Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Johnny Hawksworth was born in London, England on February 2, 1924 and initially trained as a pianist, but also played double bass in the Ted Heath Orchestra during the early 1950s and through the 1960s. Becoming one of the most popular jazz bassists in the UK, he won numerous polls and was often featured as a soloist on Heath concerts and recordings.
As a composer Johnny wrote many television themes including Salute to Thames, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Roobarb, Man About the House and George and Mildred. He contributed some of the incidental music used in the 1967 Spider-Man cartoon, and his composition, Er Indoors, was frequently used in SpongeBob SquarePants. While working on films, he scored The Naked World of Harrison Marks, The Penthouse, and Zeta One.
Hawksworth has also written many pieces of stock music for the De Wolfe Music library. He also provided the hypnotic musical soundtrack to Geoffrey Jones’s classic British Transport Films Snow and has composed American-style blues-based material under the name Bunny J. Browne and classically-based material under the name John Steinway.
Bassist and composer Johnny Hawksworth transitioned on February 13, 2009 in Sydney, Australia at the age of 85.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Norbert Black was born on February 1, 1940 in New Orleans, Louisiana. He played piano and trumpet during his youth and studied music at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He first started working in R&B ensembles as a drummer in the late 1950s, but took a job drumming with Ellis Marsalis in the New Orleans Playboy Club, leading to further work in jazz idioms.
A move to New York City in the mid-Sixties and worked in jazz idioms during the decade with Nat Perrilliat, Roy Montrell, Ellis Marsalis, Nat Adderley and Cannonball Adderley, Joe Jones, Horace Silver, Lionel Hampton, Yusef Lateef, Freddie Hubbard, and Eric Gale.
Returning to New Orleans near the end of the 1960s, playing there with Dr. John, James Booker, Fats Domino, Professor Longhair, Charles Neville, James Rivers, Earl Turbinton and the Dukes of Dixieland. Scram Records brought James on as a session musician, and can be heard on Eddie Bo’s single Hook and Sling. In the 1980s he worked with Cassandra Wilson, Wynton Marsalis, and Germaine Bazzle.
Black was a composer and received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Among his works are Monkey Puzzle and Dee Wee, both of which were recorded by Ellis Marsalis’s ensemble in the early 1960s. Recordings under his name were compiled by Night Train Records and released on CD as I Need Altitude: Rare and Unreleased New Orleans Jazz and Funk, 1968-1978.
Drummer James Black, closely associated with the New Orleans jazz scene, transitioned on August 30, 1988.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Thornton Blue was born on January 31, 1902 in St. Louis, Missouri and grew up playing in local bands in his hometown, where his father was a part-time music instructor.
He played with Wilson Robinson’s Bostonians, a territory band, where he was introduced to the rigors of the road. In 1924 he worked with Charlie Creath, then went to New Orleans, Louisiana and joined Dewey Jackson in the middle of the 1920s. This association eventually took Blue back to St. Louis as part of the touring schedule but Blue didn’t stay long. Heading to New York City later that decade he had an extended stint working with Andrew Preer’s Cotton Club Orchestra. This led to a European tour as a member of Noble Sissle’s ensemble.
Remaining for a brief time in Paris, France he collaborated with bassist John Ricks. When Bill returned to New York City, he joined The Missourians, led by Cab Calloway, then worked with pianist Luis Russell.
Due to failing health he played very little in the late Thirties and afterwards. Clarinetist and alto saxophonist William Thornton Blue, sometimes credited as Bill Blue, transitioned in 1968 after spending the last several years of his life in a New York sanatorium.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Bob Harrington was born Robert Maxon Harrington in Marshfield, Wisconsin on January 30, 1912. He played piano with Charlie Barnet in the early 1950s and worked with both Red Nichols and Bud Freeman during that decade as a drummer.
On vibraphone, he played with Georgie Auld, Buddy DeFranco, Vido Musso, Ben Webster, Ann Richards, and Harry Babasin’s Jazzpickers. He released one solo album, Vibraphone Fantasy in Jazz, on Imperial Records in 1957, which is now a collector’s item.
Vibraphonist Bob Harrington, who was adept on drums and piano, transitioned on August 20, 1983 in Kona, Hawaii.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ulysses Livingston was born on January 29, 1912 in Bristol, Tennessee and played in the band of the West Virginia State College. He began his professional career in music in the Horace Henderson band as a roadie, or, as Henderson called them, valet.
After his period with Henderson he played guitar in carnival bands on traveling road shows. By the middle of the 1930s he began to get jazz gigs with Lil Armstrong, Frankie Newton, Sammy Price, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Carter.
Moving to New York City, Ulysses accompanied Ella Fitzgerald on tour and on record. He served briefly in the military during World War II, but returned to jazz playing on the West Coast in 1943. He played with Cee Pee Johnson in Hawaii four years later.
Alongside his guitar playing, Livingston also sang with the Spirits of Rhythm, and led a group called the Four Blazes. From the 1950s he did freelance work with West Coast jazz musicians and also became active as a record producer.
He would go on to record with the Varsity Seven, Jazz At The Philharmonic, Illinois Jacquet, Rex Stewart’s Big Eight, Pete Johnson and numerous others. Guitarist Ulysses Livingston, who also played and recorded on electric bass guitar, transitioned on October 7, 1988 in Los Angeles, California.
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