Daily Dose Of Jazz…

John Patitucci was born December 22, 1959 in Brooklyn, New York and began playing electric bass at ten, composing and performing at 12, playing the acoustic bass at 15 and a year later the piano. A family move to the West Coast allowed him to study classical music at San Francisco State and Long Beach State universities.

By 1980 John’s career moved him to Los Angeles where he began a successful career as a studio musician and jazz artist. His long list of credits include twelve albums as a leader and a sideman for the likes of B.B. King, Chick Corea, Joanne Brackeen, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, George Benson, Natalie Cole, Queen Latifah, Sting, Stan Getz, Astrud and Joao Gilberto, Henry Mancini, Danilo Perez, Wynton Marsalis, McCoy Tyner and the list goes on and on.

In 1986 he was voted by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences as the Most Valuable Player on acoustic bass, he has won two Grammy Awards, he has reached number one on the Billboard Jazz charts and has won the reader’s polls: Best Jazz Bassist in Guitar Player Magazine’s and Best Jazz Bassist in Bass Player Magazine’s.

Patitucci has taught at music schools in several countries, was the Artistic Director of the Bass Collective, a school for bassists in New York City, is involved with the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program and was appointed Associate Professor of Jazz Studies at City College of New York.

More Posts: bass

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

McCoy Tyner was born Alfred McCoy Tyner on December 11, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the oldest of three children. He was encouraged to study piano by his mother. He began studying the piano at age 13 and within two years, music had become the focal point in his life. His early influences included Bud Powell, a Philadelphia neighbor.

Tyner’s first main exposure came with Benny Golson in 1960, being the first pianist in the Golson/Art Farmer legendary Jazztet. After departing the Jazztet, Tyner replaced Steve Kuhn in John Coltrane’s group the same year during its extended run at the Jazz Gallery. Coltrane had featured one of the McCoy’s compositions, “The Believer”, as early as 1958. He appeared on the saxophonist’s popular recording of “My Favorite Things” for Atlantic Records followed by Live at the Village Vanguard, Ballads, Live at Birdland, Crescent, A Love Supreme and The John Coltrane Quartet Plays on Impulse.

As a leader, Tyner recorded a number of highly influential albums in his own right during and post Coltrane tenure and as a sideman for many of the projects of Impulse and Blue Note. But by 1966, Tyner was rehearsing with a new trio and would now fully embark on his career as a leader. At Blue Note a string of albums were released such as The Real McCoy, Tender Moments, Sahara, Fly With The Wind and Time For Tyner, incorporating different configurations and instruments were utilized like flute, koto, string orchestra, percussion, and harpsichord along with African and Asian elements.

He currently records and has enlisted the talents of Avery Sharpe, Charnett Moffett, Eric Harland, Gerald Cannon, Gary Bartz, Eric Kamau Gravatt. Tyner still records and tours regularly though his schedule has been pared down due to his age.

More Posts: piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jimmy Smith was born James Oscar Smith on December 8, 1925 in Norristown, Pennsylvania. He began as a pianist but switched to organ after hearing Wild Bill Davis, purchasing his first Hammond, renting a warehouse and emerging a year later with a fresh new sound. He was instrumental in revolutionizing the playing of the instrument. It only took one time for Alfred Lion to hear him play before signing him to Blue Note in 1956. It was the second album, “The Champ” that established him as a new star on the jazz scene, followed by “The Sermon”, “Home Cookin’” “Midnight Special” and “Back at the Chicken Shack”.

Forty sessions later Jimmy left Blue Note for Verve Records dropping his first album Bashin’ with a big band led by Oliver Nelson. With this album selling well he went on to collaborate over the next decade with Lalo Schifrin, Wes Montgomery, Kenny Burrell, Lou Donaldson, Lee Morgan, Stanley Turrentine, Grady Tate, Jackie McLean, George Benson and many other jazz greats of the day.

In the 1970s, Smith opened a supper club in Los Angeles where he played regularly; his career resurged in the 80s recording for Blue Note, Verve, Milestone and Elektra with Quincy Jones, Frank Sinatra, Michael Jackson, Dee Dee Bridgewater, B.B. King, Etta James and Joey DeFrancesco.

Smith’s virtuoso improvisation technique popularized the Hammond B3 and his style on fast tempo pieces combined bluesy “licks” with bebop-based single note runs, ballads had walking bass lines and up-tempo tunes he played the bass line on the lower manual with use of the pedals for emphasis of a string bass. He influenced the likes of Jimmy McGriff, Brother Jack McDuff, Richard “Groove” Holmes, Larry Goldings and Joey DeFrancesco as well as many rock keyboardists like Brian Auger or more recently The Beastie Boys.

