Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Walter Dewey Redman was born May 17, 1931 in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended I.M. Terrell High School and played saxophone in the school band with Ornette Coleman, Prince Lasha and Charles Moffett. After high school he briefly enrolled in the electrical engineering program at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama but became disillusioned with the program and returned home to Texas. In 1953, he earned a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Arts from Prairie View Agricultural and Mechanical University and while attending switched from clarinet to alto saxophone, eventually to tenor.
Following his degree, Redman served for two years in the Army and upon his discharge he began working on a master’s degree in education at the University of North Texas. While there he taught music to fifth graders in Bastrop, Texas and worked as a freelance saxophonist at night and on weekends around Austin, Texas. By 1957 he graduated in Education with a minor in Industrial Arts.
1959 saw him moving to San Francisco, California as result of an early collaboration with clarinetist Donald Rafael Garrett. He would go on to perform with Ornette Coleman, from 1968 to 1972 and recording New York Is Now!, among others. Dewey was also a part of Keith Jarrett’s American Quartet from 1971 – 1976, whose album The Survivors’ Suite was voted Jazz Album of the Year by Melody Maker in 1978.
In the mid-70s Redman formed the quartet Old And New Dreams with Coleman alumni Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell. They recorded four albums in the period to 1987. He performed and recorded as an accompanying musician with jazz musicians who performed in varying styles within the post-1950s jazz idiom, including drummer Paul Motian, Pat Metheny, Jane Bunnett, Anthony Cox, Cameron Brown, Billy Hart, Matt Wilson, Roswell Rudd, Randy Weston, Clifford Thornton, Jon Ballantyne, Michael Boclan, David Bond, Leroy Jenkins, Dane Belany and Michel Benita.
As a leader with more than a dozen recordings, Dewey established himself as one of the more prolific tenor players of his generation. Though generally associated with free jazz, he would also play standards and ballads reminiscent of the blues and post-bop mainstream and would sometimes hum into his sax while performing.
Tenor saxophonist Dewey Redman, who occasionally played alto saxophone, the Chinese suona and clarinet mainly in the free jazz genre, passed away from liver failure in Brooklyn, New York, on September 2, 2006. He was the subject of an award-winning documentary film Dewey Time and recorded two albums with his son Joshua.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Gary Peacock was born May 12, 1935, in Burley, Idaho and studied the bass as a youth. After military service in Germany, during the early Sixties he worked on the West Coast with Barney Kessel, Bud Shank, Paul Bley and Art Pepper. Moving to New York he continued working with Bley as well as with Paul Motian in the Bill Evans Trio, and with Sunny Murray in the Albert Ayler trio. He also played some live dates with Miles Davis as a temporary substitute for Ron Carter.
In the late 1960s Peacock spent time in Japan, abandoning music temporarily to study Zen philosophy. After returning to the U. S. in 1972, he studied biology at the University of Washington, Seattle and taught music theory at Cornish College of the Arts from 1976 to 1983.
In 1983 Gary joined Keith Jarrett’s Standard Trio with Jack DeJohnette and the trio releaseded Standards Vol. 1 & 2 and Standards Live. Under Peacock’s leadership the trio recorded earlier in 1977 Tales of Another on the ECM label.
Peacock has recorded a dozen albums under his leadership, six releases as part of the group Tethered Moon and another sixty-two albums as a sideman with Bill Connors, Don Elis, Clare Fischer, Marc Copland, Marilyn Crispell, Barney Kessel, Prince Lasha, Sonny Simmons, Don Pullen, Bud Shank, Ravi Shankar, Ralph Towner, Mal Waldron, Tony Williams and Jimmy Woods to name a few.
He has composed for two film shorts, performed on three documentaries, performed as the Keith Jarrett Trio on the Most Martha soundtrack, and has appeared on television. Double bassist Gary Peacock continued to perform, tour and record until he passed away on September 4, 2020, at his home in Upstate New York. He was 85.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joyce Collins was born on May 5, 1930 in Battle Mountain, Nevada. She began playing piano professionally at the age of 15 while still attending Reno High School. While studying music and teaching at San Francisco State College she played in groups and solo at various jazz clubs, eventually touring with the Frankie Carle band.
