Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Svend Asmussen was born on February 28, 1916 in Copenhagen, Denmark into a musical family. He started taking violin lessons at the age of seven and by 16 he first heard recordings by jazz violinist Joe Venuti and began to emulate his style. He started working professionally as a violinist, vibraphonist, and singer at 17, leaving his formal training behind for good.

Early in his career he worked in Denmark and on cruise ships, with artists such as Josephine Baker and Fats Waller. Asmussen later was greatly influenced by Stuff Smith, whom he met in Denmark. During World War II he played with Valdemar Eiberg and Kjeld Bonfils, during which time jazz had moved to the underground and served as a form of political protest.

The late 1950s saw Svend forming the successful trio Swe-Danes with singer Alice Babs and guitarist Ulrik Neumann. The group gained a dance hall reputation and toured the United States. He worked with Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, and Duke Ellington. Asmussen was invited by Ellington to play on his Jazz Violin Session recording in 1963 with Stéphane Grappelli and Ray Nance.

In 1966, Asmussen performed alongside Grappelli, Stuff Smith, and Jean-Luc Ponty in a jazz Violin Summit in Switzerland, appeared at the ‘67 Monterey Jazz Festival,and guested on Snakes in a Hole, an album by the jazz-rock band, Made in Sweden.

Actively playing violin at the age of 94, he became a centenarian in 2016, and his collection of jazz music, photographs, posters and other material is held in the jazz collections at the University Library of Southern Denmark. Violinist Svend Asmussen transitioned peacefully in his sleep on February 7, 2017.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Abe Most was born on February 27, 1920 in New York City, New York. He began his career in 1939 as a member of Les Brown’s Big Band. After serving three years in the Army during World War II beginning in 1942, he became a member of Tommy Dorsey’s Big Band.

Most made a few albums with smaller labels between 1946 and 1984, including Superior, Trend, Annunciata and Camard. His last two albums were Abe Most Live! and I Love You Much Too Much.

He was a studio musician for seven decades, recording on albums by Ted Gärdestad, Dick Haymes, Randy Newman, Dory Previn, Laurindo Almeida, Dominic Frontiere, Henry Mancini, Peggy Lee, Carmen McRae, Ray Conniff, and George Shearing, as well as Joni Mitchell, Cher, Earth, Wind & Fire, and B. B. King among others. He can also be heard playing on the soundtrack of the film How to Marry a Millionaire.

Clarinetist Abe Most, the older brother of flautist Sam Most, recorded three albums as a leader and thirty-one as a sideman, transitioned on October 10, 2002.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

James Graham Collier OBE was born on  February 21, 1937 in Tynemouth, Northumberland, England. After leaving school he joined the British Army as a musician, spending three years in Hong Kong, China. He subsequently won a Down Beat magazine scholarship to the Berklee School of Music, in Boston, Massachusetts studying with Herb Pomeroy.

After graduating in 1963 he returned to Britain and founded the first version of an ensemble devoted to his own compositions, Graham Collier Music, which included Kenny Wheeler, Harry Beckett and John Surman. Later configurations included Karl Jenkins, Mike Gibbs, Art Themen and many other notable musicians.

As the first recipient of an Arts Council bursary for jazz, Graham was commissioned by festivals, groups and broadcasters across Europe, North America, Australia and the Far East. He recorded nineteen albums, worked on stage plays, musicals, documentary and fiction film, and radio drama productions.

Collier was an author and educator, writing seven books on jazz, giving lectures and workshops around the world. He launched the jazz degree course at London’s Royal Academy of Music and was its artistic director until he resigned in 1999, so he could concentrate on his own music.

Bassist, composer and bandleader Graham Collier, who along with a group of jazz educators formed the International Association of Schools of Jazz, transitioned from heart failure on September 9, 2011.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Buddy Deppenschmidt was born William Henry Deppenschmidt on February 16, 1936 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father was a saxophonist and bandleader under the name Buddy Williams, but his mother moved him to Richmond, Virginia when he was four.

Self-taught, he started playing drums professionally while in his teens and then went on the road in the western U.S. with the territory band Ronnie Bartley Orchestra. Returning home, he played with local bands and became the drummer for the Newton Thomas Trio through the mid to late Fifties, which was also the touring rhythm section for the Billy Butterfield Quintet. When the Newton Thomas Trio played the Virginia Beach Jazz Festival, it received rave reviews on a bill that included the Dave Brubeck Quartet and the Charlie Byrd Trio. Two nights later, Charlie Byrd came into the Jolly Roger jazz club where Buddy was playing, and offered him the job as drummer with his trio. He played with the trio at the Showboat Lounge in Washington, D.C. from 1959–62.

In February 1961, while on a goodwill tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department, the Charlie Byrd Trio with Byrd on guitar, Keter Betts on bass, and Buddy on drums, they visited 18 countries throughout South and Central Americas, and Mexico. While in Brazil, he spent his free time with local musicians, teaching them jazz and learning bossa nova. It was his idea to record an album combining jazz and bossa nova with Stan Getz.

After Byrd, Deppenschmidt joined the Tee Carson Trio in the early Sixties, then moved to Pennsylvania and formed the Jazz Renaissance, was also the drummer with the John Coates Trio, toured the midwest and west coast with the Bernard Peiffer Trio and studied with drummer Joe Morello.

He’s worked on A Thousand Clowns, Wall Street, Bossa Nova, The Lake House, and Whatever Works movie soundtracks. He’s played with a who’s who list of jazz musicians from Mose Allison and Chet Baker to Coleman Hawkins and Shirley Horn, Phil Woods and more.

Drummer Buddy Deppenschmidt, biographies are in The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties and The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz, transitioned on March 20, 2021 in Pennsylvania ​​from complications of COVID-19. He was 85 years old.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Edward “Bruno” Carr was born on February 9, 1928 in The Bronx, New York. Growing up he lived around many different ethnic groups, including neighborhoods with German and Italian residents. Listening to the radio as a youth, he heard different styles of music while developing his ear and his memory. By the time he started playing professionally he had anarsenal of songs that he surprised band leaders he already knew and had no need for charts when they handed them to him.

As a timbale player in Latin bands, one can hear the inflection in the way he plays his small tom-toms at times. Though not a household name, his playing with a lot of fire and conviction made him a sought after drummer among the jazz elite. Kenny Burrell, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Michael Franks, Aretha Franklin, Monte Alexander, Stanley Turrentine, Roy Ayers, King Curtis and Harry “Sweets” Edison have all had him on their bandstand.

Here recorded several single albums, each with Aretha, Curtis Amy, Walter Davis Jr., Lou Donaldson, and Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, however, his largest body of work was with Herbie Mann, recording eighteen albums with the flutist from 1964 to 1970.

Drummer Bruno Carr, who was a frequent collaborator with Ray Charles, transitioned from lung cancer on October 25, 1993 in Denver Colorado at the age of 65.

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