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.
More Posts: clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
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.
More Posts: bandleader,drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,vibraphone
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.
More Posts: guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Big Eye Louis Nelson was born Louis Nelson Delisle on January 28, 1885 in New Orleans, Louisiana into a family who were Creoles of color. He spent most of his life in his hometown and studied clarinet with the elder Lorenzo Tio.
By the age of 15, Big Eye was working professionally in the music venues of Storyville, an area of brothels and clubs in New Orleans where Black musicians could find work. He developed a style of hot jazz, also known as Dixieland, and was an influence on clarinetists Johnny Dodds and Jimmie Noone.
In 1917, Nelson joined the reconstituted Original Creole Orchestra that included Freddie Keppard and Bill Johnson. Disbanded in Boston in the spring of that year, it was reassembled in New York City later in the fall. After a short while, he was replaced by Jimmie Noone. He was the regular clarinetist with the Jones & Collins Astoria Hot Eight but did not play on their 1929 recording sessions.
He made his only recordings in his later years in the 1940s, by which time he was often in poor health. Dixieland clarinetist Big Eye Louis Nelson, who also played double bass, banjo, and accordion, transitioned on August 20, 1949.
More Posts: accordion,bandleader,banjo,bass,clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Paul Broadnax was born on January 27, 1926 in Cambridge, Massachusetts to a tenor father with the Lyric Male Quartet who was also a choral director and voice teacher. She also was a dressmaker and bartered those talents to secure piano lessons for the youngster from the age of eight until he was fourteen. They moved to the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts when he was very young and where he grew up.
He studied clarinet in Junior High School which allowed him to play in the marching band. His classmates were Roy Haynes, Alan Dawson and Ray Perry, and during this period in life he formed his own band. After graduating from Mechanic Arts High School he was drafted into the Army Air Forces and sent to Texas. After being a foot soldier for only two days he was assigned to Special Services as a musician. It was here that he met arranger and pianist Donn Trenner, who he would later collaborate with on a later album.
Returning to Roxbury after World War II, Paul hooked up with alto saxophonist Harold Emerson, trumpeter Buster Daniels and tenor saxophonists Doug Lee and Fred Williams. He began playing with ensembles at jazz venues throughout the region. Nat King Cole and Duke Ellington would become huge influences inhis development. In the late 1940s, Broadnax began writing arrangements for Sabby LewisIn the late 1940s, Broadnax began writing arrangements for Sabby Lewis for more than five years, and worked with Paul Gonsalves before he joined the Ellington Orchestra.
In addition to supplying arrangements for Lewis, directing his own groups and working with the Tom Kennedy and Buster Daniels bands, he played tenor, piano and sang with the Gilmore Big Band, all the while writing arrangements for the group. Setting up other sources of revenue to supplement his earnings as a musician, Broadnax attended what is now the Wentworth Institute of Technology to be certified as an airplane mechanic, and he graduated from Northeastern University with an associate’s degree in engineering. He worked at Raytheon for many years, then left to focus more on music, while also running an Amway business.
He would go on to form the Paul Champ Three featuring bassist Champlain “Champ” Jones and drummer Tony Sarni, have a regular spot on the ABC affiliate in Boston and for another group with bassist Dave Trefethen and drummer Les Harris, Jr. He would appear with among others, Cab Calloway, Dorothy Donnegan, Lionel Hampton, Clark Terry, Joe Williams, and Jimmy Witherspoon. Vocalist and pianist Paul Broadnax, who in 2003 was chosen as Musician of the Year by the Boston Musicians’ Association, transitioned on August 1, 2018.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,music,piano,vocal