Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alexander Louis Bigard, Jr. was born on September 25, 1899 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a musical family. His brother was Brney and his cousins were Natty Dominque and A.J. Piron. He studied drums under Louis Cottrell, Sr., and played at times with Cottrell in A.J. Piron’s band in the 1910s.
He played with the Excelsior Brass Band and Maple Leaf Orchestra, as well as with Peter DuConge, Buddy Petit, and Chris Kelly in the late 1910s and early Twenties. He was a member of Sidney Desvigne’s band in 1925, then with Kid Shots Madison. For much of the Thirties he worked with John Robichaux.
In the mid-1940s he was in Kid Rena’s band, then formed his own ensemble, the Mighty Four, in the 1950s.During the Dixieland revival period of the 1960s, he was a regular at Preservation Hall, and performed or recorded with Harold Dejan, Kid Howard, Punch Miller, De De Pierce, Billie Pierce.
Becoming deaf around 1967 he left active performance. Drummer Alex Bigard, who was involved for decades with the New Orleans jazz scene, transitioned on June 27, 1978 in his hometown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leonard Gaskin was born August 25, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He played on the early bebop scene at Minton’s and Monroe’s in New York in the early 1940s. In 1944 he took over Oscar Pettiford’s spot in Dizzy Gillespie’s band,and followed it with stints in bands led by Cootie Williams, Charlie Parker, Don Byas, Eddie South, Charlie Shavers, and Erroll Garner.
In the 1950s, he played with Eddie Condon’s Dixieland band, and played with Ruby Braff, Bud Freeman, Rex Stewart, Cootie Williams, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, and Miles Davis. In the 1960s he became a studio musician, playing on numerous gospel and pop records. In the 1970s and 1980s he returned to jazz, playing with Sy Oliver, Panama Francis, and The International Art of Jazz.
Gaskin became involved in educating young people later in his life. He toured and performed at New York City schools, sharing his knowledge with elementary students with the Good Groove Band and the International Art of Jazz groups. For more than a decade, he and drummer Oliver Jackson teamed to play the European jazz festival circuit. He also regularly collaborated with Sy Oliver’s Rainbow Room Orchestra.
Capping off his career in 1994, Leonard performed at the White House’s Congressional Ball at the behest of President Bill Clinton. Although his touring schedule slowed dramatically in the decade to follow, he wrote a privately published autobiography and donated his personal jazz collection to the American Music Archives at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.
Bassist Leonard Gaskin transitioned from natural causes at a nursing home in Queens, New York on January 24, 2009. He was 88.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
George Abel Van Eps was born on August 7, 1913 in Plainfield, New Jersey into a family of musicians. His mother was a classical pianist, his father was a ragtime banjoist and sound engineer and his three brothers were musicians. He began playing banjo at eleven years old but after hearing Eddie Lang on the radio, he devoted himself to guitar. By thirteen, in 1926, he was performing on the radio.
Through the middle of the 1930s, he played with Harry Reser, Smith Ballew, Freddy Martin, Benny Goodman, and Ray Noble. Van Eps moved to Los Angeles, California and spent most of his remaining career as a studio musician, playing on many commercials and movie soundtracks.
In the 1930s, he invented a model of guitar with another bass string added to the common six-string guitar. The seven-string guitar allowed him to play bass lines below his chord voicings, unlike the single-string style of Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt. He called his technique “lap piano”, as it anticipated the fingerpicking style of country guitarists Chet Atkins and Merle Travis and inspired jazz guitarists Bucky Pizzarelli, John Pizzarelli, and Howard Alden to pick up the seven-string.
Dixieland had a following in Los Angeles during the 1940s and 1950s, and he played in groups led by Bob Crosby and Matty Matlock and appeared in the film Pete Kelly’s Blues. He played guitar on Frank Sinatra’s 1955 album. In The Wee Small Hours.
Playing guitar into his eighties, he built a career that lasted over sixty years. Swing and mainstream guitarist George Van Eps, who recorded eleven albums as a leader and thirty~two as a sideman, transitioned from pneumonia on November 29, 1998 in Newport Beach, California at the age of 85.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Captain John Handy was born on June 24, 1900 in Pass Christian, Mississippi. His father, John Handy Sr., had a family band that included two of his brothers, Sylvester and Julius. Although he also played guitar, mandolin, and drums at an early age, he chose reeds to develop his professional musical career, beginning with clarinet and then migrating to saxophone.
He moved to New Orleans, Louisiana in 1915 and during the 1920s played clarinet working with Kid Rena and Punch Miller. He switched to alto saxophone in 1928. From the early 1930s he led the Louisiana Shakers with his brother Sylvester, and toured throughout the South. In the latter 1930s Handy worked with Charles Creath in St. Louis, Missouri.
Captain John returned to New Orleans in the 1940s, where he performed with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band. Handy was interviewed several times for the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University in New Orleans in the late 1950s and early Sixties. During the 1960s, he played with Kid Sheik Cola and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and recorded for GHB, RCA, and Jazz Crusade.
Alto saxophonist Captain John Handy, who was part of the New Orleans jazz revival, transitioned in New York on January 12, 1971 at the age of 70.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Bauduc was born June 18, 1906 in New Orleans, Louisiana and was the son of cornetist Jules Bauduc, his older brother was a banjoist and bandleader, and his sister was a pianist. His youthful work in New Orleans included performing in the band of Johnny Bayersdorffer, and on radio broadcasts. His New Orleans origin instilled in him a love for two-beat drumming, which he retained when he played with Bob Crosby’s swing-era big band.
Moving to New York City in 1926 he joined Joe Venuti’s band. During the 1920s he recorded with the Original Memphis Five and the Scranton Sirens, which included Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey. His time with the Bob Crosby Orchestra brought him national fame and Bauduc and bassist Bob Haggart composed two hits for the orchestra, South Rampart Street Parade and Big Noise from Winnetka, which has become a jazz standard.
After his discharge from the Army in 1944, he and former Crosby group leader Gil Rodin formed a short-lived big band. He toured with a septet in 1946 and also worked in Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra for a couple of months that year. By 1947, he joined Bob Crosby’s new group, then left to play with Jimmy Dorsey where he stayed for the next two years. He freelanced on the West Coast for a couple of years before joining Jack Teagarden in 1952. In 1955, he formed a band with Nappy Lamare which found considerable success, touring nationally and recording several albums.
From 1960 Ray went into semi-retirement and relocatred to Bellaire, Texas but visited New Orleans in 1983. He appeared occasionally at Crosby Orchestra reunions, worked with Pud Brown on several recordings, and played with the Market Square Jazz Band headed by James Weiler in the early 1980s in Houston.
A trend setter in traditional jazz circles, his precise, disciplined, yet fiery patterns and syncopated fills, helped New Orleans drummers make the transition into swing from the rigid, clipped progressions that had defined the previous era. His use of woodblocks, cowbells, China cymbals, and tom-toms distinguished him from most drummers of the swing era, and made him one of the few white drummers to be influenced by Warren ‘Baby’ Dodds. Drummer Ray Bauduc, who authored two books on drumming, transitioned in Houston, Texas, on January 8, 1988.
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