Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billy Novick was born on Long Island, New York on October 12, 1951 and began playing clarinet at age eight. He picked up the saxophone at fifteen, and began playing club dates and concerts around the New York area. By 1973 he joined the David Bromberg band. After leaving the band, he started touring and making regional appearances as a sideman with a series of pop performers, including Leon Redbone, Jonathan Edwards, and Martha and the Vandellas.
While rehearsing for a dance performance in 1976, Novick was introduced to the innovative guitarist Guy Van Duser, and the two began a collaboration that continues to flourish. He joined the New Black Eagle Jazz Band, and continues to perform with them. He has appeared on more than thirty-five of the band’s recordings.
With jazz as his first love, Billy has always had an eclectic sensibility and enjoys being able to play a wide range of musical styles. He has performed with blues greats Robert Junior Lockwood, Willie Dixon, Ruth Brown, Duke Robillard, Scott Hamilton, Milt Hinton, Herb Pomeroy, Dave McKenna, Dorothy Donegan and Butch Thompson. He has recorded with a wide variety of artists including Maria Muldaur, Tex-Mex star Freddy Fender, Celtic performers Robbie O’Connel and Aine Minogue, and even rock legend J. Geils.
Internationally recognized as a musician, performer, arranger and composer, he has toured extensively throughout North America, Europe and Asia, and has made spotlight appearances at numerous festivals.
Clarinetist Billy Novick, who has been featured as a sideman on over two hundred and fifty recordings and as a composer, arranger or studio musician has appeared in more than 100 film scores, television shows and commercials, continues to compose, arrange, perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Isidore Jean “John” Barbarin was born September 24, 1871 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He began learning cornet at age 14, then played in various New Orleans brass bands, like the Onward Brass Band, the Excelsior Brass Band, and Papa Celestin’s Tuxedo Brass Band.
He did not make it on to record until 1945, when he recorded with Bunk Johnson; in 1946 he recorded with the Original Zenith Brass Band. He was a mainstay of the New Orleans jazz scene in the decades around the turn of the 20th century.
Cornet and alto horn player Isidore Barbarin died on June 12, 1960 in New Orleans.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Orchard was born on September 21, 1914 in Chicago, Illinois. He studied at Juilliard from 1932-33 and performed for a year with Stanley Melba’s band, but then worked outside of music altogether, mostly as a salesman until 1941.
Orchard became a part of the New York Dixieland scene in the 1940s, working with Jimmy McPartland, Jimmy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Bobby Hackett, Max Kaminsky, Wingy Manone, Joe Marsala and the Eddie Condon gang.
The mid-1950s saw Frank’s move to Dayton, Ohio and eventually to St. Louis, Missouri and still playing trombone although out of the spotlight. He never led his own record date and returned to New York in the 1960s. He worked regularly at Jimmy Ryan’s from 1970-71 and with Billy Butterfield in 1979.
Trombonist, violinist, banjoist and tubist Frank Orchard, who also played in the Willie “The Lion” Smith band with Jack Lesberg, Mac McGrath, Max Kaminsky, Rod Cless, died December 27, 1983 in Manhattan, New York City, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Benny Featherstone was born on July 30, 1912 in Brown’s Creek, Tasmania, Australia. His family moved to Melbourne, Australia around the time he was six where he attended Melbourne Grammar and played trombone with the school orchestra and its Footwarmers band between 1926 and 1927. He went on to play drums with Joe Watson and His Green Mill/Wentworth Hotel Orchestra for three years when he was 17. During those years he recorded with the Beachcombers.
Between 1931 and 1933 he worked with bands led by Maurice Guttridge, Les Raphael, Em Pettifer, Geoff Smith and the 3DB Radio Studio Band. Mid 1933 he went to Englandwhere he heard and met Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and had a short residency at the Silver Slipper Club. Returning home he joined Art Chapman’s New Embassy Band and led a group at Rex Cabaret. He joined Art Chapman’s New Embassy Band and led a group at Rex Cabaret.
In Sydney, Australia he led the Benny Featherstone Famous Band for a year residency at the Manhattan Club/Cabaret.that only lasted eight weeks when the club went bankrupt. He led the Commodore Cabaret Band, was a member of Art Chapman’s Orchestra at Wattle Palais, then reformed his band in 1935. Two years later he worked with popular dance, swing and show bands. He contributed to the legendary Fawker Park Kiosk Jam Sessions on weekends.
He led his own swing quartet, sextet, Six Stars of Swing, and the Dixielanders. Joining the merchant navy late in 1943 he played in American Servicemen’s clubs in Queensland and in Oakland, California. He disappeared from music in 1945 became a shipping clerk from 1958 to 1975 but played the occasional jam session.
Trumpeter Benny Featherstone became reclusive in his later years and died in Melbourne on April 6, 1977.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Albert Wynn was born on July 29, 1907 in New Orleans, Louisiana but grew up in Chicago, Illinois where he began his professional career as a trombonist. His first appearance on record in 1926 backing Ma Rainey and the following year he played and recorded in St. Louis, Missouri with Charlie Creath.
Wynn went on to work with Earl Hines’s band briefly in 1928 before assembling a group of his own. Later that same year he joined the Sam Wooding Orchestra on their European tour and didn’t return to the United States until 1932 when he would live in New York City for a short time before going back to Chicago.
He was a member of Sidney Bechet’s New Orleans Feetwarmers for a stint going on to work with the bands of Jesse Stone, Carroll Dickerson, Richard M. Jones, and the Earl Hines Orchestra once again. During the late 1930’s and early ’40’s Albert played in the big band of Fletcher Henderson and the short lived assembly of Jimmie Noone.
Settling into semi-retirement he ran a Chicago record store and enjoined his final professional band work as a member of Franz Jackson’s Original Jazz All-Stars from 1956 to 1960 and the Gold Coast Jazz Band from 1960 to 1964.
Trombonist Albert Wynn died on May 1, 1973.
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