Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Tarto was born Vincent Joseph Tortoriello on February 22, 1902 in Newark, New Jersey. He played trombone from age 12 before settling on tuba as a teenager. When World War I hit, he enlisted and played in an Army band where he was wounded, and received his release in 1919.
The 1920s saw him working with Cliff Edwards, Paul Specht, Sam Lanin, and Vincent Lopez, in addition to doing arrangement work for Fletcher Henderson and Chick Webb and playing in pit orchestras on Broadway. Throughout the 1920s recording copiously, he accompanied among others, Bing Crosby, The Boswell Sisters, Ethel Waters, Eddie Lang, Joe Venuti, Miff Mole, Red Nichols, The Dorsey Brothers, Bix Beiderbecke, and Phil Napoleon.
During the 1930s he spent two years playing with Roger Wolfe Kahn, then worked extensively as a session musician both on tuba and double bass. He also played with radio ensembles and in theater and symphony orchestras. He remained active as a performer into the 1980s, playing in Dixieland jazz revival groups in his last years. Tubist and bassist Joe Tarto passed away on August 24, 1986 in Morristown, New Jersey.
More Posts: bandleader,bass,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Akira Sakata was born on February 21, 1945 in Hiroshima, Japan and first heard jazz on short-wave radio and Voice of America, then became more interested in it from listening to film soundtracks. His serious study of music began in high school where he played clarinet. He played alto sax in a jazz band when at Hiroshima University and trained as a marine biologist before moving to Tokyo, Japan in 1969.
From 1972 to 1979 Sakata was a member of the Yamashita Yosuke Trio and toured internationally with them. In 1986, he performed with the group Last Exit with Bill Laswell. This performance was released as The Noise of Trouble: Live in Tokyo. Laswell went on to play bass on and produce Sakata albums such as Mooko, Silent Plankton and Fisherman’s.com, the last of which also featured the reclusive Pete Cosey on guitar. He later worked with DJ Krush and Chikamorachi with Darin Gray and Chris Corsano.
His career nearly ended in 2002, when he had a brain haemorrhage and he had to relearn the saxophone, only to return to performing after three months, but still had some remaining restrictions years later. Akira is also a television and film actor, as well as being a writer.
Free jazz saxophonist Akira Sakata, who has recorded fifteen albums as a leader, continues to perform and record.
More Posts: history,instrumental,jazz,music,saxophone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Frederick L. Robinson was born on February 20, 1901 in Memphis, Tennessee. He learned to play trombone as a teenager, and studied music in Ohio before moving to Chicago, Illinois where he played in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra.
Robinson went on to play on Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five recordings and continued working with both Dickerson and Armstrong until late 1929, when he took a position in Edgar Hayes’s band. In the 1930s he worked extensively as a sideman, with Marion Hardy, Don Redman, Benny Carter, Charlie Turner, Fletcher Henderson, and Fats Waller.
In 1939-1940 he was in Andy Kirk’s band, and played later in the 1940s with George James, Cab Calloway, and Sy Oliver. Early in the 1950s he worked with Noble Sissle, but after 1954 he was less active as a performer. Trombonist Fred Robinson passed away on April 11, 1984 in New York City.
More Posts: history,instrumental,jazz,music,trombone
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Blaise Siwula was born in Detroit, Michigan on February 19, 1950. Growing up in a working/middle-class black neighborhood. His next-door neighbor practiced saxophone in the afternoon and occasionally allowed him inside to watch him play. He began studying the alto sax at the age of 14, playing in the middle school concert band.
Hearing the John Coltrane album Om in 1969 compelled him to take up the tenor saxophone. He was also influenced by hearing Art Pepper in San Francisco, as well as Ornette Coleman, Sonny Stitt, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Blue Mitchell, Elvin Jones, and Miles Davis in live performances in Detroit in the 1970s. Cecil Taylor’s recordings with Jimmy Lyons were inspirational in a later period along with Ravi Shankar and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in the Seventies.
At college on and off for an extended period from 1968 to 1980, he studied theory and composition at Wayne State University, and earned a BFA. His first personal encounter with jazz musicians came around 1971 while living in a hotel near the downtown campus like drummer Doc Watson. Moving to San Francisco, he started playing free improvised music in coffeehouses and writing poetry. After four years in Northern California, he returned to Detroit before heading for Europe in 1989. Working and traveling as a street musician for three months, then returning to the States and settling in New York City.
After periodic explorations of drama, poetry, architecture, and visual art, and quite unable to secure a recording contract initially, he recorded independently produced cassette tapes. He played with Amica Bunker, the Improvisers Collective, and the Citizens Ontological Music Agenda (COMA) series.
During the decade of the 2000s, Blaise composed music scores, played a number of saxophones, clarinets, flutes, percussion and string instruments, and computer-altered sound files as background for improvisation. His many collaborators have included Doug Walker’s Alien Planetscapes, Cecil Taylor’s Ptonagas, William Hooker’s ensembles, Judy Dunaway’s Balloon Trio, Dialing Privileges with Dom Minasi and John Bollinger, Ken Simon, Karen Borca, Jackson Krall, Tatsuya Nakatani, and William Parker, among others.
Avant-garde alto saxophonist, composer and bandleader Blaise Siwula, who has been a part of New York City’s underground jazz scene, continues to performa and record.
More Posts: clarinets,flutes,percussion,saxophones,strings
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Emile Barnes was born on February 18, 1892 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His first instrument was a toy fife. He soon moved on to the flute, and then the clarinet, which was given to him by the great Bunk Johnson. He studied under Lorenzo Tio Jr., Alphonse Picou, George Baquet, and Big Eye Louis Nelson Delisle. By 1908, at sixteen, he became active professionally in New Orleans, Lousiana by 1908, he was long well regarded locally for his bluesy and distinctively individualistic style.
He played with the Chris Kelly band from the late 1910s through the 1920s. He never became widely known to jazz fans outside of New Orleans until he made recordings during the revival era for American Music Records. He performed at the opening night of Preservation Hall and also in his later years.
In the 1930s he played with Wooden Joe Nicholas, and in the 1940s with Kid Howard. During this time, Barnes also had standing gigs with Lawrence Toca at the Harmony Inn, a New Orleans venue, and with Billie and DeDe Pierce at Luthjen’s dancehall. As a brass band musician, he performed with the Superior and Olympia Brass Bands, among others.
Emile was featured on several Folkways Records New Orleans compilation albums during the 1950s, and again in the early 60s as a solo artist. When British trumpeter Ken Colyer jumped ship and visited New Orleans in 1953, he recorded with a pick-up band including Barnes.
Clarinetist Emile Barnes, ragtime and brass band player, passed away on March 2, 1970 in his hometown.
More Posts: clarinet,history,instrumental,jazz,music