Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Erskine Tate born on December 19, 1895 in Memphis, Tennessee played violin and studied music at Lane College in Jackson, Tennessee. He moved to Chicago in 1912, studied at the American Conservatory and took his first professional gig at 17. By 1918 he was an early figure in the jazz scene and leading his band the Vendome Orchestra providing music during intermission and for the silent films that were shown in the Vendome Theatre at 31st and State streets.
The band was originally a nine-piece outfit but by the mid 20s had grown to 15. Among the members were Louis Armstrong, Freddie Keppard, Stomp Evans, Buster Bailey, Fats Waller and Teddy Wilson. They recorded during the period for Okeh and Vocalion Record labels.
By 1928 Erskine left the orchestra and led a band at the Metropolitan Theatre and then the Michigan Theatre. He had a long residency at the Cotton Club and continued to lead orchestras and play for dance marathons throughout the 1930s. In 1945 he retired from active performance, opened his own studio, began teaching music and became one of the city’s top instructors throughout the 50s and 60s.
Violinist, composer, conductor and bandleader Erskine Tate passed away on December 17, 1975 in Chicago, Illinois.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Cooper was born on December 6, 1925 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began to study the clarinet in high school and the following year he began working on the tenor saxophone. By 1945 he was joining Stan Kenton’s outfit when he was just 20, and as the new tenor saxophone player played alongside vocalist June Christy on “Tampico” that was to be a Kenton million-selling record. He would marry Christy two years later in Washington, DC.
Coop, as he was affectionately known, stayed with Kenton until he broke up the band in 1951. A naturally swinging jazz musician, Cooper and some other ex- Kenton men were hired to play at the Lighthouse Cafe in Los Angeles by the bassist Howard Rumsey. The Lighthouse became one of the most famous jazz clubs in the world, and the band, Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All Stars made history.
With a steady job he could work from home and he expanded his study of the oboe and English horn. While at the Lighthouse he made many momentous recordings, unique amongst them oboe and flute with Bud Shank, and composing a 12-tone octet for woodwind. Bob would go on to lead record sessions as part of a series of long-playing albums under “Kenton Presents” for Capitol Records.
His writing and playing on the album and its successor, “Shifting Winds” in 1955, were seminal in the creation of what was to become known as West Coast jazz. Imaginative writing and a well lubricated polish characterized the session and Cooper’s singing and stomping tenor style on his arrangement of “Strike Up The Band” boosted the record sales considerably.
Cooper would go on to tour Europe, South Africa and Japan with Christy, work as a studio musician in Hollywood, further develop his writing and compose film scores, join Kenton’s huge Neophonic Orchestra and have his composition ‘Solo For Orchestra’ premiered at one of its concerts. Much in demand for his beloved big-band work, he played regularly in other Los Angeles orchestras led by Shorty Rogers, Terry Gibbs, Bill Holman, Bill Berry, Bob Florence and Frankie Capp / Nat Pierce.
Bob Cooper, the West Coast jazz musician known primarily for playing tenor saxophone was also one of the first to play solos on oboe, passed away on August 5, 1993 in Los Angeles, California. Though maturing into one of the finest but least praised tenor saxophonists, he easily ranked with Stan Getz, Zoot Sims and Al Cohn in his talents. His last studio recording, released the year of his death, was on Karrin Allyson’s album Sweet Home Cookin on which he played tenor saxophone.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mary Lou Williams was born Mary Elfrieda Scruggs in Atlanta, Georgia on May 8, 1910 but grew up in the East Liberty neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA. As a very young child she taught herself to play the piano and one of her greatest influences was Lovie Austin. She had her first public performance at the age of six and went on to help support her ten half-brothers and sisters playing for parties. Mary Lou began performing publicly at the age of seven becoming admiringly known as “the little piano girl of East Liberty”.
