Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Robert Haslip was born in the Bronx, New York on December 31, 1951 to Puerto Rican immigrants, Spanish being his first language and learned to speak English in kindergarten. His family moved to Huntington, New York when he was four years old. At age seven, he began playing drums and then moved onto other instruments such as trumpet and tuba until at age 15 when he started playing bass.
Considering himself self-taught though he took music lessons and went to a private music school, he originally went to a local music shop with his father and purchased a right-handed bass and learned to play it upside down, as he is left-handed. Surrounded by music as a young boy, from visiting nightclubs and concert venues, there was always music in the house as well. His older brother listened to classic jazz, his father to Latin and orchestra jazz and his aunt listening to sappy stuff like Jerry Vale and Johnny Mathis. In high school, Jimmy created his first band called Soul Mine with his high school classmates, playing soul music at school dances and parties.
By the early 1970s he toured alongside musicians, and moved to Los Angeles, California in 1976, playing with guitarists Tommy Bolin and Harvey Mandel. A founding member of the jazz fusion group the Yellowjackets, in 2012 he took a year hiatus that turned permanent and has gone on to produce independent projects as well as being involved with the charitable organization Union Station Foundation that serves the needs of the homeless. He has worked with Jeff Lorber, Eric Marienthal, Bruce Hornsby, Rita Coolidge, Gino Vannelli, Kiss, Tommy Bolin, Allan Holdsworth, Marilyn Scott, Chaka Khan, Al Jarreau, Donald Fagen, and Anita Baker.
A part of a combo with Allan Holdsworth, Alan Pasqua, and Chad Wackerman, he has also collaborated with Jing Chi with Robben Ford and Vinnie Colaiuta, and Modereko. Bass player and record producer Jimmy Haslip, who is an early user of the five-string electric bass, continues to produce and perform.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles “Don” Alias was born on December 25, 1939 in Harlem, New York City, the son of Caribbean immigrants. Absorbing the lessons of neighborhood Cuban and Puerto Rican hand drummers, while in high school he played conga with the Eartha Kitt Dance Foundation, and in 1957 accompanied the singer at the Newport Jazz Festival.
Mothballing his musical career to study biology at Erie, Pennsylvania’s Cannon College, he followed those studies with a stint at Boston’s Carnegie Institute for Biochemistry. While there Alias regularly moonlighted at local clubs in the company of students of the nearby Berklee School of Music, among them conguero Bill Fitch and bassist Gene Perla, and played bass in a short-lived trio featuring Chick Corea on guitar and Tony Williams on drums.
When Perla landed a gig with Nina Simone, he convinced the singer to hire Alias to assume drumming duties. By the end of his three-year residency he was serving as musical director, and eventually captured the attention of Miles Davis, with whom Simone regularly shared festival bills. He would go on to record four albums with Miles Davis including sitting in to play the drums on the recording of Miles Runs the Voodoo Down on the album Bitches Brew in 1969, when neither Lenny White nor Jack DeJohnette were able to play the marching band-inspired rhythm.
Settling back in New York City in the late Seventies he along with Gene Perla formed the Afro-Cuban fusion group Stone Alliance, which would be resurrected in 1980 with pianist Kenny Kirkland and tenor saxophonist Bob Mintzer. Performing on hundreds of recording sessions, he can be heard playing with Carla Bley, Uri Caine, Jack DeJohnette, Roberta Flack, Joe Farrell, Dan Fogelberg, Bill Frisell, Hal Galper, Kenny Garrett, Herbie Hancock, Elvin Jones, Joe Lovano, David Sanborn, Philip Bailey, Joni Mitchell, Jaco Pastorius, Carlos Santana, John McLaughlin, Lalo Schifrin, Nina Simone, Steve Swallow, the Brecker Brothers, James Taylor, Weather Report, Lou Reed, Blood Sweat & Tears, Pat Metheny, Don Grolnick Group and Jaco Pastorius, on the short list.
Percussionist Don Alias, best known for playing congas and other hand drums, but was also a capable drum kit performer, passed away suddenly in his Manhattan home on March 29, 2006 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cornell Luther Dupree was born on December 19, 1942 and raised in Fort Worth, Texas. Growing up with King Curtis, he graduated from I.M. Terrell High School and began his career playing in the Atlantic Records studio band, recording on albums by Aretha Franklin and King Curtis as a member of his band, The King Pins. He played on the 1969 Lena Horne and Gábor Szabó recording, as well as recordings with Archie Shepp, Grover Washington, Jr., Snooky Young and Miles Davis.
