Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James Charles Heard, known as J. C. Heard was born on August 10, 1917 in Dayton, Ohio and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. As a young child, he performed as a tap dancer in amateur contests and vaudeville shows. He began to switch his focus to drumming around age 11 and started out teaching himself to play, then took lessons as a student at Cass Technical High School. Supporting his interest, his parents brought him to see major performers who toured to Detroit’s famous music venues, however, it was Chick Webb play in 1937 as a formative experience.
Becoming a protege of the drummer Jo Jones, through him he met and sat in with Count Basie. With Jones’s help, Heard got his first professional job with Teddy Wilson’s band in 1939. They played the Golden Gate Ballroom in Harlem and the Roseland Ballroom and recorded for Columbia Records. After the Wilson band’s breakup, he went on to perform in bands led by Benny Carter, Louis Jordan, Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Woody Herman, and Dizzy Gillespie. He also performed at major jazz festivals and played alongside Roy Eldridge and Charlier Parker.
Heard’s style was a hybrid of swing and bop and was known for his innovative techniques and the hard swing he would bring to both large and small bands. He recorded with Charles Mingus, Ray Brown, Billie Holiday, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington, Lena Horne, and Sarah Vaughan. He also led his own bands, including a quintet that played at Cafe Society and a trio with Erroll Garner and Oscar Pettiford. Performing as a featured member of Cab Calloway’s band from 1942-1945, he appeared in several Hollywood films, including Stormy Weather.
During the Fifties Heard toured with Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic in the 1950s and after a successful engagement in Japan in 1953, stayed for many years performing and teaching. Returning to New York in 1957, J.C. played with the Coleman Hawkins-Roy Eldridge Quintet and with Teddy Wilson’s trio. In 1966 he moved back to Detroit where he was influential as a bandleader and a mentor to younger musicians. In 1983, he again recorded an album as a leader, accompanied by saxophonist George Benson, pianist Claude Black, and Dave Young on bass. In 1981, Heard started a 13 piece big band which played around the state and at festivals, often featuring Dizzy Gillespie and other colleagues. This group recorded in 1986 and continued performing regularly until his death.
Drummer J. C. Heard passed away from a heart attack on September 27, 1988 at the age of 71 in Royal Oak, Michigan. His legacy is honored with a yearly jazz drumming competition held as part of the Detroit Jazz Festival.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lorenzo Paesani was born on August 9, 1977 in Teramo, Abruzzo, Italy and studied piano since childhood. He graduated Summa Cum Laude at 21 from the Niccolò Piccinni Conservatory of Bari. He studied improvisational music all over Europe and the U.S. with John Taylor, Fabrizio Puglisi, Franco D’Andrea, Ralph Alessi, Tim Berne, Marc Ducret, among others.
He collaborated with Norma Winston, Massimo Manzi, Claudio Fasoli, Sound Sketches Orchestra, Sidma Jazz Orchestra, and the Turin Philharmonic Orchestra among others.
Since 2014 he has performed at a variety of jazz festivals across Europe, recorded with different ensembles but all projects have a particular blend of jazz, original compositions and open improvisation, spanning from modern jazz to contemporary music. In his role as a composer, he collaborates with Kairostudio, a cultural association that produces documentaries and movies about the safeguard of the environment. Pianist and bandleader Lorenzo Paesani continues to perform, record and explore the realm of music
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charlie H. “Devil” Gaines was born on August 8, 1900 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a teenager, Gaine played in brass bands in his hometown before moving to New York City in 1920. It was there that he joined the orchestra of Wilbur Sweatman.
Signing on with Clarence Williams’s house band, he went on to play with Sam Wooding, Earl Walton, Leroy Smith, Fats Waller, Charlie Johnson, and the Hot Chocolates.
In the 1930s Gaines launched his own band in Philadelphia, recorded occasionally, including once with Williams in 1934. Simultaneously he continued playing with Smith while playing in Louis Armstrong’s orchestra. He continued to lead bands in Philadelphia into the 1950s, especially at the jazz venue Carroll’s.
The 1960s saw him performing in a trio at the Hangover Club until he went into retirement in the 1970s. Trumpeter and bandleader Charlie Gaines passed away on November 23, 1986.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Harry Arnold Persson was born on August 7, 1920, in Helsingborg, Sweden and led his first big band in 1942, playing the saxophone initially but eventually ceased to perform, concentrating on arranging.
From 1949-52 he played and arranged for Thore Ehrling’s band and worked extensively as a studio musician, particularly writing film scores through much of the 1950s. From 1956 to 1965 Arnold led the Swedish Radio Big Band, which included Arne Domnérus, Bengt Hallberg, and Åke Persson.
American trumpeter Benny Bailey played with the band for a time, Quincy Jones arranged and briefly led the group, and they recorded with Ernestine Anderson, Lucky Thompson, Coleman Hawkins, Toots Thielemans, Tony Scott, and Stan Getz.
Disbanding the group in 1965, Arnold continued working as an arranger and led big bands in Europe. Saxophonist and bandleader Harry Arnold passed away on February 11, 1971 at the age of 51 in Stockholm, Sweden.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
William Marcel “Buddy” Collette was born in Los Angeles, California on August 6, 1921. Raised in the Central Gardens area of Watts in a house his father built, he was surrounded by people of all different ethnicities. His father played piano, his mother sang and the melting pot of Watts framed the way he saw his position as a black man in the future.
He began playing piano at age ten, in middle school, the saxophone. That same year, he formed his first band with Charlie Martin, Vernon Slater, Crosby Lewis, and Minor Robinson. The following year, Collette started a band with Ralph Bledsoe and Raleigh Bledsoe, then started a third group which eventually included bassist Charles Mingus. Becoming very good friends, Collette helped Mingus find his less wild, more reserved side. When he was fifteen, Collette became a part of the Woodman brothers’ band, along with Joe Comfort, George Reed, and Jessie Sailes.
While in high school, Buddy began traveling to Los Angeles, competed in a battle of the band and lost to a band that included Jackie Kelson, Chico Hamilton, and Al Adams. However, afterward, he was asked to join the winning band, and later, Charles Mingus joined this band. By 19, he started taking music lessons from Lloyd Reese, who taught him and the other musicians how to manage themselves in the music world.
After serving as a U.S. Navy band leader, he played with the Stars of Swing with Woodman, Mingus, Lucky Thompson, Louis Jordan, and Benny Carter. In 1949, he was the only black member of the band for You Bet Your Life, a TV and radio show hosted by Groucho Marx. In the 1950s, he worked as a studio musician with Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Nat King Cole, and Nelson Riddle.
In 1955 he was a founding member of the Chico Hamilton Quintet, playing chamber jazz flute with guitarist Jim Hall, cellist Fred Katz, and bassist Carson Smith. He was also an educator teaching Mingus, James Newton, Eric Dolphy, Charles Lloyd, and Frank Morgan. He helped merge an all-black musicians’ union with an all-white musicians’ union.
Flutist, saxophonist, and clarinetist Buddy Collette, 1994 co-founder of the JazzAmerica program, a non-profit organization that aims at bringing jazz into classrooms in middle school and high schools in the greater Los Angeles area tuition-free, passed away in his beloved hometown on September 19, 2010.
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