Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mary Osborne was born in Minot, North Dakota on July 17, 1921 into a musical family. As early as age three she showed an interest in music with her earliest instruments including piano, ukulele, violin, and banjo. At nine, she picked up the guitar. At ten, she started playing banjo in her father’s ragtime band. She was featured on her own radio program, performing twice weekly until she was fifteen. At twelve she started her own trio of girls to perform country music in Bismarck, North Dakota.
By the time she turned fifteen, Osborne joined a trio led by pianist Winifred McDonnell, for which she played guitar, double bass, and sang. After hearing Charlie Christian play electric guitar she immediately bought her own electric guitar and had a friend build an amplifier. She sat in with Christian to learn his style of guitar. Her husband and trumpeter Ralph Scaffidi encouraged her musical career.
The early 1940s saw Mary sitting in on jam sessions on 52nd Street, on the road with jazz violinist Joe Venuti and working freelance in Chicago, Illinois when she made a recording with Stuff Smith. In 1945, Osborne headlined a performance with Dizzy Gillespie, Art Tatum, Coleman Hawkins, and Thelonious Monk in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to reviews and audiences that praised her specifically. She, Tatum, and Hawkins went on to record a concert in New Orleans.
Returning to New York City she recorded with Mary Lou Williams in 1945, Coleman Hawkins, Mercer Ellington, and Beryl Booker in 1946, and led her own swing trio. For three years her trio played 52nd street clubs, had a year-long engagement at Kelly’s Stables, and made several recordings. Throughout the 1950s, she played with Elliot Lawrence’s Quartet on The Jack Sterling Show, and appeared on the television show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts.
By the Sixties her focus changed to learning Spanish classical guitar under Alberto Valdez-Blaine and incorporated pick-less playing into her jazz playing. Osborne moved to Bakersfield, California, where she lived the rest of her life, and founded the Osborne Guitar Company with her husband. Mary taught music and continued to play jazz locally and in Los Angeles, California as well as several jazz festivals over the next two decades.
Guitarist Mary Osborne died on March 4, 1992 at the age of 70, the result of chronic leukemia.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Graham Peter Hall, generally known as GP Hall was born July 15, 1943 in Hampton Hill, London, UK. Schooled in classical, flamenco and jazz, he went on to develop his skills as a guitarist in the British blues boom of the late 1960s. As a teenager, he played in the Odd Lot Band and set up the Odd Lot Club as a venue for their music, which in turn attracted more established bands and players for concerts.
As he became better known, Hall went on to play at more celebrated London venues including The Roundhouse, the Middle Earth club and took up residency at the 100 Club. He supported the likes of Deep Purple, The Hollies, and Chris Farlowe and played on stage with original American blues heroes John Lee Hooker and Sonny Boy Williamson.
In the early 1970s he studied with renowned flamenco guitarist Manitas de Plata and subsequently became involved in more avant-garde work, writing, producing and performing. GP was commissioned by the South Hill Park Arts Centre to write The Estates which was a large and complex musical piece. Scored for a large ensemble, it was recorded and released on album by Prototype Records in 1972. It was his debut recording.
At around this time, Hall’s promising career was cut short by personal trauma. This led to alcoholism, depression, periods of homelessness, loss of confidence and self worth. It would be more than a decade before he returned to music. During the 1980s he began returning to music but it was a slow process to becoming sober.
He would go on to compose, record and release seventeen albums to various labels as well as his own self-releases over the next thirty-three years. His last self-released album in 2019 is titled Be Strong. Guitarist, composer and improviser GP Hall continues to explore the realms of music.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Alan Dawson was born on July 14, 1929 in Marietta, Pennsylvania and raised in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Serving in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, he played with the Army Dance Band while stationed at Fort Dix from 1951 to 1953. During his service, Dawson explored the post-bop era by performing with pianist Sabby Lewis. After being discharged from the army, Dawson toured Europe with Lionel Hampton.