Jimmy Smith, Hammond B3 pioneer in the hard bop, mainstream, funk and fusion jazz genres, was honored as an NEA Jazz Master shortly before his death on February 8, 2005 in Scottsdale Arizona.

More Posts: organ

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Doug Carn was born on July 14, 1948 in New York City but was raised in St. Augustine, Florida, where his mother, Gwendolyn Seniors Carn, taught music in the St. Johns County Public School System. Her unique and special teaching abilities provided a fertile ground for his future development, and he started piano lessons at the age of five but switched to the alto sax at eight.

Doug was introduced to all of the jazz of the late Forties and early Fifties by his a jazz aficionado and deejay uncle, Bill Seniors. By his early teens, Doug had formed his first group, The NuTones, that played a variety of jazz, R&B and Rock ‘n Roll hits for dances, proms and club dates all over Florida and southeast Georgia. In addition, he held down a post as organist for the A.M.E. church in its 11th Episcopal District.

During his sophomore year in high school, Doug started to play the oboe that would eventually earn him a full scholarship to Jacksonville University. Graduating valedictorian of his high school class, Carn turned down a full scholarship to the U.S. Air Force Academy to pursue his music.

After college Carn settled in Los Angeles where his creative writing abilities and spiritual ideology began to bear fruit. He was leading an organ trio and studying with Larry Young, Jr. when the word started to get around about Doug’s multi-faceted talents. He was soon discovered by Gene Russell who had heard about Doug’s innovative lyric adaptation of contemporary jazz classic, i.e., Wayne Shorter’s “Infant Eyes” Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” Bobby Hutcherson’s “Little B’s Poem” and Horace Silver’s “Peace.”

He garnered critical acclaim as a “jazz spatialist” for his “deft orchestrations” and horn arrangements. They were inspired by a natural ability to speak the be-bop language and a solid foundation in the classical tradition. He produced several landmark albums on the Black Jazz label such as “Adam’s Apple” and with his wife Jean “Infant Eyes” and “Search for a New Land”. He has worked with many great jazz musicians over the years, a list to numerous to name but included Lou Donaldson, Stanley Turrentine and Irene Reid and continues to record, perform and tour.

More Posts: piano

Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Bobby Hutcherson was born January 27, 1941 in Los Angeles, California and studied piano with his aunt as a child. Not enjoying the formality of the training he tinkered with it on his own, especially since he was already connected to jazz through a brother’s high school friendship with Dexter Gordon and a singing sister who later dated Eric Dolphy. But it was hearing Milt Jackson that made everything clicked for Hutcherson during his teen years, working until he saved up enough money to buy his own set of vibes.

He began studying with Dave Pike and playing local dances in a group led by his friend, bassist Herbie Lewis. Parlaying his local reputation into gigs with Curtis Amy and Charles Lloyd in 1960. And joined an ensemble led by Al Grey and Billy Mitchell. A year later he’s in New York at Birdland and ends up staying on the east coast as his reputation of his inventive four mallet playing spread.

Attracted foremost to more experimental free jazz and post-bop, he made early recordings in this style for Blue Note with Jackie McLean, Eric Dolphy, Andrew Hill, Granchan Moncur, but ironically his debut recording for the label in 1963, The Kicker, not released until 1999, demonstrated his background in hard bop and the blues.

His vibraphone playing is suggestive of the style of Milt Jackson in its free-flowing melodic nature, but his sense of harmony and group interaction is thoroughly modern. Easily one of jazz’s greatest vibraphonists, Bobby Hutcherson helped modernize the vibes by redefining what could be done with it — sonically, technically, melodically, and emotionally. In the process, he became one of the defining voices in the “new thing” portion of Blue Note’s glorious ’60s roster.

Throughout his career Hutcherson has performed or recorded with a who’s who list of avant-garde, free improvisation, modernist post-bop, straight-ahead, mainstream, fusion and bop jazz players on the scene, staying ever current in his message.  As a leader he has recorded nearly four-dozen albums for Blue Note, Landmark, Columbia, Cadet, Timeless, Evidence, Atlantic and Verve. Vibraphonist Bobby Hutcherson maintained his reputation as one of the most advanced masters of his instrument until he passed away on August 15, 2016 in Montara, California.

More Posts: marimba,vibraphone