Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Onaje Allan Gumbs was born Allan Bentley Gumbs on September 3, 1949 in Harlem, New York but grew up in St. Albans, Queens. Starting to play piano at age 7, Henry Manciniwas one of his earliest and greatest influences, hearing Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky themes on television. He later studied at the Music and Art High School in Manhattan and was mentored by Erskine Tate Alum Leroy Kirkland.
During this time, he was playing in a Latin band, a big band, playing piano duets and listening to records made by Motown and Blue Note, developing an interest in R&B in conjunction with the straight-ahead jazz of Horace Silver, Dizzy Gillespie, Lalo Schifrin, Gil Evans, Miles Davis, McCoy Tyner and John Coltrane. He went on to study classical piano, composition, arranging and graduated with a degree in Education at the State University of New York at Fredonia in upstate New York.
In 1971, Leroy Kirkland introduced Onaje to guitarist Kenny Burrell and a subsequent gig led him to play with Larry Ridley and The Thad Jones/ Mel Lewis Orchestra. He would join jazz ensemble Natural Essence that included Thelonious Monk Jr. In 1972he went to work with Norman Connors as an arranger on the Dark of Light album and contributed keyboards on the albums Love From the Sun, Saturday Night Special, You Are My Starship, Invitation and Mr. C.
Toward the late 1970s, Onaje spent two years working in Woody Shaw‘s band as pianist, arranger, and occasional composer, in which the group won the Down Beat Reader’s Poll for Best Jazz Group and for Best Jazz Album in 1978 for Rosewood. His first solo piano project was simply titled Onaje and was followed by venturing into R&B and subsequently ending up on the smooth jazz charts and rotations for nearly 20 years with his composition “Quiet Passion”.
In 2003, Onaje return to straight-ahead with his release of the live album Return to Form, and garnering critical acclaim the next year with a project on his own label, Ejano, titled Remember Their Innocence. These were followed with Grady Tate‘s Sack Full of Dreams before his stroke in 2010 but by year end had recorded and release Just Like Yesterday in Japan, with all signs of a stroke vanished. His sideman work has included stints with Buster Williams, Cecil McBee, and Betty Carter and most recently with Avery Sharpe on the 2012 album Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I A Woman.
He has received the Min-on-Art Award, has his song Dare To Dream chosen by Panasonic as the theme for their 10th anniversary celebration of Kid Witness News, composed, arranged and performed the original score for the Showtime film, Override and was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.
Suffering a stroke in 2010 he was able to return to music two weeks later. In 2015 he was hospitalized again for two weeks but made a full recovery and returned to composing and performance. Pianist, composer, arranger and bandleader Onaje Allen Gumbs passed away at 70 on April 6, 2020.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gil Coggins was born Alvin Gilbert Coggins on August 23, 1928 in New York City of West Indian heritage and started playing piano at an early age. He attended The High School of Music and Art in Harlem and also school in Barbados.
In 1946, Coggins met Miles Davis while stationed in Missouri and after his discharge he began playing piano professionally, working with Davis on several of his Blue Note and Prestige releases. He also recorded with John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers, Ray Draper and Jackie McLean.
Coggins gave up playing jazz professionally in 1954 and took up a career in real estate, playing music only occasionally. He did not record as a leader until 1990, when Interplay Records released “Gil’s Mood”. He continued performing through the 190s and into the new millennium. On February 15, 2004 pianist Gil Coggins passed away from complications sustained in a car crash eight months earlier in Forest Hills, New York. His second album recorded as a leader, “Better Late Than Never”, was released posthumously in 2007 on the Smalls Records label.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Malachi Favors was born August 22, 1927 in Lexington, Mississippi. He began playing double bass at age fifteen and began performing professionally upon graduating high school. His early performances included work with Dizzy Gillespie and Freddie Hubbard. But by 1965, he was a founding member of the AACM – Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians and a member of Muhal Richard Abrams’ Experimental Band.
