Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lammar Wright, Jr. was born September 28, 1927 in Kansas City, Missouri to a big band trumpeter father. He began playing with local bands and by 16 the young trumpeter performing professionally with the Lionel Hampton band. Stints with Dizzy Gillespie and as principal soloist with the Charlie Barnet big band followed.
Often substituting for one another on recordings, Sr. or Jr. were never put in the credits on discographies, leaving the two to become ambiguous. However it was only the younger that hired out as a session player in the genres of R&B, rock and roll, doo-wop and others forms of music backing such artists as Wynonie Harris, Esther Phillips, The Coasters and Otis Redding during the ‘50s and ‘60s.
He later even had a brief association with Stan Kenton, whose modernistic charts were obviously influenced by some of the Hampton band’s more eccentric traits. Lammar Wright Jr. eventually settled on the West Coast, where he passed away on July 8, 1983 in Los Angeles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Connick, Jr. was born Joseph Harry Fowler Connick, Jr. on September 11, 1967 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. His musical talents soon came to the fore when he started learning the keyboards at the age of three, played publicly at age five and recorded with a local jazz band at ten.
When Harry was nine years old, he performed with the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra and later played a duet of “I’m Just Wild About Harry” with Eubie Blake at the Royal Orleans Esplanade Lounge in New Orleans. His musical talents were developed at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and under the tutelage of Ellis Marsalis and James Booker.
Moving to New York, Connick studied at Hunter College and the Manhattan School of Music. It was here that Columbia Records A&R exec Dr. George Butler persuaded him to sign with the label releasing first a self-titled album and then “20” as his sophomore project. He soon acquired a reputation in jazz because of extended stays at high-profile New York venues.
Over the course of his career Harry has sung on film soundtracks, ventured into acting on Broadway and the big and small screens, has sold over 25 million albums worldwide, has seven top-20 US albums, and ten number-one US jazz albums, earning more number-one albums than any other artist in the U.S. jazz chart history. Harry Connick Jr., singer, big-band leader, conductor, pianist, actor, and composer, continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Dwight Newman was born on September 7, 1922 in New Orleans, Louisiana. A child of a pianist father, he had his first music lessons from David Jones. He continued his study of trumpet at Alabama State College where he also played, led and toured the school band, the Bama State Collegians.
By 1941 Joe joined Lionel Hampton for two years, before signing with Count Basie, a relationship that lasted for a total of thirteen years resulting in a number of small group recordings as leader, spent time with Illinois Jacquet, and then with J.C. Heard. He also played on Benny Goodman’s 1962 tour of the Soviet Union.
Leaving the Basie band in 1961, Newman helped found Jazz Interactions, of which he became president in 1967. Jazz Interactions was a charitable organization which provided an information service, brought jazz master classes into schools and colleges, and later maintained its own Jazz Interaction Orchestra, for whom Newman wrote.
In the 1970s and 1980s Newman toured internationally, recorded for various major record labels. He suffered a stroke in 1991, however, which seriously disabled him. Joe Newman, trumpeter, composer and educator best known for his years with Count Basie passed away on July 4, 1992.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sherrie Maricle was born Sharon Lee Maricle on September 2, 1963 in Buffalo, New York. She began playing drums professionally performing locally with Slam Stewart while studying music at SUNY-Binghamton. She then attended New York University where she completed a Masters in Jazz Performance and a Doctorate of Philosophy in Jazz Performance and Composition.
Maricle directed Saturday jam sessions at the Village Gate from 1987 until the venue closed in 1993. Beginning in 1987, she also began collaborating and leading small groups with Peter Appleyard. In the late 1980’s, she was appointed director of percussion studies at NYU.
By the 1990’s Sherrie was performing with the New York Pops, Clark Terry, Al Grey and began working with the group DIVA, currently leading the DIVA Jazz Orchestra, the DIVA Jazz Trio, and the quintet Five Play.
As an educator she teaches on the jazz faculty of the New York State Summer Music Festival, as well as running her own private drum and percussion studio. In 2009, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival. Drummer Sherrie Maricle continues to perform, tour and record.
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Ernie Fields was born Ernest Lawrence Fields on August 28, 1904 in Nacogdoches, Texas, though raised in Taft, Oklahoma. He attended Tuskegee Institute before moving to Tulsa. From the late 1920s, he led the Royal Entertainers, and eventually began touring more widely from Kansas City, Kansas to Dallas, Texas, and recording. Fields’ band became the first African-American band to play at Tulsa’s landmark Cain’s Ballroom.
A 1939 invite to New York by John Hammond to record for Vocalion. He began touring nationally, never became a star but continued to work steadily, recording for smaller labels, and gradually transforming his sound through a smaller band and a repertoire shift from big band and swing to R&B. During WWII he entertained troops both at home and abroad.
Continuing to straddle these styles into the 1950s, Ernie played swing standards such as “Tuxedo Junction” and “Begin The Beguine” in a rocking R&B style. In the late 1950s he moved to Los Angeles, California and joined the Rendezvous Records and ran the house band In 1959 this band had an international hit with an R&B version of Glenn Miller’s “In The Mood” that reached #4 on the Billboard chart, selling over a million copies. He would go on to record instrumentals under a variety of names including B. Bumble and the Stingers, The Marketts and The Routers.
After Rendezvous Records folded in late 1963, trombonist, pianist, arranger and bandleader Ernie Fields retired and returned to Tulsa. He died on May 11, 1997, at the age of 92.
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