Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ronald Maxwell Jones was born on February 28, 1917 in London, England and together with his brother Cliff, taught himself to play the saxophone, before the two of them founded the semi-professional Campus Club Dance Band in 1930. Dissolved in 1935 he tried to establish himself as a professional musician, becoming a member of a combo led by trumpeter Johnny Claes, with musicians who played in the style of Coleman Hawkins.
In 1942 and 1943, Max worked for the BBC radio program Radio Rhythm Club; and in 1942, together with authors Albert McCarthy and Charles Fox, founded the magazine Jazz Music, which became meritorious as it set out to reassert the pioneering role of the African-American, to emphasize the music’s social dimensions, and to attack the glossy commercialism of big-band swing.
Since 1944, Jones had a full-time job writing features for the Melody Maker in the column Collectors’ Corner. In the following years he gained more and more high recognition as a proven expert of New Orleans Jazz, swing, and mainstream jazz.
In 1971 Jones published a Louis Armstrong biography, Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, together with John Chilton. He also wrote a number of liner notes, such as for the CD edition of the Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band, the Spirits of Rhythm, and wrote the preface for the Lee Collins, Mary Spriggs Collins, Frank Gillis, John W. Miner book Oh, Didn’t He Ramble: The Life Story of Lee Collins. A collection of his articles on musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges, Billie Holiday, and Mary Lou Williams was published as a book entitled Talking Jazz in 1987.
Jones was the first jazz musician to become a professional journalist and exclusively dealt with jazz in his publications. He was a model and a mentor for a younger generation of rock music critics and authors. Author, radio host, and journalist Max Jones passed away on August 1, 1993 in Chichester, England.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Don Randi was born Don Schwartz on February 25, 1937 in New York City and raised in the Catskill Mountains, where he received training in classical music. After his father’s death in 1954, he and his mother moved to Los Angeles, California and the following year he started working at a record distribution company where he heard and became influenced by jazz musicians, particularly Horace Silver.
He began his career as a professional pianist and keyboard player in 1956, gradually establishing a reputation as a leading session musician. By the early 1960s, he was a major contributor, as musician and arranger, to record producer Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. He became a member of Nancy Sinatra’s touring band for decades and also played piano on These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ as well as every album she recorded, and played on the Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations.
Playing on over three hundred hit records, Don worked with musicians such as Gerald Wilson, Quincy Jones, Cannonball Adderley, Herb Alpert, Sarah Vaughan, Linda Ronstadt and Frank Zappa. He recorded a number albums of piano jazz under his own name and as the leader of a trio with Leroy Vinnegar and Mel Lewis between 1960 and 1968 that included Feelin’ Like Blues, Where Do We Go From Here, Last Night, Revolver Jazz, and Love Theme From Romeo And Juliet. He also wrote film scores for Bloody Mama, Up in the Cellar, J. W. Coop, Stacey, and Santee in the Seventies.
In 1970 he opened The Baked Potato jazz club in Studio City, California, and forming his own group, Quest, serving as the house band. The band subsequently recorded over 15 albums and were nominated for a Grammy in 1980 for the album New Baby. In 2008, as a member of the Wrecking Crew, Randi was inducted into the Hollywood RockWalk.and in 2010 the club was named Best Jazz Club in Los Angeles magazine. Pianist, bandleader and songwriter Don Randi continues to perform, record and releasing his own jazz records.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leroy Jones was born on February 20, 1958 in New Orleans, Louisiana and began playing trumpet at the age of ten. By the time he was 12 he was leading the Fairview Baptist Church Marching Band, a group of young musicians organized by guitar and banjo player Danny Barker.
The musicians’ union forced Barker to disband the group in 1974, so Leroy became a union musician and took over the running of the group, renaming it the Hurricane Brass Band. By 1976 he had left the group, touring for a time with Eddie Vinson and Della Reese before forming his own group, the Leroy Jones Quintet.
In 1991 Jones joined the big band of Harry Connick, Jr., and that exposure with the band, including the opportunity for the Leroy Jones Quintet to open for Connick. This in turn led to him releasing his first album under his own name titled Mo’ Cream From The Crop on the Columbia Records in 1994. Trumpeter Leroy Jones, who has ten albums as a leader, has also appeared with the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Dr. John and continues to tour and record with his quintet.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hans Koller was born February 12, 1921 in Vienna, Austria. He attended the University of Vienna from 1936 to 1939 and served in the armed forces from 1940 to 1946. Following World War II he returned home and played with the Hot Club of Vienna.
Emigrating to Germany in 1950, Hans formed a small ensemble there. During the decade of the Fifties he played with Freddie Brocksieper, Albert Mangelsdorff, Jutta Hipp, Dizzy Gillespie, Bill Russo, Lee Konitz, Stan Kenton, Eddie Sauter, Benny Goodman, Attila Zoller, Oscar Pettiford, Kenny Clarke, Zoot Sims and Jimmy Pratt.
From 1958 to 1965 he directed the jazz workshops of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Hamburg, Germany before returning to Vienna in 1970. Soon after his return he formed his own ensemble, Free Sound, and later that decade he worked with the International Brass Company. In addition to playing and bandleading, Koller also composed; among his original works are a 1968 ballet titled New York City.
Tenor saxophonist and bandleader Hans Koller, who was also a recognized abstract painter, passed away on December 21, 2003 in his hometown of Vienna.
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John Richard Handy III was born on February 3, 1933 in Dallas, Texas and first came to prominence while working with Charles Mingus in the 1950s. By the 1960s, he was leading several groups, among them a quintet with violinist Michael White, Jerry Hahn on guitar, Don Thompson on bass, and drummer Terry Clarke. This group’s performance at the 1965 Monterey Jazz Festival was recorded and released as an album and he received Grammy nominations for jazz performance of Spanish Lady and jazz composition for If Only We Knew.
As an educator Handy has taught music history and performance at San Francisco State University, Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and other schools.
The 1980s saw John working on the Mel Martin project Bebop & Beyond, recording tribute albums to Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. He has recorded some eighteen albums as a leader for Roulette, Columbia, Impulse!, Warner, MPS, Milestone, Koch Int’l and Boulevard record labels. He has had one compilation released of selections from In The Vernacular and No Coast Jazz, and and has recorded two albums with Brass Fever, as well as, five albums during his time with Mingus.
Alto saxophonist John Handy, who also plays tenor and baritone saxophone, saxello, clarinet, oboe and sings, continues to perform and record.
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