Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Winston Clifford was born on September 19, 1965 in Islington, England and began playing drums as a child. He studied with former Tubby Hayes drummer Bill Eyden and Trevor Tomkins at the Guildhall School of Music. His playing is free from the usual restraints of stylistic expectations and a true reflection of listening and responding in the moment.
This training has led him to become one of the most in-demand drummers in Britain. He has performed or recorded with over five dozen luminary jazz musicians from both sides of the Atlantic. To name a few one must include Bheki Mseleku, Joanne Bracken, Stanley Turrentine, Benny Golson, James Williams, Chico Freeman, Phillip Catherine, John Abercrombie, Birelli Lagrene, Joe Lovano, Eddie Henderson, Archie Sheep, Carmen Lundy, Ronnie Laws, Freddie Hubbard, Art Farmer, Gary Bartz, Joey Calderazzo, Dave Valentin, Larry Coryell, Monty Alexander, Eddie Harris, Bobby Watson, Billy Childs, Houston Person, Courtney Pine, Julian Joseph, and the list goes on.
Post bop drummer Winston Clifford continues to perform and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Hailing from Los Angeles, California on September 18, 1951 Steve Slagle was born. He grew up in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and received a scholarship to the Berklee College of Music and received a master’s degree in music from Manhattan School of Music. In 1976 New York City saw him first working with Machito and his Afro-Cuban orchestra, before touring and recording with Ray Barretto, Steve Kuhn, Lionel Hampton, Brother Jack McDuff, and Carla Bley. He has also performed and traveled with Woody Herman and Cab Calloway.
In the mid-1980s he began leading his own combos, first with Mike Stern and Jaco Pastorius, and then with Dave Stryker. He has played frequently with Joe Lovano and has been featured on several of Lovano’s albums, including the Grammy-winning 52nd Street Themes.
The mid-1980s had Steve recording with Milton Nascimento and recorded Rio Highlife in Brazil. He toured frequently worldwide during the 1990s and 2000s, in Western Europe, Japan, South America, Russia and Bulgaria. During the 1990s, he was a leading figure in the Charles Mingus Big Band, and co-leads a band with guitarist Dave Stryker.
He has played with such diverse artists as St. Vincent, Elvis Costello, the Beastie Boys, and Dr. John. As an educator Slagle has taught at the Manhattan School of Music, Rutgers, The New School, NYU, and clinics through the Thelonious Monk Institute, the Mingus Jazz Workshop and master classes and clinics worldwide.
He recorded a duo album with pianist Bill O’Connell in tribute album to Kenny Drew Jr. was released as The Power of Two. He has published a composition and improvisation workbook for the creative musician titled Scenes, Songs and Solos. He has released eighteen albums as a leader, six as a collaborator and 41 as a sideman. Saxophonist Steve Slagle continues to perform, record, teach.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ralph Simon Sharon was born in London, England on September 17, 1923 to a British mother and Latvian-born father. He emigrated to the United States in early 1954 and became a naturalized citizen five years later.
By 1958, Ralph was recording with Tony Bennett as accompanist. That was the start of a more than 50 year working relationship. He found the song I Left My Heart in San Francisco for Bennett, which became his signature song.
A jazz pianist in his own right, Sharon recorded nineteen albums as a leader, 15 with Bennett and two with Johnny Hartman. However, he also accompanied the likes of Robert Goulet, Chris Connor and nemerous others. Retiring to Boulder, Colorado, from on-the-road work when he reached 80, he continued to perform in the Denver metropolitan area until shortly before his death.
Pianist and arranger Ralph Sharon, best known as one of the finest accompanists who backed up popular singers, transitioned from natural causes on March 31, 2015.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Rodney Charles Levitt was born on September 16, 1929 in Portland, Oregon and studied composition at the University of Washington, where he took his BA in 1951.
He was in the Radio City Music Hall orchestra from 1957 to 1963, and during those years he performed with Dizzy Gillespie, Ernie Wilkins, Kai Winding, and Sy Oliver. In 1959 Rod worked with Gil Evans when his orchestra accompanied Miles Davis. The following year he played with Gerry Mulligan and Mundell Lowe, with Quincy Jones in ‘61, and with Oliver Nelson in 1962.
He recorded four albums as a leader of an octet between 1963-66 and continued to work with this combination into the 1970s, when he played with bassist Chuck Israels.
Later in his career he worked with Cedar Walton and Blue Mitchell, and wrote music for commercials with a company he ran from 1966-1989. The late Seventies saw him teaching at Fairleigh Dickinson, Hofstra University, CUNY, and Hunter College.
Trombonist, composer, and bandleader Rod Levitt transitioned from Alzheimer’s disease in Wardsboro, Vermont at the age of 77 on May 8, 2007.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Stanley Frank Dance was born in Braintree, Essex, England on September 15, 1910. As a youth, he claimed he was “fortunate” to have been sent to boarding-school at Framlingham College, where he first encountered American recordings of bands fronted by Jelly Roll Morton and Benny Moten, among others. While working in the family business he continued to pursue his interest in music and soon learned of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Duke Ellington through the music newspaper Melody Maker.
Focusing on the music of black bands he started writing opinion pieces about the jazz scene for Hugues Panassié’s French-language magazine Jazz Hot in 1935, modeling his articles on those written by John Hammond. A 1937 three week visit to New York City’s jazz scene had Stanley at the Savoy Ballroom and similar venues in the evenings, listening in on recording sessions during the day and an introduction to Canadian writer Helen Oakley.
Joining the RAF he was assigned to the Royal Observer Corps in East Anglia, and for a period of nine years his opportunity to listen to Black American bands was curtailed. He missed the start of Bebop, which developed during the war and a recording-musicians’ strike in the US, but he found Oakley when the American OSS assigned her to London late in the war.
Dance and Oakley married in 1947, resided in England until 1959 then moved to Connecticut. He wrote a monthly jazz column for Jazz Journal, he coined the term mainstream to describe those in between revivalist Dixieland and modern bebop. In 1958, Decca’s Felsted Records commissioned him to produce a series of New York recordings of Coleman Hawkins, Cozy Cole/Earl Hines, Billy Strayhorn/Johnny Hodges, Buddy Tate, and several others, which were released under the collective title Mainstream Jazz.
Leaving England for Connecticut with a commission from EMI’s English Columbia label to make proprietary jazz recordings, Stanley used his and Helen’s contacts with the Ellington players to produce seven albums that were quite successful in Europe. He also assembled two albums for RCA as well as writing liner notes and shared a 1963 Grammy with Leonard Feather for his liner notes to The Ellington Era, Vol. 1.
He went on to publish five books on jazz, write articles for several magazines, helped Duke Ellington write his autobiography and is credited with helping to revive the careers of several musicians including Helen Humes and Earl Hines. By 1979 the Dances moved to Southern California where he consulted with Ken Burns during the development of his documentary television series Jazz, served as book editor for Jazz Times and donated their journals, photographs, and recordings to the Yale Music Library’s Special Collections.
Over his career, his priority was advocating for the music of black ensembles performing sophisticated arrangements, based on Swing-era dance music. Jazz writer, business manager, record producer, and historian Stanley Dance who was personally close to Duke Ellington which put him in a position to author official biographies, transitioned from pneumonia at 88 on February 23, 1999 in Vista, California.
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