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…
Bobby Tucker was born Robert Nathaniel Tucker on January 8, 1923 in Morristown, New Jersey. His rise to recognition came On November 12, 1946 when during Billie Holiday’s stay at the Down Beat Club he was drafted to accompany Holiday because Eddie Heywood refused his opportunity. Billie’s stay at the Down Beat was so successful due to Tucker’s playing that she decided to keep him as her accompanist. The partnership lasted until 1949, where Tucker quit due to Holiday’s abusive lover, John Levy (not the bassist) threatening him.
After leaving Holiday, Tucker began playing with Billy Eckstine, a partnership and friendship that last more than forty years. He recorded on multiple sessions with Billy but was featured on the 1960 album “No Cover, No Minimum”, in which he arranged and conducted the orchestra behind Eckstine. That same year Tucker also released his only known album under his own name “Too Tough”.
Bobby was especially sought out as an accompanist for singers among them Johnny Hartman, Lena Horne and Antonio Carlos Jobim. He was a musician’s musician whose quiet yet prolific career renders little biographical information, yet spanned the jazz age from the 40s to the 60s and beyond with his friend Billy Eckstine.
Pianist, arranger and conductor Bobby Tucker passed away of a heart attack on April 12, 2007 in his hometown of Morristown, New Jersey at the age of 85.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sam Woodyard was born January 7, 1925 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He learned to play the drums by teaching himself, with no instruction. He began playing locally around Newark, New Jersey area in the 1940s. Sam gigged with Paul Gayten in an R&B group, moving on in the early 50s to play with Joe Holiday, Roy Eldridge, and Milt Buckner. It was in 1955 that Woodyard would join Duke Ellington’s orchestra, remaining the ensemble’s drummer until 1966.
After his time with Ellington, Sam played behind Ella Fitzgerald prior to moving to Los Angeles, California. In the 1970s he played less due to health problems, but recorded with Buddy Rich and toured with Claude Bolling. In 1983 he played in a band with Teddy Wilson, Buddy Tate and Slam Stewart. His last recording was on Steve Lacy’s 1988 album “The Door”.
A little more than a month after this recording was completed, drummer Sam Woodyard passed away on September 20, 1988 in Paris, France.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bulee “Slim” Gaillard was born on January 4, 1916 in Santa Clara, Cuba. His childhood in Cuba was spent cutting sugarcane and picking bananas, as well as occasionally going to sea with his father. At age 12, he made his way to America settling in Detroit. A move to New York City in the late 1930s saw Gaillard’s rise to prominence as part of Slim & Slam, a jazz novelty act he formed with bassist Slam Stewart. Their hits included “Flat Foot Floogie”, “Cement Mixer” and the hipster anthem, “The Groove Juice Special”.
Gaillard’s appeal was that he presented a hip style with broad appeal, was a master improviser whose stream of consciousness vocals ranged far afield from the original lyrics along with wild interpolations of nonsense syllables. Gaillard could play several instruments, such as guitar and piano and always managed to turn the performance from hip jazz to comedy.
In the late forties and early fifties, Gaillard frequently opened at Birdland for such greats as Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips and Coleman Hawkins. Slim composed theme songs for radio shows, appeared in several shows in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Charlie’s Angels, Mission Impossible, Along Came Bronson and Roots: The Next Generation. By the early 1980s he was touring the European jazz festival circuit, playing with such musicians as Arnett Cobb.
Slim Gaillard, singer, songwriter, pianist, guitarist and actor noted for his vocalese, spoke 9 languages including “Vout”, a language he constructed out of word play and created a dictionary, passed away on February 26, 1991 in London, England at the age of 75.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Al McKibbon was born January 1, 1919 in Chicago, Illinois but grew up in Detroit, Michigan from the age of two. Attending Cass Tech, the high school that gave the world jazz greats Gerald Wilson, J.C. Heard, Wardell Grey and other, Al focused his training on the bass, which at the time, the bass was coming into its own as a jazz instrument and replacing the tuba.
In 1947, after working with Lucky Millinder, Tab Smith, J.C. Heard, Coleman Hawkins, and as a singer with the Ted Bruckners band, replaced Ray Brown in Dizzy Gillespie’s band. He joined Miles Davis’ nonet in the Fifties recording with him as well as Earl Hines, Count Basie, Johnny Hodges, Thelonious Monk, George Shearing, and Cal Tjader, with whom McKibbon is credited with interesting Cal in Latin music while a member of Tjader’s group.
McKibbon, always highly regarded among his peers, was the chosen bassist for the “Giants of Jazz”, and continued to perform until 2004. In 1999, at age 80, he recorded his first album as a leader “Tumbao Para Los Congueros Di Mi Vida” and garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Latin Jazz Performance.
Al McKibbon, double bassist, singer and self taught dancer, who played a Jacob Steiner bass made in 1650, best known for his work in bop, hard bop, and Latin jazz, passed away on July 29, 2005.
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