Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Anne Peter Schilperoort was born on November 4, 1919 in The Hague, Netherlands. Famous for his work with the Dutch Swing College Band, and projects with other well-known musicians.
He is most recognized as a saxophone and clarinet player, but also played the guitar and the banjo. Leading the Dutch Swing College Band from 1946 to 1955, then from 1960 to 1990, his style was Dixieland, a style popular at the start of the twentieth century. His band became widely popular across Europe, Australia, Asia and South America in 1960, known as a Dixieland revival band.
Peter Schilperoort, also known as Pat Bronx, died in Leiderdorp, Netherlands on November 17, 1990 at the age of 71.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Graeme Emerson Bell was born on September 7, 1914 in Richmond, Victoria, Australia. His father performed musical comedy and music hall on the early Australian Broadcasting Commission radio, and his mother was a contralto recitalist in Dame Nellie Melba’s company.
From the age of 12, Bell had weekly piano lessons in classical music by Jesse Stewart Young, a contemporary of his mother. He attended Scotch College in 1929 and 1930, leaving school at sixteen during the Great Depression and worked for T & G Insurance as a clerk for over nine years, and had a stint as a farm hand. He paid for his own piano lessons for two further years, and in later years he supplemented his income by teaching.
Graeme was converted to jazz by Roger, a drummer, who later became a singer and trumpete. Roger would play 78s on the family’s record player, including Fats Waller’s Handful of Keys. It was in 1935 that he started playing jazz with Roger at Melbourne dances and clubs. By 1941 he fronted his own Graeme Bell Jazz Gang. Unfit for active duty during World War II, he entertained Australian troops, including travelling to Mackay, Queensland in early 1943. After his return to Melbourne, Bell became a full-time professional with the Dixieland Jazz Band.
His first recordings were for William Miller’s Ampersand label in 1943, after which he became leader of the house band for the Eureka Youth League and established a cabaret, the Uptown Club, in 1946. After playing at the inaugural Australian Jazz Convention, Bell’s band was renamed Australian Jazz Band and became the first such band to tour Europe.
The Australian Jazz Band travelled to the United Kingdom in early 1948 and Graeme started the Leicester Square Jazz Club, playing music specifically for dancing, which continued into the 1950s. Many future and contemporary bands were to be influenced by his music. During the early 1950s he periodically returned to UK and Europe to perform, and in 1951 they appeared at Oxford Town Hall with the performance ultimately released as Big Bill Broonzy in Concert with Graeme Bell & his Australian Jazz Band.
Upon returning to Australia he settled in Sydney and became one of the leading promoters of jazz in the country, bringing American performers such as trumpeter Rex Stewart. He played commercial music and taught piano to supplement his income.
Pianist Graeme Bell, wrote Graeme Bell, Australian Jazzman, was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association Hall of Fame in 1997 and made over 1,500 recordings, died on June 13, 2012 after suffering from a stroke at 97.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richard Hawdon was born in Leeds, England on August 27, 1927 and first studied cello before moving to trumpet in his mid-teens. After a stint with the Yorkshire Jazz Band he relocated to London, England in 1951, signing on with Chris Barber’s famed New Orleans Jazz Band.
Hawdon replaced trumpeter Ken Colyer in the Christie Brothers Stompers in 1952, remaining with the group for close to two years. While his Louis Armstrong-inspired approach earned favor among traditional jazz purists, he developed a modernist sensibility influenced by Clifford Brown.
Bop and progressive jazz followed in 1954 as a member of Don Rendell’s group in addition to a stint as trumpeter and arranger with Tubby Hayes. He joined his first big band in mid-1956 with Basil and Ivor Kirchin and the next year he joined John Dankworth in 1957. This would be his longest and most rewarding career collaboration.
Beyond recordings with Dankworth, the group performed with Louis Armstrong, teamed with the Duke Ellington Orchestra, he wrote and arranged a number of Dankworth staples including Cool Kate and One for Janet. Hawdon went on to freelance with bandleaders Sid Phillips, Harry Gold, Oscar Rabin, Terry Lightfoot, and backed singers Tony Bennett and Eartha Kitt during a stint with the house band at the London cabaret Talk of the Town.
On the eve of the demise of jazz as the leading music of the era, Dick relocated to Yorkshire, England in 1967 and led the Batley Variety Club’s house band. A year later, he developed a jazz course at the new City of Leeds College of Music, and became head of the school’s Light Music Department in 1972. Hawdon also led his own jazz quintet throughout the 1980s, and after retiring from academia in 1993 he turned his attention to the bass, playing in a series of local groups.
Trumpeter and bassist Dick Hawdon died June 24, 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie Queener was born in Pineville, Kentucky on July 27, 1921 or 1923, the actual year of his birth is in question. During the Forties he worked with the Muggsy Spanier Orchestra, Harry James Orchestra, Benny Goodman Orchestra, Joe Marsala Orchestra, and Glen Gray among others.
Between 1946-50 Queener settled into Nick’s in New York and then spent much of his career freelancing with Dixieland all-stars. Among his associations were Bobby Hackett, Billy Butterfield, Jimmy McPartland, Ruby Braff, Max Kaminsky, Wingy Manone from 1954 to 1960, Wild Bill Davison and with Clarence Hutchenrider on and off from 1958 to 1973, to name a few.
He worked into the 1990s, also composed orchestral works starting in the mid-1960s but never led a record session of his own. Pianist Charlie Queener, who played in Dixieland, swing and mainstream settings, died in July 1997.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rubén “Baby” López Fürst was born July 26, 1937 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. From the age of five he studied music and piano, and was soon attracted to jazz. In 1951 the 14 year old Ruben got the nickname Baby from the other musicians because he was a child. He made his debut on the jazz scene performing at the concerts organized by the Hot Club de Buenos Aires.
In 1953 Baby played in a string ensemble led by the López Fürst brothers who performed a jazz concert at the Provincial Hotel in the city of Mar del Plata, Argentina. With his brother Héctor on banjo and him on piano they created the Hot Jammers group and made two 78-single records for Victor. He went on to be part of the Dixie band, The Picking Up Timers.
In 1957 the big succes of Oscar Alemán inspired Baby to leave the piano and take up the guitar, trying to emulate one of his idols: Django Reinhardt. Then began regular performances with a string-group named the Blue Strings. It was a quartet in the vein of gypsy string swing.
Modern jazz captivated him in 1959, when he listened to Gerry Mulligan at the Hot Club de Montevideo in Uruguay. Trying to play those new sounds, in 1962 he joined the modern group of pianist Sergio Mihanovich. On the two albums recorded in 1962, the work began Argentine cool jazz with saxophonist Leandro “Gato” Barbieri, Sergio Mihanovich on piano, drummer Osvaldo “Pichi” Mazzei, trumpeter Rubén Barbieri, Oscar López Ruiz on electric guitar, Rubén López Furst on piano, Domingo Cura on percussion, Osvaldo Bissio vibráphone, and baritone saxophonist Julio Darré.
Fürst is one of the most important pianists in the history of Argentinean jazz and opted to stay in Buenos Aires and make a name for himself at home unlike his counterparts Barbieri and Lalo Schiffrin. He played for over 20 years, mainly with his own trio or quartet.
The hard bop musician also formed a swing group. Pianist and guitarist Baby Fürst, whose primary influences were Teddy Wilson and Bill Evans, died on July 26, 2000 at the age of 63 in Buenos Aires.
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