Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Klaus Weiss was born February 17, 1942 in Gevelsberg, Germany and his influences were Big Sid Catlett and Buddy Rich. He began playing professionally at age 16. His first gigs, with a group called the Jazzopators, provided accompaniment for trumpeter Nelson Williams and vocalist Inez Cavanaugh.

Klaus worked with the Klaus Doldinger Quartet, played the Paris Blue Note with Bud Powell, Kenny Drew and Johnny Griffin. He led a trio beginning in 1965, with pianist Rob Franken and bassist Rob Langereis, recorded his first LP Greensleeves as a leader and won the International Jazz Competition in Vienna in 1966. He would go on to win several Twen Jazz Polls as well. During the late ’60s, he also played with the Erwin Lehn Big Band, the Bayerischer Rundfunk Jazz Ensemble and Friedrich Guida.

Weiss recorded half a dozen LPs during the early ’70s, several with a quintet or sextet including work by trumpeter Cecil Bridgewater, bassist George Mraz and pianist Walter Norris. He also led an international all-star big band with Slide Hampton, Herb Geller, Philip Catherine and Don Menza among others for the live 1971 album I Just Want To Celebrate

During the late ’70s and early ’80s, Klaus worked mostly with his quintet, but also toured with Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Clifford Jordan and Horace Parlan while making frequent quintet albums as a leader. He recorded two albums during the ’90s, including the trio outing L.A. Calling and the Christmas album A Message from Santa Klaus with the NDR Big Band.

Later in his career, as his extensive discography continued to grow, he began composing music for movies and television. Drummer Klaus Weiss, who played with American expats and led his own bands in trio, quartet, sextet and big band settings from the ‘60s through the ‘90s, passed away unexpectedly, reportedly of heart failure, on December 10, 2008 in Pfaffenhofen an der Ilm, Germany.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Rob McConnell was born Robert Murray Gordon McConnell on February 14, 1935 in London, Ontario, Canada. He took up the valve trombone in high school and began his performing career in the early 1950s, performing and studying with Don Thompson, Bobby Gimby, Maynard Ferguson and music theory with Gordon Delamont. In 1968 he formed The Boss Brass, a big band that became his primary performing and recording unit through the Seventies and Eighties.

In 1988, McConnell took a teaching position at the Dick Grove School of Music in California, but gave up his position and returned to Canada a year later. In 1997, he was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and in 1998 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Rob remained active throughout the 2000s, touring internationally as both a performer and educator. The Rob McConnell Tentet, a scaled-down version of the Boss Brass featuring many Boss Brass alumni, has been quite successful; it has recorded three major albums, The Rob McConnell Tentet, Thank You, Ted and Music of the Twenties.

Rob McConnell & The Boss Brass became one of Canada’s most popular jazz ensembles, performing live and recording for Concord Jazz label and a variety of others. The valve trombonist, composer, arranger, bandleader, educator and recording artist died on May 1, 2010 in Toronto, Ontario, aged 75, from cancer. He left a catalogue of 33 albums recording with Maynard Ferguson and Mel Torme among others.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jonny King was born Jonathan Z. King on February 2, 1965 in New York City, New York. Raised in New York City, he graduated from Princeton and Harvard Law School. A jazz pianist primarily self-taught, he has neither received any formal music education nor attended any jazz schools. His school of music was life – obsessively listening to records, going to jam sessions and soaking up as much live and recorded music as possible from traditional to avant-garde.

He credits pianist Mulgrew Miller and Tony Aless as his important influences, mentors and personal teachers. As well as recording under his own name, he has performed with, among others Roy Hargrove, Kenny Garrett, Bobby Watson, Christian McBride, Joe Lovano, Ira Coleman, Billy Drummond, Mark Turner, Vincent Herring, Steve Nelson, Peter Washington, Joshua Redman, Steve Davis, David Sanchez, Milton Cardona and Larry Grenadier.

He has released three albums in the 90s on the Criss Cross and Enja labels – In From the Cold, Notes From The Underground and Meltdown. In between his duties as an attorney at a copyright practice, he continues to approach music the way he learned, both as a performer and composer.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Steve Wiest was born John Stephen Wiest on January 26, 1957 in Cleveland, Ohio. Taking up the trombone in his youth he attended Blair High School and played in the band. He went on to matriculate through University of Southern Mississippi and then through University of North Texas.

From 1981 to 1985, Steve was a featured trombonist and arranger with the Maynard Ferguson Band, he has been a professor for twenty-six of the thirty-four years that he has been a professional trombonist, composer, and arranger. From 2006 to 2014, he was Associate Professor of Music in Jazz Studies at the University of North Texas College of Music and during that time he was also the director of the One O’Clock Lab Band.

A three-time Grammy nominee individually, for composing and collaboratively for ensemble, Steve Wiest has in excess of two dozen albums to his name and 58 arrangements and compositions to his credit, which include 10 original compositions from his current project, The Dover Stone: Concerto for Folded Space.

His resume of performances or recordings reads like a who’s who list with Weather Report, Sarah ‘Vaughan, Bill Cosby, Buddy Rich, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy tner, Al Foster, Eddie Gomez, Slide Hampton, Dizzy Gillespie, Chick Corea and the Gil Evans Orchestra on it, just to name a few.

Trombonist and educator Steve Wiest is currently in his first year as Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and Commercial Music at the University of Denver Lamont School of Music, and is the Coordinator of the 21st Century Music Initiative at the school. He continues to perform, compose and arrange jazz and big band.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

 Gene Krupa was born Eugene Bertram Krupa on January 15, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois. Originally groomed for the priesthood by his parents, he He spent his grammar school days at various parochial schools and upon graduation, attended Saint Joseph’s College for a year, but later decided it was not his vocation. He studied with Sanford A Moeller and began playing drums professionally in the mid-1920s with bands in Wisconsin.

Gene broke into the Chicago scene in 1927, when he was picked by MCA to become a member of Thelma Terry and Her Playboys, the first notable American Jazz band to be led by a female musician. The Playboys were the house band at The Golden Pumpkin nightclub in Chicago and also toured extensively throughout the eastern and central United States.

Making his first recordings in 1927 with a band under the leadership of guitarist Eddie Condon and Red McKenzie, Krupa recorded others on the Chicago scene such as Bix Beiderbecke. His big influences during this time were Tubby Hall, Zutty Singleton and Baby Dodds.

By 1934 he joined Benny Goodman’s band, where his featured drum work made him a national celebrity. His tom-tom interludes on their hit “Sing, Sing, Sing” were the first extended drum solos to be recorded commercially. He made a cameo appearance in the 1941 film, Ball of Fire, in which he and his band performed an extended version of the hit Drum Drum Boogie, which he had composed with trumpeter Roy Eldridge. He also appeared in The Best Years Of Our Lives in 1946 during the waning years of the big band era.

1951 saw Gene leading a trio or quartet, appeared regularly with the Jazz At The Philharmonic band, never quite adjusted to be-bop, and by the end of the decade returned to Hollywood appearing in such films as The Glenn Miller Story, The Benny Goodman Story and had a biography starring Sal Mineo titled The Gene Krupa Story, featuring a cameo appearance by Red Nichols.

During the 1960s he played clubs in Washington, DC and New York but increasingly troubled by back pain, he retired in the late 1960s and opened a music school. He would give instruction to future KISS drummer Peter and Jerry Nolan of the New York Dolls. He occasionally played in public in the early 1970s until shortly before his death. Gene Krupa, big band drummer, band leader, actor and composer, known for his highly energetic and flamboyant style passed away on October 16, 1973.

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