Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Allie Wrubel was born in Middletown, Connecticut on January 15, 1905. He attended Wesleyan and Columbia Universities prior to playing saxophone and clarinet for a variety of famous swing bands. His musical career began in Greenwich Village where he roomed with his close friend and actor, James Cagney.
1934 saw Allie’s move to Hollywood to work for Warner Brothers as a contract songwriter. He was a major contributor to a large number of movies including Busby Berkeley films before moving to Disney in 1947. He also contributed to films such as “Make Mine Music”, “Duel In The Sun”, “I Walk Alone”, “Melody Time”, “Tulsa”, “Midnight Lace” and “Never Steal Anything Small”.
He collaborated with many lyricists such as Abner Silver, Herb Magidson, Charles Newman, Mort Dixon, Ned Washington and Ray Gilbert, the latter collaboration penned Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah from the 1947 film Song Of The South, which won Gilbert and Wrubel an Oscar for Best Song that year. A few recognizable songs from his huge collection of compositions, some that have become staples in the jazz catalog – Gone With The Wind, As You Desire Me, Music Maestro Please, I’ll Buy That Dream, Mine Alone, How Long Has This Been Going On and The Masquerade Is Over.
After a long and successful career Allie Wrubel was inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame in 1970, just three years before his death on December 13, 1973 in Twentynine Palms, California.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Kenny Wheeler was born Kenneth Vincent John Wheeler and came into this world on January 14, 1930, in Toronto, Canada. He began playing the cornet at the age of 12, becoming interested in jazz in his mid-teens. Spending a year at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto, he moved to Britain in 1952 at the age of 22 and found his way into the jazz scene of London playing with Tommy White, Tubby Hayes and Ronnie Scott.
In the 60’s Wheeler worked with John Dankworth, recording “Windmill Tilter” which is now a collector’s item since the master tapes have been lost. He has also enjoyed being active in free improvisation creating orchestral writing with passages of free improvisation infused in the bi band album “Song For Someone” in 1973 named Album of the Year by Melody Maker magazine in 1975.
Kenny’s lists of recordings or performances are too vast but includes Paul Gonsalves, Dave Holland, Anthony Braxton, Keith Jarrett, Steve Coleman, John Taylor, and Lee Konitz among a host of other notables in jazz.
Highly respected among his peers for his beautiful tone and extensive range on the trumpet and flugelhorn, Wheeler has written over one hundred compositions and is a skilled arranger for small groups and larger ensembles. His compositions blend lyrical melodies with a distinctive and ever changing harmonic palette. He has occasionally contributed to rock music recordings, is the patron of the Royal Academy Junior Jazz course, has been based in the UK since 1950 and remained faithful to the jazz genres of avant-garde, post bop, chamber jazz and free improvisation until his passing on September 18, 2014 at age 84 in London, England.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Melba Doretta Liston was born on January 13, 1926. Growing up in Kansas City, MO the young trombonist studied with Alma Hightower and played in youth bands. At 17 the talented trombonist joined Gerald Wilson’s big band and by the mid-1940’s Melba began working with the emerging beboppers like Dexter Gordon, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Gonsalves, John Coltrane and John Lewis. She toured with Count Basie and Billie Holiday in the late 40’s but was so profoundly affected by audience indifference and the rigors of the road she quit playing.
For the next few years she did clerical work and supplemented her income working as an extra in Hollywood appearing in The Prodigal and The Ten Commandments. By the mid 50’s Melba was back playing, touring with Dizzy Gillespie for the U.S. State Department and recording with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. In 1958 she formed her all-women quintet and with her show “Free and Easy” she toured Europe with Quincy Jones as her musical director.
The 60’s saw Melba collaborating with pianist Randy Weston, arranging primarily her own compositions for mid-size to large ensembles and are widely acknowledged as jazz classics. Melba worked with the likes of Milt Jackson, Clark Terry, and Johnny Griffin as well as arranging for various Motown records. In 1971 she became the musical director for Stax Records, working with Stevie Wonder, Joe Sample, Wilton Felder, Arthur Adams and jazz drummer Paul Humphrey whose uncharted album released in 1972 contains some of Melba’s finest works ever.
Melba Liston was a trombonist, composer and an important jazz arranger whose collaboration with pianist/composer Randy Weston continued until her death on April 23, 1999.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Roberta opened at the New Amsterdam Theater on November 11, 1933. It ran 295 performances with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics and book by Otto Harbach. The show starred Tamara Drasin, Bob Hope, George Murphy, Ray Middleton, Fay Templeton and Fred MacMurray. The musical comedy was based on the novel Gowns by Roberta by Alice Duer Miller and is set in a fraternity house at Haverhill College. From the play came songs like Yesterdays, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes and The Touch Of Your Hand that have become jazz standards.
The Story: Set in a fraternity house at Haverhill College: A deposed Russian princess has become a famed Parisian couturier. Her partner passes away leaving her half of the business to American football player Randolph Scott–who of course knows next to nothing about the gown business, and couldn’t care less anyway. The former girlfriend of the bandleader poses as a phony Polish countess. Men are chasing women who are chasing men as flirtations involved all.
Jazz History: By the time Roberta premiered on Broadway, the nation was buckling under the devastation of The Great Depression. Twenty-five percent of the workforce was jobless, and up to 60 percent of African American men had no work. Cities became crowded with people searching for work after farms began to whither and rot. Black musicians were not allowed to do studio or radio work. However, jazz music was resilient. While businesses, including the record industry, were failing, dance halls were packed with people dancing the jitterbug to the music of big bands, which would come to be called swing music.
Swing bands attracted throngs with their intensity, playing fast and loud blues riffs and featuring virtuosic soloists. All of a sudden, thanks to musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young and Ben Webster, the tenor saxophone became the instrument most strongly identified with jazz.
In Kansas City, pianist Count Basie began building an all-star big band after Benny Moten, a well-known bandleader died in 1935. Basie featured Lester Young, giving rise to the saxophonist’ career as an innovator, and also bringing exposure to an aggressive and bluesy vein of jazz that filled the clubs of the Midwest.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Trummy Young was born James Young in Savannah, GA on January 12, 1912 but grew up in Washington, DC. He originally started out as a trumpeter but by the time he debuted in 1928, he had switched to trombone and soon became one of the finest trombonists of the swing era. From 1933 to ’37 Young was a member of Earl Hines’ orchestra and later joined Jimmie Lunceford from ‘37 to 1943.
Although he was never really a star or bandleader, Trummy had one hit with his version of “Margie” and with Sy Oliver wrote the tune “Tain’t What You Do (It’s The Way You Do It)” that became a hit for both Lunceford and Ella Fitzgerald in 1939.
Young played with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie on a Clyde Hart led session in 1945 and with the Jazz At The Philharmonic. In 1952 he joined the Louis Armstrong All Stars and stayed a dozen years recording St. Louis Blues in ’54 and performing in the 1956 musical High Society. 1964 saw Young quitting the road to settle in Hawaii where on September 10, 1984 he succumbed to a cerebral hemorrhage.
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