Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Pharoah Sanders was born Ferrell Lee Sanders on October 13, 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas, an only child. He began his musical career accompanying church hymns on clarinet but his initial artistic accomplishments were in the visual arts. When he was at Scipio Jones High School in North Little Rock, he began playing the tenor saxophone.

After graduating from high school in 1959, Sanders moved to Oakland, California, where he lived with relatives. He briefly studied art and music at Oakland City College. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from an unknown art institution.

He began his professional career playing tenor saxophone in Oakland, then moved to New York City in 1962. The following year he was playing with Billy Higgins and Don Cherry and caught the attention of Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane. In 1965, he became a member of Coltrane’s band, as the latter gravitated towards the avant-garde jazz of Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, and Cecil Taylor.

Sanders first recorded with Coltrane on Ascension, followed by their dual-tenor album Meditations, then joined Coltrane’s final quintet. Pharoah released his debut album as a leader, Pharoah’s First, was not what he expected. In 1966 he signed with Impulse! and the years Sanders spent with the label were both a commercial and critical success.

The 1970s had Sanders continuing to produce his own recordings including the 30-minute wave-on-wave of free jazz, The Creator Has A Master Plan from the album Karma, featuring vocalist Leon Thomas and to work with Alice Coltrane on her Journey in Satchidananda album. Although supported by African-American radio, Sanders’ brand of brave free jazz became less popular.

His major-label return came in 1995 when Verve Records released Message from Home, followed by Save Our Children (1998). But again, Sanders’s disgust with the recording business prompted him to leave the label. In the 2000s, a resurgence of interest in jazz kept Sanders playing festivals and was awarded a NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for 2016 and was honored at a tribute concert in Washington DC on April 4, 2016.

In 2020 he recorded the album Promises, with the English electronic music producer Floating Points and the London Symphony Orchestra. It was widely acclaimed as a clear late-career masterpiece.

Saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques, died on September 24, 2022 at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 81.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Shafi Hadi was born William Curtis Porter on September 21, 1929 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to William Porter and Harrietti Porter. He received piano lessons from his grandmother at age 6. He went on to study musical composition at Howard University and University of Detroit. He performed with rhythm and blues artists such as Paul Williams, Ruth Brown, and the Griffin Brothers.

He recorded with bassist Charles Mingus between 1956 and 1958. He also recorded with tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. Hadi improvised the soundtrack music for John Cassavetes’s film Shadows, then returned to Mingus’s group in 1959. He also collaborated with Mary Lou Williams on her 1977 composition “Shafi”, although the extent of his contribution is unclear.

Between 1965 and 1969 Shafi co-wrote five songs with Lionel Hampton or Gladys Hampton: Bye, Bye, Hamp Stamps, No, Say No, A Sketch Of Gladys, and Mama Knows.

Tenor and alto saxophonist Shafi Hadi died in June 1976, at the age of 46.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Jay Cameron was born in New York City on September 14, 1928. He began as an alto saxophonist but later recorded with bass clarinet, B-flat clarinet, and baritone saxophone. His career began in the early 1940s in Hollywood, California with Isaac M. Carpenter’s band, with whom he played until 1947.

Moving to Europe near the end of the decade he played with Rex Stewart, Bill Coleman, Roy Haynes and Henri Renaud in France and Italy. By the early 1950s Cameron was gigging around Belgium, Germany, and Scandinavia. Returning to Paris, France in 1955 he played steadily with a band that included Bobby Jaspar, Barney Wilen and Jean-Louis Chautemps.

Back in the United States in the mid-Fifties Jay played in the bands of Woody Herman, Chet Baker, Dizzy Gillespie, Maynard Ferguson, Freddie Hubbard, Candido Camero, Bill Barron, André Hodeir, Hal McKusick, and Les and Larry Elgart. In 1960 he played with Slide Hampton, also led the International Sax Band and the Third Herdsmen, and late in the decade, he toured with Paul Winter.

Bass and B-flat clarinetist and baritone saxophonist Jay Cameron died in San Diego, California on March 20, 2001.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Peck Morrison was born John A. Morrison on September 11, 1919 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was classically trained, and in addition to bass, being competent on trumpet and percussion was also his talent.

During World War II he played in military bands in Italy and after the war he moved to New York City to play professionally. He played with Lucky Thompson in the early 1950s, and then recorded with Horace Silver, Gigi Gryce, and Art Farmer. He played and toured Europe with Gerry Mulligan.

He was a noted accompanist and sideman with Carmen McRae, Tiny Bradshaw, King Pleasure, Zoot Sims, Dave Bailey, Betty Carter, Eddie Jefferson, the J. J. Johnson/Kai Winding Quintet, and Duke Ellington in the Fifties and the latter in the 1960s.

He performed or recorded in the Sixties with Lou Donaldson, Johnny Smith, Mal Waldron, Randy Weston, Babs Gonzales, the Newport Rebels, Shirley Scott, Red Garland, Charles McPherson, and Sy Oliver. In 1986 he performed as a member of the Harlem Blues and Jazz Band.

Bassist Peck Morrison, who never recorded as a session leader, died on February 25, 1988.

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Daily Dose Of Jazz…

Joe Rigby was born on September 3, 1940 in Harlem, New York and grew up in the Sugar Hill neighborhood where his neighbors included Johnny Hodges, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, and Kenny Burrell. He started playing piano when he was six and began playing flute and clarinet in high school. His focus eventually switched to the saxophone after hearing John Coltrane and Charlie Parker.

Graduating from the College of Staten Island he earned a bachelor’s degree in Music and a minor in Music Education. Rigby would go on to study privately with Joe Allard, Garvin Bushell, and Anders Paulsson. He taught instrumental music with the New York City Board of Education from 1989 until he retired in 2004, and was named New York’s Music Teacher of the Year in 1996.

Performing on alto, soprano, baritone and sopranino saxophone, Joe began performing professionally with Milton Graves, Johnny Copeland, and Steve Reid, with whom he led the Master Brotherhood. In the late 1970s, he formed and led his own group, Dynasty.

Establishing his Homeboy record label, he released a record with trumpeter Ted Daniel, and the album Music as a solo artist in 2009. The same year he recorded on French label Improvising Beings, releasing For Harriet with a quartet which included bagpiper player Calum MacCrimmon.

Tenor, alto, baritone, soprano and sopranino saxophonist Joe Rigby, who also plays flute and piccolo, died on July 16, 2019 at the age of 78.

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