Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Francy Boland was born François Boland on November 6, 1929 in Namur, Belgium. He first gained notice in 1949 and worked with Belgian jazz greats like Bobby Jaspar. In 1955 he joined Chet Baker’s quintet before moving to the US where he began arranging for Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie.
Boland set up an octet with drummer Kenny Clarke before returning to Europe and becoming Kurt Edelhagen’s chief arranger. In 1961, based around a rhythm section featuring Clarke, Jimmy Woode and himself, he founded The Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland Big Band, which rapidly became one of the most noted Big Bands assembled outside the United States. A decade later in 1972 the band broke up and he mainly concentrated on composing.
Francy primarily lived in Switzerland, from 1976 wrote musical arrangements for Sarah Vaughan among others, and played as a sideman with Johnny Griffin. He was also part of One World One Peace, an effort involving Pope John Paul II. He recorded some three-dozen albums and Carola covered his song “Just Give Me Time” in 1966,
Belgian composer and pianist Francy Boland passed away on August 12, 2005 in Geneva, Switzerland.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Phil Woods was born Philip Wells Woods on November 2, 1931 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He studied music with his great influence Lennie Tristano, at the Manhattan School of Music and at The Julliard School.
After moving to France in 1968, Phil led the avant-garde jazz group The European Rhythm Machine, and then returned to the United States in 1972 and unsuccessfully attempting to establish an electronic group formed a quintet, which is still performing with some changes of personnel.
Although Woods is primarily a saxophonist he is also a fine clarinet player and solos can be found scattered through his recordings. His pop credits include the alto solos on Billy Joel’s Just The Way You Are, Steely Dan’s Doctor Wu and Paul Simon’s Have A Good Time.
Phil has worked with the likes of Manny Albam, Kenny Burrell, Gary Burton, Ron Carter, Lou Donaldson, Bill Evans, Art Farmer, Dizzy Gillespie. Stephane Grappelli, Milt Jackson, Quincy Jones, Mundell Lowe, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Oliver Nelson, Lalo Schifrin, Shirley Scott, Clark Terry and Ben Webster among others.
He has amassed 34 sessions as a sideman and nearly four-dozen albums as a leader and has been nominated for seven Grammy Awards and won one for Images: “Best Large Jazz Ensemble Performance”, and three for “Best Instrumental Jazz Performance, Individual or Group” for Live from the Show Boat, More Live, and At the Vanguard.
His 2005 documentary film “A Life in E Flat” – Portrait of a Jazz Legend” offers an intimate portrait of Woods during a recording session of the Jazzed Media album This is How I Feel About Quincy. In 2007, Phil received a “Jazz Master” award from the National Endowment of the Arts. Saxophonist, clarinetist and composer Phil Woods was married to Chan Parker, the widow of Charlie Parker, until her death in 1999. He continued to perform, record and tour until his passing on September 29, 2015 in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Carmen Lundy was born November 1, 1954 in Miami, Florida and at the age of six began to study the piano. After joining her church junior choir, she decided to become a singer when she was 12 years old. While an opera major at the University of Miami she sang with a jazz band and her decision to sing vocal jazz was cemented.
Moving to New York in 1978 Carmen was hired by the Mel Lewis/Thad Jones Big Band and performed her first engagement at the Village Vanguard in Greenwich Village. Two years later she formed her own trio, performing with pianists John Hicks and Onaje Allan Gumbs. She has also performed with Walter Bishop Jr., Don Pullen, Mulgrew Miller, Terri Lyne Carrington, Courtney Pine, Bill O’Connell, Steve Berrios, Marian McPartland, Kenny Kirkland and numerous others.
Lundy recorded her first album of original compositions Good Morning Kiss in 1985 followed by her sophomore project Night and Day the next year featuring musicians Kenny Kirkland, Alex Blake, her brother Curtis Lundy, Victor Lewis, Rodney Jones and Ricky Ford.
Carmen played the lead role in the European tour of Duke Ellington’s Broadway musical, Sophisticated Ladies. Off-Broadway she portrayed Billie Holiday in Lawrence Holder’s They Were All Gardenias. She made her television debut in 1990 as the star of the CBS pilot-special Shangri-La Plaza in the role of Geneva.
A composer, arranger, producer, actress, painter, and sophisticated vocalist well known for her progressive bop and post-bop styling’s, Lundy has composed and published forty songs with favorites such as Quiet Times, Forgive Me, The Out Crowd, and Never Gonna Let You Go that have been recorded by Kenny Barron, Ernie Watts and Straight Ahead. With thirteen albums to her credit Carmen Lundy continues to focus on original material as she moves her three-decade career forward.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Matthew Parrish was born on October 14, 1969 in Fresno, California. Traveling with his parents most of his formative years, the bassist developed a wide appreciation for culture and arts and his family finally settled in New Jersey for his high school years. This led to his tenure at Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts. From there he moved to Philadelphia where his music studies really began at Ortliebs Jazz Haus.
At Ortliebs, Parrish played with Mickey Roker and Shirley Scott, backing everyone from Cecil Payne, Johnny Coles and Danny Turner to Sylvia Simms. He was soon partnered with Al Grey and while touring hit with Clark Terry, Marian McPartland, Dr. Lonnie Smith, Lou Donaldson, Joe Cohn, Savion Glover, Bill Charlap and many others.
Considering himself an East Coast player his list of accolades is more than sufficient to fall in the lineage of great Philly players. He has toured all over the world and his beautiful, warm and complex sound has earned him an impressive reputation in the music community. He has toured with Greg Osby, Stefon Harris and Regina Carter among others and continues to tour with the Dave Leonhardt group, Houston Person as well as the Vana Gierig Trio with Paquito D’Rivera. Bassist Matthew Parrish also continues to perfect his arrangements and compositions – a true passion for the music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Yusef Lateef was born William Emanuel Huddleston on October 9, 1920 in Chattanooga, Tennessee and by the time he was five his family moved to Detroit. Throughout his early life Lateef came into contact with many Detroit-based jazz musicians who went on to gain prominence, including vibraphonist Milt Jackson, bassist Paul Chambers, drummer Elvin Jones and guitarist Kenny Burrell.
Proficient on saxophone by graduation from high school at the age of 18, he launched his professional career and began touring with a number of swing bands. In 1949, he was touring with Dizzy Gillespie and his orchestra. In 1950, Lateef returned to Detroit and began his studies in composition and flute at Wayne State University. It was during this period that he converted to Islam.
Lateef began recording as a leader in 1957 for Savoy Records overlapping with Prestige Records subsidiary label New Jazz, collaborating with Wilbur Harden and Hugh Lawson among others. By 1961, with the recording of Into Something and Eastern Sounds his dominant presence within a group context had emerged and his ‘Eastern’ influences are clearly audible in all of these recordings.
Along with trumpeter Don Cherry, Yusef can lay claim to being among the first exponents of the world music as sub-genres of jazz. He played on numerous albums, was a member of Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet during the early Sixties, was a major influence on John Coltrane, he began to incorporate contemporary soul and gospel phrasing into his music, founded his own label YAL Records and was commissioned by the WDR Radio Orchestra to compose the African American Epic Suite.
Lateef has written and published a number of books including two novellas and Yusef Lateef’s Flute Book of the Blues. He has received the Jazz Master Fellowship Award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and has had aired a special-documentary program for Lateef, titled A Portrait of Saxophonist Yusef Lateef In His Own Words and Music. He has recorded nearly six-dozen records as both a leader and sideman and continued to compose, perform, record and tour until his transition at age 93 on December 23, 2013 in Shutesbury, Massachusetts.
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