By the late 1950s, Collins settled in Los Angeles, California, working there Reno and in Las Vegas she became the first woman to conduct one of the resort’s show bands. During this period she worked in film and television studios, spending 10 years in the band on the Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart shows.
In 1975, she recorded with Bill Henderson garner Grammy nominations for their Street Of Dreams and Tribute To Johnny Mercer albums. Joyce continued to work in films, coached the Bridges brothers for their roles in The Fabulous Baker Boys. She appeared twice on Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz radio show.
She performed mostly in solo, duo and trio work but occasionally sat in with big bands, such as that led by Bill Berry. She has recorded with Paul Horn and under her own name releasing her debut album in 1961, followed by her sophomore release Moment To Moment, after a long gap. She was an accomplished composer, arranger and singer with a delicate understanding of the lyricist’s intentions.
As an educator, in 1975 she taught jazz piano at the Dick Grove Music School. She wrote and arranged extensively, including a program, performed live and on radio, tracing the involvement of women in jazz as composers and lyricists. Pianist, singer and educator Joyce Collins passed away on January 3, 2010.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
James W. Newton was born May 1, 1953 in Los Angeles, California and grew up immersed in the sounds of African-American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. As a tee he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone, and clarinet. In high school he took up the flute, influenced by Eric Dolphy. In addition to taking lessons in classical music on flute, he also studied jazz with Buddy Collette and completed his formal musical training at California State University, Los Angeles.
From 1972 to 1975, along with David Murray, Bobby Bradford and Arthur Blythe, he was a member of drummer and later critic Stanley Crouch’s band Black Music Infinity. Three years later in 1978 he lived in New York, leading a trio with pianist and composer Anthony Davis and cellist Abdul Wadud, that lasted until 1981. These three played extended chamber jazz and Third Stream compositions by Newton and Davis. With Davis, he founded a quartet and toured successfully in Europe in the early 1980s.
Following his European tour James performed with a wide variety of musicians, including John Carter, Mingus Dynasty, Leroy Jenkins and Chico Freeman. He would go on to release four solo improvisations for flute recordings, work with musicians from other cultures including Jon Jang, Gao Hong, Kadri Gopalnath and Shubhendra Rao. He has performed with the New York Philharmonic, Brooklyn Philharmonic, the San Francisco Ballet, California EAR Unit and the L’Orchestre du Conservatoire de Paris among others around the world. He served for five years as Musical Director/Conductor of the Luckman Jazz Orchestra.
As an educator Newton has taught at the University of California Irvine, the California Institute of the Arts, and California State University Los Angeles. In 1989 he became a published author with a method book entitled The Improvising Flute and in 2007 he published Daily Focus For The Flute.
He is an accomplished composer of classical works for chamber ensemble and orchestra, electronic music, jazz and opera, the latter composing The Songs of Freedom. He has received a Guggenheim and Rockefeller Fellowships, Montreux Grande Prix Du Disque, and Down Beat International Critics Jazz Album of the Year and has been voted the top flutist for 23 consecutive years in Down Beat magazine’s International Critics Poll. Post bop flautist James Newton continues to perform, record, tour and compose.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sal Mosca was born April 27, 1927 in Mount Vernon, New York and studied piano with Lennie Tristano. After playing in the United States Army Band during World War II, he studied at the New York College of Music under the G.I. Bill.
Mosca began working with Lee Konitz in 1949 and also worked with Warne Marsh. He spent much of his career teaching and was relatively inactive since 1992; however, new CDs were released in 2004, 2005, and 2008.
Pianist Sal Mosca, who predominately performed in the cool jazz and post-bop genres, passed away on July 28, 2007 in White Plains, New York.
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