Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Hermeto Pascoal was born an albino on June 22, 1936 in Lagoa da Canoa, Alagoas, Brazil at a time when there was no electricity. He learned the accordion from his father and practiced for hours as his condition of birth did not allow him to work the fields.

Hermeto’s career began in 1964 with appearances on several Brazilian recordings alongside relatively unknown groups that included Edu Lobo, Elis Regina and Cesar Camargo Mariano, establishing widely influential new directions in post-bossa Brazilian jazz.

By 1966 he was playing in the Sambrasa Trio with Airto Moriera and Humberto Clayber releasing one album Em Som Maior. Then he and Airto joined Trio Novo and in 1967 renamed the group Quarteto Novo and released an album that launched the careers of Pascoal and Moreira. Pascoal would then go on to join the multi-faceted group Brazilian Octopus.

Pascoal initially caught the international public’s attention with an appearance on Miles Davis’s 1971 album Live-Evil, which featured him on three pieces he composed.  Later collaborations involved fellow Brazilian musicians Airto and Flora Purim. From the late 1970s onward he has mostly led his own groups, that have included bassist Itibere Zwarg, pianist Jvino Santos-Neto and percussionists Nene, Pernambuco and Zabele.

Known as o Bruxo (the Sorcerer), Hermeto often makes music with unconventional objects such as teapots, children’s toys, and animals, as well as keyboards, button accordion, melodica, saxophone, guitar, flute, voice, various brass and folkloric instruments. Folk music from rural Brazil is another important influence in his work.

Between 1996 and 1997, Pascoal worked on a book project called the Calendário do Som, that contains a song for every day of the year, including 29 February, so that everyone would have a song for his or her birthday. He continues to perform, record and tour.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Wally Fawkes was born Walter Ernest Fawkes on June 21, 1924 in Vancouver, Canada. His family moved to Britain in 1931 and enthused by comic books he started out pursuing a career as a cartoonist, first enrolling in Sidcup Art School. Due to financial restraints he left school, took a job painting camouflage onto factory roofs at the onset of WWII but a bout of pleurisy kept him from service.

The Coal Commission employed Fawkes to work on maps and in 1942 he entered an art competition that was adjudicated by the Daily Mail and was found work in the Clement Davies ad agency and later at the Daily Mail drawing column-breaks and decorative illustrations.^[1]

It was during the war years that he began playing in jazz bands and because of the amount of time spent in air raid shelters that people living in London were becoming troglodytes and adopted the name for one of his first groups – Wally Fawkes and the Troglodytes. In 1947 he joined the George Webb Dixielanders, a semi-professional revivalist jazz band that featured Humphrey Lyttelton on trumpet. The two would leave and form their own group that evolved into mainstream jazz. He would record with Sidney Bechet in 1949, George Melly and John Chilton in the early Seventies.

Over the years clarinetist Wally Fawkes combined playing jazz with his love of cartooning and had a successful career in both. His political satire in the comic strip he illustrated gained praise from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Poor eyesight retired him from cartooning at the age of 81 and he has concentrated solely on his clarinet playing.

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Daily Dose OF Jazz…

Jeff Beal was born in Hayward, California on June 20, 1963 and began trumpet studies in the third grade after attending a school music assembly at Castro Valley’s Marshall Elementary School with his father. Upon hearing the trumpet played, he chose it as his instrument and his grandmother, pianist Irene Beal, gave him a recording of Miles’ collaboration with Gil Evans, Sketches of Spain.

 Beal wrote his first long-form composition for the Oakland Youth Symphony Orchestra while a student at Castro Valley High School, combining his love of jazz improvisation with an orchestral accompaniment. This merging of improvisation with classical composition has remained a hallmark of his music. He went on to matriculate through the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York studying composition and trumpet earning a Bachelor of Music degree.

Beal composed and recorded his debut album, Liberation, for Island Records. His jazz band went on to perform at The Blue Note and the Montreaux Jazz Festival. At the request of Chick Corea, Beal composed and recorded a concerto for the virtuosic jazz bassist, John Patitucci for Corea’s Stretch Records label.

John’s signature work, Alternate Route, was composed for improvised trumpet and orchestra. Written fifteen years after his first long form composition, this piece was again premiered by Kent Nagano for the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, spotlighting him as trumpet soloist. He also composed improvisatory concerti for Dave Samuels, Larry Coombs, and the Turtle Island String Quartet.

By the mid-1990s, he relocated to Los Angeles and got his first critical notice in 2001, for his minimalist Americana score to Ed Harris’ directorial debut, Pollock. He has been nominated for thirteen Emmy Awards including Carnivale, Rome and House of Cards. He has won three. Trumpeter and composer Jeff Beal continues to work in film and television, recording and performing concerts.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Mousey Alexander was born Elmer Alexander on June 19, 1922 in Gary, Indiana. He studied at the Roy Knapp School in Chicago, Illinois. It was there that he started a working relationship with Jimmy McPartland and soon afterward began playing with is wife Marian.

By the middle of the 1950s he played with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra and performed in a small group with guitarist Johnny Smith. In 1956 he accompanied Benny Goodman on a tour of the Far EAst. Later in the decade he often worked with Bud Freeman and Eddie Condon.  He would go on to play with Charlie Ventura, Billie Holiday, Red Norvo, Clark Terry, Ralph Sutton, Sy Oliver and Doc Severinsen.

Freelancing during the 1960s with many bands, it was in the 1970s Alexander started recording for Harry Lim under the Famous Door record label. A great well-schooled drummer able to swing any band, he performed with his friend Buddy Rich, who thought highly of his playing.

Drummer Mousey Alexander had a bad stroke in 1980 but fully recovered over time, and played up until his death of heart and kidney failure on October 9, 1988 at age 66.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Javon Anthony Jackson was born June 16, 1965 in Carthage, Mississippi and raised in Denver, Colorado by parents who were musicians. His mother played the piano, and his father played trumpet, but he didn’t begin playing alto saxophone until age 10. By 16 he changed to the tenor saxophone and was taught by pianist Billy Wallace.

He briefly enrolled at the University of Denver prior to spending part of 1985-86 at Berklee College of Music, which he abandoned to become a Messenger with Art Blakey. Jackson would later finish his undergraduate degree and obtained a master’s degree from the State University of New York at Purchase where he later taught.

The hard bop, soul and mainstream tenor saxophonist has played with the Harper Brothers, Benny Green, Freddie Hubbard and Elvin Jones among others. He has fourteen albums as a leader, mainly on the Criss Cross and Blue Note labels. In between performing, touring or recording, he heads the Jackie McLean Institute of Jazz at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford and has been doing so since 2013.

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