Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Guarente was born Francisco Saverio Guarente on October 5, 1893 in Montemiletto, Italy and received formal training in music before emigrating to America in 1910. He settled in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where a brother of his lived.
Relocating to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1914, where he took a job in a bank and associated with ethnically Italian musicians such as Nick LaRocca and Tony Parenti. He met King Oliver and eventually started getting gigs with New Orleans brass bands. He played at Tom Anderson’s club and toured Texas under the name Ragtime Frank with his ensemble, the Alabama Five.
Serving in the United States Army during World War I in 1917, then played in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with Charlie Kerr and Eddie Lang. Putting together his own group in 1921 in New York City, which included Arthur Schutt and Chauncey Morehouse. Soon after, Paul Specht picked his players up to join a larger orchestra, and Guarente played with Specht on European tours through 1924.
Leading a Specht side group called The Georgians, they recorded between 1922 and 1924 in the style of the Original Dixieland Jass Band. He left Specht in 1924, to form his own group, The New Georgians, that toured Europe and remained active until 1927. This he followed by working in England with the Savoy Orpheans and ensembles associated with Bert Firman.
Returning to the United States in 1928, he joined Specht’s orchestra again, playing until 1930. He joined Victor Young’s band in 1930, remaining there until 1936, and also played with Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Jack Teagarden, Bing Crosby, and The Boswell Sisters on record and radio. In 1937 ill health forced him to stop performing and on July 21, 1942 in New York City, trumpeter, composer and bandleader Frank Guarente transitioned at the age of 48.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Greely Walton was born in Mobile, Alabama on October 4, 1904. He played violin in his youth before settling on saxophone, and went on to study music at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1920s.
During the 1920s he first worked with Elmer Snowden, then with Benny Carter. For seven years beginning in 1930 he played with Luis Russell during which time they served as Louis Armstrong’s backing ensemble. After leaving Russell in 1938 he worked with Vernon Andrade, and in the Forties he worked with Horace Henderson, Cootie Williams, and Cab Calloway.
From 1945-47 he acted as musical director for The Ink Spots, and played with Noble Sissle and Sy Oliver towards the end of the decade. In the Fifties he worked in radio and television in the 1950s.
Retiring from music before the end of the decade, tenor saxophonist Greely Walton transitioned on October 9, 1993 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Thelma Terry was born Thelma Esther Combes on September 30, 1901 in Bangor, Michigan in 1901. After her parents divorced she moved with her mother and two sisters to Chicago, Illinois where she chose to study string bass. Her early years were spent on the road performing in Chautauqua assemblies. When she graduated from Austin Union High School, she earned first chair in the Chicago Women’s Symphony Orchestra. As this did not provide her with a living, she turned to jazz.
She found her way into Chicago nightlife, playing in and around the city with her all-women band, Thelma Combes and her Volcanic Orchestra, or her jazz string quartet, and was hired by Al Capone as the house band in his Colosimo’s Restaurant.
Withan article in Variety bringing national attention to her, the Music Corporation of America took notice of Combes and renamed her “Thelma Terry” and gave her an all-male band, Thelma Terry and Her Playboys, with a young Gene Krupa on drums.
MCA billed Terry as “The Beautiful Blonde Siren of Syncopation”, “The Jazz Princess”, and “The Female Paul Whiteman”. Bud Freeman was so enthusiastic about the band that he paid another musician to fill his seat in the Spike Hamilton Band so he could join the Playboys. The band toured nationally on the Eastern Seaboard and as far west as Kansas City. In 1929 she disbanded the Playboys, quit MCA to marry Willie Haar and settled in Savannah, Georgia.
After a failed comeback, and a divorce in 1936 she sold her string bass, turned her back on the music profession, and took a job as a knitting instructor. She spent her last years with family in her native Michigan.
Bandleader and bassist Thelma Tery, who was the first American woman to lead a notable jazz orchestra as an instrumentalist, transitioned on May 30, 1966 from esophageal cancer at the age of 64.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Michael Anthony Nock was born September 27, 1940 in Christchurch, New Zealand. He began studying piano at 11 and attended Nelson College for one term in 1955. By the age of 18, he was performing in Australia and in Sydney he played in The Three Out trio with Freddy Logan and Chris Karan. They toured England in 1961 before he left to attend Berklee College of Music.
Nock was a member of Yusef Lateef’s group from 1963 to 1965. Three years later he became involved with fusion, leading the Fourth Way band for two years. For a decade beginning in 1975 he was a studio musician in New York City, then returned to Australia.
His 1987 album Open Door with drummer Frank Gibson, Jr. was named that year’s Best Jazz Album in the New Zealand Music Awards. The 2003 New Year Honours saw Mike appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to jazz.
Currently residing in New South Wales, pianist, composer and arranger Mike Nock, who taught at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music until 2018, continues to perform with his trio, big band, and various one-off ensembles.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tiny Bradshaw was born Myron Carlton Bradshaw on September 23, 1907 in Youngstown, Ohio. Graduating from high school he went on to matriculate through Wilberforce University with a degree in psychology, then turned to music for a living.
In Ohio, he sang and played drums with Horace Henderson’s campus oriented Collegians. Relocating to New York City in 1932 he drummed for Marion Hardy’s Alabamians, the Charleston Bearcats, and the Mills Blue Rhythm Band, and sang for Luis Russell. Two years later Bradshaw formed his own swing orchestra, which recorded eight sides in two separate sessions for Decca Records that year in New York City. The band would go on to record in 1944 for Manor Records with the music leaning more towards rhythm and blues than jazz or swing. In 1947 he recorded for Savoy Records.
The band recorded extensively for the rhythm and blues market with King Records between late 1949 and early 1955. His influence as a composer is evidenced in the rock world with his 1951 song The Train Kept A-Rollin’ that has been recorded by Johnny Burnette & The Rock and Roll Trio, The Yardbirds with Jeff Beck, Aerosmith, Motörhead and performed by Jimmy Page as the first song played, at the very first rehearsal of the band that would become Led Zeppelin.
Returning to R&B with Soft and Heavy Juice, he brought along with him on both of these 1953 hits, Red Prysock on tenor saxophone. Tiny’s later career was hampered by severe health problems, including two strokes, the first in 1954, that left him partially paralyzed. However he made a return to touring in 1958.
As a bandleader, he was an invaluable mentor to important musicians and arrangers including Sil Austin, Happy Caldwell, Shad Collins, Wild Bill Davis, Talib Dawud, Gil Fuller, Gigi Gryce, Big Nick Nicholas, Russell Procope, Red Prysock, Curley Russell, Calvin “Eagle Eye” Shields, Sonny Stitt, Noble “Thin Man” Watts, and Shadow Wilson.
Weakened by the successive strokes as well as the rigors of his profession, bandleader, singer, composer, pianist, and drummer Tiny Bradshaw, who was important to the development of rock and roll, transitioned from a final stroke on November 26, 1958 in Cincinnati, Ohio at 51 years of age.
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