Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Rudolph Pickett Blesh was born January 21, 1899 in Guthrie, Oklahoma. He studied at Dartmouth College and held jobs writing jazz reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Herald Tribune in the 1940s. He was a prolific promoter of jazz concerts, particularly New Orleans jazz, and hosted a jazz radio program, This Is Jazz, in 1947.

In collaboration with Harriet Janis, mother of jazz band leader Conrad Janis, wrote the book They All Played Ragtime, which was published in 1950 by Alfred A. Knopf. A promotional record consisting of Maple Leaf Rag recorded to piano roll by Jelly Roll Morton in 1907.

With renewed public interest in ragtime music, Blesh founded Circle Records in 1946, which recorded new material from aging early jazz musicians in conjunction with the Library of Congress recordings of Jelly Roll Morton. Together they sparked renewed interest in the music of Joseph Lamb, James P. Johnson, and Eubie Blake, among others.

Retiring from writing in 1971 Rudi held professorships at several universities later in his life, and wrote liner notes to jazz albums almost up until the time of his death. In 1976, he was nominated for a Grammy Award for his liner notes to Joplin: The Complete Works of Scott Joplin performed by Dick Hyman.

Jazz critic, promoter and enthusiast Rudi Blesh died on August 25, 1985, on his farm in Gilmanton, New Hampshire from a myocardial infarction, aged 86.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Andy Sheppard was born on January 20, 1957 in Warminster, Wiltshire, England. In the late Seventies at the age of 19 he emerged as a musician in the Salisbury-based contemporary quartet Sphere, gigging only three weeks after picking up the saxophone. He honed his skills in the wine bars and jazz clubs of the United Kingdom (UK) and Europe in the early 1980s.

He also played with world music groups and with more established improvisers such as Keith Tippett. While still with Sphere, he moved to Paris, France working with French bands Lumière and Urban Sax. The mid-1980s saw Sheppard returning to the UK, playing often on Ki Longfellow-Stanshall and Vivian Stanshall’s Bristol, England-based Old Profanity Showboat. He released his self-titled debut solo album, featuring trumpeter Randy Brecker and bassist/producer Steve Swallow in 1987 and was awarded the Best Newcomer prize at the 1987 British Jazz Awards, followed by the Best Instrumentalist Award in 1988.

Andy would go on to join George Russell’s Living Time Orchestra and tour with Gil Evans. His sophomore solo album, Introductions in the Dark, also received Best Album and Best Instrumentalist at the 1989 British Jazz Awards. He toured the world and became the first to bring a Western jazz group to play in Outer Mongolia.

The Soft on the Inside Band was Sheppard’s first big band in 1990 for an album of the same name. This band turned into In Co-Motion, and after this he signed a deal with Blue Note Records, who issued Rhythm Method in 1993. That band expanded to Big Co-Motion and recorded a live album Delivery Suite at London jazz club Ronnie Scott’s which was released by Blue Note in 1994.

Saxophonist and composer Andy Sheppard, who has had the television movie The Music Practice, based on his music, continues to perform and compose.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Raymond Michael Pizzi was born January 19, 1943 in Everett, Massachusetts. His first instrument was clarinet and he attended the Boston Conservatory and Berklee College of Music in the 1960s.

Pizzi taught in Randolph, Massachusetts public schools from 1964 to 1969 before relocating to California. In the 1970s he worked with Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Frank Zappa, Shelly Manne, Willie Bobo, Moacir Santos, Mark Levine, and Dizzy Gillespie.

The Eighties saw him accompanying Nancy Wilson and was a sideman for Milcho Leviev and Bob Florence. He worked with the American Jazz Orchestra into the early-1990s. Ray recorded as a leader, including in a quartet called Windrider.

As an educator he joined the faculty at the Henry Mancini Institute at the University of Miami in 1997.

Saxophonist, bassoonist, and flautist Ray Pizzi, nicknamed Pizza Man, died on September 2, 2021.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz..

Bernard Cash was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, England on January 18, 1935. Music became his religion and he began his musical career as a trumpet player, gaining a reputation playing with different bands around the United Kingdom. At 25 he took up the double bass under the tutelage of Peter Ind. To earn a living he moved to London, England in 1961 with his wife, where he became involved in the jazz scene, and played with many musicians of note.

Returning to Yorkshire he founded the Light Music Course at Leeds College of Music. Recruiting his friend and mentor Ind, the two went about establishing the first real jazz course in the UK of which jazz guitarist Dave Cliff was an alumni. Leaving the academia of college he moved his family to Bridlington, on the East Yorkshire Coast, and worked as a peripatetic instrumental teacher. He continued to make regular trips to London to play jazz and organized jazz gigs in the North of England with many of the great players he had met.

He studied music at Hull University from 1974 to 1977 and while there Bernie organized numerous jazz gigs that included Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh. He continued to work in music education and maintained his own career. He held the position of Deputy Music Advisor for the Hull area, created the big band Great Jazz Solos Revisited, and scored some of his favourite artists’ solos, including Lester Young, Charlie Parker and Charlie Christian.

The big band enlisted the heavyweights of British jazz, Peter Ind, Peter King, Bob Burns, Art Morgan, Jim Livesey, Kathy Stobart, John Holbrooke, and Dave Cliff. He went on to create in conjunction with English playwright Alan Plater the jazz opera “Prez” based on the life of Lester Young. With the education system losing its luster he returned to London in 1986, playing jazz and being a traveling instrumental teacher.

He joined the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra, Yorkshire Opera and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and toured with them. While on tour with the Royal Philharmonic in Germany, bassist Bernie Cash, who was an accomplished flautist, saxophonist and trumpeter, collapsed and died of a heart attack on October 7th, 1988.

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Daily Dose Of jazz…

Larry Sonn was born in Woodmere on Long Island New York City on January 17, 1919. He graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in New York and began his career with the Southern Symphony Orchestra in Columbia, South Carolina. He took the first trumpet position, but later turned to the popular idioms of jazz and the big band sound. He was soon playing trumpet and arranging for the top orchestras in the United States including Glenn Miller, Teddy Powell, Bobby Byrne, Charlie Barnett, and Vincent Lopez.

In the early 1940’s he moved from New York to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and then to San Antonio, Texas.  While performing there an executive from the new Hotel Reforma in Mexico City heard him play. Impressed by Larry’s virtuosity, he offered him a short-term contract at the hotel’s Ciro’s Nightclub that lasted nine years.

Returning to America for a stay late in the1950’s but still Mexico called. Larry came back to form one of the foremost big bands in the country, touring, doing radio shows for XEW, and recording for RCA Victor, CBS, Cisne, Peerless, Sonart and other labels.

Retiring from music in 1972 Sonn relocated forty miles south of Mexico City, opened a popular book store specializing in US editions for English-speaking residents and tourists. After several years he retired completely. Trumpeter, arranger, composer and bandleader Larry Sonn at 91, is alive and well in the City of Eternal Spring, Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.

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