Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Stephen Russell Race was born April 1, 1921 in Lincoln, England and learned the piano from the age of five. His education from 1932 to 1937 was at Lincoln School, where he formed his first jazz group. At sixteen, he attended the Royal Academy of Music, studying composition under Harry Farjeon and William Alwyn. After leaving the academy, he wrote occasional dance band reviews for Melody Maker and, in 1939, joined the Harry Leader dance band as pianist, succeeding Norrie Paramor.
Race joined the Royal Air Force in 1941, and formed a jazz/dance quintet. After World War II, he began a long and productive career with the BBC, where his ready wit, musicianship and broad musical knowledge made him a much sought after musical accompanist for panel games and magazine shows, such as Whirligig and Many a Slip.
Simultaneously he played in the Lew Stone and Cyril Stapleton bands, and arranged material for Ted Heath. By 1949 The Steve Race Bop Group recorded some of the first British bebop records for the Paxton label. These included four sides with Leon Calvert, Johnny Dankworth, Peter Chilver, Norman Burns, Jack Fulton. He also developed a sideline arranging player piano rolls for the Artona company.
the 1950s to the 1980s, he presented numerous music programs on radio and television. Steve was the chairman of the long-running light-hearted radio and TV panel game My Music which ran for 520 episodes from 1967 to 1994. He also presented Jazz For Moderns and Jazz 625 for the BBC in the 1960s.
As a composer, he produced a number of pieces in the jazz, classical and popular idioms. Blue Acara, Esteban Cera, Faraway Music, Nicola, Ring Ding and Pied Piper aer just a few of his well known compositions. He appeared as pianist/bandleader in the 1948 film Calling Paul Temple and with Sid Colin wrote two of the songs performed by Celia Lipton. He also wrote other scores for films. His autobiography, Musician at Large, was published in 1979, and was inducted into the Order of the British Empire (OBE). Pianist, composer, radio and television presenter Steve Race had his first heart attack in 1965 and transitioned from a second attack at his home in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire, on June 22, 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Iain Ballamy was born Guildford, England on February 20, 1964. Taking piano lessons from age of 6 to 14, he received further education at George Abbot School from 1975 to 1980. He went on to study Musical Instrument Technology from 1980 to 1982 at Merton College.
Discovering the saxophone in 1978 with three lessons, his first professional gig was in 1980, playing Ronnie Scotts as the Iain Ballamy Quartet at age 20. He was a founding member of Loose Tubes in 1984. His first recording was with Billy Jenkinsthe following year, and his first solo album, Balloon Man, was released in 1988.
During his career, his performances and recording sessions reads like a who’s who list, including but not limited to Gil Evans, Hermeto Pascoal, Carla Bley, Dewey Redman, George Coleman, London Sinfonietta, Françios Jeanneau, Randy Weston, Clare Martin, Charlie Watts Orchestra, Jeremy Stacey, Jane Chapman, Bryan Ferry, Everything But The Girl, Ian Shaw, Slim Gaillard, Ronnie Scott, Gordon Beck, and one of his closest musical collaborators, Django Bates.
In 1999, Ballamy founded the record label Feral Records, in partnership with graphic artist and filmmaker Dave McKean. He composed the musical score for the movie MirrorMask and the score for the film Luna, both directed by McKean.
Bellamy is currently a visiting professor at the Royal Academy of Music, Birmingham Conservatoire, Trinity College of Music, and the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. Modern saxophonist and composer Iain Ballamy continues to explore jazz.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jeanie Lambe was born on December 23, 1940 in Glasgow, Scotland. Her mother was a singer and her father played the accordion in the musical act Douglas, Nicol & Lamb. Her first public performances were with her parents and when she was seventeen, she became a member of the Clyde Valley Stompers.
She was the vocalist with the Alex Sutherland Sextet at Elgin’s Two Red Shoes Ballroom, where she kicked off the Two Red Shoes dances at age 19. Moving to London, England in 1960 Jeanie worked with a variety of jazz bands in the area, including those led by Alex Welsh, Kenny Ball and Charlie Galbraith. In 1964 she married tenor saxophonist Danny Moss and became more well known through her extensive performances at international jazz festivals.
Lambe has performed with modern and mainstream jazz musicians including Cliff Hardie and the UK All Stars Orchestra, Bobby Rosengarden, Monty Alexander, Ben Webster, Budd Johnson, Oscar Peterson, Wild Bill Davison, Kenny Davern, Joe Pass and Buddy Tate.
Suffering ill health, vocalist Jeanie Lambe, who recorded seven albums as a leader, passed away on May 29, 2020 in Perth, Australia at the age of 79.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Jerome Darr was born on December 21, 1910 in Baltimore, Maryland. His first major professional affiliation was in a jug band, the Washboard Serenaders. The guitarist was a member of this group from 1933 through 1936, a tenure that included a well-received European tour.
He had an incredibly versatile and prolific career. He showed up on sessions from blues to bebop and even strummed a few arpeggios behind Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers.
Though Jerome was not hiding in a closet during the ’40s, the guitarist simply focused on work as a studio musician during an era when the efforts of such players went largely uncredited. He was a player in the classic jazz context of Buddy Johnson’s band in the early ’50s, or was working with the much more modernistic Charlie Parker during roughly the same period.
He played on some 20 recording sessions between 1935 and 1973, though to his credit or noncredit, his playing included many other styles besides jazz. In his final years, Darr was mostly swinging in the busy band of trumpeter Jonah Jones, in a sense coming full circle with the type of playing he had started out with.
Guitarist Jerome Darr passed away on October 29, 1986 in Brooklyn, New York.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sven Arne Domnérus was born on December 20, 1924 in Stockholm, Sweden and began to play the clarinet at the age of 11. By the time he left school he had taken up the saxophone and turned professional. In 1949 he performed at the Paris Jazz Festival and with Charlie Parker when he was on tour in Sweden in 1950.
A few years later Arne recorded with Clifford Brown, Art Farmer, and James Moody. From the middle 1950s to the middle 1960s he was a featured soloist in the Swedish Radio Big Band. With Bengt-Arne Wallin, Rolf Ericson, and Åke Persson (the latter two were former members of Duke Ellington’s Orchestra), he participated in the Jazz Workshops organised for the Ruhrfest in Recklinghausen by Hans Gertberg from the Hamburg radio station.
He recorded several times with Quincy Jones in Sweden and is featured throughout The Midnight Sun Never Sets, composed and arranged by Jones and recorded under Jones’ direction by Harry Arnold’s orchestra in 1958. Domnérus’ playing in his early career was typical of the cool, sophisticated, technically accomplished and lyrical style of Swedish modern jazz during the 1950s.
As a leader Domnerus recorded forty~four albums and another 104 as a sideman with Alice Babs, Lars Gullin, Bengt Hallberg, Dizzy Gillespie, Thad Jones, George Russell, Toots Thielemans, Red Rodney, James Moody, Leonard Feather and Monica Zetterlund, among others too numerous to mention.
Saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Arne Domnerus, who wrote for film and television, and retired from playing due to his declining health, passed away on September 2, 2008 in his hometown.
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