Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Rhea “Yank” Lawson was born May 3, 1911 in Trenton, Missouri. He started playing music on saxophones and piano before settling on the trumpet as a teenager. He played in the University of Missouri Dance Band, and was soon offered a job with Slatz Randall’s group, with whom he made his recording debut on Mom in 1932. Dropping out of college he had a stint with Wingy Manone before being hired to join Ben Pollack in late 1933.
From 1933 to 1935 Yank worked in the Pollack orchestra, then became a founding member of the Bob Crosby Orchestra. He later worked with Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey, but also worked with Crosby again in 1941~1942. Later in the decade he became a studio musician leading his own Dixieland sessions.
By the 1950s he and Bob Haggart created the Lawson-Haggart band and they worked together in 1968 to form the World’s Greatest Jazz Band, a Dixieland group which performed for the next ten years. He recorded for Atlantic, Audiophile, Decca and Jazzology.
Trumpeter Yank Lawson, best known for Dixieland and swing music, transitioned on February 18, 1995 in Indianapolis, Indiana.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Boyce Brown was born on April 16, 1910 in Chicago, Illinois. He worked with Wingy Manone, Paul Mares, and Danny Alvin. Best known of his recordings is a 1935 session with Paul Mares and his Friars Society Orchestra, that was first issued on LP in 1955 as part of Columbia’s Chicago Style Jazz album and a 1939 session with Jimmy McPartland & his Jazz Band, which was first released as part of Decca’s Chicago Jazz album. Both of these sessions had Brown demonstrating a driving, harmonically advanced style.
In 1953, Boyce entered a monastery of the Roman Catholic Servite Order, however, he returned in 1956 to release his one and only album as Brother Matthew, backed by a band organized by Eddie Condon.
Alto saxophonist Boyce Brown, who played in the dixieland genre, transitioned from a heart attack on January 30, 1959 at the age of 48.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Miff Görling was born Uno Görling on March 21, 1909 in Stockholm, Sweden. He took his nickname from trombonist Miff Mole and got his start late in the 1920s with the Frank Vernon Orchestra, where he played until 1932.
He then worked with Arne Hülphers, Gösta Jonsson, Seymour Österwall, and Gösta Säfbom before organizing his own ensemble in 1938 and led bands well into the 1950s. He also did arrangement and composition work for other jazz groups as well as for popular Swedish musicians.
Bandleader, trombonist, arranger, and composer Miff Görling transitioned on February 24, 1988 in Stockholm.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Voltaire “Volly” De Faut was born March 14, 1904 in Little Rock, Arkansas but his family moved to Chicago, Illinois when he was six. He started out studying the violin, however, by fourteen switched to the clarinet and saxophone.
At seventeen he had his first professional gig at a summer resort and the next year he was playing with Sig Meyers. During the early 1920s he spent time in the New Orleans Rhythm Kings before joining Art Kassel. He also played with The Bucktown Five.
His first recordings were made with Muggsy Spanier in 1924 followed by his recording with Jelly Roll Morton the next year. The late 1920s saw Volly playing with Merritt Brunies and Jean Goldkette, and played for a time in Detroit, Michigan.
Around the end of the decade De Faut held several positions in theater orchestras in Chicago, while working as a studio musician. He started his own dog breeding business but abandoned it to join the military and play in bands there.
He returned to Chicago in the middle of the 1940s, playing with Bud Jacobson and working extensively on the local jazz scene. In the 1950s he moved to Davenport, Iowa but returned to Chicago in 1965. In the last two decades of his life De Faut worked often with Art Hodes, including on many of his recordings for Delmark Records.
Clarinetist and saxophonist Volly De Faut transitioned on May 29, 1973 in Chicago Heights, Illinois.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robert Sherwood Haggart was born March 13, 1914 in New York City, New York. He became a member of the Bob Crosby Band in 1935 and composed and arranged Big Noise from Winnetka, My Inspiration, What’s New?, and South Rampart Street Parade. He remained with the band until its 1942 dissolution. He went on to work as a session musician, with much of his time spent at Decca Records.
He recorded with Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, and Ella Fitzgerald and his arrangements can be heard on Fitzgerald’s album Lullabies of Birdland. Haggart also starred in several commercials for L&M cigarettes on the radio program Gunsmoke.
He and Yank Lawson formed the Lawson~Haggart Band, and together led the World’s Greatest Jazz Band from 1968 until 1978. Over the next two decades he appeared at jazz festivals. Double bassist, composer and arranger Bob Haggart, who was associated with dixieland and swing, transitioned on December 2, 1998 in Venice, Florida.
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