A founding member of the band Stuff, which featured fellow guitarist Eric Gale, Richard Tee on keyboards, Steve Gadd and Chris Parker on drums, and Gordon Edwards on bass, they recorded several albums. He and Tee recorded together on many occasions, and in addition he recorded with Joe Cocker, Brook Benton, Peter Wolf, Hank Crawford, Charles Earland, Eddie Harris, Gene Harris, Donny Hathaway, Roland Kirk, Yusef Lateef, Arif Mardin, Les McCann, Jack McDuff, David Newman, Bernard Purdie, Buddy Rich, Marlena Shaw, Sonny Stitt, Stanley Turrentine, Cedar Walton and Charles Williams.
In 2009, Dupree appeared in a documentary titled Still Bill, chronicling the life and times of Bill Withers. Appearing on stage playing a guitar-led version of Grandma’s Hands, Withers joined him from the audience to sing the lyrics. At the time he was suffering from emphysema and played his guitar on a stool, breathing using an oxygen machine.
Guitarist Cornell Dupree recorded nine albums, wrote a book on soul and blues guitar: Rhythm and Blues Guitar and reportedly recorded on 2,500 sessions before passing away on May 8, 2011 at his home in Fort Worth, Texas awaiting for a lung transplant.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Walter Booker was born December 17, 1933 in Prairie View, Texas and moved with his family to Washington, D.C. in the mid-1940s. He played clarinet and alto saxophone in college with a concert band. In 1959 he began on bass while in the US Army, serving side-by-side in the same unit with Elvis Presley. He worked with Andrew White in Washington after his discharge, playing in the JFK Quintet during the early 1960s.
Moving to New York City in 1964, Booker was hired by Donald Byrd. After his stint with Byrd, he recorded and toured with Ray Bryant, Betty Carter, Chick Corea, Stan Getz, Art Farmer, Charles McPherson, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Milt Jackson, Harold Vick, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins. All this was done before joining the Cannonball Adderley Quintet in 1969, starting an association which lasted until Adderley’s death in 1975. He would go on to record and perform with Joe Zawinul, Joe Williams, Gene Ammons, Joe Chambers, Roy Hargrove, Archie Shepp, Kenny Barron and numerous others.
Walter’s next gig was a tour the United States with the Shirley Horn Trio, along with Billy Hart on drums. During the same time, Booker designed, built, and ran the Boogie Woogie Studio in NYC, a mecca for musicians from all over the world. Through the Eighties he played and recorded with Nat Adderley, Nick Brignola, Arnett Cobb, Richie Cole, John Hicks, Billy Higgins, Clifford Jordan, Pharoah Sanders, Sarah Vaughan, Leroy Williams, Marcus Belgrave, Roni Ben-Hur, Larry Willis, John HIcks and Phil Woods.
Booker married pianist Bertha Hope with whom he played in a trio that included drummer Jimmy Cobb. In addition to his own quintet, he also formed Elmollenium, based on the same core group as the Quintet plus Bertha and dedicated to playing the music of Elmo Hope.
Bassist Walter Booker, a highly underrated stylist whose playing was marked by voice-like inflections, glissandos and tremolo techniques, passed away in his Manhattan home on November 24, 2006, at the age of 72.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Robben Ford was born December 16, 1951 in Woodlake, California and raised in Ukiah, California. He began playing the saxophone at age 10 and the guitar at age fourteen. Robben and his brothers created the Charles Ford Blues Band in honor of their father.
By age 18, Ford’s band was hired to play with Charlie Musselwhite and they recorded two albums The Charles Ford Band and Discovering the Blues. He went on to record two albums with Jimmy Witherspoon titled Live and Spoonful. In the 1970s he joined the jazz fusion band, L.A. Express, led by saxophonist Tom Scott. In 1974 the band backed George Harrison on his American tour and played on the Joni Mitchell albums The Hissing of Summer Lawns and Miles of Aisles.
Leaving the L.A. Express in 1976, Robben recorded his debut solo album, The Inside Story with a band that later became the Yellowjackets. 1982 saw him appearing on the KISS album Creatures of the Night, playing lead guitar on the songs Rock And Roll Hell and I Still Love You. He worked with Miles Davis in 1986 and can be heard on Davis’ Montreux box set. He joined Philippe Saisse, Marcus Miller and J.T. Lewis as a member of The Sunday Night Band for the second and final season of the late-night NBC television program, Sunday Night in 1989.
He has recorded with Dizzy Gillespie, Georgie Fame, Rickie Lee Jones, Neil Larsen, David Sanborn, Bob Malach, Ruthie Foster, Larry Carlton and Charlie Haden, to name a few. In the 1990s he released several more albums and on into the new millennium, received five Grammy Award nominations, and was named one of the “100 Greatest Guitarists of the 20th Century” by Musician magazine. He has produced five instructional DVDs and performed on the soundtracks of the films Pink Cadillac, The Firm, No Way Home and The Whole Nine Yards.
He credits pianist and arranger Roger Kellaway and saxophonist and arranger Tom Scott as major influences on his musical development. Guitarist Robben Ford continues to cross genres of jazz, blues and rock with recording, performing and touring.
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