School Gang that helped establish Chicago-style jazz in the 1920s.
McPartland started out on the violin and then switched to the banjo and guitar. He played primarily in Chicago during the 1920s including with Red McKenzie, replacing Eddie Lang. He recorded with Irving Mills in 1928 and Jack Teagarden in ’29.
Dick’s rhythm guitar can be heard on sessions led by his brother Jimmy in 1936 and 1939. Unfortunately an early heart attack forced his retirement from full-time music by his early 30s. He later became a cab driver and only appeared at an occasional concert, including in 1955 when he played his final gig. He never led his own record date and on November 30, 1957, guitarist Dick McPartland passed away at the age of 52.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Al Porcino was born on May 14, 1925 in New York City. He began playing trumpet professionally in 1943 in many of the big bands over the next two decades including those of George Auld, Louis Prima, Jerry Wald, Tommy Dorsey, Gene Krupa and Chubby Jackson.
Porcino played with Woody Herman in 1946, 1949-1950, and again in 1954. He also did two stints with Stan Kenton in 1947-48 and 1954-55. By the 1950s, he was playing with Pete Rugolo, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Elliot Lawrence and Charlie Barnet.
In 1957 he moved to Los Angeles and started working in the studios. Al played in the Terry Gibbs Dream Band for three years starting in 1959. Throughout the Sixties he often played in orchestras backing vocalists, performed on two soundtracks The Cincinnati Kid and Music from Mission Impossible with Lalo Schifrin, played with Buddy Rich, Gil Fuller, Thad Jones, Mel Lewis and again with Woody Herman in 1972.
Al formed his own big band and recorded behind Mel Torme in addition to their own work. During the Seventies he moved to Germany playing on Al Cohn’s final recordings in 1987 and led big bands there until his death in Munich on December 31, 2013.
Dose A Day – Blues Away
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