In 1924 at age 14 she was taken on the Orpheum Circuit. The following year she played with Duke Ellington and his early small band, the Washingtonians. A year later she was jamming with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers at Harlem’s Rhythm Club and Louis Armstrong stopped in, listened to her picked her up and gave her a kiss. By 1929 she was married to John Williams and composing, arranging and playing piano for Andy Kirk’s Twelve Clouds of Joy, an association that would last until 1942.
Returning to Pittsburgh she put together a group that included Art Blakey, went on the road with Duke Ellington, moved to New York taking a job at Café Society and became closely associated with the bebop generation. She lived in Europe for two years in the fifties and upon her return took a hiatus from performing and began composing religious jazz music.
Throughout the seventies her career flourished recording both group and solo settings and commentating The History of Jazz. She toured extensively playing concerts and festivals, accepting an artist-in-residence appointment at Duke University and performed at the White House in 1978.
Mary Lou Williams was much more than a pianist. She was a composer and arranger who wrote hundreds of compositions and arrangements and recorded more than a hundred records. She wrote and arranged for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and was friend, mentor and teacher to Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie.
Mary Lou Williams died of bladder cancer on May 28, 1981 in Durham, North Carolina at the age of 71. Looking back over her career at the end of her life Mary Lou Williams was known to have said, “I did it, didn’t I? Through muck and mud.”
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Trombonist and bandleader Grover Curry Mitchell was born on March 17, 1930 in Whatley, Alabama. By age eight he was living in Pittsburgh where jazz took hold of him. During his teen years after an initial desire to play trumpet, the school took note of his long arms and trained him to play the trombone.
After high school he enlisted playing in the U.S. Marine Band, then went on to play with Lionel Hampton and Duke Ellington. But his best-known association was with Count Basie from 1962 to 1978, when he founded his own band, the Jazz Chronicles.
In the seventies he started writing music for television and film including the 1972 Lady Sings The Blues. returned to the Count Basie Band in 1980 and continued to lead the band and served as the director from ’95 until his death, winning a Grammy for the Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album twice.
The mellow-toned trombonist lost a quiet battle with cancer on August 6, 2003 in New York City’s Sloan Kettering Hospital. Grover Mitchell was inducted posthumously into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 2008.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cleveland, Ohio was the birthplace of Tadley Ewing Peake Dameron on February 21, 1917. Tadd as he was known in the jazz world became the definitive arranger/composer of the bop era writing such standards as “Good Bait,” “Our Delight,” “Hot House,” “Lady Bird,” and “If You Could See Me Now.” Not only did he write melody lines, he also wrote full arrangements. Though he never financially prospered, Dameron was an influential force from the mid-’40s till his death.
Dameron started out in the swing era touring with the Zack Whyte and Blanche Calloway bands, he wrote for Vido Musso in New York and most importantly, contributed arrangements for Harlan Leonard’s Kansas City Orchestra, some of which were recorded.
Soon he was writing charts for such bands as Jimmie Lunceford, Count Basie, Billy Eckstine, and Dizzy Gillespie (1945-1947) in addition to Sarah Vaughan. Always very modest about his own piano playing but he did gig with Babs Gonzales’ Three Bips & a Bop in 1947 and led a sextet featuring Fats Navarro at the Royal Roost during 1948-1949.
Dameron co-led a group with Davis at the 1949 Paris Jazz Festival, stayed in Europe for a few months (writing for Ted Heath), and then returned to New York. He wrote for Artie Shaw’s last orchestra that year, played and arranged R&B for Bull Moose Jackson (1951-1952) and in ‘53 led a nonet featuring Clifford Brown and Philly Joe Jones.
He also led bands that included Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins and Wardell Gray. Drug problems, however, started to get in the way of his music. After recording a couple of albums including 1958’s Mating Call with John Coltrane, drug addiction caused him to spend much of 1959-1961 in jail. After he was released, Dameron wrote for Sonny Stitt, Blue Mitchell, Milt Jackson, Benny Goodman, suffered several heart attacks and diagnosed with cancer from which he would eventually succumb to on March 8, 1965 in New York City.