Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Melton S. Mustafa was born on November 23, 1947 in Miami, Florida, the younger brother of Jesse Jones, Jr. He started playing the trumpet in junior high school and as a teenager played in a five-piece R&B/calypso band led by his brother. As a young adult in the Sixties, he studied at Berklee College of Music and Mississippi Valley State College before graduating from Florida A&M with a degree in music education.
During this period he started played behind Sam and Dave, Betty Wright, Lattimore, the Marvelettes and Joe Simon. His love for jazz never waning, his visibility on the Miami jazz scene increased when Melton joined hard bopper multi-instrumentalist Ira Sullivan. By the 80s he was playing with the Duke Ellington Orchestra led by mercer Ellington, Jaco Pastorius, James Williams, Bobby Watson and John Hicks and Mingus Dynasty among others.
Mustafa joined the Count Basie Orchestra in 1984 and stayed for eight years. In 1992 he formed his own big band and a couple years later signed with Contemporary/Fantasy releasing his debut album Boiling Point. He followed up with his sophomore project St. Louis Blues in 1997. Never far from jazz standards and ballads his quintet recorded his latest CD titled The Softer Side, Scenes from Miami Vol. 1 featuring Duffy Jackson on drums, Dennis Marks on bass and Jim Gasior on piano.
He produces his Annual Melton Mustafa Jazz Festival at the university that has welcomed Jon Faddis, Abraham Laboriel, Benny Golson, Dr. Nathan Davis, Dr. Grover Washington Jr., Dr. James Moody, Idris Muhammad, George Cables, Wallace Roney, Patrice Rushen, Geri Allen, Jimmy Owens, Billy Cobham, Herbie Mann, Dr. Billy Taylor, Clark Terry, Curtis Fuller, Nestor Torres, Winard Harper, Najee, Randy Brecker, and others.
As an educator he is the Director of Jazz Studies at Florida Memorial University, teaching Music Theory, Jazz Composition and other jazz related courses. The hard bop, post bop, soul and swing trumpeter, composer, arranger and producer and educator Melton Mustafa continues to perform, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Vincent Herring was born November 19, 1964 in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. His formal musical education began at age 11, when he started playing saxophone in school bands and studying privately at Dean Frederick’s School Of Music in Vallejo, California. At age 16, he entered California State University at Chico on a music scholarship.
A year later, Vincent auditioned for a spot in the United States Military Academy Band Jazz Knights playing lead alto saxophone. He made the move to West Point, served one enlisted tour, which turned out to be a steppingstone to the New York jazz scene.
He first began touring Europe and the United States with Lionel Hampton’s big band. Since that turning point in his career Herring has recorded and performed over 200 sessions as a sideman working with Nat Adderley, Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, the Horace Silver Quintet, Jack DeJohnette’s Special Edition, Larry Coryell, Cedar Walton, Freddie Hubbard, Dizzy Gillespie, the Mingus Big Band, Nancy Wilson, the Roy Hargrove Big Band, Arthur Taylor, Dr. Billy Taylor, Carla Bley and the Phil Woods Sax Machine.
Vincent has been a special guest soloist with Wynton Marsalis and Lincoln Center as well as with Jon Faddis and the Carnegie Hall Big Band. As a leader he has recorded fifteen albums and taken bands to Japan and Europe, has appeared in nearly every major jazz festival in the world. Wearing his educator hat he gives clinics throughout Europe and the United States. He is currently performing with the Cannonball Legacy Band, which plays in jazz festivals, jazz clubs and occasionally small towns for benefit concerts.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Seldon Powell was born on November 15, 1928 in Lawrenceville, Virginia. A classically trained saxophonist and flautist who studied at Juilliard in New York City, he went on to work briefly with Tab Smith in 1949 before joining and recording with Lucky Millinder the following year. For the next two years he would spend in the military and upon discharge became a studio musician.
A solid musician with the ability to move between genres from big band to hard bop to soul jazz and R&B, over a forty year career he would record four albums as a leader between 1956 and 1973 and another 60 album sessions as a sideman with Clark Terry, Johnny Hammond Smith, Buddy Rich, Louis Bellson, Neal Hefti, Billy Ver Planck, Sy Oliver,, Erskine Hawkins, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Gato Barbieri, Dizzy Gillespie, Gerry Mulligan,Benny Goodman, Woody Herman, roland Hana, Osie Johnson, Freddie Green, Gus Johnson, Sonny Stitt, Friedrich Gulda, Art Farmer, Cal Tjader, Billy Taylor, Ernie Wilkins, Panama Francis, Teri Thornton, Jimmy Forrest, Charlie Byrd, Oliver Nelson and the list goes on.
He recorded for Epic, Roost, Savoy, RCA, United Artists, Lion, Riverside, EmArcy, Golden Crest, Candid, ABC, New Jazz, Impulse, Solid State, Verve, 20th Century, Atlantic, and Sesac record labels. Tenor saxophonist and flautist who concentrated in the swing, progressive and soul jazz, big band and rhythm & blues genres passed away on January 25, 1997 in Hempstead, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billy Mitchell was born in Kansas City, Missouri on November 3, 1926. In the late Forties he worked Detroit with the Nat Towles’ band before venturing to New York to join Lucky Millinder. In 1949 he recorded with Milt Jackson, worked and recorded with the big bands of Milt Buckner, Gil Fuller and toured with Woody Herman’s Second Herd.
1950 saw him back in Detroit but by mid-decade Billy was playing with the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band taking a making solo on cool Breeze at the ’57 Newport Jazz Festival. From 1957 until 1961 and from 1966 to 1967 Mitchell played with Count Basie, replacing Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis. In the early 1960s he co-led a group with trombonist Al Grey, and also served as musical director for Stevie Wonder during this period.
Although he had a short list of recordings as a leader Mitchell performed with jazz luminaries like Bobby Hutcherson, Gene Ammons, Rufus Reid, Tommy Flanagan, Sam Jones, Dolo Coker and Earl May among others, his “Colossus in Detroit” has remained a sought after collectible album.
Tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell, who mainly played in the hard bop genre, passed away of lung cancer on April 18, 2001 in Rockville Centre, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Errol Parker was born Raphaël Schecroun on October 30,1925 in Oran, French Algeria. In 1964, Parker composed the song Lorre, which became a hit in France, and opened his own jazz club called Le Ladybird on Rue de la Huchette.
Following a serious car accident which impaired Parker’s piano playing, he emigrated to New York, where his daughter Elodie Lauten was to begin university in February 1968. It was in America that he started a second career as a record producer, but unable to find a suitable drummer, he started to perform as a jazz drummer, which was not affected by his shoulder injury.
Pianist, composer, record producer and drummer Errol Parker, who played and recorded as a leader and with Django Reinhardt, James Moody, Don Byas and Kenny Clarke among others, passed away of liver cancer at the age of 72 on July 2, 1998 in New York City.
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