Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joseph Francis Lamb was born of Irish parents on December 6, 1887 in Montclair, New Jersey. The youngest of four children, he taught himself to play the piano and admired the early ragtime publications of Scott Joplin. His first known works were Meet Me At The Chutes and Idle Dreams, at the age of 13 in 1900, but they are unpublished and assumed lost.
During his teenage years while living in Toronto, Canada he published several march and waltz compositions for Harry H. Sparks Music Publisher. Most notable were The Lilliputian’s Bazaar, Celestine Waltzes, and Florentine. Most were published after he left Canada
Lamb dropped out of St. Jerome’s College in 1904 to work for a dry goods company. He met Joplin in 1907 while purchasing the latest Joplin and Scott sheet music in the offices of John Stark & Son. It was there that Joplin was impressed with Lamb’s compositions and recommended him to ragtime publisher John Stark. Stark published Lamb’s music for the next decade, starting with Sensation.
Joseph’s twelve rags published by Stark from 1908 to 1919 can be divided into two groups: the “heavy” rags are incorporated with Joplin’s melody–dominated style and Scott’s expansive use of the keyboard registers. The “light” rags with the cakewalk tradition show the narrow-range melodies inspired by Joplin.
He went on to work as an arranger for the J. Fred Helf Music Publishing Company and in 1914 became an accountant for L. F. Dommerich & Company. When popular music interest shifted from ragtime to jazz Lamb stopped publishing his music, playing and composing only as a hobby.
Composer Joseph Lamb, who was the only non-African American of the Big Three composers of classical ragtime, the other two being Scott Joplin and James Scott, died of a heart attack in Brooklyn, New York at age 72 on September 3, 1960.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Tony Jackson was born Antonio Junius Jackson an epileptic on October 25, 1882 into a poor Black family of freed slaves in Uptown New Orleans, Louisiana. His twin brother died at fourteen months of age. Showing musical talents at a young age by 10 he constructed a crude properly tuned harpsichord out of junk in his backyard. He played hymns he heard in church and soon the neighborhood was offering the use of their pianos and reed organs to practice on. This led to his first musical job at age 13, when he began playing piano during off hours at a Tonk run by bandleader Adam Olivier.
Jackson became the most popular and sought after entertainer in the red light district Storyville. Able to remember and play any tune he had heard once and was hardly ever stumped by obscure requests. His singing voice was also exceptional, and he was able to sing operatic parts from baritone to soprano range. He became a mentor to Jelly Roll Morton.
Tony wrote many original tunes, a number of which he sold rights to for a few dollars or were simply stolen from him; some of the old time New Orleans musicians said that some well known Tin Pan Alley pop tunes of the era were actually written by Jackson.
Well dressed always with a pearl gray derby, checkered vest, ascot tie with a diamond stickpin, with sleeve garters on his arms to hold up his cuffs as he played. This became a standard outfit for ragtime and barrelhouse pianists.
Moving to Chicago, Illinois hoping to have more of an influence on his career. Jackson was a resident performer at the De Luxe and Pekin Cafes in the city. In his later years his voice and dexterity were impaired by disease, syphilis or cirrhosis of the liver in addition to chronic epilepsy. Pianist, singer, and composer Tony Jackson died on April 20, 1921.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Sylvester Lewis was born on October 19, 1908 in Kansas City, Missouri and played locally as a college student around the city in the 1920s. His first major tour was with a traveling revue called Shake Your Feet, where he met Herbie Cowens. This meeting led to him joining the Cowens group, playing at the Rockland Palace in New York City in 1928.
He recorded with Jelly Roll Morton in New York the same year. After a stint with Aubrey Neal in 1929, Lewis joined Claude Hopkins’s band, playing with him from 1930 to 1936 and recording with him extensively between 1932 and 1935.
Leaving Hopkins, he performed in Billy Butler’s orchestra for the theater show Rhapsody in Black and played in Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake’s Shuffle Along in 1941. Sylvester led his own band for troop tours of the Pacific during World War II, and recorded with Roy Eldridge in 1946 after his discharge.
He began studying the Schillinger system in the late 1940s, but gave up music entirely after 1949 and spent the rest of his life working for the New York City Subway.
Trumpeter Sylvester Lewis died in 1974 in New York City.
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Mike John Brett Daniels was born April 23, 1928 in Norbiton, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, London, England. He had an early interest in jazz at a very young age while studying at Aldenham School from the age of 13 in 1941 as a pupil until 1945. Taking up the trumpet at 16, his family moved to Stanmore, Middlesex, where he organized a new group called the Stanmore Stompers in 1947.
He is probably best known for his work with his own seven piece group, The Delta Jazzmen. He led this group from 1948 to 1974 and again in the 1990s. He moved to Spain briefly in the mid-1960s. He had very little recorded output during his lifetime but he recorded two albums worth of material, one of which was titled Mike on Mike from 1960.
There exists some well recorded performances by the Delta Jazzmen which featured Daniels from 1958 to 1963, along with additional input from trombone player Gordon Blundy and John Barnes on reed instruments. The rhythm section is accompanied on these works by banjo-tuba-drums.
Mike was regarded as an ensemble-orientated player who provided a solid lead combined with laid-back solos. Some of his other bands have featured talents such as Keith Nichols and John Chilton. The British Lake Label produced ‘Limited Edition’ recordings of Daniels’ work.
Trumpeter Mike Daniels, who aspired to reproduce the original styles of King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, died on October 18, 2016 at the age of 88
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Daily Dose Of Jazz…
Joe Thomas was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma on December 23, 1908 and was the brother of Walter “Foots” Thomas. He first went to New York City with Jelly Roll Morton in 1929.
During the 1930s he worked with Blanche Calloway and other bands. The early Forties saw him working with jazz musician Dave Martin. He gave up playing to become a vocal coach and songwriter and later an A&R executive.
Alto saxophonist and songwriter Joe Thomas transitioned on April 15, 1997.
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