Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Pete Edward Jacobs was born on May 7, 1899 in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His first professional job was playing with the Musical Aces. He then joined the band of Claude Hopkins from 1926 to 1928.
Leaving Hopkins he joined Charlie Skeete for a short stint but returned to play with Hopkins from 1928 until 1938. During this ten-year tenure in Hopkins’s orchestra, Jacobs recorded extensively with the group on Brunswick Records, during 1932 to 1937.
Additionally, he appeared with the band in the short films Barbershop Blues in 1933) and By Request in 1936.
Falling ill in 1938 he hung up his drummsticks and quit the group, never returning to active performance. Drummer Pete Jacobs, who was prominent during the swing era for about a decade, died in 1952, month and day unknown.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Denys Justin Wright, known professionally as Denny Wright, was born on May 6, 1924 in Deptford, London, England. He grew up in Brockley with frequent forays to the Old Kent Road and the Elephant and Castle. His first instrument was the piano. His older brother was a semi-professional guitarist and soon he was trying to play his brother’s guitar. He began playing professionally before the Second World War, while at school.
A session musician for many years, he frequently acted as arranger and fixer for recording sessions. As a prolific jazz and orchestra composer Wright led many bands, from small ensembles and night club bands to orchestras. He worked with Latin American and Jamaican bands, Afro-Cubists and the Decca Records house band.
In the Forties Wright played in jazz clubs in the West End of London, doing session work, performed in bands on radio shows, and medically unfit to serve due to a childhood injury, he entertained the troops. In 1945 he started the first bebop club in London.
He went on to form several bands, tour the Soviet Union, and continued his work as a session musician, producing Tribute To The Hot Club as The Cooper-Wright Quintet. Denny gave private lessons and at London comprehensive schools, and he lectured at the Royal College of Music on the life of a session musician.
During his career he worked with Stéphane Grappelli, Lonnie Donegan, Johnny Duncan, Digby Fairweather, Ella Fitzgerald, Ken Snakehips Johnson, Billy Eckstine, Fapy Lafertin, Russ Conway, Biréli Lagrène, Humphrey Lyttelton, Marie Bryant, Nigel Kennedy, and George Shearing.
Guitarist and pianist Denny Wright, who was voted the 1980 BBC Jazz Society Musician of the Year, died on February 8, 1992.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Monica Lewis was born May Lewis in Chicago, Illinois on May 5, 1922, the youngest of three children. Her father was a pianist, composer and musical director for CBS, while her mother was a singer with the Chicago Opera Company. She studied voice with her mother and when she was eleven the family moved to New York City due to The Great Depression.
She began singing on radio after a successful audition with WMCA in New York City, which led to her own program. At age seventeen she started working as a singer for a radio show titled Gloom Dodgers in order to support her family while studying at Hunter College. Shortly afterwards Lewis had a radio show titled Monica Makes Music and went on to co-star on The Chesterfield Supper Club radio show.
Winning a part as a singing cigarette girl in the Broadway show Johnny 2X4, her work on Broadway led to performing at the Stork Club. She dropped out of school, changed her name from May to Monica because she thought it was sexier. In 1943 at an audition in Times Square with hundreds of women participating, she earned the part as a singer.
She started singing on Hotel Astor’s roof with Goodman’s orchestra and established her career through nationally broadcast shows. Lewis went on to record for Signature Records, MGM Records, Decca Records, Capitol Records, and Verve Records.
She went on to sing in commercials, became the voice of Miss Chiquita Banana, and appeared on the Toast of the Town which would become the Ed Sullivan Show. It was created and produced by her brother Marlo Lewis.
By 1950 she was signed to a contract with MGM and movies were added to her trades. Over the next three decades she appeared in romantic comedies and disaster films along with television action, crime and western series. Resuming her singing career in the 1980’s and 1990s, she performed at popular clubs in Los Angeles and New York City.
Vocalist Monica Lewis died ten days after an interview with The New Yorker, on June 12, 2015. The article was posthumously published in the September 7, 2015 edition.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Maurice “Moe” Purtill was born May 4, 1916 in Huntington, New York and] dropped out of high school to start his career as a freelance drummer in New York Studios. At the age of 20 at the outset of 1936 he became a member of the Red Norvo band.
Later he joined Mildred Bailey, played briefly with Glenn Miller in 1937, then worked with Tommy Dorsey in 1938 for a year before picking up with Miller again from 1939 to 1942, when Miller had the bulk of his hits. After Miller’s band broke up in 1942, Moe played with Kay Kyser until 1944, then joined the U.S. Navy. After his discharge, he played briefly in 1946 with the reformed Glenn Miller Orchestra directed by Tex Beneke.
Purtill went on to record in the studio on various projects and participated in a few Miller reunions. He was good friends with Buddy Rich, Trigger Alpert and saxophonist Jack Palmer. He lived in New York City until the early 1970s, retired in 1978 and moved to Sarasota, Florida.
Drummer Moe Purtill died at Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, New Jersey on March 9, 1994.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
David J. White was born May 3, 1968 in Houston, Texas and became a saxophone student at age eight. His love for jazz was nurtured by musicians and educators Conrad O. Johnson, Craig Green, and Dr. Robert Morgan. By the time he was sixteen he was playing with local bands in clubs and other musical events. While in high school he appeared in Saxophone Journal and other jazz education periodicals and won several awards including a DB award from DownBeat Magazine.
Moving to Washington, D.C. he attended Howard University and contributed to the Jazz Ensemble’s yearly recordings both as a performer and composer/producer. 1992 saw David meeting internationally renowned film maker Haile Gerima and composed, produced and performed the soundtrack for the critically acclaimed film Sankofa.
He went on to score other films and released his sophomore album on his own label titled Where I Left Off. This project represents a more aggressive style of composition and performance than his first release. He has performed with Rich Matheson, Billy Harper, Randy Brecker & Eliane Elias, and Lou Marini.
Tenor saxophonist David White continues to compose, perform, tour, produce and record.
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