Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Eddie Wasserman was born on March 5, 1923 in Smackover, Arkansas. Growing up he had played the saxophone with many black kids in the neighborhood. After his father died, he moved with his mother to Tyler, Texas and it’s where he fell in love with jazz. His first paid job was in a dance band at age 14.

At the onset of World War II in 1941, Wasserman attended New York’s Juilliard School for a couple of years but he was soon drafted and wasn’t discharged until 1946. He returned to Juilliard to complete his studies and graduated in 1948, and that’s when he started playing with Benny Goodman. In addition to playing with Goodman, he was in big-band live and studio recordings led by Artie Shaw, Manny Albam, Stan Kenton, Louie Bellson and Chico O’Farrell, with whom he co-led a big band in 1953.

By 1955, big band work was beginning to dry up on the East Coast was starting to dry up. On the request of an agent O’Farrell and Wasserman formed a small group to play Latin music in Miami Beach, Florida. Not a good experience but Eddie’s late-1950s quartet recordings with Gene Krupa were great recordings.

Given that the youth-culture explosion in 1966 was changing the face of music, jazz was no longer an ideal way for him to earn a living. So giving up the road and having a degree in education, he became an assistant director of the concert band at Clifton High School in New Jersey. He continued to play club dates and find work in Broadway pit bands.

Saxophonist, clarinetist and flutist Eddie Wasserman died after suffering a heart attack on May 27, 1992. He was 69.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Cal Lampley was born on March 4, 1924 in Dunn, North Carolina as the second child of Hettie Marina and William Lorenzo Lampley. He graduated with a B.S. from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. His first known music contribution was as an organist of the Chapel Hill Presbyterian Church.

A move to New York City in 1946 had him continuing his education at the Juilliard School of Music. With an Artist Diploma in 1949 in piano he debuted his performance as a pianist at the Carnegie Hall concert in 1950.

He became a tape editor at Columbia Records. During Lampley’s nine-year stint with Columbia, he rose to the position of Recording Director of the Popular Albums Department. He was later hired by record producer George Avakian to work as an A&R and as a record producer for music labels such as Columbia, Warner Bros., RCA/Victor, and Prestige. He worked with artists including Miles Davis, Mahalia Jackson, Dave Brubeck, Art Blakey, Leonard Bernstein, Freddie McCoy and Louis Armstrong.

Lampley’s other collaborations were with classical, jazz and pop musicians such as Nina Simone, Robert Casadesus, Zino Francescatti, Guiomar Novaes, Johnny Mathis, Genevieve, Victor Borge, Carmel Quinn, Arthur Godfrey, Tab Hunter, Bill Haley, Lonnie Sattin, and Chico Hamilton.

His own version of the composition “Misty” by jazz musician Richard “Groove” Holmes was Prestige’s Records biggest single in its entire history, peaking at #44 on the Billboard charts in 1966. In tribute to his musical contribution to the city and the state, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke officially promulgated the “Cal Lampley Day” on May 1, 1994 in Baltimore at a City Hall ceremony.

On July 6, 2006 composer and record producer Cal Lampley in Baltimore, Maryland from complications of multiple sclerosis.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Teruo Nakamura was born on March 3, 1942 in Tokyo, Japan and everyone in his immediate family were artists. He studied at Nihon University before moving to New York City in 1964, where he studied with Reggie Workman.

In 1969 he joined drummer Roy Haynes’s ensemble and that same year he also formed a band with Steve Grossman and Lenny White, who both went on to play on his 1973 debut as a leader, the album Unicorn and Nakamura played both acoustic and electric bass on the album, which was released by Three Blind Mice.

Teruo formed the Rising Sun band in the mid-1970s. In 1977 this contained saxophonist Bob Mintzer, guitarist Shiro Mori, with Mark Gray on synthesizer, Art Gore on drums and Nobu Urushiyama on percussion.

The 1980s and 1990s saw him working principally as a record producer. Bassist and record producer Teruo Nakamura continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Clarence Lacquese Penn born on March 2, 1968 in Detroit, Michigan and started playing the drums at around eigh years old. In 1986, while still at high school, he attended the Interlochen Arts Academy. He started studying at the University of Miami in Florida that same year, but transferred to Virginia Commonwealth University.

At Virginia Commonwealth he studied with Ellis Marsalis, and played in the pianist’s trio from 1987 to 1991, including for a tour of Japan in 1990. Penn graduated in classical percussion in 1991 and was part of vocalist Betty Carter’s trio from until 1993.

Penn later went on to work with David Sanchez, Jimmy Smith, Slide Hampton, Jimmy Scott, Greg Hatza, Stanley Clarke, Tim Warfield, Bob Berg, Diana Krall, Cyrus Chestnut, and Stephen Scott.

He recorded his debut album, Penn’s Landing, for Criss Cross Jazz in 1997 with some of the tracks he composed. His sophomore album as leader, Play-Penn, was recorded four years later, followed by a third the following year. He took a nine year hiatus from recording then recorded three more albums.

Drummer Clarence Penn, who also plays organ and rhodes, continues to perform and record.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Vinny Golia was born March 1, 1946 in the Bronx, New York City.  As a composer he fuses the rich heritage of jazz, contemporary classical music and world music. As a bandleader, he has presented his music in Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. His ensembles vary in size and instrumentation.

He founded the jazz record label Nine Winds in 1977 and has won numerous awards as a composer. In 1982 he created the ongoing 50-piece Vinny Golia Large Ensemble to perform his compositions for chamber orchestra and jazz ensembles.

A multi-woodwind performer, Vinny’s recordings have been consistently picked by critics and readers of music journals for their yearly “ten best” lists on JazzTimes, Cadence Magazine, DownBeat, LA Weekly,  Jazziz and the Jazz Journalists Association honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Golia has been a featured performer with Anthony Braxton, Henry Grimes, Joëlle Léandre, Wadada Leo Smith, Horace Tapscott, John Zorn, Tim Berne, George E. Lewis, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Patti Smith, Eugene Chadbourne, John Bergamo, George Gruntz, Lydia Lunch, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra among numerous others.

Most recently, Golia has performed and toured with his sextet which features some of the new voices in the Los Angeles free-improv scene. Saxophonist and composer Vinny Golia, who also plays flute, English horn, clarinet, bassoon, tárogató, continues to expand and discover new avenues of exploration in his music.