Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Henderson was born on October 26, 1940 in New York City. His mother was an original Cotton Club dancer and his father sang with a popular singing group of the day, Billy Williams and The Charioteers. At the age of nine he got an informal lesson by Louis Armstrong and continued his study of the instrument as a teenager at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, after his family moved there in 1954. As a young man, he performed with the San Francisco Conservatory Symphony Orchestra. In 1957 he met Miles Davis, a friend of his parents and played a gig together when he was just 17.
After three years in the Air Force, Henderson enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley graduating with a B.S. in zoology in 1964. He then studied medicine at Howard University, then went back to the Bay area undertook his residency in psychiatry in 1968, he practiced general medicine from 1975 to 1985 in San Francisco part-time for about four hours a day working at a small clinic.
His break in music came when he took a weeklong gig with Herbie Hancock’s Mwandishi band that led to a three-year job. It was during this period in the early 70s that her recorded three albums with the group but more importantly came out as a leader and recorded his debut album Realization followed by Inside Out.
After leaving Hancock, Eddie worked extensively with Pharoah Sanders, Mike Nock, Norman Connors, and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. He joined Latin jazz band Azteca, recorded with Charles Earland and fronted his own bands, both jazz and rock-oriented. However, recognized for his work with Hancock, his own records were considered too commercial.
By the 1990s, Henderson returned to playing acoustic hard bop, touring with Billy Harper while also working as a physician. He recorded at Miles tribute album So What? with Bob Berg, Dave Kikoski, Ed Howard and Victor Lewis. He has collaborated with his wife Natsuko who composed Tender You, Precious Moment, Around the World in 3/4 and Be Cool.
As an educator trumpet and flugelhorn player Eddie Henderson has been a faculty member of Juilliard since 2007 and is Associate Professor of Trumpet at the Oberlin Conservatory Jazz Department, beginning in 2014. He has recorded 23 albums as a leader, has released two anthologies, and recorded nearly four-dozen sessions as a sideman with Benny Golson, Mulgrew Miller, Richard Davis, Gary Bartz, Leon Thomas, Billy Hart, McCoy Tyner, Mal Waldron, Stanley Cowell, Grover Washington, Jr., Kenny Barron, Joe Farnsworth and the Mingus Big Band to name a few.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Swallow was born October 4, 1940 in Fair Lawn, New York. As a child, he studied piano and trumpet before turning to the double bass at age 14. While attending a prep school, he began trying his hand in jazz improvisation. While attending Yale and studying composition he left oin 1960, settled in New York and began playing in Jimmy Guiffre’s trio with Paul Bley. By 1964 he was with Art Farmer’s quartet where he began to write and during this period his long association with Gary Burton’s various bands commenced.
The early 1970s saw Swallow switching exclusively to the five-string electric bass guitar, encouraged by his favorite drummer Roy Haynes. Along with Monk Montgomery and Bob Cranshaw was one of the firsts to do so. He was an early adopter of the high C string and use of the upper register.
In 1974-76 Steve taught at the Berklee College of Music, contributed several of his compositions to the Berklee students who assembled the first edition of The Real Book. He later recorded an album of the same name, with the picture of a well-worn, coffee-stained Real Book on the cover. By 1978 he became an essential and constant member of Carla Bley’s band and her romantic partner since the 1980s. He toured extensively with John Scofield in the early Eighties, returning to this collaboration several times over the years.
Swallow has consistently won the electric bass category in Down Beat yearly polls, both Critics’ and Readers’, since the mid-80s. His compositions have been covered by, among others, Bill Evans, Chcick Corea, Stan Getz, Gary Burton and Jim Hall, who recorded his very first tune, Eiderdown. He has performed or recorded with Don Ellis, Dave Douglas, Steve Kuhn, Pete La Roca, Joe Lovano, Michael Mantler, Gary McFarland, Pat Metheny, Paul Motian, Jimmy Raney, Zoot Sims, Tore Johansen and George Russell.
Bassist Steve Swallow, who performs in the genres of cool, fusion, avant-garde, free, post-bop and hard bop jazz, has fourteen albums to his credit as a leader an co-leader and continues to perform, compose, record and tour.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Papa John DeFrancesco was born John Jasper DeFrancesco on September 12, 1940 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Growing up with a father who played reeds in swing bands including the Dorsey Brothers, he began plaing trumpet at six and did not start playing organ until his wife bought him an organ for his 23rd birthday. After a few months of nearly nonstop practicing, he was ready to perform in clubs.
