Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ray Ellington was born Henry Pitts Brown on March 17, 1916 in Kennington, London, England, the youngest of four children of a Black father and Russian Jew mother. His father died when he was four years old, and was raised as a strictly Orthodox Jew, attending the South London Jewish School before entering show business at the age of twelve, when he appeared in an acting role on the London stage.
Ellington’s first break came in 1937 when he joined Harry Roy and His Orchestra as the band’s drummer, replacing Joe Daniels. His vocal talents were put to good use, from the time of his first session when he recorded Swing for Sale. Called up in 1940 he joined the Royal Air Force as a physical training instructor where he served throughout the war. He played in various service bands including RAF Blue Eagles.
Post military service, Ray resumed his career, fronting his own group, playing at The Bag O’Nails club. By early in 1947, he rejoined the Harry Roy band for a few months, later forming The Ray Ellington Quartet the same year. Specializing in jazz, he experimented with many other genres throughout the show’s history and his musical style was heavily influenced by the comedic jump blues of Louis Jordan.
His band was one of the first in the UK to feature the stripped-back guitar/bass/drums/piano format that became the basis of rock and roll. His band was also one of the first groups in Britain to prominently feature the electric guitar and use an amplified guitar produced and introduced by their guitar player, Lauderic Caton.
Drummer, singer, bandleader Ray Ellington, best known for his appearances on The Goon Show from 1951 to 1960, passed away of cancer on February 27, 1985.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Woody Witt was born on March 16, 1969 and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. He started on the clarinet in fourth grade, switching his focus to saxophone the following year. Becoming a professional musician at the age of 16, he studied at the University of Houston, earning a Master’s degree in Jazz Studies from the University of North Texas, and a Doctor of Musical Arts from the University of Houston’s Moores School of Music.
The tenorist has recorded over thirty compact discs as a sideman and recorded twelve sessions as a leader. He has collaborated with Randy Brecker, Tim Hagans, Jim Rotondi, James Moody, David Liebman, Tim Armacost,Conrad Herwig, Joe LoCascio, Larry Ham, Mark Levine, Louis Hayes, Adam Nussbaum, Billy Hart, Nancy King and Gabrielle Stravelli. He has worked with the Houston Symphony, and has been featured on major third-stream works that blend together jazz and classical music.
He won the 2010 Chamber Music America French American Cultural Exchange grant and the 2014 International Jazz Saxophone Competition in Taiwan. Since 1999 Woody has been the artistic director of Houston’s jazz club, Cezanne, and now owns the club.
As an educator Witt has taught at Houston Community College since 2000, is an Affiliate Artist at the University of Houston, and has conducted countless master classes and workshops throughout the United States, Europe, Brazil and Asia.
Tenor saxophonist, composer and educator Woody Witt continues to expand his musical creativity.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Vinnie Burke, born Vincenzo Bucci on March 15, 1921 in Newark, New Jersey, played violin and guitar early in life, but he lost the use of his little finger in a munitions factory accident and switched to double bass.
In the second half of the 1940s he played with Joe Mooney, Tony Scott, and Cy Coleman. He would go on to play with the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra, Tal Farlow, Marian McPartland, Don Elliott, Vic Dickenson, Gil Mellé, Bucky Pizzarelli, John Mehegan, Chris Connor, Eddie Costa, and Bobby Hackett.
From 1956 into the 1980s he led his own band and led small combos. Bassist Vinnie Burke, who recorded four albums as a leader, passed away on February 1, 2001.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ernest “Bass” Hill was born on March 14, 1900, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He played from 1924 with Claude Hopkins, and remained with him on a tour of Europe with Josephine Baker the following year. He collaborated with Hopkins numerous times over the next few years and again in the 1940s. In 1928 he played with Leroy Smith & His Orchestra and Bill Brown & His Brownies, and the following year worked in the Eugene Kennedy Orchestra.
The 1930s saw Bass playing with Willie Bryant, Bobby Martin’s Cotton Club Serenaders, Benny Carter, Chick Webb, and Rex Stewart. He was in Europe late in the decade when World War II broke out and he fled to Switzerland. There he played with Mac Strittmacher before returning to the United States in 1940.
In that year, he recorded with violinist Eddie South and trumpeter Hot Lips Page. Following this, he played with Maurice Hubbard, Hopkins again, Zutty Singleton, Louis Armstrong, Cliff Jackson, Herbie Cowens, and Minto Kato throughout the decade. In 1949 he returned to Europe, where he played in Switzerland and Italy with Bill Coleman and then in Germany with Big Boy Goudie until 1952.
Upon his return to the States he worked in New York City with Happy Caldwell, Henry Morrison, and Wesley Fagan. Double bassist Ernest “Bass” Hill, who worked in the musicians’ union in the last decade of his life, passed away on September 16, 1964 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Ina Ray Hutton was born Odessa Cowan on March 13, 1916 in Chicago, Illinois into a family whose mother was a pianist. She began dancing and singing on stage professionally at the age of eight. By 15, she starred in the Gus Edwards revue Future Stars Troupe at the Palace Theater, and Lew Leslie’s Clowns in Clover. On Broadway she performed in George White’s revues Melody, Never Had an Education and Scandals, before joining the Ziegfeld Follies.
1934 saw her being approached by Irving Mills and vaudeville agent Alex Hyde to lead an all-girl orchestra, the Melodears. As part of the group’s formation, Mills asked Odessa to change her name. The group included trumpeter Frances Klein, Canadian pianist Ruth Lowe Sandler, saxophonist Jane Cullum, guitarist Marian Gange, trumpeter Mardell “Owen” Winstead, and trombonist Alyse Wells.
The Melodears appeared in short films and in the movie Big Broadcast of 1936. They recorded six songs, sung by Hutton, before disbanding in 1939. Soon after, she started the Ina Ray Hutton Orchestra (with men only) that included George Paxton and Hal Schaefer. The band appeared in the film Ever Since Venus in 1944, recorded for Elite and Okeh, and performed on the radio. After this band broke up, she started another male band a couple years later. During the 1950s, Hutton again led a female big band that played on television and starred on The Ina Ray Hutton Show.
Although she and some members of her family are known to have been white, historians have theorized that she and her family were of mixed white and African-American ancestry. In 1920, Hutton herself was listed in the US Census as “mulatto” and in 1930 as “negro”. Hutton was also mentioned under her original name in the black Chicago newspaper The Chicago Defender several times in articles describing the early years of her career. A photograph of her as a 7-year-old dancer appeared in a 1924 issue of the paper.
Retiring from music in 1968, Ina Ray Hutton, who led one of the first all-female big bands, passed away on February 19, 1984 from complications due to diabetes at the age of 67 in Ventura, California.
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