In early 1960, he resided in Boston, Massachusetts for a regular engagement with bassist John Neves and pianist Leroy Flander. He was an early teacher of drummers Tony Williams, Joseph Smyth, Terri Lyne Carrington, Julian Vaughn, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Smith, Kenwood Dennard, Gerry Hemingway, Jeff Sipe, Billy Kilson, Joe Farnsworth, Bob Gullotti, and many others.
Dawson began teaching at Berklee College of Music in 1957. He suffered a ruptured disc in 1975 which led to him halting his touring schedule, to leave Berklee and limit his teaching to his home in Lexington, Massachusetts.
While teaching, Dawson also maintained a prolific performing and recording career. He was the house drummer for Lennie’s on the Turnpike in Peabody, Massachusetts, from 1963 through 1970. Throughout the 1960s he recorded almost exclusively with saxophonist Booker Ervin on Prestige Records. In 1968, he replaced Joe Morello in the Dave Brubeck Quartet and continued until 1972. His performance credits also included stints with Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Jaki Byard, Sonny Stitt, Dexter Gordon, Lee Konitz, Quincy Jones, Charles Mingus, and Tal Farlow.
Drummer Alan Dawson died of leukemia on February 23, 1996. He was 66.
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sara Jacovino was born on July 9, 1983 and earned both a Bahelors and Masters degree in music from the University of North Texas. While there she studied composition with Neil Slater and Paris Rutherford and trombone with Steve Wiest and Tony Baker.
Since leaving Texas for New York City, she has entrenched herself in the jazz scene as a trombonist, composer, and arranger. who has drawn the recognition of many of her peers nationwide. She has received awards from the BMI Foundation, Downbeat Magazine, the Airmen of Note, The International Trombone Association and among others.
Sara leads her own quartet and is a member of The Birdland Big Band, The Diva Jazz Orchestra, David Berger and the Sultans of Swing, Band of Bones, The Manhattan Bridges Orchestra, and The Afro-Bop Alliance. She is an active musician in the Broadway scene performing in numerous musical productions and currently holds the tenor/bass trombone chair in “Tina, The Tina Turner Musical” at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre.
A sought after session musician as both a lead/section trombonist and soloist. Her writing and playing is often featured by the Birdland Big Band, The Diva Jazz Orchestra, and can be heard on numerous albums by the University of North Texas One O’Clock Lab Band including: “Lab 2008,” “Lab 2007,” “Lab 2006” and “Live at Blues Alley, and by the award winning UTubes Jazz ensemble.
She enjoys working as a guest artist and clinician for University and High school jazz programs. Sara will be a guest performer and clinician at both the International Trombone Festival in 2021 and IWBC Festival in 2022.
Trombonist Sara Jacovino continues to perform, compose, arrange and continues to accept commissioned works.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lembit Saarsalu was born July 8, 1948 in Roosna-Alliku, Estonia. He started playing jazz at an early age. He debuted at the Tallinn International Jazz Festival at the age of 16. He worked for many years in the State Philharmonic of the Estonian SSR , where as a paid musician he gave numerous concerts both at home and abroad. In the 1980s, Saarsalu devoted himself completely to jazz.
For decades, he has led local and international ensembles. He worked in a duo with Leonid Vintskevich, started a new international jazz festival Rainbow Jazz with music producer Merle Kollom and a competition for young musicians in Tartu.
As an educator Saarsalu introduced jazz in schools and has performed together with Olav Ehala and other well-known Estonian musicians for more than 40,000 students. Since the fall of 2016, he has been working as a saxophone and ensemble teacher in the rhythm music department of the Tartu Music School.
In the 1980s Eesti Televisioon made two films about Lembit, he has performed on Finnish and Spanish television and has made numerous recordings, numbering 200 recordings for Estonian Radio. His style ranges from blues and swing to free forms of jazz.
He has been repeatedly chosen as the best tenor saxophonist, awarded the annual prize of the Sound Art Endowment Fund of the Estonian Cultural Capital.
Saxophonist , bandleader and composer Lembit Saarsalu, who has been called the saxophone king and the calling card of Estonian jazz, continues to perform, compose and teach.
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