Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Booker Collins was born on June 21, 1914 in Roswell, New Mexico. Emerging from the New Mexico Military Institute to play in Bat Brown’s Band, a territory band. By the mid-’30s he was keeping very good company playing with pianist Mary Lou Williams and Her Kansas City Seven, cutting sides with her when he was only 16. In 1934, his break came when he got into the band of Andy Kirk and His Clouds Of Joy, staying for the next decade and playing alongside Williams in the rhythm section. Kirk’s hiring replaced the tuba with the double bass.
Booker’s final job of note was with Chicago, Illinois guitarist and drummer Floyd Smith as part of his trio, a stint that lasted from 1946 until the early ’50s, when this great bass man finally laid his big instrument down in terms of full-time playing. He made a few appearances at festival occasions in the ensuing decades but was in Chicago’s recording studios in the late ’50s cutting sides for independent labels.
Returning to performing he joined a combo called the Shades of Rhythm to backup blues singer Mad Man Jones on the demanding Come Here. Collins’ involvement with this group of shifting personnel began in 1952 when he was part of a version that took the risk of cutting sides for the Chance label.
He also performed and recorded with Bert Johnson and the group Six Men And A Girl. Little is known about the death of double bassist Booker Collins who also played the valve trombonist and tuba. It appears he faded into obscurity.
More Posts: bass,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone,tuba
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Dennis Matthew Budimir was born on June 20, 1938 in Los Angeles, California. He learned to play piano and guitar in his youth and first played professionally when he was fourteen years old. In mid Fifties Los Angeles he played in a quartet with La Monte Young, Billy Higgins, and Don Cherry and by the late 1950s he was working in the bands of Ken Hanna, Keith Williams, Harry James, and Chico Hamilton.
From 1960–1961 he worked with Bud Shank and accompanied Peggy Lee prior to entering military service. After his discharge in 1963 he toured Japan with Bobby Troup and returned to the Los Angeles area, where he came off the road and became a studio musician for the next several decades. He recorded in this capacity with Lalo Schifrin, Marty Paich, Don Ellis, Gil Melle, Ella Fitzgerald, Milt Jackson, Stan Getz, Julie London, Jimmy Smith, Ray Brown, Johnny Mandel and the Capp-Pierce Juggernaut.
This opportunity also led him to record with Joni Mitchell, The Carpenters, Brian Wilson, Barbra Streisand, Ravi Shankar, Frank Zappa, Linda Ronstadt, Dusty Springfield, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones, David Axelrod, Tom Waits, Harry Nilsson, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, Johnny Mathis, Cher, and Doris Day. He recorded more than 900 movie soundtracks from the early 1960s until the 2000s.
Guitarist Dennis Budimir, considered to be a member of The Wrecking Crew, transitioned on January 10, 2023 at the age of 84.
More Posts: guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jerry “Buck” Jerome was born on June 19, 1912 in Brooklyn, New York and he didn’t begin playing the saxophone until he was in high school in Plainfield, New Jersey.
Jerome became part of a national tour in 1936 with bandleader Harry Reser and his Clicquot Club Eskimos. He joined Glenn Miller’s original orchestra in 1937 and was a member until it broke up in 1938. He played and soloed on the Glenn Miller recording Doin’ the Jive. He then joined the Red Norvo band which was followed by his joining the Benny Goodman orchestra in 1938.
When Goodman broke up his band in 1940, he joined the Artie Shaw Orchestra. While with Shaw he appeared the same year he joind the band in the film Second Chorus, starring Fred Astaire and Burgess Meredith. By the end of the 1940s, Jerry became involved in broadcasting, working various positions as a conductor, composer, arranger and musical director.
Tenor saxophonist Jerry Jerome, who composed the Winston tastes good like a cigarette should jingle for the tobacco company, transitioned on November 17, 2001 at the age of 89.
More Posts: history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
René “Rudy” Bruder was born on June 15, 1914 in Brussels, Belgium. His father was a bandleader and Rudy played in his father’s group in the mid-1930s. He then joined Jean Omer’s group, accompanying visiting American musicians such as Benny Carter, Bill Coleman, Coleman Hawkins, and Bobby Martin.
He worked with Omer through the early 1940s. He also recorded several times with Jean Robert and Gus Deloof. He led his own band, which recorded in the early 1940s and again in 1946.
Pianist Rudy Bruder retired from music and according to sources is 108 yers old.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles Anthony Elgar was born on June 13, 1879 in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 13, 1879. From age 5 he played violin and also played trumpet. He studied music in Wisconsin and Illinois.
Elgar played in Chicago, Illinois from 1903 with the Bloom Theater Philharmonic Orchestra, but returned to his hometown late in the decade of the 1900s. He remained there until about 1913 when he returned to Chicago, putting together a band the same year. His band played at the Navy Pier Ballroom, Hattie Harmon’s Dreamland Ballroom from 1917 until 1922 and opened the old Savoy Ballroom in 1928.
With his band Charles toured in the revue Plantation Days and traveled to London, England though he did not accompany it on this trip. However, he did play with Will Marion Cook’s Orchestra in Europe. He went on to lead bands in Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 1925 to 1928, making several recordings with Elgars Creole Orchestra that he led at the Wisconsin Roof Gardens in Milwaukee and again in Chicago, 1926-30.
His sidemen included Manuel Perez, Lorenzo Tio, Louis Cottrell, Jr, Barney Bigard, Darnell Howard, and Omer Simeon. He made four recordings as leader of the Creole Orchestra. He concentrated on teaching in the 1930s, and worked as a union official later in his life. He was a founder and charter member of the local branch of the American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO, Local 2018.
Violinist, teacher and jazz bandleader Charles Elgar transitioned in August 1973 in Chicago.
More Posts: bandleader,educator,history,instrumental,jazz,music,violin