Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Shelly Manne was born Sheldon Manne in New York City on June 11, 1920. His father and uncles were drummers, he got tips from drummer Billy Gladstone as a teenager and soon he rapidly developed his style in the 52nd Street clubs in the late 30s and 40s. He got his first professional job with the Bobby Byrne Orchestra and was soon recording with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Shavers, Don Byas, Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, Harry Carney and Rex Stewart.
Manne rose to stardom when he became part of the bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton in the late 1940s and early 1950s, winning awards and developing a following at a time when jazz was the most popular music in the United States. When the bebop movement began to change jazz in the 1940s, Manne loved it and adapted to the style rapidly, performing with Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips, Charlie Ventura, Lennie Tristano and Lee Konitz.
In the early 1950s, Manne left New York, settled permanently on a ranch outside Los Angeles, where he and his wife raised horses. This began his important role in the West Coast school of jazz, performing on the Los Angeles jazz scene with Shorty Rogers, Hampton Hawes, Red Mitchell, Art Pepper, Russ Freeman, Frank Rossolino, Chet Baker, Leroy Vinnegar and many others.
Shelly led a number of small groups that recorded under his name and leadership, recording his now famous live Black Hawk sessions and for Contemporary Records. He played in styles of Dixieland, swing, bebop, avant-garde jazz and fusion, as well as contributing to the musical background of hundreds of Hollywood films and television programs, collaborating with Henry Mancini on such films as Breakfast At Tiffany’s, Hatari and The Pink Panther and tv shows like Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky.
Shelly Manne passed away of a heart attack on September 26, 1984 shortly before the popular revival of interest in jazz had gained momentum.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cole Albert Porter was born into wealth on June 9, 1891 in Peru, Indiana. His musical training began at an early age, learning the violin at age six, the piano at eight and wrote his first operetta, with help from his mother at 10. His father, an amateur poet, may have influenced his son’s gifts for rhyme and meter. He matriculated through Yale writing student songs went on to Harvard law, switched to the music faculty, where he studied harmony and counterpoint.
Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre. After a slow start, he began to achieve success in the 1920s, and by the 1930s he was one of the major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. Unlike most successful Broadway composers, Porter wrote both the lyrics and the music for his songs.
After a serious horseback riding accident in 1937, Cole was left disabled and in constant pain, but he continued to work. His shows of the early 1940s did not contain the lasting hits of his best work of the 1920s and 30s, but in 1947 he made a triumphant comeback with his most successful musical, Kiss Me Kate.
Porter wrote numerous songs that have come to be jazz standards such as Night and Day, Anything Goes, I Get A Kick Out Of You and I’ve Got You Under My Skin, It’s De-Lovely, Begin the Beguine, Just One of Those Things and In The Still of the Night. He also composed scores for films from the 1930s to the 1950s.
Cole Porter, composer and lyricist, noted for his sophisticated, suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms, contributed to the great American songbook, passed away of kidney failure on October 15, 1964.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billie Pierce was born Wilhelmina Goodson on June 8, 1907 in Marianna, Florida. She was born into a family of pianists with both parents and seven-sisters playing, notably her sister Ida Goodson.
Early in the 1920s, Billie played with Bessie Smith and later in the decade played in the bands of Alphonse Picou, Emile Barnes and George Lewis. By the 1930s she was playing the Blue Jay Club, where she met trumpeter De De Pierce; the two fell in love, married, and co-led their own ensemble, which served as the house band at Luthjen’s Dance Hall in the 1950s.
She played in the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and was a regular on the New Orleans jazz scene in the 1950s through the early Seventies. Pianist and singer Billie Goodson died on September 29, 1974 in New Orleans, Louisiana at the age of 67.
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Hollywood On 52nd Street
My Shining Hour and One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) are from a 1943 musical comedy movie titled “The Sky’s The Limit”. Harold Arlen composed the music and Johnny Mercer wrote the lyrics. It starred Fred Astaire and Joan Leslie.
My Shining Hour was introduce by Sally Sweetland and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Song. It is believed that the opening line “this will be my shining hour” to have been a reference to Winston Churchill’s famous rallying call to British citizens during the war: “This will be our finest hour”.
One For My Baby (And One For More The Road) took two and a half days to shoot, after seven days of full set rehearsal. After a drunken rendition of the song, he furiously tap dances up and down the bar, pausing only to smash stacked racks of glasses and a mirror. The number was first performed in the film by Fred Astaire but popularized by Frank Sinatra.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Talmage Holt Farlow was born on June 7, 1921 in Greensboro, North Carolina. He didn’t take up the guitar until he was twenty-one but within a year was playing professionally, although he had a reluctance to perform publicly. But, by 1948 he had joined Marjorie Hyams’ band, moved to Red Norvo’s group from ’49 to ’53 and after only six months with Artie Shaw’s Gramercy Five in 1953, Farlow put together his own group, which for a time included pianist Eddie Costa.
Farlow’s extremely large hands led to his nickname “Octopus” spreading over the fret board as if they were tentacles. In 1956 Down Beat magazine critics named him as the very best jazz guitarist in the world. Where other similar players of his day combined rhythmic chords with linear melodies, Tal preferred placing single notes together in clusters, varying between harmonically richened tones based on a startling new technique.
A supreme technician, renowned for his articulation, and smooth relaxed phrasing even at the most daunting tempos, Tal retired from full-time performing in 1958, returning to a career as a sign painter, playing only the occasional date.
He only made one record as a leader during 1960–1975, but emerged a bit more often during 1976–1984, recording for Concord fairly regularly before largely disappearing again. He was profiled in the documentary film, Talmage Farlow, and can be heard leading groups for Blue Note, Verve and Prestige. Guitarist Tal Farlow died of cancer in New York City on July 25, 1998 at the age of 77.
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