Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Richard Gene Williams was born in Galveston, Texas on May 4, 1931 and played tenor saxophone early in his life before picking up the trumpet as a teenager. While playing in local Texas bands, he attended Wiley College, majoring in music.
After serving in the Air Force from 1952–56, Williams toured Europe with Lionel Hampton. He returned to America and received a master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music. In 1959, he played with Charles Mingus at the Newport Jazz Festival and recorded with MIngus that same year. The following year he recorded his only session as a leader, New Horn in Town on the Candid Records label featuring Reggie Workman, Leo Wright, Richard Wyands, and Bobby Thomas.
During the 1960s Richard was a sideman on numerous releases for Blue Note, Impulse!, New Jazz, Riverside, and Atlantic working with Oliver Nelson, Grant Green, Booker Ervin, Sam Jones, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Les McCann, Lou Donaldson, Yusef Lateef, Gigi Gryce, Carmen McRae, Randy Weston, Charles Tolliver, Mose Allison, Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis, and Duke Jordan, among numerous others.
He also played with the big bands of Duke Ellington, Gil Evans, Thad Jones and Mel Lewis, Sam Rivers, and Clark Terry. Finding work on Broadway in pit orchestra productions of The Me Nobody Knows and The Wiz, and appeared on the original Broadway cast recordings of both musicals. Williams led his own bands in New York jazz clubs and in addition to jazz trumpet, he performed with classical orchestras, playing piccolo trumpet and flugelhorn. Trumpeter Richard Williams passed away on November 4, 1985 from kidney cancer in his Jamaica, New York home, at the age of 54.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billy Byers was born on William Mitchell Byers on May 1, 1927 in Los Angeles, California. He picked up the trombone and played with Karl Kiffle before serving in the Army in 1944–45. In the second half of the 1940s, he arranged and played trombone for Georgie Auld, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Charlie Ventura, and Teddy Powell.
Following this period of playing, Byers composed for WMGM (AM) radio and television in New York City. During the mid-1950s, he was living and arranging in Paris, France where he also led a session as a leader, released as Jazz on the Left Bank, at this time. Later in the 1950s in Europe, he played with Harold Arlen (1959–1960) and with the Quincy Jones Orchestra. Becoming Quincy’s assistant at Mercury Records in the Sixties, he arranged for Count Basie albums.
He also led some recording sessions of Duke Ellington standards, toured Europe and Japan alongside Frank Sinatra in 1974, and had extensive credits arranging and conducting for film. Billy won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Orchestrations for the City of Angels.
He recorded with Count Basie, Bob Brookmeyer, Al Cohn, Billy Eckstine, Coleman Hawkins, J. J. Johnson, Lee Konitz, Jack McDuff, Gary McFarland, Hal McKusick, Carmen McRae, Joe Newman, Lalo Schifrin, Bud Shank, Charlie Shavers, Julius Watkins, Andy Williams, Cootie Williams, Kai Winding, and Frank Zappa. With four albums as a leader and another twenty-eight as a sideman, trombonist Billy Byers, passed away in Malibu, California, on May 1, 1996.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Cecilia Wennerström was born on April 21, 1947 in Stockholm, Sweden and studied saxophone at the music academies in Malmoe and Gothenburg. In 1997 she released her first self-titled album as a leader, Cecilia Wennerström/Minor Stomp on the Four Leaf Records label. Joining her were Ann Blom on piano, Filip Augustson on bass, and Henrik Wartel on drums. Enjoying the small group format she explores classical, bebop/cool-oriented jazz.
Cecilia is currently a member of the Wennerstrom Larsson Explicity with her husband Sven Larsson, who released their first album Tussilago in September 2011. She is also part of the octet LARS 8 which plays compositions by Lars Gullin and other Swedish jazz icons.
In 2013 she released her fourth solo compact disc Lydian Mars with pianist Maria Kvist, bassist Filip Augustson, and drummer Jonas Holgersson. The band on the recording session evolved into the Cecilia Wennerström New Quartet with Chris Montgomery replacing Holgersson on drums.
Saxophonist, flutist, and composer Cecilia Wennerström continues to compose, perform, and record.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Billy James born William James on April 20, 1936 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He first came on the jazz scene in the Fifties when he began working with the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, with the bandleader thinking the 15-year-old James was already playing at professional standards. He would then go to work with Booker Ervin. In the early 1960s with played and recorded with James Moody, Candido Camero, Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Don Patterson, and Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis.
With Patterson, he frequently recorded as a duo, and James led his own groups in the latter half of the 1960s. He worked further with Stitt during this time as well as with Eric Kloss. Further associations also include Eddie Harris, Houston Person, Grant Green, and Pat Martino.
Billy’s most illustrious performances including the Patterson side righteously titled Boppin’ and Burnin’ and even better, the Boss Tenors in Orbit! sessions in which Stitt duels with Ammons.
Drummer Billy James, whose most distinctive aspect of drumming is an extremely well-disposed shuffle that he seems able to reinvent endlessly, chorus after chorus, passed away on November 20, 2009.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Piers Lawrence was born on April 19th in New York City, raised in San Francisco, California and Switzerland, where he attended the Conservatoire de Musique de Lausanne and studied guitar and composition.
An alum of the Harlem-based, Jazz-Mobile Orchestra and studying with Barry Galbraith and Ted Dunbar, he has played Broadway shows including Guys and Dolls, Dancin’, Hubie, and Your Arms Too Short to Box With God, and has toured and recorded with R&B hitmakers Wilson Picket, The Main Ingredient, Esther Phillips, Phyllis Hyman, The Caribbean All-Stars and Merl Saunders.
He has recorded sessions and shared the jazz stages with many great musicians including Narada Michael Walden, Sammy Figueroa, Hiram Bullock, Lou Soloff, Jerry Garcia, John Handy, Steve Kimock, Armando Peraza, Bob Weir, Vince Welnick, Reuben Wilson, Jimmy Heath, and Tommy Flanagan.
Being based in Manhattan, the jazz guitarist continues to lead the Piers Lawrence Quartet, manage his record label, JazzNet Media, that produced his internationally acclaimed recording Stolen Moments, and produces independent projects and ambient music for film and television.
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