By 1967 he was a part of the Philadelphia jazz scene. However, in 1979 when his son Joey turned eight and started playing professionally, he temporarily gave up his career in order to supervise his son. Johnny, his other son, has also developed into a fine guitarist.
In the 90s Papa John returned to a more active playing career and recorded two sessions for Muse Records featuring Joey on trumpet, titled Doodlin’ and Comin’ Home. Both records gained him a national reputation of his own. His organ playing is in an infectious hard bop style that compliments his sons playing and it was while working with Joey that his career was revived
Between 2001 and 2006 he released four albums, took a five-year hiatus, and then returned to release A Philadelphia Story performed by a classic Hammond B-3 trio featuring John Jr. on guitar, drummer Glenn Ferracone with guest appearances by Joey and tenor saxophonist Joe Fortunato.
Organist and vocalist Papa John DeFranceso continues to perform, tour and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Larry Ridley was born September 3, 1937 in Indianapolis, Indiana and began playing bass professionally while still in high school in the 1950s. He studied at Indiana University School of Music and then would later study at the Lenox School of Jazz. As a college student he would go on to matriculate through be bassist in his mentor’s ensemble, the David Baker Big Band.
Ridley served as chairman of the Jazz Panel of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and was the organization’s National Coordinator of the “Jazz Artists in Schools” Program for five years. He was awarded the Mid Atlanti Arts Foundation’s Living Legacy Jazz Award, the Benny Golson Jazz Award from Howard University, and inducted into the International Association for Jazz Education Hall of Fame,
Over the course of his career Larry has recorded two albums as a leader and performed and/or recorded with Chet Baker, Al Cohn, Dameronia, Red Garland, Dexter Gordon, Stephane Grappelli, Joe Venuti, Roy Haynes, Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, James Moody, Lee Morgan and Horace Silver to name a few.
Bassist and music educator Larry Ridley has been involved in jazz education, heading the jazz program at Rutgers University, and Professor of Jazz Bass at the Manhattan School of Music is a Jazz Artist in Residence at Harlem’s New York Public Library/Schomberg Center for Research in Black Culture, and continues to perform with his Jazz Legacy Ensemble.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Horace Silver was born Horace Ward Martin Tavares Silva on September 2, 1928 in Norwalk, Connecticut to a mother from Connecticut and a father from Maio, Cape Verde. He began playing the piano as a child, receiving classical music lessons and Cape Verde folk music from his father. When he turned 11 he became interested in becoming a musician, after hearing the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra.
From ninth grade Silver played tenor saxophone in the Norwalk High School band and orchestra, influenced by Lester Young. He played gigs locally on both instruments while still at school and around 1946 he moved to Hartford, Connecticut, taking a regular job as house pianist in a nightclub. His big break came around 1950, backing saxophonist Stan Getz at a Hartford club. Liking what he heard, Getz took Silver’s band on the road. With Getz he made his recording debut on the Stan Getz Quartet album, along with bassist Joe Calloway and drummer Walter Bolden.
The following year Horace left Getz, moving to New York City and worked at Birdland on Monday nights. During that year, he met the executives of Blue Note Records, eventually signed with them, and remained there until 1980. He also co-founded the Jazz Messengers with Art Blakey.
From 1951 he free-lanced around New York, recorded mostly his own compositions with his trio, featuring Blakey on drums and Gene Ramey, Curly Russell or Percy Heath on bass. Throughout his career he would record with Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Junior Cook, Blue Mitchell, Louis Hayes, Carmell Jones, Joe Henderson, Woody Shaw, Tyrone Washington, Michael and Randy Brecker, Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Donald Byrd and Miles Davis All Stars.
He music reflected the social and cultural upheavals of the 60s and 70s as he briefly played electric piano and including lyrics in his compositions, and his interested in spiritualism also came into his music.
He received a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award, recorded his final studio session in 1998 titled Jazz Has A Sense of Humor, was awarded the President’s Merit Award by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, penned his autobiography Let’s Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver and published by University of California Press, and many of his compositions have become jazz standards.
Horace Silver, whose early influences were Bud Powell, Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole and Thelonious Monk, and who and influence for Bobby Timmons, Le McCann, Ramsey Lewis and Cecil Taylor, passed away of natural causes in New Rochelle, New York on June 18, 2014. The pianist and composer known for his distinctive playing style and pioneering compositional contributions to hard bop, featured surprising tempo shifts from aggressively percussive to lushly romantic merged with funk long before that word could be used in polite company.
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