Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Rushton was born in Evanston, Illinois on November 7, 1907. He started out playing clarinet and all of the other standard saxophone varieties, and was occasionally recorded with these other instruments. Settling on the bass saxophone, through the early to mid Forties he worked with Ted Weems, Jimmy McPartland, Bud Freeman, Floyd O’Brien, Benny Goodman, and Horace Heidt.
Joining Red Nichols’s Five Pennies in 1947 became a musical relationship and collaboration that went well into the early 1960s. He recorded six sides for Jump Records in 1945/47, but otherwise appears on record only as a sideman.
Bass saxophonist Joe Rushton, who is one of the best-known jazz performers to concentrate on bass saxophone, aside from Adrian Rollini, which he played from 1928. transitioned on March 2, 1964, in San Francisco, California at the age of 56.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Lusher was born on November 6, 1923 in Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England and started playing the trombone at six years old in his local Salvation Army band, the third generation of his family to do so.
During World War II, he served as a gunner signaller in the Royal Artillery. After the war, he became a professional musician, playing with the bands of Joe Daniels making £12 a week, Lou Preager, Maurice Winnick, the Squadronaires, Jack Parnell and the Ted Heath Big Band.
Lusher spent nine years as lead trombone with Ted Heath’s Orchestra and toured the United States with him five times. After several attempts to revive the band, Don took over the leadership in 1976. He led the ‘Ted Heath Tribute Orchestra’ throughout the 1980s and 1990s until the sold-out final concert at the Royal Festival Hall in December 2000. He led the trombone section during many of Frank Sinatra’s European tours. In 1975 he gave the first performance of Gordon Langford’s Rhapsody for Trombone at London’s Royal Albert Hall, and went on to perform it around the world.
Lusher formed his own ensemble, the Don Lusher Big Band, performed with the Manhattan Sound Big Band, played with Alexis Korner and various session musicians in the big band-rock fusion group CCS, and was a founder member of the Best of British Jazz group from the 1970s onwards.
After spending some years as a Professor of the Royal College of Music he became Professor of Trombone at the Royal Marines School of Music, in Portsmouth, England in 1997, retiring in 2004.
In 2001, he recorded an album British Jazz Legends Together on the Decca label featuring Kenny Ball, Acker Bilk, John Chilton and the Feetwarmers, John Dankworth, Humphrey Lyttelton, and George Melly.
He was awarded the status of Freeman of the City of London, received an OBE for services to the music industry, and was twice president of the British Trombone Society. Trombonist Don Lusher, who with his big band played its final concert in 2007, transitioned in Cheam, England on July 5, 2006 at 82.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lawrence Benjamin Bunker was born November 4, 1928 in Long Beach, California. At first he played primarily drums, but increasingly he focused on vibraphone. He was later highly regarded for his playing of timpani and various percussion instruments.
Bunker is a dependable and in-demand studio drummer and vibist who achieved distinction recording with Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Diana Krall, and many other jazz greats. In 1952, he was the drummer in one of Art Pepper’s first groups. The next two years he played drums in some of the earliest of Gerry Mulligan’s groups.
In the 1950s and 1960s he appeared at Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, and performed with Shorty Rogers and His Giants and others. The Sixties had him intermittently drumming in the Bill Evans trio and played timpani with the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.
His work in movie soundtracks spanned over fifty years, from Stalag 17 in 1953 and Glengarry Glen Ross in ‘92) to The Incredibles in 2004. Larry’s work included soundtracks by John Williams, Henry Mancini, Quincy Jones, Miklós Rózsa, Jerry Goldsmith, Johnny Mandel, Lalo Schifrin and many other composers.
Drummer, vibraphonist, and percussionist Larry Bunker, who was a central figure on the West Coast jazz scene, transitioned from complications of a stroke in Los Angeles, California at age 76 on March 8, 2005.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Richards was born Juan Manuel Cascales on November 2, 1911 in Toluca, Mexico to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother. He came to the United States in 1919 through Laredo, Texas along with his mother, three brothers and a sister. The family first lived in Los Angeles, California and then in San Fernando, California, where he and two brothers attended and graduated from San Fernando High School.
1930 saw Richards living in Fullerton, California where he attended Fullerton College. Working in Los Angeles from the late 1930s to 1952, before moving to New York City. He had been arranging for Stan Kenton since 1950 and continued to do so through the mid-1960s. He also arranged for Charlie Barnet and Harry James.
He led his own bands throughout his career and composed the music for the popular song Young at Heart in 1953. The song was made famous by Frank Sinatra and was covered by numerous others.
Arranger and composer Johnny Richards transitioned on October 7, 1968 in New York City of a brain tumor.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Edgar Melvin Sampson was born on October 31, 1907 in New York City, New York. He began playing violin aged six and picked up the saxophone in high school, then started his professional career in 1924 in a violin piano duo with Joe Colman. Through the rest of the 1920s and early 1930s, he played with many big bands, including those of Charlie “Fess” Johnson, Duke Ellington, Rex Stewart and Fletcher Henderson.
In 1934, Sampson joined the Chick Webb outfit and during his period he created his most enduring work as a composer, writing Stompin’ at the Savoy and Don’t Be That Way. Leaving Webb in 1936, his reputation as a composer and arranger led to freelance work with Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Red Norvo, Teddy Hill, Teddy Wilson and Webb.
Becoming a student of the Schillinger System in the early 1940s, Edgar continued to play saxophone through the late 1940s and started his own band at the end of the decade. He worked with Latin performers such as Marcelino Guerra, Tito Rodríguez and Tito Puente as an arranger.
He recorded one album under his own name, Swing Softly Sweet Sampson, in 1956. Due to illness, he stopped working in the late Sixties. Composer, arranger, saxophonist, and violinist Edgar Sampson, nicknamed The Lamb, transitioned on January 16, 1973.
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