Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David Samuel Pike was born March 23, 1938 in Detroit, Michigan and learned drums at the age of eight and is self-taught on vibraphone. He made his recording debut with the Paul Bley Quartet in 1958. While working with flautist Herbie Mann in the early Sixties he began putting an amplifier on his vibe. By the late 1960s, Pike’s music became more exploratory, contributing a unique voice and new contexts that pushed the envelope in times remembered for their exploratory nature.
Dave’s release Doors of Perception produced by Mann in 1970 on Vortex Records explored ballads, modal territory, musique concrete, and free and lyrical improvisation. He has recorded as a leader and sideman with Lee Konitz, Chuck Israels, Herbie Mann, Bill Evans, Nick Brignola, and Kenny Clarke.
Pike’s move to Europe and his tenure at MPS Records produced some of the most original jazz of the period. He formed the Dave Pike Set and recorded six albums between 1969 and ’72 that ran the gamut from funky grooves to free, textural territory. The group, though short-lived, created a unique identity and textural palette.
Collaborating with Volker Kriegel during this period provided compositional and instrumental contributions to the group, playing acoustic, classical, and electric guitar as well as sitar, that helped set the Dave Pike Set’s sound apart, organically incorporating influences from jazz, soul jazz, psychedelia, avant-garde music, and World music. With 19 albums to his credit, vibraphonist Dave Pike continued exploring different realms of music until his passing away of lung emphysema on October 3, 2015 in Del Mar, California.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Eddie Higgins was born Edward Haydn Higgins on February 21, 1932 in Cambridge, Massachusetts and began study of piano with his mother. His professional career began in Chicago while attending Northwestern University. He played the most prestigious clubs in Chicago for more than two decades in the 50s and 60s with his longest tenure at the London House, playing opposite Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Errol Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Oscar Peterson, and George Shearing among others.
As a leader he amassed a number of recordings during the Chicago years but as a sideman he added many more albums working with Wayne Shorter, Coleman Hawkins, Bobby Lewis, Freddie Hubbard, Jack Teagarden and Al Grey to name just a few.
Equally adept in every jazz circle Eddie was able to work in Dixieland, modal, bebop and swing as well as being a persuasive, elegant and sophisticated pianist whether he was soloing or accompanying a singer.
Higgins eventually moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, played in local clubs, performed the jazz festival circuit, toured Europe and Japan, and continued to record up until his death on August 31, 2009 at 77.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Douglas Surman was born August 30, 1944 in Tavistock, Devon, England. He initially gained recognition playing baritone saxophone in the Mike Westbrook Band in the mid-1960s, and was soon heard regularly playing soprano saxophone and bass clarinet as well.
His first playing issued on a record was with the Peter Lemer Quintet in 1966. After further recordings and performances with jazz bandleaders Westbrook and Graham Collier and blues-rock musician Alexis Korner, he made the first record under his own name in 1968.
In 1969, he founded The Trio along with two expatriate American musicians, bassist Barre Phillips and drummer Stu Martin. In the mid-1970s, he founded one of the earliest all-saxophone jazz groups, S.O.S., along with alto saxophonist Mike Osborne and tenor saxophonist Alan Skidmore.
During this early period, he also recorded with (among others) saxophonist Ronnie Scott, guitarist John McLaughlin, bandleader Michael Gibbs, trombonist Albert Mangelsdorff, and pianist Chris McGregor’s Brotherhood of Breath.
In 1972 he had begun experimenting with synthesizers. The musical relationships he established during the Seventies with pianist John Taylor, bassist Chris Laurence, and drummer John Marshall; singer Karin Krog and drummer/pianist Jack DeJohnette continued for decades.
Since the 1990s, he has composed several suites of music that feature his playing in unusual contexts, and has worked with bassist Miroslav Vitouš, bandleader Gil Evans, pianist Paul Bley and Vigleik Storaas, saxophonist and composer John Warren, guitarists Terje Rypdal and John Abercrombie and trumpeter Tomasz Stańko.
Baritone and soprano saxophonist, clarinetist, synthesizer player, and composer of free jazz and modal jazz, who continues to often use themes from folk music has also composed and performed music for dance performances and film soundtracks.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lowell Dwight Dickerson was born in Los Angeles, California on December 26, 1944 and grew up in the city where his influences were Horace Silver, McCoy Tyner, Kenny Barron, and Bud Powell, among others. He became active on the local jazz scene in the 1960s.
In the early Sevenites he appeared on the Chicago, Illinois tenor titan Gene Ammons’ Free Again album on Prestige, and the latter part of the decade found him being featured on a few LPs by baritone saxophonist Nick Brignola. In the 1980s Dickerson started recording as a leader when he provided his debut album, Sooner or Later, for Discovery. In 1992,
Dickerson recorded Dwight’s Rights which features Red Holloway on tenor sax for the small Night Life label. He has played as a sideman in the 1990s with saxman Rickey Woodard, singer Michael Martin and Albert “Tootie” Heath. The early 2000s saw him featured on singer David Coss’ Simple Life album.
Pianist Dwight Dickerson, who occasionally sings and plays a variety of genres ranging from hard bop, funk and soul jazz, to modal post-bop, continues to perform and record at 80.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
John Josephus Hicks Jr. was born December 21, 1941 in Atlanta, Georgia, the eldest of five children. As a child he moved around the United States as his father, Rev. John Hicks Sr, took up jobs with the Methodist church. His mother was his first piano teacher after he began playing at six or seven in Los Angeles, California. He took organ lessons, sang in choirs and tried the violin and trombone. Once he learned to read music around the age of 11, he started playing the piano in church.
His development accelerated once his family moved to St. Louis, Missouri when Hicks was 14 and he settled on the piano. Attending Sumner High School and played in schoolmate Lester Bowie’s band, the Continentals, which performed in a variety of musical styles. Hicks worked summer gigs in the southern United States with blues musicians Albert King and Little Milton with the latter providing his first professional work in 1958.
He studied music in 1958 at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he shared a room with drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson. He also studied for a short time at the Berklee School of Music in Boston, Massachusetts before moving to New York in 1963.
In New York, John first accompanied singer Della Reese, then went on to play with Joe Farrell, Al Grey, Billy Mitchell, Pharoah Sanders, Jimmy Witherspoon, Kenny Dorham and Joe Henderson before joining Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers in 1964. From 1965 to 1967 he worked on and off with vocalist Betty Carter, then joined Woody Herman’s big band, where he stayed until 1970, playing as well as writing arrangements for the band.
From 1972 to 1973, Hicks taught jazz history and improvisation at Southern Illinois University. From the 1970s onward he had a prolific career as a leader recording his debut in England followed by fifty-three more albums and as a sideman he recorded 300.
Towards the end of his life, he taught at New York University and The New School in New York. In 2006 John played in a big band led by Charles Tolliver, recorded his final studio album On the Wings of an Eagle.
Pianist, composer and arranger John HIcks, whose collection of papers, compositions, video and audio recordings are held by Duke University, died from internal bleeding on May 10, 2006.
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