Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Yoshiaki Masuo was born in Tokyo, Japan on October 12, 1946. The son of a jazz bandleader and pianist, he grew up surrounded by jazz. Never having any formal training, by the time he was 15 he started playing the guitar and his influences were Wes Montgomery and Grant Green.
Discovered by alto saxophonist Sadao Watanabe in 1967 he joined the group and started his professional career with one of Japan’s leading groups. During the three years he was with the group Masuo was Swing Journal’s reader’s poll #1 guitarist and went on to win it five more times.
A move to New York City in ‘71 saw him playing with Teruo Nakamura, Lenny White, Michael Brecker, Chick Corea, Elvin Jones, Ashford & Simpson and was a member of Lee Konitz’s group. Two years later he joined up with Sonny Rollins and recorded four albums and toured the U.S., Japan and Europe. Forming his own electric fusion group he began recording and touring Japan, the West Coast and played in New York City.
In Soho, New York City he began experimenting with electronic instruments and it turned into a self-titled album Masuo in which he was composer, arranger, engineer and mixer. He produced dozens of albums over the next ten years and his performing was put on hold the deeper he got into producing. By the end of the century he closed his studio in New York.
Guitarist Yoshiaki Masuo returned to performing in 2008, recording two albums in successive years and continues to performa and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Junior Mance was born Julian Clifford Mance, Jr. on October 10, 1928 in Evanston, Illinois. When he was five years old, he started playing piano on an upright where his father taught him to play stride piano and boogie-woogie. With his father’s permission, he had his first professional gig in Chicago, Illinois at the age of ten when his upstairs neighbor, a saxophone player, needed a replacement for a pianist who was ill.
At Roosevelt College in Chicago he signed up for music classes but discovered jazz was forbidden and left before the school year was finished. Mance first played and recorded with Gene Ammons in Chicago in 1947 while he was enrolled at Roosevelt. While on tour in Chicago, Lester Young saw him playing with Ammons and had him sit in. He ended up recording with Young for Savoy Records that year, and reunited with Ammons to record with Sonny Stitt for Prestige Records in 1950.
Drafted into the Army in 1951, two weeks before shipping out to Korea from basic training, Cannonball Adderley helped Mance score a position in the 36th Army Band at Fort Knox, Kentucky, where he remained as the company clerk. Back in Chicago after being discharged two years later, Junior immediately started working at the Bee Hive Jazz Club in Chicago. He backed Charlie Parker, Coleman Hawkins, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and Sonny Stitt among others.
Parker encouraged Mance to move to New York, and in 1954, he recorded with Dinah Washington, touring with her over the next two years and learning accompaniment technique from her arranger, Jimmy Jones. From a live session recorded in 1954 in Los Angeles, California that included him, Washington, Clifford Brown, Clark Terry, Maynard Ferguson, Herb Geller, Harold Land, Richie Powell, Keter Betts, George Morrow, and Max Roach, EmArcy released two LPs, Dinah Jams and Jam Session.
The Fifties saw Junior joining Cannonball Adderley’s first civilian band, making several recordings for EmArcy/Mercury and supported Dinah Washington on her In the Land of Hi-Fi album. He would go on torecord with Johnny Griffin, James Moody, and Wilbur Ware. Then he joined Dizzy Gillespie’s band. By the end of the decade he recorded his debut as a leader on the Verve label.
Over the course of his career he would record with Capitol and Atlantic, and Sackville record labels. He continued to record and perform during the next three decades. As an educator he taught at The New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music for 23 years, counting Brad Mehldau and Larry Goldings among his students before retiring in 2011.
From 1990 to 2009 Mance was part of the all-star group called “100 Gold Fingers” which frequently toured Japan. The rotating lineup included Toshiko Akiyoshi, Monty Alexander, Geri Allen, Lynne Arriale, Kenny Barron, Joanne Brackeen, Ray Bryant, Bill Charlap, Cyrus Chestnut, Gerald Clayton, Eric Reed, and twenty-two others with bassist Bob Cranshaw and either Alan Dawson or Grady Tate on drums.
Pianist and composer Junior Mance, who suffered from Alzheimer’s and a fall, died on January 17, 2021 from a brain hemorrhage at the age of 92 in New York.Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…Acquaint an inquisitive mind with a dose of an Evanston pianist who is in the company of musical genius around the world as a member of the jazz canon…
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gene Ludwig was born on September 4, 1937 in Twin Rocks, Cambria County, Pennsylvania and raised in the boroughs of Wilkinsburg and Swissvale, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He began studying the piano at age 6 and became interested in rhythm and blues after hearing Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner and organists Bill Doggett and Wild Bill Davis.
