Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenny Baldock, was born on April 5, 1932 in the affluent district of Chiswick in London, England. Having studied both piano and bass, he continued on the instruments at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. By the early ’60s he began showing up on jazz bandstands as a bassist in the company of players such as Peter King and the John Dankworth Orchestra, with whom he continued to be associated into the mid Seventies.
In 1972 he joined pianist Oscar Peterson at the Montreux Jazz Festival, and his performance opened opportunities to collaborate with Freddy Randall’s all-star caravan, and many more engagements with Peterson.
Summer in Montreux presented recording circumstances with guitarist Barney Kessel and the following year Baldock was leading own band projects featuring some of Britain’s heavy hitters. He worked in the Ronnie Scott Quartet that led to backup stints at Scott’s club behind many visiting American jazz performers.
By the early 1980s, Kenny seemed most interested in intimacy and stuck to a small group, often using electric guitarists as sidemen. Throughout his career he performed with among others, the Bobby Wellins Quartet, Freddy Randall~DAve Shepherd Jazz All Stars, Gordon Beck + Two, and the Laurie Holloway Quartet.
Active as an educator, bassist Kenny Baldock, whose composition Kosen Rufu garnered him an Arts Council award in 1983, transitioned from cancer on March 22, 2010.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Max Greger was born on April 2, 1926 in Munich, Germany. In 1948 at 22 he founded his first sextet with acclaimed musicians, including Hugo Strasser. By 1959 he became the first western orchestra to tour the Soviet Union.
1963 saw Max putting together a top orchestra for ZDF, which for years supported all the major TV shows. He was honored with the Officers Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Bavarian Order of Merit, and has a memorial plaque with his handprints and signature in Berlin-Mitte.
Saxophonist, conductor and big bandleader Max Greger, who recorded over 150 records in jazz and pop music, transitioned on August 15, 2015 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Stephen Russell Race was born April 1, 1921 in Lincoln, England and learned the piano from the age of five. His education from 1932 to 1937 was at Lincoln School, where he formed his first jazz group. At sixteen, he attended the Royal Academy of Music, studying composition under Harry Farjeon and William Alwyn. After leaving the academy, he wrote occasional dance band reviews for Melody Maker and, in 1939, joined the Harry Leader dance band as pianist, succeeding Norrie Paramor.
Race joined the Royal Air Force in 1941, and formed a jazz/dance quintet. After World War II, he began a long and productive career with the BBC, where his ready wit, musicianship and broad musical knowledge made him a much sought after musical accompanist for panel games and magazine shows, such as Whirligig and Many a Slip.
Simultaneously he played in the Lew Stone and Cyril Stapleton bands, and arranged material for Ted Heath. By 1949 The Steve Race Bop Group recorded some of the first British bebop records for the Paxton label. These included four sides with Leon Calvert, Johnny Dankworth, Peter Chilver, Norman Burns, Jack Fulton. He also developed a sideline arranging player piano rolls for the Artona company.
the 1950s to the 1980s, he presented numerous music programs on radio and television. Steve was the chairman of the long-running light-hearted radio and TV panel game My Music which ran for 520 episodes from 1967 to 1994. He also presented Jazz For Moderns and Jazz 625 for the BBC in the 1960s.
As a composer, he produced a number of pieces in the jazz, classical and popular idioms. Blue Acara, Esteban Cera, Faraway Music, Nicola, Ring Ding and Pied Piper aer just a few of his well known compositions. He appeared as pianist/bandleader in the 1948 film Calling Paul Temple and with Sid Colin wrote two of the songs performed by Celia Lipton. He also wrote other scores for films. His autobiography, Musician at Large, was published in 1979, and was inducted into the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Pianist, composer, radio and television presenter Steve Race had his first heart attack in 1965 and transitioned from a second attack at his home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, on June 22, 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jørgen Emborg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark on March 29, 1953 and was influenced by Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett.
He has played at international festivals since 1975, releasing his first album, Sargasso in 1979 on the Kong Pære label. In the following years he belonged to Six Winds with Marilyn Mazur, Uffe Markussen and Alex Riel and formed with Palle Mikkelborg, Bjarne Roupé, Bo Stief and Ole Theill the ensemble Alpha Centauri.
By1986 he recorded with Bjarne Rostvold and through the Nineties he performed and/or recorded with Thomas Hass and Tomas Franck. Emborg teamed up with Alex Riel again and recorded Over The Rainbow on the Storyville label, with the saxophonist Fredrik Lundin, the bassist Steve Swallow. He played in the Tolvan Big Band and the Per Carsten Quintet.
Jørgen has also composed music for children, rhythmic choir music, big band, a cappella work, ironworks and piano quizzes. He taught piano, theory and composition at the Rytmisk Conservatory of Music from 1988 to 2016.
In 1981, his LP en 20:33 with Alpha Centauri received an award from Statens Kunstfond, the State Art Foundation. He received the Ben Webster Prize with the Frontline Fusion Group as well as others.
Pianist and composer Jørgen Emborg, who ensures there is a Nordic feel to his compositions, continues to perform and compose.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Randolph E. Brooks was born on March 28, 1917 in Sanford, Maine and began on trumpet at age six. By 11 he was discovered by Rudy Vallee and appeared on his Fleischman Hour radio show. He became a permanent member where he played thrilling trumpet solos, but was not allowed to play with the brass section of the band. By the time he was eighteen he was working with Jerry Blane for an entire summer in western New Jersey, followed by Gene Kardos and then Ruby Newman at the Rainbow Room in New York City.
Hired by Hal Kemp, he cut his first records for the Victor label in 1939. After Kemp’s death late in 1940, he stayed with the band when Art Jarrett took leadership. But by 1942 he moved on to a brief relationship with Claude Thornhill, followed by Bob Allen, but within a year he was playing with Les Brown before founding his own band in early 1945.
John Benson Brooks, who was not related, contributed arrangements to the ensemble that included Stan Getz in 1946. Among his hits for Decca Records were Tenderly, Harlem Nocturne, and The Man With The Horn, but unfortunately his swing-based style and large ensemble were out of step with the times, and his success eroded toward the end of the decade.
He married singer and bandleader Ina Ray Hutton and moved to Los Angeles, California where he suffered a stroke and was unable to continue as a musician. Trumpeter and bandleader Randy Brooks transitioned at the age of 49 of smoke inhalation in a fire at his Sanford, Maine apartment.on March 21, 1967.
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