Malachi was a protégé of Chicago bassist Wilbur Ware. His first known recording was a 1953 session with tenor saxophonist Paul Bascomb and four years later recorded with pianist Andrew Hill. He began working with Roscoe Mitchell in 1966 and this group eventually became the Art Ensemble of Chicago, for which he is most prominently known. Favors also worked outside the group, with artists including Sunny Murray, Archie Shepp and Dewey Redman.
Favors’ most notable records include “Natural and the Spiritual”, “Sightsong” andthe 1994 Roman Bunka collaboration and recording at the Berlin Jazz Fest of the German Critics Poll Winner album “Color Me Cairo”.
At some point in his career Malachi added the word “Maghostut” to his name and because of this he is commonly listed on recordings as Malachi Favors Maghostut.
Most associated musically with bebop, hard bop and particularly free jazz, Favors not only plays the double bass but electric bass, guitar, banjo, zither, gong and other instruments. Malachi Favors died of pancreatic cancer in Chicago, Illinois on January 30, 2004 at the age of 76.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carl Perkins was born August 16, 1928 in Indianapolis, Indiana and as a child suffered with polio. Overcoming a slightly crippled left hand he learned to play piano, holding his arm sideways over the keyboard. His early professional playing came touring with the big bands of Tiny Bradshaw and Big Jay McNeely but then he settled and worked mainly in Los Angeles, becoming a West Coast fixture from 1949 on.
Best known for his performances with the Curtis Counce Quintet, he performed alongside tenor saxophonist Harold Land, trumpeter Jack Sheldon and drummer Frank Butler. In 1954 Carl performed with the Clifford Brown-Max Roach group, and recorded with Frank Morgan in 1955.
Perkins recorded on as a leader for Savoy, Duotone, and Pacific Jazz labels between 1949 and 1957 and for the Boplicity label between 1955-56 titled “Introducing Carl Perkins”. He composed the jazz standard “Grooveyard” that was recorded in a 1958 session led by Harold Land.
Over the course of his short career absent of fame and beleaguered with drug addiction, Perkins recorded with Chet Baker, Art Pepper, Dizzy Gillespie, Jim Hall and Dexter Gordon to name a few.
Carl Perkins, known to be one of the best hard bop pianist of his day, died due to an untimely drug overdose at age 29 on March 17, 1958 in Los Angeles, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Benny Bailey was born Ernest Harold Bailey on August 13, 1925 in Cleveland, Ohio. Having some training in piano and flute in his youth, he switched to trumpet, concentrating on the instrument while at the Cleveland Institute of Music. He was influenced by his hometown colleague, Tadd Dameron, seven years his elder, and subsequently had a significant influence on other prominent Cleveland musicians including Bill Hardman, Bobby Few, Albert Ayler, Frank Wright and Bob Cunningham.
In the early 1940s he worked with Bull Moose Jackson and Scatman Crothers. He later worked with Dizzy Gillespie, toured with Lionel Hampton and while on the European tour with Hampton, decided to stay and spend time in Sweden. This Swedish period saw him working with Harry Arnold’s big band. His preference for big bands over small groups associated him with several European big bands including the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band.
For a while her worked with Quincy Jones returning to the States briefly in 1960. During this time, he worked with Tony “Big T” Lovano and recorded with Freddie Redd’s sextet invited to the studio as part of Freddie Redd’s sextet on the Blue Note Records album Redd’s Blues. Shortly thereafter, he returned to Europe first to Germany, and later to the Netherlands where he would settle permanently.
In 1969 he played on the Eddie Harris/Les McCann project Swiss Movement, recorded live at the Montreux Jazz Festival that included a memorable unrehearsed solo on “Compared To What”. Then in 1988 he worked with British clarinetist Tony Coe and kept producing albums until 2000 when he was in his mid-70s. He recorded 18 albums as a leader and another half-dozen as a sideman working with such luminaries as Eric Dolphy, Benny Golson, Randy Weston and Jimmy Witherspoon. Bebop and hard bop trumpeter Benny Bailey died at home in Amsterdam on April 14, 2005.
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