Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Born Kenneth Spearman Clarke on January 9, 1914 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Kenny Clarke grew up in a musical family, studied multiple instruments, including vibes and trombone, as well as music theory and composition while still in high school. As a teenager he played in the bands of Leroy Bradley and Roy Eldridge. He later toured around the Midwest for several years with the Jeter-Pillars band that also featured bassist Jimmy Blanton and guitarist Charlie Christian. By 1935, he was more frequently in New York, where he eventually moved and worked in groups led by Edgar Hayes and Lonnie Smith.
While working in the bands of Edgar Hayes and Roy Eldridge, Clarke started developing the rhythmic concepts that would later define his contribution to the music. He began experimenting with moving the time-keeping role from the combination of snare drum or hi-hat and bass drum to embellished quarter notes on the ride cymbal, the familiar “ding-ding-da-ding” pattern, which Clarke is often credited with inventing. One of these passages, a combination of a rim shot on the snare followed directly by a bass drum accent, earned Clarke his nickname, “Klook”, which was short for “Klook-mop”, in imitation of the sound this combination produced. This nickname was enshrined in “Oop Bop Sh’Bam”, recorded by Dizzy Gillespie in 1946 with Clarke on drums, where the scat lyric to the bebop tune goes “oop bop sh’bam a klook a mop.”
Clarke himself claimed that these stylistic elements were already in place by the time he put together the famous house band at Minton’s Playhouse, which hosted Monk, Parker, Gillespie, Russell, saxophonist Don Byas and many others while serving as the incubator of the emerging small group sound. While playing at Minton’s, Clarke made many recordings, most notably as the house drummer for Savoy Records. When the musicians from the Minton’s band moved to different projects, Clarke began working with a young pianist and composer John Lewis and vibraphonist Milt Jackson, and with the addition of bassist Ray Brown they formed the Modern Jazz Quartet or MJQ. The group pioneered what would later be called chamber jazz or third stream, referring to its incorporation of classical and baroque aesthetics as an alternative to hard bop.
Clarke stayed with the MJQ until 1955, relocating in Paris in 1956. As soon as he moved to Paris, he regularly worked with visiting American musicians in, as well as forming a working trio, known as “The Bosses”, with Bud Powell also a Paris resident and Pierre Michelot. In 1961 along with pianist Francy Boland, Kenny formed a regular big band “The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band that lasted eleven years and featured leading European and expatriate American musicians, such as Johnny Griffin and Ronnie Scott.
Drummer Kenny Clarke continued recording and playing with both visiting U.S. musicians along with his regular French band mates until his death on January 26, 1985 in Montreuil-sous-bois. In 1988 he was inducted into the Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame and his innovation set the stage for the development of the bebop combo, which relied heavily on improvised exchanges between drummer and soloist to propel the music forward.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hank Crawford was born Bennie Ross Crawford, Jr. on December 21, 1934 in Memphis, Tennessee. He began formal piano studies at age nine and was soon playing for his church choir. His father had brought an alto saxophone home from the service and when Crawford entered Manassas High School, he took it up in order to join the band, hanging out with George Coleman, Booker Little, Harold Mabern and Frank Strozier. At eighteen he appeared on an early 1952 Memphis recording for B. B. King playing alongside Ben Branch and Ike Turner.
In 1958 Crawford attended Tennessee State University, majored in music studying theory and composition, played alto and baritone saxophone in the Tennessee State Jazz Collegians and led his own rock ‘n’ roll quartet, “Little Hank and the Rhythm Kings”. It was during this period that he met Ray Charles and got his nickname “Hank” because he looked and sounded like local legendary saxophonist Hank O’Day.
Charles hired Crawford originally as a baritone saxophonist but he switched to alto in ’59 and became musical director until ’63 when he left to form his own septet, having already established himself with several albums on Atlantic Records, recording a dozen albums between 1960 and 1970. He also arranged for Etta James, Lou Rawls and others, although much of his career has been in R&B. However, in the Seventies, Hank had several successes on the jazz and pop charts.
In 1983 a move to Milestone Records gave him the opportunity to become a premier arranger, soloist, and composer, writing for small bands—that include guitarist Melvin Sparks, Dr. John and organist Jimmy McGriff, the later with whom he toured extensively and co-led dates for Milestone’s “Soul Survivor”, Steppin’ Up”, “On The Blue Side” and Road Tested”. The new century found Crawford pursuing a more mainstream jazz sound with the “World of Hank Crawford”, covering Ellington and Tadd Dameron compositions.
Hank Crawford, alto and baritone saxophonist in the hard bop, R&B, jazz-funk and soul jazz genres, credits Charlie Parker, Louis Jordan, Earl Bostic and Johnny Hodges as early influences. His piercing full-bodied signature sanctified church sound, easily recognizable, will live on through his music since his passing on January 29, 2009 at 74.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny “Hammond” Smith was born John Robert Smith on December 16, 1933 in Louisville, Kentucky and earned the nickname “Hammond” for his renowned playing on the B3. In the early years of his career he played with Paul Williams and Chris Columbo before forming his own group. His bands featured singers Etta Jones, Byrdie Green, saxophonists Houston Person, Earl Edwards, guitarists Eddie McFadden, Floyd Smith, James Clark and vibist Freddie McCoy. However, his career took off as he was serving as accompanist to singer Nancy Wilson.
After a string of albums over a 10-year period at Prestige Records during the 60s, Johnny signed with CTI’s Kudu label, launching it with his soul/R&B project “Break Out” that featured Grover Washington Jr. as a sideman prior to the launch of his career as a solo recording artist. Three further albums followed and he became “Johnny Hammond”, dropping “Smith” from his name.
Adapting to the changing sound of the music Johnny’s style had become increasingly funky. This culminated in two popular albums with the Mizell Brothers, “Gambler’s Life” (1974) for the CTI offshoot, Salvation and then in 1975, “Gears” after switching to another jazz label, Milestone Records, incorporating electric and acoustic pianos as well.
As an educator he taught at Cal Poly Pomona music department for several years, penned “Quiet Fire” for Nancy Wilson’s 1989 “Nancy Now” album and remained a hard bop and soul jazz organist until his passing on June 10, 2004.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Curtis DuBois Fuller was born in Detroit, Michigan on December 15, 1934 to Jamaican parents who died when he was very young and raised in an orphanage. He took up the trombone while in Detroit and became friends with schoolmates Paul Chambers and Donald Byrd and also knew Tommy Flanagan, Thad Jones and Milt Jackson.
After two years of army service ending in 1955, where he played in a band with Chambers and the Adderley brothers, Fuller joined the quintet of another Detroit musician, Yusef Lateef. By 1957 the quintet moved to New York and Curtis recorded his first sessions as a leader for Prestige Records.
Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records heard him playing with Miles Davis in the late Fifties and featured him as a sideman on record dates led by Sonny Clark and John Coltrane. His work on Trane’s “Blue Train” album is probably his best-known recorded performance. This was followed with four Fuller led dates for Blue Note.
Over his career Curtis has worked with Slide Hampton, Bud Powell, Jimmy Smith, Wayne Shorter, Abbey Lincoln, Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Blue Mitchell and Joe Henderson, and that’s the very short list. He performed with Dizzy Gillespie’s band, toured with Count Basie, was the sixth Jazz Messenger with Art Blakey in 1961, was the first trombonist to hold membership in the Art Farmer-Benny Golson Jazztet, and has recorded for Savoy, Epic, Impulse, Status, Challenge, Timeless and Capri among others and his latest album, “Down Home” on Capri.
In addition to continuing to perform and record, he was a faculty member of the New York State Summer School of the Arts – School of Jazz Studies. Trombonist Curtis Fuller passed away on May 8, 2021.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecil Payne was born December 14, 1922 in Brooklyn, New York. He received his first saxophone at age 13, asking his father for one after hearing Count Basie’s version of Honeysuckle Rose performed by Lester Young and took lessons from Pete Brown, a local alto sax player.
Payne began his professional recording career with J. J. Johnson on the Savoy label in 1946. During that year he played with Roy Eldridge, through whom he met Dizzy Gillespie. His earlier recordings would largely fall under the “swing” category, until Gillespie hired him, a relationship that lasted until 1949.
By the early 50s, Cecil found himself working with Tadd Dameron, Illinois Jacquet, James Moody, Machito, Woody Herman, Count Basie and freelancing around New York, frequently performing with Randy Weston. Throughout his fifty plus year career baritone saxophonist he recorded as a leader and a sideman for Decca, Savoy, the Charlie Parker label, Muse, Spotlite and Strata East, and regularly for Delmark Records in the nineties, when he was in his seventies, and on into the new millennium.
Cecil Payne, baritone and alto saxophonist and flautist, passed away on November 27, 2007. Although largely unknown to the public he was one of the pioneers in adapting the baritone saxophone to bebop and post-bop.