Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Steve Masakowski was born on September 2, 1954 in New Orleans, Louisiana and The Beatles influenced his desire to play guitar. When he was fourteen, he played bass guitar and co-founded the band Truth, which was based on the rock band Cream. During his high school years he became interested in composing, and started taking guitar lessons to learn about harmony. His teacher introduced him to the music of jazz guitarists Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, and Lenny Breau.
He went to Berklee College of Music in 1974, studied music theory, arranging, and composition. Returning home with his girlfriend Emily Remler after getting his degree, Steve founded the group Fourplay, not to be confused with the later jazz group of the same name. From 1976 to 1978, he studied classical composition and orchestration at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts with Bert Braud.
The early Eighties he played regularly with local New Orleans musicians such as Willie Tee, Earl Turbinton, Jr. and Alvin Tyler, as well as accompanying visiting musicians Randy Brecker, Tom Harrell, Art Baron, and Dave Liebman. His next band Mars played a mix of jazz and electronic music. He then went on to found the Composers Recording Studio with harpist Patrice Fisher, guitarist Jimmy Robinson, and violinist Denise Villere. After a ten year stretch the studio closed and he started working in duet with Ellis Marsalis Jr., then joined Astral Project, toured with Dianne Reeves. He leads the band Nova NOLA.
As an educator in 1991, he became a full-time faculty member at the University of New Orleans and became Chair of Jazz Studies and director of the jazz program in 2004 . He invented the key-tar, a guitar-like instrument with seven rows of keys instead of strings, one key at each fret. This pre-MIDI controller was hardwired to a Moog synthesizer.
Inspired by a visit to New Orleans by seven-string guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, he began to explore the seven-string guitar, first finding an early Gretsch, then designing his own models which have the expanded range of a normal guitar and bass guitar combined. Guitarist and educator Steve Masakowski continues to perform, record and educate.
More Posts: bandleader,guitar,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Leonard Gaskin was born August 25, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He played on the early bebop scene at Minton’s and Monroe’s in New York in the early 1940s. In 1944 he took over Oscar Pettiford’s spot in Dizzy Gillespie’s band,and followed it with stints in bands led by Cootie Williams, Charlie Parker, Don Byas, Eddie South, Charlie Shavers, and Erroll Garner.
In the 1950s, he played with Eddie Condon’s Dixieland band, and played with Ruby Braff, Bud Freeman, Rex Stewart, Cootie Williams, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, J.J. Johnson, and Miles Davis. In the 1960s he became a studio musician, playing on numerous gospel and pop records. In the 1970s and 1980s he returned to jazz, playing with Sy Oliver, Panama Francis, and The International Art of Jazz.
Gaskin became involved in educating young people later in his life. He toured and performed at New York City schools, sharing his knowledge with elementary students with the Good Groove Band and the International Art of Jazz groups. For more than a decade, he and drummer Oliver Jackson teamed to play the European jazz festival circuit. He also regularly collaborated with Sy Oliver’s Rainbow Room Orchestra.
Capping off his career in 1994, Leonard performed at the White House’s Congressional Ball at the behest of President Bill Clinton. Although his touring schedule slowed dramatically in the decade to follow, he wrote a privately published autobiography and donated his personal jazz collection to the American Music Archives at the Smithsonian’s Museum of American History.
Bassist Leonard Gaskin transitioned from natural causes at a nursing home in Queens, New York on January 24, 2009. He was 88.
More Posts: bandleader,bass,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Lou Colombo was born on August 22, 1927 and raised in Brockton, Massachusetts. He began playing trumpet in the 1940s, at age 12. Aftere serving in the Army band in World War II he had hopes of playing professional baseball, saw him signed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, but a broken ankle forced him to curtail that dream. He then formed his own band in the 1950s and toured with Buddy Morrow, Perez Prado, Dick Johnson and the Artie Shaw Orchestra. He also played with Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong during his career.
So he dove into music and his trumpet. His career included stints with the Charlie Spivak and Perez Prado bands and the Artie Shaw Orchestra. On Cape Cod, Lou’s gigs with Dick Johnson and Dave McKenna were legendary, as is their superb Concord album, I Remember Bobby, a tribute to Bobby Hackett.
Known for his one-handed trumpet style, he was a mainstay in the Cape Cod, Massachusetts jazz scene for more than six decades and maintained a home in Fort Myers, Florida. Trumpeter Lou Columbo, who also played flugelhorn, baritone horn and pocket trumpet, transitioned unexpectedly at 84 on March 4, 2019 in a car crash in Fort Myers after making a turn and his vehicle was struck by another.
More Posts: bandleader,history,instrumental,jazz,trumpet
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Charles “Chuck” Riggs was born on August 5, 1951 in Westerly, Rhode Island. Beginning in 1976 he played with Scott Hamilton and their association lasted well into the 1990s.
In the late 1970s and 1980s, he played with Bob Wilber, the World’s Greatest Jazz Band, Chris Flory, Benny Goodman, Kenny Davern, Dick Wellstood, Flip Phillips, Ruby Braff, and Jay McShann.
He was a member of the Concord Jazz All-Stars alongside Hamilton, Dave McKenna, and Gray Sargent in the early 1990s. Later in the decade he worked with Keith Ingham, Jon-Erik Kellso, and Ken Peplowski.
Riggs was featured on The Cotton Club, the soundtrack for the 1984 film of the same name.
Drummer Chuck Riggs continues to perform and record.
More Posts: drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music
Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sue Evans was born on July 7, 1951 in New York, New York and played piano, violin and clarinet as a young child before switching to drums. She studied under Warren Smith and Sonny Igoe, and graduated in 1969 from The High School of Music & Art. She went on to earn a BA in Music from Columbia University, as well as a Master of Music and Doctorate from the Juilliard School.
Becoming one of the top recording percussionists in New York she has recorded jingles, movie scores, and numerous albums with many jazz, folk and pop artists. She was Judy Collins’s touring drummer from 1969 to 1973 and worked with Gil Evans from 1969 to 1982. During the Seventies she worked with Steve Kuhn, Art Farmer, Bobby Jones, George Benson, Urbie Green, Yusef Lateef, Idris Muhammad, Lalo Schifrin, Jeremy Steig and Roswell Rudd’s Jazz Composers Orchestra. In addition Sue played with The New York Pops, the New York Philharmonic, the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
The 1980s saw her working with Michael Franks, Mark Murphy, Suzanne Vega, Tony Bennett, and Morgana King. Other associations include touring or recording with Aretha Franklin, Sting, Spike Lee, James Brown, Billy Cobham, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Philip Glass, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Don Sebesky, Sadao Watanabe, Hubert Laws, Randy Brecker, David Sanborn and Terence Blanchard.
For several years she played at the Tony Awards and the Grammy Awards. She won National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Most Valuable Awards in 1984, 1987 and 1989. Drummer and percussionist Sue Evans continues to perform and record.
More Posts: drums,history,instrumental,jazz,music,percussion