Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Abe Most was born on February 27, 1920 in New York City, New York. He began his career in 1939 as a member of Les Brown’s Big Band. After serving three years in the Army during World War II beginning in 1942, he became a member of Tommy Dorsey’s Big Band.
Most made a few albums with smaller labels between 1946 and 1984, including Superior, Trend, Annunciata and Camard. His last two albums were Abe Most Live! and I Love You Much Too Much.
He was a studio musician for seven decades, recording on albums by Ted Gärdestad, Dick Haymes, Randy Newman, Dory Previn, Laurindo Almeida, Dominic Frontiere, Henry Mancini, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae, Ray Conniff, and George Shearing, as well as Joni Mitchell, Cher, Earth, Wind & Fire, and B. B. King among others. He can also be heard playing on the soundtrack of the film How to Marry a Millionaire.
Clarinetist Abe Most, the older brother of flautist Sam Most, recorded three albums as a leader and thirty-one as a sideman, transitioned on October 10, 2002.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Åke Persson was born on February 25, 1932 in Hässleholm, Sweden and started his music career by playing valve trumper in school. Known as The Comet, he moved to Stockholm, Sweden in 1951, where he played in Simon Brehm’s quintet until 1954. During the Fifties he led several sessions for labels such as Metronome, Philips, and EmArcy.
Following this Persson worked through the Sixties and into the 1970s with Arne Domnérus, Hacke Björksten, Harry Arnold’s Radio Band, Quincy Jones, Lars Gullin, the RIAS Berlin Band, and the Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band.
Persson played with many American musicians, including George Wallington, Roy Haynes, Benny Bailey, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie.
He drowned in the Djurgården canal as a result of him driving his car into the canal either accidentally or deliberately. A biography was written, Trombonist Åke Persson, authored by Bo Carlsson.
Trombonist Åke Persson, who flourished in the bebop and big band tradition, transitioned on February 5, 1975.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harold “Money” Johnson was born in Tyler, Texas on February 23, 1918 and didn’t start playing trumpet until he was fifteen. Moving to Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1936, he jammed with Charlie Christian and Henry Bridges before joining Nat Towles’s band.
He played with Horace Henderson and Bob Dorsey before returning to Towles’s band in 1944 in Chicago, Illinois. He also played with Count Basie, Cootie Williams, Lucky Millinder, and Bull Moose Jackson during the decade.
In the 1950s Money’s associations included Louis Jordan, Lucky Thompson, Sy Oliver, Buddy Johnson, Cozy Cole, Mercer Ellington, Little Esther, and Panama Francis.
The Sixties saw Johnson played in the house band at the Apollo Theater in Harlem, and recorded with King Curtis in 1962. He toured the USSR with Earl Hines in 1966. From 1968 he played in the Duke Ellington Orchestra and also worked again with Hines and Oliver.
He recorded with Buck Clayton, Pearl Bailey, Red Prysock, Barbara Lews, Jack McDuff, Houston Person, and Jesse Stone. Trumpeter Money Johnson, whose last performance was on the night before, transitioned from a heart attack on March 28, 1978 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Spivak was born on February 17, 1905 in Kyiv, Ukraine and learned to play trumpet when he was ten years old. He played in his high school band, going on to work with local groups before joining the Johnny Cavallaro Orchestra.
He went on to play with Paul Specht’s band for most of 1924 to 1930, then spent time with Ben Pollack early Thirties, and the Doresy Brothers to the middle of the decade. Ray Noble was his next stop prior to the Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1935. He spent the next two years working mostly as a studio musician with Gus Arnheim, Glenn Miller, Raymond Scott’s radio orchestra, and others, followed by periods with Bob Crosby, Tommy Dorsey, and Jack Teagarden to the end of the Thirties.
Finally, with the encouragement and financial backing of Glenn Miller, he formed his own band in late 1939. His first attempt was a failure within a year, but his second proved successful, one of the most successful bands in the 1940s, and survived until 1959. He scouted top trumpeter Paul Fredricks (formerly of Alvino Rey’s Orchestra) just as Fredricks left the service at the end of World War II, in 1946. Trumpeter Paul Fredricks was recruited after WWII service and became instrumental in the band’s success in the coming years as it reached its peak.
Spivak’s experience playing with jazz musicians had little effect on his own band’s style, which was straight dance music, made up mainly of ballads and popular tunes. Trombonist Nelson Riddle, saxophonist Manny Albam and Sonny Burke arranged for the band. When the orchestra broke up he went to live in Florida, where he continued to lead a band until illness led to his temporary retirement in 1963. On his recovery, he continued to lead large and small bands, first in Las Vegas, Nevada and then moved to Greenville, South Carolina in 1967, where he led a small group featuring his wife as vocalist.
Trumpeter and bandleader Chalie Spivak, known during his heyday as The Man Who Plays The Sweetest Trumpet In The World, continued to play and record until his transition on March 1, 1982 in Greenville.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Buddy Deppenschmidt was born William Henry Deppenschmidt on February 16, 1936 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was a saxophonist and bandleader under the name Buddy Williams, but his mother moved him to Richmond, Virginia when he was four.
Self-taught, he started playing drums professionally while in his teens and then went on the road in the western U.S. with the territory band Ronnie Bartley Orchestra. Returning home, he played with local bands and became the drummer for the Newton Thomas Trio through the mid to late Fifties, which was also the touring rhythm section for the Billy Butterfield Quintet. When the Newton Thomas Trio played the Virginia Beach Jazz Festival, it received rave reviews on a bill that included the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Charlie Byrd Trio. Two nights later, Charlie Byrd came into the Jolly Roger jazz club where Buddy was playing, and offered him the job as drummer with his trio. He played with the trio at the Showboat Lounge in Washington, D.C. from 1959–62.
In February 1961, while on a goodwill tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department, the Charlie Byrd Trio with Byrd on guitar, Keter Betts on bass, and Buddy on drums, they visited 18 countries throughout South and Central Americas, and Mexico. While in Brazil, he spent his free time with local musicians, teaching them jazz and learning bossa nova. It was his idea to record an album combining jazz and bossa nova with Stan Getz.
After Byrd, Deppenschmidt joined the Tee Carson Trio in the early Sixties, then moved to Pennsylvania and formed the Jazz Renaissance, was also the drummer with the John Coates Trio, toured the midwest and west coast with the Bernard Peiffer Trio and studied with drummer Joe Morello.
He’s worked on A Thousand Clowns, Wall Street, Bossa Nova, The Lake House, and Whatever Works movie soundtracks. He’s played with a who’s who list of jazz musicians from Mose Allison and Chet Baker to Coleman Hawkins and Shirley Horn, Phil Woods and more.
Drummer Buddy Deppenschmidt, biographies are in The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, transitioned on March 20, 2021 in Pennsylvania from complications of COVID-19. He was 85 years old.
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