Graduating from Swissvale High School in 1955, he studied physics and mathematics at Edinboro State Teachers College. He left due to his father going on strike at Westinghouse Electric, and returned to Pittsburgh to work in construction.
Ludwig began performing in local vocal groups before hearing organist Jimmy Smith perform at the Hurricane nightclub in Pittsburgh’s Hill District. That initial encounter inspired him to take up the Hammond organ. He bought several organs before settling on the B-3 after sharing a bill with Jimmy Smith in 1964 in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Traveling along the East Coast and to Ohio, he performed jazz and rhythm and blues, and released numerous singles and albums as a leader and a sideman. Gene released a 45-rpm single of the Ray Charles song Sticks & Stones in 1963, then in 1967 he released Mother Blues on Johnny Nash’s Jocida record label. He went on to replace Don Patterson in saxophonist Sonny Stitt’s band in 1969, appearing on Stitt’s album, Night Letter.
Ludwig toured with bass-baritone vocalist Arthur Prysock and guitarist Pat Martino. He released the album, Now’s the Time, in 1980 on Muse Records, and continued to travel and work through the ’80s and ’90s, regularly performing at Pittsburgh’s Crawford Grill and James Street Tavern. He signed with Loose Leaf/Blues Leaf Records in 1997 and released the albums Back on the Track, Soul Serenade, The Groove ORGANization, Hands On, and Live in Las Vegas, for the label.
Hammond B-3 organist Gene Ludwig, who was a prominent figure on the Pittsburgh jazz scene, died in Monroeville, Pennsylvania on July 14, 2010. A posthumous album, Love Notes of Cole Porter, was released in 2011 by Jim Alfredson’s Big O Records.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tom Kennedy was born on August 21, 1960 in St. Louis, Missouri and is the son of a professional trumpet player. He began playing acoustic bass at the age of nine on a double-bass brought home by his older brother, jazz pianist Ray Kennedy. It wasn’t long before he began to perform with such as Freddie Hubbard, James Moody, Nat Adderly, Sonny Stitt and Stan Kenton passing through the Midwest.
Specializing in acoustic jazz until he picked up the electric bass at the age of 17. Soon he was dividing his time between mainstream and progressive jazz fusion. Tom gained a reputation beyond St. Louis and he relocated to New York City, where he quickly found work with multiple groups. He recorded with guitarist Bill Connors and toured with Michael Brecker in the jazz-fusion group Steps Ahead. He went on to have tours and recordings with Tania Maria and Al DiMeola.
In 1998, Kennedy became an integral part of Dave Weckl’s band, a group he toured, composed and recorded with for over nine years. They have continued to perform and record together on various projects for other artists, including Mike Stern, Didier Lockwood, Dave Grusin and Lee Ritenour.
He has recorded six albums as a leader and another twenty as a sideman with Dave Weckl, Bill Connors, Don Grolnick, Ray Kennedy, Al DiMeola, Planet X, Derek Sherinian, and Mike Stern.
Tom has also performed and recorded with top contemporary players Simon Phillips, Steve Gadd, Frank Gambale, Steve Lukather, David Sanborn, Jeff Lorber, Ricky Lawson, Joe Sample, Renee Rosnes and George Garzone and fusion band Planet X.
Double-bass and electric bassist Tom Kennedy, who moved to New York City in 1984 and immersed himself in the hard bop, fusion and swing genres, continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Terence Michael “Terry” Clarke was born August 20, 1944 in Vancouver, Canada. He studied percussion with Jim Blackley and played with Chris Gage and Dave Robbins early in his career. From 1965 to 1967 he toured in a quintet with John Handy, and joined The Fifth Dimension in 1967, remaining until 1969.
In 1970, he moved to Toronto, Canada where he began a longstanding association with Rob McConnell’s group, Boss Brass. He also played with Ed Bickert, Ruby Braff, Jim Galloway, Sonny Greenwich, Jay McShann, Emily Remler, and Frank Rosolino. In 1976, he toured with Jim Hall for the first time and in 1981 did an international tour with Oscar Peterson.
Relocating to New York City in 1985 he played or recorded with Toshiko Akiyoshi, Eddie Daniels, Oliver Jones, Roger Kellaway, Helen Merrill, Ken Peplowski, and Joe Roccisano, among others. He played with the Free Trade ensemble in 1994, a quintet composed of Clarke, Ralph Bowen, Neil Swainson, Renee Rosnes, and Peter Leitch.
Returning to Toronto in 1999, he joined The Rob McConnell Tentet. His 2009 debut album It’s About Time won a Juno Award for Traditional Jazz Album of the Year. Drummer Terry Clarke, who recorded 29 albums as a sideman and was appointed a Member of the Order of Canada in 2002, continues to perform and record.
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