Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eric Marienthal was born on December 19, 1957 in Sacramento, California but moved with his family to San Mateo, California when he was two years old. He was taught music while in school and picked up the saxophone in the fourth grade. His father bought him a $400 Selmer saxophone and enrolled him in Corona Del Mar High School. Throughout his education, he learned to play guitar, flute, clarinet and piano.
After graduating from high school he studied saxophone at the Berklee College of Music. By the time he left Berklee, Eric had achieved the highest proficiency rating given by the school. He began his professional career in 1980 with New Orleans trumpeter Al Hirt. Heading west he settled in Los Angeles, California and became a member of the Chick Corea Elektric Band. He recorded six albums with that band and two of them won Grammy Awards.
Marienthal has also written instructional books, including Comprehensive Jazz Studies & Exercises, The Ultimate Jazz Play Along, and The Music of Eric Marienthal. He has made instructional videos, Play Sax From Day One, Modern Sax and Tricks of the Trade. He occupies the lead alto chair of Gordon Goodwin’s Big Phat Band, playing alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, flute, and piccolo.
Grammy Award-nominated alto saxophonist Eric Marienthal continues to perform and record.
More Posts: bandleader,flute,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piccolo,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Frank Reichenbach Sr. was born on December 18, 1923 in Washington, D.C. and started his musical career even before he graduated from the McKinley Tech High School. During World War II, he played in a band of the Navy before he toured with the big bands of Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, and Art Mooney. Later he worked in the jazz clubs of his hometown, where he accompanied Frank Sinatra, Patti Page, Teddy Wilson, and Zoot Sims.
Charlie Byrd hired Reichenbach as an additional drummer for the Stan Getz album Jazz Samba, recorded in 1962. This recording provoked a wave of enthusiasm for bossa nova in the United States. That same year he replaced Buddy Deppenschmidt in the Byrd trio, and stayed as a member for twelve years. Departing from Byrd, he returned to work in Washington D.C., as the house drummer at the Blues Alley.
Drummer and percussionist Bill Reichenbach, who co-developed the jazz-samba drumming style, transitioned following a series of strokes in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 84 on May 16, 2008.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music,percussion
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bernard Flood was born on December 16, 1907 in Montgomery, Alabama and graduated from Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute in the Twenties. The following decade he went to New York City and became associated with a series of bandleaders in a slow and careful fashion. For the first two years he worked with Bob Neal, moved over to Fess Williams for about an equal length of time, before becoming involved with Teddy Hill in 1933 on through the middle of the decade.
He was quickly in and out of the Luis Russell and Chick Webb outfits before joining up with Charlie Johnson. By 1937 the trumpeter was hitting high notes with Edgar Hayes as well as with Johnson, the former leader launching a terrific European tour. In 1939 Bernard became part of the Louis Armstrong big-band project, dropping out for a spring 1941 James Reynolds gig before rejoining Armstrong and remaining until 1943.
Military service called in 1943 and three years later he was discharged and began working with Luis Russell and Duke Ellington. Flood went on to start his own combo, and collaborated with Happy Caldwell in both the late Forties and early 1950s.
Retiring from full-time music in the early ’70s, Flood was available for gigs, but made no new recordings during this period. Suffering from diabetes Bernard lost both of his legs due to the disease. Trumpeter Bernard Flood, who was featured in the HBO documentary Curtain Call performing Wonderful World, transitioned on June 9, 2000 in Englewood, New Jersey.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Theodore Guy Buckner was born on December 14, 1913 in St. Louis, Missouri but was raised in Detroit, Michigan where he played very early in his career before joining McKinney’s Cotton Pickers.
He became a member of the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra, remaining from 1937 to 1943. After working with Lunceford, Buckner primarily played locally in Detroit, where he worked well into the 1970s. He played in small jazz combos, worked in the Motown studios, and co-led a big band with Jimmy Wilkins, Ernie Wilkins’s brother.
He toured Europe in 1975, and also appeared in the New McKinney’s Cotton Pickers that decade. Saxophonist Ted Buckner, who was the older brother of pianist Milt Buckner, transitioned on April 12, 1976 in Detroit.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edward Emanuel Barefield was born on December 12, 1909 in Scandia, Iowa, and grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. His father was a guitarist, his mother a pianist. He began playing the saxophone at the age of twelve when his mother bought him the instrument as a Christmas gift, and he took it apart to see how it worked.
He started playing throughout the Midwest, and gained his first major big-band experience with the Bennie Moten Orchestra of 1932. This led to work with Zach Whyte’s band and at 24 was offered a position in Cab Calloway’s orchestra in 1933. Eddie arranged and wrote music for Calloway for over 40 years.
Barefield conducted the orchestra for Ella Fitzgerald after Chick Webb passed away in 1939. In addition, he performed with McKinney’s Cotton Pickers, Les Hite, Fletcher Henderson, Don Redman, and Benny Carter. After the end of the big band era he continued to work by conducting shows, free-lancing, and playing in Europe.
He was the musical director for the original Broadway production of Streetcar Named Desire in 1947. He spent a decade in the band of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, and composed and arranged for Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Paul Whiteman, and Jimmy Dorsey. Later in his life, Barefield worked with the Illinois Jacquet big band. Eddie appeared in films, including Cab Calloway’s Hi-De-Ho, Al Jolson’s The Singing Kid, Every Day’s a Holiday, and The Night They Raided Minsky’s.
Saxophonist, clarinetist and arranger Eddie Barefield, who arranged for the ABC Orchestra, transitioned from a heart attack at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York on January 4, 1991.
More Posts: arranger,bandleader,clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone