Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jean-François “J.F.” Jenny-Clark was born July 12, 1944 in Toulouse, France. Together with drummer Aldo Romano he provided the rhythm section for Don Cherry’s 1965 European quintet of 1965. During the Seventies he recorded with Steve Lacy, performed in concerts with Keith Jarrett (around 1970) and for Jasper van’t Hof’s Pork Pie group and played with Charlie Mariano.
As a member of Diego Massons ensemble Musique Vivante he was interpreting contemporary music compositions by John Cage, Luciano Berio, Mauricio Kagel, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez, or Vinko Globokar.
Along with Albert Mangelsdorff he led the German-French Jazz Ensemble from 1984 to 1987. Since 1985 Jenny-Clark was mainly working in an acclaimed trio with German pianist Joachim Kühn and Swiss drummer Daniel Humair.
His recording as a leader was minimal but as a sideman he recorded over a hundred albums. Double bassist Jean-François Jenny-Clark, one of the most important bass players of European jazz, passed away on October 6, 1998 in Paris, France.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frank Emilio was born Francisco Emilio Flynn Rodríguez on April 13, 1921 in Havana, Cuba to an American father and Cuban mother. Despite being blinded at birth due to damage to his eyes by the doctor’s forceps, unable to distinguish shapes as a child he became totally blind by his late teens. Orphaned at age five he was raised by his aunt and uncle. At 13 years old, he won an amateur music contest and shortly after began to play danzones by Antonio María Romeu. In 1938 he interrupted his career to complete his studies at a school run by Cuba’s National Association for the Blind.
During the 1940s, Flynn became part of the filin music scene which comprised jazz-influenced bolero composers. He accompanied singer Miguel de Gonzalo. In 1946 he founded the Loquibambia ensemble together with guitarist and composer José Antonio Méndez, and they started to work for the Mil Diez radio station. By 1949 they accompanied the famous Conjunto Casino in the recording of their song Átomo. Two years later he founded Los Modernistas, and played at Radio Cadena Habana, toured the island before disbanding. Flynn then joined a son ensemble, Alejandro y sus Muchachos, and in 1955 he recorded four songs with Arcaño y sus Maravillas.
By the late Fifties he would go on to pioneer small-ensemble Cuban jazz. After the Cuban Revolution, the members of the Quinteto Instrumental remained in Havana, playing and recording. In the late 1970s and 1980s, his band expanded and recorded their debut album. During the 1990s Flynn recorded several albums including Barbarísimo, Tribute to Ernesto Lecuona and A Tiempo de Danzón for Milan/RCA Records, and Ancestral Reflections for Blue Note. In 1998 he made his American debut, with Los Amigos, in a Jazz at Lincoln Center gig and the following year he reunited with his American relatives.
Between 2000 and 2001 he spent much of his time with his relatives in California, where he played live occasionally and gave lectures at California State University, Los Angeles. Pianist Frank Emilio, who played danzas, danzones, filin, descarga, and Afro-Cuban jazz, passed away on August 23, 2001 in Havana.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Oliver Edward Mitchell was born April 8, 1927 in Los Angeles, California. He was the son of Harold Mitchell, lead trumpeter for MGM Studios, who taught him to play the trumpet.
Mitchell would go on to play in big bands for Harry James, Buddy Rich and Pérez Prado, among others, as well as the NBC Symphony Orchestra. In the 1960s, he joined The Wrecking Crew, a group of studio and session musicians who played anonymously on many records for popular singers of the time, as well as theme songs for television, film scores, and advertising jingles.
Mitchell was an original member of Herb Alpert’s Tijuana Brass. He would go on to have his own bands, Ollie Mitchell’s Sunday Band, and the Olliephonic Horns
Moving to Puako, Hawaii in 1995 he founded the Horns. In 2010, he published his memoir, Lost, But Making Good Time: A View from the Back Row of the Band. He stopped playing the trumpet toward the end of his life, due to macular degeneration and hand problems from an automobile accident.
Trumpeter Ollie Mitchell, who recorded with Chet Baker, Harry James, Stan Kenton, Irene Kral, Shorty Rogers, Pete Rugolo, Dan terry and Gerry Wilson among others, suffered from cancer and passed away on May 11, 2013.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Noro Morales was born into a family with a long musical tradition in Puerta de Tierra, San Juan, Puerto Rico on January 4, 1911. As a child, he studied trombone, saxophone, and drums, finally settling on the piano. In 1935 he moved to New York City in search of a professional career and played with different bands including Alberto Socarras and Augusto Coén.
1937 saw him creating his own orchestra together with his brother Ismael, featured flutist, which competed with the likes of Tito Puente, Machito Grillo, the brothers Tito and Johnny Rodríguez, Davilita, and José Esteves known as Joe Loco. They began to record their first disc for Columbia and Decca Records and in a short time, Noro and their band became a staple on the New York City Latin music scene. The orchestra frequently performed in important clubs such as El Morocco, the Conga, and Copacabana. In 1942 with the Xavier Cugat Orchestra popularizing rumba, Morales got the opportunity to play for the first time, the prestigious dance of Harvest Moon organized by the Daily News newspaper.
At the time of the great mambo and swing bands, Morales was able to consolidate a unique style and original, and in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he achieved commercial success with several albums produced by the CODA label. His most famous compositions recorded were Rumba Rhapsody, Cute Woman, Nothing Is True, Palm Trees, Ponce, Cursed Jealousy, Rhythmic Serenade, and 110th Street & 5th Avenue.
Suffering from glaucoma, diabetes, and joint problems, in 1960 he decided to return to Puerto Rico, where he put together another band, consisting among others percussionist Ana Carrero and singer Vitín Avilés.
Composer, arranger, and pianist Noro Morales, who was a pioneer in the introduction of the Latin musical element in New York City, passed away on January 14, 1964 in San Juan.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rafael Antonio Cortijo was born on December 11, 1928 in Santurce, Puerto Rico and as a child became interested in Caribbean music and enjoyed the works of some of the era’s most successful Bomba y Plena music musicians. Throughout his life, he had a chance to meet and work with some of them and learned how to make his own congas and pleneras, the handheld drums used in bomba y plena music.
He met salsa composer and singer Ismael Rivera when both were youngsters growing up in the Villa Palmeras neighborhood. They became lifelong friends and Rivera impressed with his friend’s conga-playing skills, asked him to join his orchestra, which played at Fiestas patronales all over Puerto Rico.
Becoming well known across Latin America, Rafael attributed his success to the sound of his percussion, as Afro-Caribbean music was known worldwide. As a member of the Conjunto Monterrey, based in Monterrey, Mexico, he later toured with Daniel Santos’ orchestra and worked on radio.
By 1954, as a member of El Combo, Cortijo’s big break came when El Combo’s leader and pianist Mario Román left the band to him. Ismael Rivera, then the lead singer of Lito Peña’s Orquesta Panamericana, joined Cortijo’s orchestra known as Cortijo y su Combo in 1955. From then until 1960, his orchestra played live on Puerto Rican television shows, and sometime during the 60s, they became the house band at La Taberna India.
The orchestra virtually disbanded in 1962 when Ismael Rivera was arrested for drug possession in Panama. Rafael and the other bandmates went on to found Puerto Rico’s salsa group, El Gran Combo. He went on to create another orchestra, El Bonche, where he was joined by his adopted niece, Fe Cortijo, who would become a well-known singer on her own. He and Rivera went on to live in New York City but he soon returned impoverished to Puerto Rico, where he forged a friendship with composer Tite Curet Alonsothe who helped produce a comeback album. In 1974, Coco Records reunited all the former members of “Cortijo y su Combo” orchestra for a one-time-only concert and a subsequent studio recording issued a few months afterward.
Their friendship was so important to Rivera, that when orchestra leader, musician, and composer Rafael Cortijo passed away of pancreatic cancer on October 3, 1982 at his sister Rosa Cortijo’s apartment in the Luis Llorens Torres public housing project in Santurce, Rivera said he would no longer sing.
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