Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Wellman Braud was born on January 25, 1891 in St. James Parish, Louisiana and settled in New Orleans, Louisiana. In his early teens he was playing the violin and the upright bass and leading a trio in venues in the Storyville District before 1910.

Moving to Chicago, Illinois in 1917 by 1923 he was performing in London, England with the Plantation Orchestra, doubling on bass and trombone. His next move was to New York City, where he played with Wilber Sweatman’s band before joining Duke Ellington.

Braud was the first to utilize the walking bass style that has been a mainstay in modern jazz. His vigorous melodic bass playing, alternately plucking, slapping, and bowing, was an important feature of the early Ellington Orchestra in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1936 he co-managed a short-lived Harlem club with Jimmie Noone, and recorded with the group Spirits of Rhythm from 1935 to 1937.

He would go on to play with the bands of Kaiser Marshall, Hot Lips Page, and Sidney Bechet and returned for a while to Ellington in 1944. In 1956 Wellman joined the Kid Ory Band and in the late 1950s, he joined the Barbara Dane Trio. Doing so he  turned down opportunities to return to Duke Ellington’s band and tour with Louis Armstrong.

Upright bassist Wellman Braud, who is a distant relative of the Marsalis brothers on their mother’s side, died on October 29, 1966 in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 76.

Duke Ellington postumously paid tribute to Braud, with the composition Portrait of Wellman Braud on his 1970 album New Orleans Suite.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Peter Sidney Mulligan who was known by Mick, was born on January 24, 1928 in Harrow, Middlesex, England. He began playing trumpet while a student at Merchant Taylors’ School, Northwood and entered into the family wine company, but became an alcoholic and eventually was pushed out of the business by his relatives.

Forming his Magnolia Jazz Band in 1948, he met George Melly soon afterwards and they became close associates who performed together for many years. Mulligan’s orchestra included Roy Crimmins, Ian Christie, and Archie Semple that rivalled Humphrey Lyttelton’s band in popularity on the British trad jazz circuit.

While he booked excellent side men, Mick was not a top-flight musician and his own playing was often hampered by intoxication; their recording legacy is spotty because their releases were irregular and generally for small labels. He and Melly’s antics were drunken and scandalous outings, making them regular tabloid figures in the 1950s.

Breaking up his band in 1953 he reformed it a year and a half later, continuing with the new group into 1962 and was part of the biggest trad jazz event to be staged in Britain at Alexandra Palace. By the early 1960s, rock and roll had whittled the enthusiasm for trad jazz to nearly nothing and Mulligan disbanded the Magnolia Jazz Band. He went on to manage Melly, who was launching a solo career. He played occasionally into the 1970s, but mostly retired to run a grocery store. Later in life he became interested in horse racing, and owned or part-owned several race horses, including the prize-winning horse, Forever My Lord.

Trumpeter and bandleader Mick Mulligan, who was best known for his presence on the trad jazz scene, suffered a stroke at age 78 and died in Chichester, West Sussex, England on December 20, 2006.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Teddy Napoleon was born January 23, 1914 in New York City, New York. His first professional engagement was with Lee Castle in 1933, then played with Tommy Tompkins for several years before working as a freelance musician in New York.

In the 1940s he played in several big bands, including Johnny Messner and Bob Chester, before signing up with Gene Krupa in 1944. He worked with Krupa intermittently for the next fourteen years including on many of his big band releases in the 1940s, and in his trio settings with Charlie Ventura.

He also spent time working with Flip Phillips, Bill Harris, and Eddie Shu. Teddy moved to Florida in 1959 and led his own trio there, though he never recorded as a leader, however he did record a duo album with his younger brother Marty, also a pianist.

Swing jazz pianist Teddy Napoleon, who was the nephew of trumpeter Phil Napoleon, eventually returned north and died on July 5, 1964 in Elmhurst, New York.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Alan Lee da Silva was born on January 22, 1939, in Bermuda, British Empire to an Azorean/Portuguese mother, Irene da Silva, and a black Bermudian father known only as Ruby. Emigrating to the United States at the age of five with his mother, he was raised in Harlem, New York City. Here he first began studying the trumpet, and moved on to study the upright bass. He eventually acquired U.S. citizenship by the age of 18 or 19 and in his twentieshe adopted the stage name of Alan Silva.

As one of the most inventive bass players in jazz, Silva has performed with avant-garde jazz musicians Cecil Taylor, Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Sunny Murray, and Archie Shepp. He performed in 1964’s October Revolution in Jazz as a pioneer in the free jazz movement, and for the 1967 live album Albert Ayler in Greenwich Village.

Since the early 1970s, Alan has lived mainly in Paris, France where he formed the Celestrial Communication Orchestra, dedicated to the performance of free jazz with various instrumental combinations. In the 1980s, Silva opened a music school, Institute for Art, Culture and Perception (I.A.C.P.) in Central Paris, together with François Cotinaud and Denis Colin.

In the 1990s he picked up the electronic keyboard, the electric violin and electric sarangi on his recordings. Since around 2000, he has continmued to perform more frequently as a bassist and bandleader, notably at New York City’s annual Vision Festivals.

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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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